My feature film screenplay "The Stagemaster" set in England (yes, it's in English!) made it to the quarter-finals of the Los Angeles Screenplay Awards. Not bad for a Frenchie :)
It's great news for the future that such a personal screenplay with an unconventional structure is making its mark in mainstream competitions.
I don't go there often, but every time I do, I emerge transformed.
I never read the information: the author, the artistic approach, the family traumas that led them to make ceramics on cows, I couldn't care less. I disconnect my brain.
And always, I feel filled with overflowing gratitude to live in a country where for 9€, you can experience so much freedom in a public place where humans are welcome. At a time when train stations have more advertising boards than benches, that's saying something.
Three things I liked – among many others:
1. No need for an audience
The statues look at the artworks while the mannequins discuss the exhibition. One wonders what the purpose of the audience is.
2. It's meta
There's always a reflection on the medium. We don't just paint on paper; we reflect on the limits of paper, its relationship with ink, its connection with the viewer. And every time, we think, "Oh, are we allowed to do that?"
3. The bookstore
Every time, I choose a book almost at random by looking at the pictures or reading a paragraph in the middle. Over ten years ago, I picked up "On the Inside of Jokes" by Nik Christiansen.
This year, I picked up "The Waterfront Journals" by David Wojnarowicz – apparently, he's quite well-known. I'm already halfway through. This book blows my mind.
An afternoon... and everything changes.
I quite liked the original, and once again, no one bothered to notify me of this new version that you all know and that I only discovered this afternoon on the beach:
I took the opportunity to read the lyrics that I had never understood before, and they remind me a bit of Nobody Knows, while still maintaining an almost childlike simplicity, especially:
Went down the hill, the other day
Soul got happy and stayed all day
My eyes well up every time I hear this passage.
UPDATE: I also made a film with rockets flying backwards. And we won an award.
I was about to write an exciting article about the psychological component of effort based on my experience with the rowing machine at the gym: some days, It's a breeze; other days, on the same machine set at the same level, it feels like it weighs a ton.
I was going to explore in detail the psychological, neurological, and physiological origins of this discrepancy, and everyone would have found my article funny, well-researched, and so well-written.
Except that this morning, I discovered the truth.
When I lay my towel on the roller, the fabric prevents the moving air from escaping, and the suction maintains the rotation – or something like that – so that the exercise becomes much, much easier. But as soon as I place my towel elsewhere... Welcome to the Roman galleys.
All of this to say that the laws of physics have spared you another stupid article.
Thank you, science.
After film photography and paper lists, we continue the regression towards Mad Men, which will be followed, hopefully this year, by a very analog film project that I will talk about soon.
English transcription:
Dear friends, I've finally changed the ink ribbon of my typewriter, so I'm taking this opportunity to share with you some very important information. I know what you're going to say: "Nicolas, you have nothing important to share, you just want to show us that your machine also writes in red." My response is unequivocal: NOT AT ALL. I am surprised and extremely shocked by your doubts towards me. Big kiss XXX . Nicolas Boulenger.
It's a Remington Noiseless that I really like but whose ribbon is difficult to change and doesn't have an exclamation point. So, I add them by hand when I'm very annoyed.
I unexpectedly went to the theater last night and saw "Contre-Temps" by Samuel Sené. Fantastic!
Like a documentary but on stage: instead of archival footage and a voice-over, everything is narrated in the present by two singers and a pianist who recount the – exhilarating – life of the composer François Courdot by interpreting his main works.
At the heart of the show, there is notably a magnificent interpretation of "The Cold Song" by Purcell, of which I present you Klaus Nomi's version here:
Upon leaving, I became interested in this piece that everyone knows the melody of but often not the lyrics – which could come straight out of Game of Thrones:
What power art thou, who from below
Hast made me rise unwillingly and slow
From beds of everlasting snow?
See'st thou not how stiff and wondrous old
Far unfit to bear the bitter cold,
I can scarcely move or draw my breath?
Let me, let me freeze again to death.
Another amusing detail: I realized that the music for the show had been arranged by Raphaël Bancou, a pianist friend I haven't seen in ten years. I sent him a message, and I'm going to see him on Tuesday at the Rond Point in "Je suis Gréco." Life, sometimes.
I've been eco-anxious for a long time. I'll talk about it in more detail in upcoming posts, but the video below sums up my fears well, namely that we continue to think linearly in an exponential world.
In other words: when a phenomenon becomes visible, it's often already out of control.
Even if we were to discover that these famous "hot models" weren't accurate, they would quickly be supplanted by others that we didn't see coming either.
Two films about feminism and coming of age, where the first thirty minutes made me wonder, "Are they really going to make an entire movie out of this?"
For Barbie, the answer was "unfortunately, yes."
As for Edmond, it's a film I would have loved to share my love for with the rest of the world. I was ready to laugh and be enchanted, but... alas. The film boils down to a long series of winks the authors give to the audience to say, "Did you see how we turned that around? Pretty clever, huh?" Yes, yes, it's clever. But after ten winks, when you realize there's no real story, that the feminist or Mattel-related issues are just window dressing, and the characters are empty shells... you feel cheated. Like a long SNL sketch gone wrong. I struggled to make it to the end, and the ending didn't reward my effort.
Poor Things, by Yórgos Lánthimos, is different.
The characters, atmosphere, and humor are strange, unexpected, and once again, I feared the film would revel in this strangeness to the point of being stuck in it. But not at all: the film quickly moves forward; the characters evolve; the story progresses with an involved viewpoint and strong choices. It's a blend of fairy tale and philosophical tale, whose twists may seem far from our concerns – all these people are either much more beautiful or much uglier than us, often with very caricatured personalities, at least initially – but which ends up asking questions very close to ours: to what extent am I an extension of my parents? Am I too conditioned by society to be myself? How can I achieve a form of freedom and fulfillment in an imperfect world?
Like in any good fairy tale, we may not understand every reference – not everything is explained for once, thank you – but we feel that it speaks to us, and we come out of the movie theater a little transformed. Isn't that what cinema is all about?
