Jul
1
“Would you like tea?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Would you like coffee?”
“I’m good.”
“Well . . . “
“I mean, I don’t need a beverage. As far as beverages go, I’m good.”
“Well . . . tell me about this.”
“It’s about unrequited love.”
“That’s good. That’s one of the 12 great themes.”
“So, it’s about that but it’s also about rivalry between brothers.”
“That’s another of the 12 great themes. Jacob and Joseph and so on.”
“It’s also about . . .”
“Or is it 11 great themes? Or 10?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well . . .”
“But it’s also about sons and fathers.”
“That’s not one of them. That’s a lesser theme. It didn’t make the list of 12, or 10, or 11. Let’s cut it.”
“It’s kind of important. In the pilot script it runs the whole third act.”
“What was the other one? Brothers? I don’t think we can do that. Unless it’s a gay thing. Is it a gay thing?”
“It wasn’t really a gay thing.”
“Lose it. This is what editing is all about. Like a boy with a stick in a field of tulips. What was the other one?”
“Unrequited love.”
“Well . . . that’s to keep. You keep that. Without the other two, what’s this unrequited love thing about? Tell me about that.”
“It’s not much without the other two. It’s nothing really.”
“Tell me about it.”
“The words stick . . .”
“Well . . . I’ll tell you about it. The boy, he sits on his bed and flips the TV from channel to channel. He’s in the Ozarks, the flipping Appalachians, Tibet, or wherever. He spends his days climbing trees, gathering this parasitic herb that’s sun hungry and grows on top of the canopy. He’s a wisp to be able to climb up there. Skinny branches. But this herb, it’s for the heart, keeps everything regulated, just about as good as a pacemaker. Very valuable. He gathers it for his father, who uses it and sells it. Anyhow, he’s watching TV at night. Who knows how he gets the TV? Their one luxury, it’s satellite.
“But on the TV as he flips channel to channel, he sees, of course, a girl. She’s a nothing, the friend of the girl in the bubblegum commercial, but she makes this wonderful mistake of looking into the camera and the boy feels like she’s looked right at him. They have the internet. I don’t know how. Everyone’s got it. He finds the casting director’s contact information, and he sends her a handwritten letter. Doesn’t know about email, apparently. But the handwritten letter gets there, and it’s artfully composed, if poorly penned, and the casting director can’t help herself and sends back the bubblegum girl’s name. But the boy’s brother intercepts the letter, steams it open, I love it when they steam the envelope open, and writes another letter, vitriol about the absurdity of the boy’s position and his activities climbing trees like an ape. Of course, the boy hasn’t mentioned anything in his letter to the casting director about herb gathering or tree climbing, but when he reads this new letter, he doesn’t think about the implausibility. He’s just cut down.
“But the brother, he goes to Hollywood, takes several pounds of this cash crop, looks for this girl. He’s about to run out of money when he’s spotted and ends up in a commercial. The boy sees the commercial. He fumes and heads to Hollywood himself. He lives in trees. We’ll call it that. ‘He Lives in Trees.’ And we follow his shenanigans from treetop to treetop, following his brother who now lives with the bubblegum girl. Every episode is another attempt to undermine his brother, and contains scenes of the boy crying, and the bubblegum girl staring at the TV screen, her own reflection thrown back at her. It’s a comedy. How’s that sound?”
“It’s fine. Not what I’d planned. I think it’s slight.”
“Well . . .”
Belle & Sebastian - “Funny Little Frog” mp3
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