Historical Story

You know how in High School when you worked in a group there was always that one kid who kind of coasted through and didn't do a lot of work? Everybody dreads having that kid in their group. For this project I was the kid who got sick and kind of showed up halfway through when most of the work was already done, and for that I feel bad.

Spencer and Neil were kind enough to allow me to crash their group and work on their (already mostly finished) assignment with them. A fun little historical piece called Squeaky Milk.

In preparing for this assignment, I had read Satrapi's The Veil, an autobiographical comic about the feelings of a young girl as she grows up, finding her place in her changing world. The piece is called The Veil, and we find the main center of the story surrounding the fact that due to sudden changes in government, all girls were required to wear a veil. It's interesting to see such a huge cultural moment told in a story where the veil wasn't necessarily the most important subject being covered.

I think that is the main purpose for this assignment's particular parameters. We were to write a screenplay for a historical event, but write it from the perspective of a fictional character. In this way perhaps we could contextualize a cultural moment in a way that is interesting and from a perspective that we might not expect.

The movie, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close reminds me of this type of story telling. The movie revolves around a young boy who I suspect may have a form of Aspergers (or certainly some form of autism), and tells the story of how he makes sense of his father's death in the 9/11 attack. But in the end, this movie is not about September 11th, but about a little boy who finds his place in the world, comes to terms with his father's death, and improves understanding between himself and his mother. These are the best kinds of stories in my opinion, taking a cultural moment or certainly a changing moment in our history, and telling the story of the ordinary person being affected by such a moment.

So in the end, we have our script. The one that I helped revise and that's about it. It is a fantastic script, with a fun story about the discovery of cheese. I enjoyed helping fine-tune the story, working on the puns and making sure the names were fun while also being believable. Here are all of the links required for the assignment, and please enjoy.

Actual Script:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7A2YAV1gQ4cYkZWb0d4V0U4LUVYdjl2NDZsN1gzVHBHdjN3/edit?usp=sharing

Inspirations for the Story:

I Love Girl, Simon Rich:
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2012/12/17/121217sh_shouts_rich?currentPage=all

And then a fun video by the people over at Cracked, explaining the invention of Homelessness, as told from the perspective of a man who missed out on the progression of being mere cavemen to the cultural progression of the stone age.