Bizzarro: From Stranger Than Fiction to John Malkovich Being David Lynch

Ideas are a dime a dozen. Pulling it off is another story. Here are three stories in film that began as an idea.

Stranger Than Fiction
An I.R.S. auditor figures out that he is not a real person but rather, is a character in a book that someone is writing. When he learns that he's soon to be bumped off he goes on a quest. Can he find the author in time to have the end of the story re-written?

No doubt the story began with a "what if" question. Will Ferrell is the somewhat obsessive-compulsive lead character Harold Crick and he pulls it off. One reviewer of the film at imdb.com states that it could have gone further in exploring the issues it raised and labeled it "Charlie Kaufman Lite." I liked it though.

Adaptation
A lovelorn screenwriter becomes desperate as he tries and fails to adapt 'The Orchid Thief' by Susan Orlean for the silver screen.

This one, and the next, really are Charlie Kaufman screenplays. With echoes of Carl Hiaasen (Everglades, unusual characters and a plot that veers in unexpected ways) my only suggestion is that at a certain point in time you'll want your seat belt fastened when this film goes off the rails.

Being John Malkovich
The storyline reads: A puppeteer discovers a portal that leads literally into the head of movie star John Malkovich. Directed by Spike Jonze, this is another remarkable script by screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, a truly original film that takes you places you can't begin to imagine. This is what "Magical Realism" (Borges, Umberto Echo, Marquez) looks like when translated to the silver screen.

John Malkovich as David Lynch
The title of this trailer is Psychogenic Fugue, "a psychological state in which a person loses awareness of their identity or other important autobiographical information."**

It was this last little snippet that became catalyst for the blog post. This summer I've been reviewing everything I've ever written for this blog, and am finding a lot of material that was initiated but then abandoned in favor of something else for that day. Always hoping to make you visit worthwhile...

Imagination is an amazing thing. Where does it come from? Why is it so active in some and restrained in others? What will they think of next?

**Psychology Today:&nbsp -- https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/conditions/dissociative-fugue-psychogenic-fugue

Adagio For Strings

‘I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being! I am a man!” ~ John Merrick

Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" (1936) is one remarkable piece of music. In the 1980 David Lynch film The Elephant Man, starring William Hurt and Anthony Hopkins, Adagio becomes the perfect score for the film’s tragically soft climax. More theater goers probably remember it as the theme music weaving together Oliver Stone’s 1986 Viet Nam epic Platoon.

Having just viewed The Elephant Man again this weekend, my heart breaks for these social outcasts. This film tugs at your heart on many levels. The film is about an exceptionally deformed man’s struggle to gain a sense of dignity after years as a side show carnival attraction. The commercial exploitation of this “freak”, John Merrick, is a major undercurrent throughout.

A long forgotten memory came to mind while watching the film. I had been in Washington D.C. for the May Day protests of 1971. When the streets were safe as the first day’s rioting wound down I attempted to hitchhike out of D.C. in order to reach Athens, Ohio for my ten o’clock philosophy class at Ohio University Tuesday morning. I could tell many stories from that trip, but will only share one here. When it became apparent that the two students from Antioch, who had picked me up in Maryland, were not going to go several hours out of their way to bring me back to school, they were kind enough to drop me off at the Pittsburgh bus station where my ten dollars was just sufficient to catch a midnight bus that would transport me to Athens. With a transfer and two stops along the way I would arrive at 8:00 a.m., just in time to shower and ready myself for class. (Anecdotal: Impractical 19-year-old hippie that I was, I actually left Athens the Thursday before, thumb extended, with no money whatsoever for this five day adventure. My aunt in Falls Church outside D.C. gave me the tenspot in case I got arrested.)

There were four of us on the bus: a young black woman who pretty much kept to herself, a middle aged West Virginia woman who insisted that every boy friend she ever had was named Eddie and that I should get off with her at Parkersburg (an offer which I declined), and a man who worked for the Coney Island Freak Show who was travelling the country to purchase freaky attractions for the famed New York amusement park. He showed me photos which people sent, which he would then go examine and occasionally purchase. Some were Polaroids, others regular pictures.

As we riffled through the stack of photos I saw a two-headed sheep, two-headed dog, a six legged sheep, Siamese twin pigs with eight legs and two heads, and other horrors, some fascinating, others grotesque. It was not a pretty assignment, yet he seemed to relish it.

I think it fortunate that the carny sideshows with humans as monsters to be gawked at are a thing of the past… or I hope so. But the reality is, we still see this attitude in the world where some people are made to feel themselves outcasts. Every society has its untouchables. It could be race, social standing, education level, special needs, the way we look, piercings... What we forget is that these are fellow human beings, with beating hearts, who like John Merrick have had human aspirations, who long to be treated with dignity.

How indescribably painful it is to feel outcast, untouchable and dehumanized. Oscar Wilde, in his poem Ballad of Reading Gaol, said it aptly:
"We did not dare to breathe a prayer or give our anguish scope,
Something was dead in each of us and what was dead was hope."

Perhaps there is someone in your life who feels isolated. Perhaps by befriending this person you will give birth to hope in his or her heart. Or if you are feeling inward pain from a heart wound that seems to go on an on, perhaps you can take comfort in knowing you are not alone. My prayer is that you will be comforted.

There are a number of versions of Barber’s wonderful and heart-rending composition, but I selected this one to remove its associations so you can just lose yourself in the streams of sound. If you get a chance, take it in. Inhale its evocative mesmerizing power.



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