CERTIFIED TALENT: DAYS SPENT AT A FILM FORUM.

MR SCHRADER, PART 1.

I would love to call it a celebrity sighting, but there were very few that really knew Paul Schrader that afternoon. However, as is usual, the buzz around an event not only precedes its actual significance, but manages to pull in the unsuspecting as well. On that hot July Delhi afternoon, Golden Globe winning veteran Hollywood screenwriter and Director Paul Schrader ( Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Affliction) was in town. With a narrow focus on the art of adapting text for the screen, his opulent (more emotional than historical) biopic Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters was being screened as part of a retrospective at the 10th Osian’s Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema.

I was part of a 30 member delegate called the 5th Talent Campus: a forum for ‘talented, young and aspiring filmmakers’ Yes I had to do shit to qualify; prove my talent ET all. Apparently I did it with a screenplay submission. Ding, ding ding…jackpot!

Now, Paul Schrader was there…the man who put words into Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle , and he was open to questions. Thus began the screening. When the lights came on, still reeling from the spectrum of feelings that the film stirred up in me, I had little time to dwell on it. I had to pose a question. It was the only way to be seen by the maestro. This single thought triggered a series of imagined consequences in my star struck head:

I ask a question – Schrader answers – thinks how smart, bright and talented I seem to be – meets me after the Q & A – asks me if I have a ready, bound screenplay (I did!) – sets up a couple of meetings…twinkle twinkle! I’m wielding my pen in Hollywood!

“Mr Schrader!” I cried out like a despondent arse-on-the-line journalist. “Mr. Schrader…here!” my hands up in the air. My dear befuddled friend Sukanya giggled and remarked, “Sweetie, you don’t have to be so starry-eyed!” I smiled back at her, but chose to persist with my efforts at getting attention from this Hollywood royalty. He’s so done with the session I can see, but what he can see is that I really do seem to have something earth shattering to say. So he turns to me. “Yes, that young man over there…hey!” I swallow a lump. I’d gone over the question in my head ample times, so it almost slipped out involuntarily like a scurrying mouse. “Good afternoon Mr Schrader! While watching your film, I felt like the music almost journeyed through with Mishima’s trajectory. It was just wonderful! What would have been your brief to Philip Glass for the music?” Mr Schrader begins nodding well before the question is over, so I safely assume it’s a question he would take pleasure in answering. “Thank you” he says. “Well, Phill has had a very strong background in writing operas, and that in itself lends to a certain structure in the way the music unfolds with the story. He’s got just the ear I needed, and we’d try to gauge that sense of progression or drama that you’re talking about even when we went through the scratch tapes and I remember saying to Phill – You know Phill, I’m making this movie which is the boat, I need YOU to make me the river. And he got it, he really did!” Paul nodded again. My question was answered and my day made. A bearded man turned to me for a quick glance as I took my seat again. Turns out it was David Weisman, the producer of the legendary Kiss of the Spiderwoman. So much for a momentary brush with Hollywood!

Ideally, there should have been that progression of events that I mentioned earlier, but I had to settle for the after taste of having watched a terrific piece of cinema…and of having met its maker.

I made several mental notes at the end of the day, and highlighted a particular one – Get Schrader to read your screenplay day after. He was to come back for a master class on Screenwriting that was compulsory for the delegates to attend. I was somehow indifferent to the word ‘compulsory’. Hell I’d be there!
P.S: Watch this space for Mr Schrader, Part 2 :)

CERTIFIED TALENT: DAYS SPENT AT A FILM FORUM

Namaskar

Namaskar! Aaiye Bas Do Minute online mein. Iss site par aap jab chahein, jis vishay par chahein, likh sate hain. Dimmag daudaaiye aur keyboard par ungliyan chalaaiye... dhanyavad!