Night owls unite

For 35 years or so, I’ve been a night owl. I do my best thinking at night, after all distractions are gone, the stores are all closed, the phone has stopped ringing and the streets are empty.

As my profession is "writer," it did not become a problem until recently, when I was expected to attend school functions for my children and morning pitch meetings for my work. Someone will mention a morning event I’ll need to be at, and I’ll say "Well, that’s a little early for me because I work at night," and the person will subtly recoil as though they have suddenly noticed that I’m a vampire.

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Programming note

Weeds have begun to sprout in the corners of this blog as I attend to other matters — mostly, other blogging. This "other blogging" I’ve been doing is top-secret – related webseries stuff, which will be trumpeted loudly from every promontory the moment we have something decent to show you fine people.

In movie-viewing news, the Bollywood-related project I was working on came a cropper, so I haven’t needed to become an expert in Bollywood musicals after all, although I did set aside three hours or so to view Devdas, a period romance (a sort of Indian Wuthering Heights) starring Shahrukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai, based on a classic novella which has, apparently, been filmed no less than 11 times, twice in this decade alone. Take that, An Affair to Remember!

I know Devdas was not on any of the lists that my kind and attentive readers sent me — rather, it was the recommendation of my local video-store clerk. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Hi, do you have a Bollywood section?
Clerk: Um, not really. (To be fair, this particular video store doesn’t have an anything "section," they just have heaps of empty DVD cases sitting around — you kind of have to know what you’re looking for when you go in — an excellent selection, just not at all walk-in friendly.) What are you looking for?
Me: Well, um, I’m not really sure. I just kind of have a need to familiarize myself with the genre.
Clerk: (grabs a DVD of Devdas off the shelf) Well, this was popular.
Me: (scrutinizing DVD) Um, do you have a copy of Sholay? (That is, a movie that was recommended to me by Indian Scriptwriter.)
Clerk: Um, yeah, but, that’s like, old.
Me: Um —
Clerk. I mean, that would be like if you wanted to learn about American movies by watching something like, you know, On the Waterfront.
Me: (the downside of this eludes me) Um, yeah — okay — can I take it anyway?
Clerk: Um, if you want.

Anyway, I have no idea if Devdas is a shining example of Bollywood cinema or not, but it’s certainly a head-turning spectacle. It features what I was expecting from "a Bollywood movie," ie: a slightly giddy style of overacting, beautiful women paired with goofy-looking men, grand emotions set against luxurious, stylized backgrounds and spectacular production numbers with cultural signifiers that feel peculiar to westerners. I had planned to write a whole big thing about my first foray in Bollywood but the project I was doing it for fell apart too quickly for me to articulate my thoughts.

Instead, I have turned to Bergman, viewing not only the aforementioned Thirst but also Persona, Shame and The Passion of Anna, and looking forward to tackling Cries and Whispers in the near future. Persona I intend to dissect scene by scene in a "Favorite Screenplays" piece.

When Hollywood folk ask me what I’ve been doing with myself (that is, when I’m not working on projects for them), and I respond with "I’ve been watching a lot of Bergman," they always look at me with a furrowed brow, as though I might soon require psychiactric care.