The Pitch....

“OK, most all the great books have been made into movies already, Catch 22, Heart of Darkness ,” Mr. K raised a pencil “the bible” Billy remember don‘t alienate, don’t be rude, compromise. “yes sir… the bible.” “Star Wars” “ and Star wars of course. But now Hollywood is running on empty. What’s next? Where’s Waldo the movie?” Mr. K leaned into his desk “I like where your going with this. I’m sold, it will be like a who done it, maybe more of a where is he.” “That is an idea but I am talking about something big sir. You see the best news a young screenplay writer like myself can hear is that he has been chosen to write a screenplay for a novel by one of the greatest writers in the twentieth century. Now the worst news he could receive is that it is for; drum roll please” “Give your da da da da da da da damn pitch or your da da da da da done.” Bill’s long dramatic arms began to create a second language beside his own “Sir nothing short of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake.” Mr. K skimmed through a filing cabinet asked absentmindedly “Who?” “Sir he is world famous” He pulled out a file “Did he pitch for the cards?” “no but.” He dropped the file back in “then I don’t care.” “He’s like the Falkner of Ireland but bigger.” Mr. K looked up from clipping his toe nails. “Who?” ” “Sir he is like the worlds…..Steven King.” He spun in his chair like a little boy “Wow.” With know some of Mr. K’s attention Billy continued “OK as a medium for artistic expression, motion pictures should be able to transcend the mythological, archaic, ethnic, personal and abstract.” “Damn strait those were the rights the Japs tried to take from us” Billy defiantly tried to keep Mr. K on track “but the most optimistic artist will see the overwhelming difficulties in translating Finnegan’s Wake from words to sounds and images……even with Jap interference.
Mr. K drawling tits on the corner of a invoice asked with a yawn “Isn’t Irish, English?” “well yes…. but the English.. .it’s a long story.” Bill would not be thrown of the track by these human slot machine. “ As I was saying, Joyce had always broken with conventional writing styles by employing, what was then considered innovative, Freudian methods to his writing. Novels such as Ulysses took place in the irrational individual metaphor in the form of streams of consciousness. Yet Ulysses had narration, dialog and a plot with a beginning and an end. This meant that Ulysses could be adapted to the silver screen.” Mr K held one hand over the receiver of the phone “Does your pitch consisted of “”my movie will have an ending!?!””
“No sir my story I am pitching is Finnegan’s Wake, and Finnegan’s Wake is a story about” bills body froze in a ready to wrestle position, eyes big. “No one is for sure what it is about. It is a hodgepodge of languages, slang, personal imagery, mythos, ethnic history, puns and nothing short of abstract nonsense. At points, it is the raw material of poetry with cadence but no meaning. At other points, you can see a Christ-like figure morphing from a recently deceased man into the city of Dublin and then into the Eucharist and finally resurrected by spilled whiskey.” bill spoke from a hole in the sky in liquid preachers ecstasy.
“Even more of a challenge for me, would be to make an audiovisual version of this novel, is the fact that it is never-ending. The first line of the story is in the middle of the sentence of the last line of the novel. The novel Finnegan’s Wake is a closed loop.” Bill spun his hands about like a deaf, mime, magician. “How would a screenplay writer adapt this into a movie you may ask?” Mr K shrugged as he looked sleepily out a window “For that matter, why would he make this movie? I will tell you why Boss, a infinity move will run for ever and make money for every, instead of buying a ticket, someone would buy a life time membership. People will get off work and go strait to their old friend Finnegan’s wake, boss it will be us and cockroaches.” looking between his fingers “how will you make me money for ever?”

“Well sir In a normal adaptation, a screenwriter would read from a novel a phrase like “the front of the house looked like an angry old man.” The screenwriter would have something tangible to storyboard and the set designers would have something to work with. They could make a decrepit-looking house with two windows in the front and a door in the middle to form a face. This face could be made to look angry by curving down the windows and doors to create a frown and the siding could serve as symmetric wrinkles. While a normal excerpt from Finnegan’s Wake reads, “Countlessness of livestories have netherfallen by this plage, flick as flowflakes, litters from aloft, like a waast wizzard all of whirlworlds. Now are all tombed to the mound, isges to isges, erde from erde.”(Joyce 182) Here he paints a picture with a phonetic brush. Its not just predominantly abstract it is exclusively verbally abstract. I believe I could convert this novel with a little help from Occam’s razor. First, .” Billy‘s excitement began to peel the wallpaper. “I can drop everything but the dialogue giving voice to the character whatever morphing form the character takes. So as to keep the audience aware of who the character is the voice should be consistent and there should be a visual key like a bowtie. Your voice is mighty unique sir. “Well I do do a mean Jacky Gleeson. ” preempting Mr. K’s impersonation Billy continued
“After I completed the more lucid parts of the story, I will need to move on to the abstract portion. To keep to the original intentions of the writer the narration should be rarely change to just visual effect. Like in Fantasia, the lyrics should not be compromised by the visuals. The images could complement the theme and as the text becomes more lucid, the screenwriter could storyboard actual scenes. When I am not sure if I can translate the enigma of any part of the story I will use the text only. The result would be the equivalent to a man with synesthesia coming in and out of a coma. At times, he would wake to a scene from relatively normal life, only to fall back unconscious dragging the outside world into his personal mythology made up of a galosh of all he knows. This dream state would be filled with Freudian complexes, Jungian symbols, family relations, national myths, and nonsense.” Billy twisted himself into tied and untied knots, Mr. K watched like a cat.
“I have reference the films Jacob’s Ladder for the transcending of time, space and realities, and Fantasia to get a sense of image to sound for the real language based abstract bits. I studied eighties music videos which has been helpful too. Music videos must often transcend between direct realities to concept to abstract within the same video. A well-made music video will know when to create a mood, tell a story, or just complement sensations. I have also versed myself in Celtic, and Catholic mythology, Irish culture, and history and mythology in general so I can attempt to properly interpret Joyce’s writings.
The last dilemma in making Finnegan’s Wake into a movie, is to deal with its infinite loop. My fix for this is just allowing the movie to loop back onto itself on the DVD. This way the sense of timelessness is there, the sense of resolution will never come. If it catches on, Finnegan’s Wake could be a Rocky Horror-type experience where fans stay all night at the theater watching the equivalent of the round, “infinity bottles of beer on The Wall.” Generations will pass on there seat, wedding and funerals will take place in the theater. .
The general sense I will try to preserve is that this novel is as disjointed as life itself. Most of us don’t dare to take the time from our artificially goal-oriented lives to realize that our existence is more like the abstract, through the fun house looking glass world, of Finnegan’s Wake than the well structured world of Forest Gump. The disjointed characters that morph into one another is much more like us than the well defined Luke Skywalker. Minds, souls and thought bleed into one another through body language, shared experience, and shared cultures. Our perspective is not as absolute as conventional movies have to convey. Instead, we are constantly in personal reality dream states that would not be easy to define and interpret.
Finally, reality does not conveniently end like a well structured story would have you believe. Joyce’s infinity loop reveals the inconvenient and hard to comprehend truth that time and absolutes are illusions that help us get to our next meal.” Billy lowered his arms like currents and raised his eyes like a porn theaters lights.” “Billy you do realize we make ironing boards here” Bill held his magnificent stare, Mr K looked away and back a few times. “Billy you see ironing boards have very little to do with movies and Billy I don’t even think you own a camera.” Mr. K looked down at the empty factory floor from his window. “I know you just want to help but……….. Fine, fine we will make your damn movie, hell will even make the space shuttle if we are going to fail lets do it big, Billy lets do it big, call everyone back in, buy a camera and a smoke machine what ever the fuck you need .”