For the past few weeks, I’ve been applying for funding support for a narrative feature script that I’ve spent the past year and a half writing. I’ve now answered numerous questions regarding the purpose, the timeliness, the tone, look, and feel of the piece, the logline, the summary, the treatments and main plot points, the relevance of it in today’s world and why this story should be shared at this moment in time. I get it. As an administrator, I once crafted these applications. I’ve reviewed hundreds myself for other organizations and screenplay contests. But, now that I’m on the other side as a filmmaker, well… I just want to submit the damn script. It already says everything, or perhaps it says nothing depending on where a reviewer is at when they read it. To just submit the script itself, to me, is more important than what I have to say to “sell” it. It’s in the script where I have invested the most time, efforts, energy, and tears. Truly.
At the end of the day, it means nothing of how I see it or the meaning I personally assign to it. What matters is what you take from it, how you perceive it and what, if anything has changed within you after reading or watching it.
So, yah, as I procrastinate then apply then procrastinate some more, as I pay the hefty fees for applying late, as I let doubt overstay its welcome and make me believe that I shouldn’t even try, fuck me for having to defend, in intricate detail, what I’ve written when the interpretation of it is entirely out of my control.
My writing, any bit of it (yes, even this piece) is just a chance for me to scream across a long corridor hoping that, on the other side, there will emerge more than a whisper. That there will emerge another hand waiting to grab mine.