A script note that I've consistently heard regarding Original Glory is; why does one character so devotedly follow the other? Why doesn't LBJ just go off on his own? Because he can't, that's why. It's said, screenwriting is in the rewriting, and I've had to find a way to satisfy the questions of producers and agents while not succumbing to the hackneyed devices that often explain the needs in a character's inner life.
I've been revisiting Fellini's La Strada lately and see a character far more despicable in Zampano than my own Johnny. (Has any other actor played two such notorious characters with names beginning with Zed as has Anthony Quinn as Zampano and Zorba?) Martin Scorsese points out the Franciscan elements of Italian neo-realism. The neo-realists had tremendous compassion for all the characters in their films, eschewing the black and white hats and hearts of Hollywood. I love to repeat the old refrain that 's there's a bit of good in the worst of us and a bit of bad in the best of us. As I love Saint Francis's admonitions that we seek to understand than to be understood and so forth.
Fellini is a far more masterful storyteller than I, of course. He does not kill his bad guy. Rather he kills his sweet Gelsomina, instructing on profound levels both Zampano and his audience with the death of an innocent. I didn't see that possibility in my tale, but I always knew Johnny had to die in the end. In an affirmation of my own humanism, I still have tears well up when I read the final scenes of Original Glory. Not bad, considering I've read them seemingly countless times.
I really have more compassion for Johnny than LBJ, because LBJ finds a way out and Johnny stubbornly thinks To Thine Ownself Be True is an epitaph rather than a call to arms. Pobrecito.
Ciao amici,
Signore Direttore
No comments:
Post a Comment