Down the Rabbit Hole... Into the Cinema Scope: 2011

The Greatest Books Ever Written and WHY!

THE GREAT GATSBY- F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

The longevity of The Great Gatsby derives from the somber moral of the story. Since the beginning of time it has been in our nature to migrate to another country and adopt new traditions for a better living. During the early 20th century, the empire of America became the symbol of hope that it is today. Immigrants over the world found refuge in a country founded by immigrants. Our Founding Fathers were immigrants when this country was declared freed, now our country bestowed its right to succeed on this willing to work for their happiness. It is called the American Dream. I have been influenced by the idea of the American Dream. I have a script that is generating buzz and one of the causes of the main character’s demise is his grasp on the American Dream. George Carlin once said, “It’s called the American Dream because you got to be asleep to believe it.” Accomplishing your American Dream is a beautiful event but if in doing so, you become a persona and turn your back against those who love you despite your flaws then, the American Dream is null. I was influenced by the depiction of a generation. F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda ushered in the Jazz Age. The maligned romance between Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchannan was overshadowed by materialism and disintegration of our moral values. Jay feverishly became the embodiment of the nouveau riche, opting to forget what made him human, that he died while he was alive, and only when he awoke, did he realize the failure of his dream. His dirty empire attracted spectators whose cynicism and greed defined his wild parties. His attempts to fill his delusions of grandeur were suppose to attract the girl but in the end, he became nothing. In death, he was carved out of the memories. He was just another casualty of the hollow existence of the prosperous new America. My influence from The Great Gatsby is to have a better understanding of your peers. Everyone has a story to tell and their stories live vicariously through the actions of others. I believe the absence of an identity creates the portrayed of disturbed sheet of flesh. To me a persona is like jelly; we can mold that creation to appease our ideals and pleasures. A persona is vacant. He is a parasite that sucks the nutrients of his host. A person and a persona live through symbiosis. I love to study weak people who allow themselves become the puppets for somebody else. I love how when they latch themselves to someone, like a lackey, they believe they are being selfless. It is those kinds of lost souls that deteriorated our society in the 1920’s. What I love about this book is that nothing really changed. Every few decades, we hit the fan with too much excess and freedom. In that time we think we are invincible. We are irreplaceable creatures. Then reality strikes and we are hit with a devastating blow. In both cases in the 1920’s and the 1980’s, we had a decade of prosperity followed by a crushing blow and Depression. After the Jazz Era died, Black Tuesday unfolded and America was hit with Depression followed by World War II. In the 1980’s, everything was done in a big way. Just like the shoulder pads and hair fads, we partied hard and became consumed with the capitalist downfall of greed. Wall Street was where the movers and shakers made their Devil handshakes. The train did not lose steam in the 1990’s but by 2001 America’s empire was attacked. Our symbol of hope burned down in flames and now we are in war once again. My influence in this book derives from the hollow realities that nobody changes because of a traumatic event. We will continue to live in our shallow existence, just as long as we are exonerated from the consequences. The American Dream heavily influenced me because of the desperateness to succeed is daunting.

THE DIVINE COMEDY- DANTE

I have a lifelong obsession with the seven deadly sins. The beauty and the moroseness of this subject fascinate me. I have been craving to get my hands dirty. I want to write a feature full length film that metaphorically implicates the seven deadly sins. My influence in the seven deadly sins came from reading Dante’s The Divine Comedy. I was captivated to read Dante and Virgil’s mythical journey to the divisions of the Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. I love his dissent to the different rings of hell, purgatory, and heaven. In his journey, Dante, Virgil, and Beatrice realize that our sins have different degrees based on the irreversible motives. Taking the journey with Dante, I realize we all fall under sin. The gravity sin intensifies as the levels rise. Lust is the least punishable whereas Pride is the ultimate fall of man. Pride of is the center of all sin. The Devil’s demise derived from his desire to eclipse God. Pride is the Father of Sin. I have been intrigued by the idea that sin consumes us all and without repentance for our sins we are dammed with guilt. I have two ideas to intertwine my obsession with the seven deadly sins. I am fascinated by their punishments such as the sinners of Wrath are dismembered alive and the prideful dwellers are broken on the wheel. I came up with the idea for a screenplay about a young doll collector whose inspiration to write comes from the cruel child’s play of the dolls she collects. As the doll collector writes her magnum opus, the words on the screen become a reality for her and each principal character is attached to a deadly sin. Her characters derive from the personalities she chose for the special dolls she recently bought. The morale of this tale is that her own creations punish her for her pride. Proverbs 6:16:19 states, “There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, among brothers.” Even in all its wickedness, my influences in the sins derive from the knowledge that all man is created equal and in equality we all sin. Sinning is fun, it is like a recreational drug yet everyone accountable for the sin shuns away from the consequences at hand.

HERLAND- CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILLMAN
If there was one book in which the prose and the values are a matrimonial entity, it is Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s novel Herland. What influenced me about Herland was Gilman understands of relationships. She creates a utopian society dominated by women through parthenogenesis. She implants three men in a society dominated by women. I am influenced by this book because it teaches me to understand the opposite sex through role reversal. Gender definition is a subject that interests me. What defines our gender is our appearance and what I loved about Herland is the way women physically looked strong. This book dispelled the myth of women’s fragility. I was influenced by this book to write my stance female empowerment in a society of corruption called Mesmerized by Confusion and The Arts of Chaos. In my screenplay and its sequel, I wrote my main male character to have sympathies for four female criminals. The story is a look into the world of the corruption of elite government. The four women have a motivation and each girl is way different from each other. Kirsten is the ranting eccentric. Vanessa is the chess player; she’s incredibly resilient. Jacqueline is the schizophrenic. Leslie is very naive and innocent. Each girl has their own agenda. Vanessa is to destroy the elite establishment. Kirsten wants to erase racial barriers and eliminate the inferior races (survival of the fittest) through eugenics. Jacqueline wants to denounce psychiatry and modern medicine. Leslie wants to eliminate the government funded institutions. Ethan's sympathies lie with them because he used to apart of their group. In the end, because of my Herland influence, my women dominated the game and presented the true corruption of the black government. Herland takes a gander at the wider scope of the male and female stereotypes and exposes them for a social look at reform, equality, and the identification of male and female roles. I want to write scripts with social messages about the world around us. I hate meaningless films and books. I need characters that go through a journey together. I need my couples to feel equal and understand the complexities of love and intellect in a society full of prejudices and hate. Van and Ellador succeeded because in plain view, they were the most equipped. They were equal in their competitive nature. I am a romantic. All my stories entail a love story. Herland influenced me to have my characters re-imagine a society where the leading man and woman are both dominating and equal. I love competition but competition of the mind is not fun when one is far more inferior then its opponent.

FAHRENHEIT 451- RAY BRADBURRY/HARRISON BERGERON- KURT VONNEGUT

As an entertainer, the one thing I hate the most is censorship. I want to have free reign of whatever I produce. Ray Bradbury’s masterpiece Fahrenheit 451 and Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron has the same effect on me. The censorship of books and knowledge comes from deep-set envy towards those who are clearly superior. In Vonnegut’s short story, the government placed shackles on the intellectuals and masks on the beautiful people. In Fahrenheit 451, the firemen confiscated books and burned them. Both stories displayed Communistic ideals of the banning of intelligence and other freedoms such as speech and religion. The governments wanted them to be equal at a bare minimum. I have a keen fascinating with overthrowing a government. Many of my stories, Mesmerized by Confusion and The Arts of Chaos implicate in a corrupt government and my want for anarchy. My inspirations from that subject come from learning the difference between knowledge and ignorance. Communism wants to destroy the people’s knowledge and promote ignorance as an equal stabilizer. There is a difference between knowledge and ignorance. Someone who is "stupid" lacks the ability to gain knowledge and someone who is "ignorant" has the capacity to gain the knowledge but does not have the knowledge at the time in question. Therefore, the stories of Fahrenheit 451 and Harrison Bergeron resonated with me because they had an unforeseen villain censoring the intelligence of a nation, lowering their capacities to civilly function as a society. Unfortunately, events like these are happening around the world and I cannot help to think that in this day and age, it is happening now. The mind is a powerful think which is why it has become a reoccurring theme in my films. I am influenced by these books because I want to write scripts pertaining to the preservation of our freedoms to think freely and uphold a resistance against the machines that are attempting to control us.