I was fortunate enough to meet one of my idols today: Peter Greenaway. He delivered a presentation at UPenn earlier this evening, which was incredible. I got a chance to witness some of his most recent material, and I smiled a lot. Too much smiling.
I must say that I am terrible when it comes to idol-encounters; I am painfully shy and succumb to anxiety in most social settings, let alone environments inhabited, albeit briefly, by folks of admirable stature. April encouraged me to ask him to sign my copy of Fear of Drowning By Numbers, as I had brought it along. So I did, and he was like, "Woah, where'd you find this?"
I felt like such a twat for asking him to sign it, as he had spent what felt like nine hours semi-seriously lambasting the presence of narrative qualities in contemporary cinema, and denouncing the production of any future screenplays. Screenwriters: Shame on you all. I am eager to bear witness to the technical advancements that he so articulately foretokens, but...his writing is what I admire most of all. I could restrict my perusal to the Draughtsman's Contract screenplay and maybe two other books for the rest of my life and die fairly happily.
So yeah. That was neat. Here's a bad photo of a new drawing:
Was he protesting bad screen plays...or was it a call to abolish the screen play all together.
ReplyDeleteIf you gave me a minute to think about it...I'd probably come down on the side of the latter.