A rant
- Amanda Riddell
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- Jan 1, 2024
- 2 min read
For the musicals people: the very idea that your ideal version of my songs is an autobiographical musical that is set in contemporary Wellington suggests that we fundamentally disagree on what made my first two musicals effective.
The local thing is a flavour, but that's not why they worked. They worked because the audience suspended disbelief: in the first film, they suspended it when the Knight came to life, and in the second film I'd say that Matins or The Timing of Things is when the audience suspends disbelief and invests into the faceless voice and crude VFX as a tool. That's the thing to crack for people that are devising movie musicals: suspension of disbelief. That's why I like making magical realism films: it's natural for a lyric fantasy to have all that song and dance stuff, while I think that shifting to a rock'n'roll score for Shipwrecked on Islands 2030 allowed me to lean into all that anti-authoritarianism, and suggests a dystopian future with biting satire. - If people want to know about my life, I think this idea was highly prophetic: my life almost eerily paralleled this for a while. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/8praytohhulo6xnn4oqo0/The-Court-of-the-Dreamer-King-Treatment.pdf?rlkey=pgz4crmhxcptuksjr5if7btxd&dl=0 -
The ending of POAK was a challenge that suggested an infinite number of musicals within Wellington, but it was hardly the first.
Happy Playland filmed after us, but we were 12 months behind when it came to the release. But yeah, I think that we cracked the technical problems of how to stage a film musical effectively, and that's also something that other people could build upon.
However, I'm not doing it. I think my short story anthology film is a much safer bet for all concerned: money people, crew people, FX people. All those stories are winners, and I might invent another one.
Plus it's more realistic to pitch the NZ Film Commission on a short film. As I said, people can buy Weeded Out off me and retool it, and I'll happily take a story by credit, but I refuse to perform it, and I refuse to rewrite it.
I'd also add that it wasn't as if my songs got a strong response at the open mic night. To me, that's a sign that my futuristic story is the vehicle: they sound too much like showtunes to be believable as pub rock. I've had enough of that Weeded Out screenplay. I feel like we've discussed everything that there is to discuss regarding it, and I'm not satisfied enough to license those stories. That's my decision. I'm hoping that I'll have time to translate those Tina and Jade stories into prose while studying Māori. I was serious that a comic book version would be cool, but I don't know anyone who could draw that.