Wednesday, May 24, 2006

In the story of my life : The Pre-quel

I was a prissy little kid.
I am not gonna lie about this.
I just was.
I was not a neat freak, I was just a kid who liked to have things in a certain place and that I should wear what I want to wear.
I guess I was strong willed as well as prissy. Cause I wanted to wear what I wanted to wear, when I wanted to wear it. And it did not matter what my parents wanted.
I could throw a hissy fit to beat all hissy fits, and well my Mom usually caved pretty easily so I always got what I wanted (both my sisters (especially the Dykey one) were annoyed by this - but I can not help that I was born last, can I? Not to mention the fact that being the only son on a dairy farm meant that I had to do way more boring shit with our father than they did, so I think it evens out).
I was the one who wanted to direct.
After I finally saw "return to oz" in grade 4 I decided that my calling was to force my sister to re-enact the film with me, but we would have to change things for copy right reason.
Since I was so enamoured with the original Wizard of Oz, I decided that what the sequel lacked was the music. The glamour, the songs, the dancing. Can you really have Dorothy and the Scarecrow and not have a jazzy number? I mean even The Wiz was a musical (not that I knew it existed then) so my re-make was also going to be a musical.
So what I did was I went through my Mom's country music collection, my oldest sister's (who I will call Miss Polly Prissy Pants) tape collection (mainly Whitney Houtson and Rick Astley - Ugh (and does that explain the name?)), and I think that was about it. Obviously we would not be using my Smurfs or Rainbow Brite albums (and to think my parents had no idea I was gay at this stage of my life - how could they be so blind? I was remaking "Return to Oz" as a musical starring me as Dorothy and the Dykey sister as everyone else. Man when people live in denial, they really live knee deep in it) they were far too childish an element for my sophisticated musical.
Also I was recording this on tape, audio tape. Remember those? Yes my Magnus Opus was to be a radio remake. It would be beautiful.
So my master plan was to re-enact the film, and put in the appropriate song at the appropriate moment (I was not worried about copyright law or whether or not the song really fit the moment, just as long as it had one or two lyrics that I felt fit the moment).
However the film ended really before it began. Almost an hour into recording the Dykey sister and I ran into irreconcilable artistic differences. She wanted to do the scream herself when Dorothy was jumping into the river. No way was that ever going to happen - I also had the movie book on tape that had a girl screaming that was perfect as you could hear the river rushing in the background. We had no river and to be perfectly honest, like her laugh - my sisters scream is scary in a not-so-good way.
So we came to blows over this one detail. I would not give in and she would not give up. So my radio remake movie version never saw the light of day. But it did teach me one very good lesson, I can not work with my sister. She is just as stubborn as I am.

4 Comments:

At Wednesday, 24 May, 2006, Blogger emily said...

You are AWESOME! I wish you had a copy of your movie remake.

 
At Wednesday, 24 May, 2006, Blogger JM said...

Man, that would have made one hell of a party ice breaker--that tape!!!

 
At Thursday, 25 May, 2006, Blogger St. Dickeybird said...

You "came to blows" with your sister... who won?

 
At Thursday, 25 May, 2006, Blogger No one asked us said...

My sister won. She did not fight fair, that is why the production was canceled. She hit me, I cried, and threw the tape across the room, where it disastisfyingly just hit the wall and fell.
Harumph.
That's okay, I still love her.

 

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