1/2/08 - There's no duality in fantasy

My lifelong fantasy has become this reality

Proving once and for all that yes, it is possible.

Everything is always possible.

Even your craziest hopes and dreams are possible.

But there is no duality in fantasy.

And I was not prepared for the inevitable barrage of the darker elements that have accompanied the light ones on this unforgettable ride

Because even your “fantasy” life is still life

And those slippery bumps and turns of life are ever present

Even when your fantasies are all coming true.

The fantasy of finishing this script came true in May of 2005. That whisper of light that pulses in you when you read that last word and you can just feel that it’s good, and by “good” I mean that the inexplicable connection with a conduit spirituality has been tapped into. When it happens you just feel it intrinsically. And whether other people will get it or like it isn’t the same concern anymore.

That was the fantasy moment. It was “good” and I knew it. I smoked a cigarette on the terrace of our downtown Providence apartment, appreciated the ghostly streets of a city I was not going to live in much longer, and waited impatiently for my co producer, and back then, boyfriend Doug to come home from his closing shift at Starbucks.

I couldn’t wait to show it to him. Still Green was our brainchild. I’d been pregnant for five months and had just given birth to the baby that, under our careful guidance and the guidance of our best friends, would grow up to be Uncovered Productions’ first feature film.

The fact that I’d given birth smack in the middle of Doug’s Starbucks shift and literally, the day before his college graduation ceremony was of no concern to me at the time.

The duality of reality that followed within hours should have been a warning to start accepting it, to start learning how to roll with it, to find my way towards some kind of emotional equilibrium despite it, but I was sooo not there yet. 

The reality was that Doug was tired, from closing the store on a Saturday night, and from the long year of working in Providence and commuting an hour to Worcester MA three times a week  to sweat and elbow grease his way through that senior year, despite the fact that he was already up to his shaggy hair in film projects, and that all he wanted to do that night was come home, chill out, watch some TV, go to bed, and decompress before graduation and all related activities descended upon him. The reality was that I’d actually chosen a pretty inconvenient time to give birth to this brainchild and that realistically, daddy was in no shape to check out his new child tonight. Clearly I did not have this empathic perspective at that moment.

Doug and I never fought well. We still don’t, but now these fights don’t have leave the same scars they would leave back then. The weird thing is that in the two years we’d been together at that point, we only fought about one subject…art.  Outside of our art projects, my relationship with my boyfriend was in a relatively constant state of peace and harmony. We didn’t fight about any of the more universal topics that had plagued my past relationships or those of my friends. Money, cohabitation, sex, jealousy, family, we glided our way through these non issues with grace and ease. 

But when we were working on an art project and something shook the vibe, it was like this whiny hysterical spirit would possess my body, and a stubborn insensitive one possessed his and suddenly we were in an entirely different relationship.

I had seen sprinklings of this “other relationship” emerge on past projects, but not to this extent because at the end of the day, none of our past projects were my scripts, and none of them involved a situation where the buck stopped with us, so the stakes had always been lower. Whenever that element appeared we could turn off our computers, get in the car, and drive until everything had re-shifted back to its proper perspective. 

But from the moment we committed ourselves to making Still Green, there was no perspective anymore. Because honestly, there was nothing either of us wanted more than to succeed in this endeavor.

The duality was that in May 2005 we had our first major fight where we swore at each other, where I threw something, where we were both scared by the anger that had infiltrated our apartment and would not easily dissipate.

When I was in film school I was always fantasizing about what it would feel like to finish the last word on a script that was actually GOING TO BE A MOVIE!  It involved every bit of the rush I felt sitting on my terrace and I’d been waiting for it for the past ten years.

It did not involve a broken vase, a spasm of deep rooted tears, or using words like:” you fucking asshole” to someone I loved. 

Filmmaker blog by writer / producer Georgia Menides