We've been over the blood: what the story is about. We're going through the sweat right now: this is going to be a huge undertaking for me. However, where are the tears? I mention all the time how incredibly personal "Our Story" is as a film, and I think until it is made, it will be difficult for many people to understand what I'm saying.
I write things inspired by my life all the time, as I think just about any writer does. Even the weird fantasy stuff that I do has people I've met, or ideas about the world that I've came upon through living in the land of the real. However, "Our Story" is possibly the first thing I've ever written that isn't afraid to go verbatim.
I've wanted to do several blogs about music I listened to during the writing of "Our Story." Purposefully choosing music is a practice I frequently employ to help me nail the mood of a scene. However, because "Our Story" and this album are so similar, and I've also wanted to write about why this film is so personal to me, I figured I should combine them.
I am not comparable to the genius of Rivers Cuomo. However, I feel that "Our Story" is my "Pinkerton."
Weezer's "Pinkerton" is the black sheep of their discography. It is also one of the single best albums ever, and an enormously intimate, almost frighteningly close portrait of an awkward and afraid young man. Weezer's music took a turn for the darker for this album to match Cuomo's entry-in-my-diary-in-hell lyrics. I feel like the album also shares a major theme with "Our Story" in that many of the songs involve obsession and desperation leading to Cuomo creating stories for himself, versions of things he wishes could happen, but that inside his aching heart, he knows won't.
Here's an excerpt from "Across the Sea:"
I wonder what clothes you wear to school
I wonder how you decorate your room
I wonder how you touch yourself
And curse myself for being across the sea
Why are you so far away from me?
I need help and you're way across the sea
I could never touch you
I think it would be wrong
I've got your letter
You've got my song.
A lot of people would call those lyrics "emo." Some would call them the ramblings of an incredible wuss. The thing about these lyrics is that, unlike many similar longing love songs, they are incredibly candid. There is nothing hidden, nothing obscured behind unnecessary poetry or metaphor. It is a confessional booth where you are the priest, sworn to secrecy to take these fears from a man who is ashamed of the pathetic creature he is and wants so badly to let people know he has changed, that he's sane, that everything he's feeling was just a phase and an illusion.
For this reason, "Pinkerton" got heavy play during the writing of "Our Story." The album showed me what kind of beauty you could create when you aren't afraid to get down to the nitty gritty, and the things you're most ashamed of.
So...whoa. Hold on. Does "Our Story" really get that intimate?
Not quite; there are no scenes of imagined masturbation in this film. However, as "El Scorcho" and "Tired of Sex" are on Pinkerton, "Our Story" is, in many ways, a true story. It draws bits and pieces from countless real people of both genders for the characters and some of the events in the film. However, the big pieces are inspired by one girl in particular, whose name shall remain anonymous, as it is not necessary.
The year 2004. I'm a sophomore in high school, and I'm still a kid. My world is half reality and half story. I still do nothing but play video games in my spare time, huge ones, vast ones, ones with worlds I can lose myself in because, quite frankly, a lot of the real world bores me. I'm unconfident, unsure of myself, and trying to establish an identity when, in reality, I already have one that I'm too immature to embrace.
A beautiful girl, the most beautiful girl I've ever seen, comes up to me at a football game where I'm bored. She flirts with me. I don't know what to do. I'm in love. She's not like the other girls; as I relate in "Our Story," she was beautiful because of "her own light, her own aura, her own radiance of ubiquity." She is totally into me. I'm clueless and nervous as hell, but I think, for some reason, that I might have just proven the rule of first sight to be true.
The next day, I play video games to distract myself because I'm afraid to call her. Eventually, I do. We talk for three hours. This happens repeatedly.
Two weeks later, she gets a boyfriend. I wonder why.
Five years later, I know exactly why: I tried too hard. I made up my mind about how things were going to go, and when they didn't, I found myself crying quietly and muttering "Why can't she see how beautiful we are?" We wouldn't be that extraordinary. She is still special to me, but she isn't special. I failed to see that there were the proverbial other fish, and began to live inside this story off and on, mostly on, for two and a half years.
Eventually, I changed. I came out of my shell and learned a critical life lesson: stop worrying so much. Stop thinking so much, stop caring so much, and don't just play the hand you're dealt, enjoy the hand you're dealt. It was then that I was ready to face the person I used to be and, maybe, call myself a man for once. I had grown up finally, and learned to live in the real world while enjoying the ones I explored as a child. The roots were tired and old, but now the tree had begun to sprout and was basking in sunlight, ready to grow all the way to the clouds...or at least as far as the other trees in the forest would let it go.
"Our Story" was written for many reasons. For one, I feel like there aren't enough films about unrequited love, at least that try to truly explore it as their primary goal. I hear "Chasing Amy" is really good but, despite my love of Kevin Smith, I still haven't seen it. But, like Cuomo says "Pinkerton" was for him, it was cathartic.
Looking back as an adult, or at least something like it, on the life I lived trying to grow up, I knew I had a story to tell that I'm sure many other people were way too comfortable with. I heard once that the greatest stories are the ones we already know, and I sincerely hope "Our Story" is one of those.
However, I can't help but worry a little bit. Cuomo has said before that he hates "Pinkerton." He compares it to getting drunk and telling all your friends your deepest secrets, then waking up the next morning and feeling as if life is going to be awkward forever. Will it be the same for me? I don't think so. There are still moments in "Our Story" that I've held back. Will it be uncomfortable?
Yes. But that's expected.
-JD
There are no updates for the Pre-Productive Organs today.
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