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Probably the most extreme revision that I undertook in the class happened with the writing that became my second film project. I originally wrote a piece early on in the semester called “Behind the Door” about my Mother’s mysterious seclusion after her difficult 1965 pregnancy and its traumatic effect on our family. I believe it was my response to the “Revealing a secret” exercise. Over the many preceding years, I had not recalled the incident I wrote about, but remembering and focusing on it for the purposes of the class led me to connections that I might not have made otherwise.
I ran the piece several times through my workshop group of Chrislande and Patrick (and sometimes Professor Perl too)…but it felt incomplete. Then most recently, when I realized that I had the opportunity to do another film, I determined to do a piece about my brother’s life, his homelessness and recent death in San Francisco. It would be something I felt strongly about, but I realized also that it would be painful to execute. In the process, I realized that the “Behind the Door” piece about my mother’s withdrawal connected to my brother’s story, since he was the child who was born at that time and removed from our family’s view by my mother for a period and this seemed to have something to do with a recurring delusion of my brother’s, about a possible twin of his that had died in childbirth—or at least, I had always assumed it was a delusion.
The film project was looming closer, so I wrote a much longer text, incorporating a detailed chronology of my brother’s degeneration over decades and I bookended it with the earlier “Behind the Door” text as a sort of climax, providing some ambivalence about my brother’s sanity. I read this to my workshop last week and got positive feedback. Patrick suggested adding an image of a closed door to the title sequence, which I did implement in my own way. In fact, that nearly surreal title image and the “Behind the door” text add much-needed metaphorical weight to the subtext of “closeted gayness” that runs through the piece.
As I was working on the film (with Marguerite’s extremely helpful guidance and input), it was going fine but becoming quite long—too long in fact, over six and a half minutes. I progressively began to shave away inessential details: the naming and specifics of my other brother and my sister, details about Rom’s life that went outside of the purview of the intent of the piece, and also I felt the need to qualify certain details that seemed too harsh or judgmental–although, the piece is still pretty harsh.
In the end, I finally ended up cutting away nearly all of the “original “Behind the Door” text, to leave only a few lines—but it still makes the relevant point even in its brevity—and I think the piece is much clearer and more straightforward for all the mutations it has undergone. It may seem odd that what I thought was so primary and significant in the original piece has now almost disappeared. Of course, I don’t feel very comfortable with any of it being public on Youtube for these few days before class—given the content and that it might be possible for my family members to see it (they would probably find it intrusive)—but I will make a decision about that after it is seen in class. I will be very interested to hear my fellow workshoppers’ comments, since they have been privy to so much of the process.-
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