Of course I’ve long known the historical/cultural reference, but I realize I’ve never seen an actual production of any kind of MEDEA.
I was thinking about this today since I met up with Yale roommate Peter to retrieve my long-lost navy, Ralph Lauren, GO-ANYWHERE blazer that I left at their house at Thanksgiving. [Courtney, his wife is in Berlin playing Clytemnestra for some kind of lecture series.]
The thing I didn’t realize about Medea — and would have gotten wrong on a multiple choice quiz show — is that not whether or not she murders her children to get back at her husband. That I knew. But that she not only gets away with it, but flies off in a chariot courtesy of the sun god Helios.
I was actually thinking about Medea before today because one phrase that has haunted me since I first heard it from my cinematographer Joaquin Baca-Asay while editing my feature film was “you’ve got to kill your children” during the editing process.
What he meant was that you have to be completely ruthless towards your artistic goal, rather than being sentimental and unable to let go of any moments, no matter how individually priceless or precious. You may have fallen in love with something [even something like a look on an actor’s face or some perfect lighting] but if it’s not really serving the overall vision, it’s got to go.
When writing, I always try to look at each bit of dialogue and each action through those same ruthless eyes: it’s either driving the story forward or expanding the character. Otherwise, it’s not helping.
I do have some major consolations in the editing of novel into screenplay, in that each time I strike a perfectly charming paragraph of voice-over dialogue full of witty narration, at least I know that they still exist in the novel. It’s not quite like tossing them out of a lifeboat, in other words.
At the end of the summer when Adrian and I were sitting around with LLS and she was asking about our process, she asked him what he felt the most helpful thing I brought to the table was, and I loved that he answered instantly, “Edward is a ruthless editor.”
And it’s kinda true.
“It’s perfect, it’s amazing, you’re a genius, in fact, I love everything about this room EXCEPT ____” was a boilerplate sentence I must have said a thousand times. [Note: I am a sensitive director in that I always give AUTHENTIC praise first.]
At this moment, however, I find myself unsettled by another editing process that’s far more challenging, if not disturbing.
I’ve had my third meeting with a different marketing consultant in 2012 about discussing branding and strategy etc., and everyone wants to “distill my message” and have that perfect “elevator pitch” that unites all my work, and I always end up feeling vaguely battered.
Don’t get me wrong — I mostly agreed and I am in fact the one who sets up all of these meetings (with more to come). But somehow the need to summarize it feels both invigorating and enslaving, laser-focusing and incredibly reductive.
And of course there are like 2,000 powerful words that might apply to everything I’m doing.
I think it’s particularly challenging because there’s a broad spectrum between YOGA IN BED’s delightful charms and something as intense as MIRACLE IN RWANDA (created with LLS). And the novel is somewhere in between.
Unlike this challenge, with the screenplay version of the novel, my work is frankly rather simplistic. My job now is 90% cutting away. [I have to kill my children in other words, until there are only 120 pages left of them.]
But trying to find the perfect pitch and tagline and catch-phrase and core message of my work feels a thousand times more challenging.
[At least it does tonight, sigh.]
Is there a parallel Greek myth for this, I wonder — and if so does my character get to fly away in a chariot from the Sun God at the end?
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