Alex de Campi: Gojira!

***

WHO

FILM & TV

COMICS & BOOKS

6.7.05 If I were a character in one of my books, I would have dismissed me as cliche

I leave for Los Angeles later this morning. My airplane reading consists of three screenplays and a book on directing. "Today, Matthew, I am going to be Comedy Wannabe Film Person." "That's great, Alex! Now, repeat after me: 'I have several projects in varying stages of development...'"

Although I've been cast as Stephano for this voyage, I feel I've missed out on the part I really suited: Prospero. Every time I go back to America I think of the old Duke, leaving his rainy island for a Milan whose language and customs he no longer understands.

This site will be changing upon my return from Los Angeles. It started as an exercise in short non-fiction pieces, which I'd post once a week. I liked that. It was good practice. I haven't been comfortable with the "This Girl's Life" direction the site has taken since. I was brought up that it is rude to talk about yourself, and I am also... restless. Perhaps I will start writing short fiction for you. Perhaps not. I'm still deciding.

To tide you over until I get back, I have stayed up late making a mixtape. Friends have given me some mixing software, which probably would have been easy to use if I had bothered to read the instructions. Still, I persevered. I plan to do a mixtape once a month, based around a little story, or theme.

This month's, Bright Hollow Town (29MB), is about the myth of Los Angeles. Nine songs and a couple of samples. I've been obsessing recently over late-1960s film soundtracks, the genius of Lalo Schifrin and John Barry, and Miles Davis/John Coltraine. The mix reflects that, and is also a soundscape for the noir screenplay I'll be working on in LA. It starts off with the heavy metronome beat of "Human Jungle"; picture Lee Marvin striding through the airport in Point Blank. Then out the chrome and glass doors into bright, jagged sunshine and emptiness - a city of strangers, endless streets, people cocooned inside their cars, always searching, searching for something lost.

Every good story has a girl and a boy in it, and the boy shows up about halfway through. You'll know when. Love (or something like it) ensues, and - could that be a happy ending? Well, perhaps, if I had stopped at "Something Beautiful". But this is noir, and the best we can hope for is that the final irony isn't a killing one. So there's one last song before we roll credits. Playlist here, but it's more fun hearing the mix once in ignorance.

Please note: I have made this mix as a way of introducing friends to some music I adore and think should be better known. If you enjoy the mix, please purchase these or other tracks by the artists. If you are a rightsholder or the representative of one, and you object to this mixtape, please email me and I will take it down immediately. I am not making money off this, and I do not have lawyers.

( 1:55 AM )

0 Comments: