Being Sandra Spielberg

Last night I woke up at 4:17 AM because I'd had an incredible dream (and also because the air conditioning randomly went off because we have a ghost that drains phones and computers and turns off the AC, but I think mostly it was the dream that woke me).  At first I thought, "Oh well, I'll remember it in the morning" and closed my eyes again... and then I thought, "No, I'll remember that I had a cool dream and I'll wish that I wrote it down," so, puffy-eyed and fighting to keep my eyes open, I got up to jot it down... but then looking at what I'd written in purple ink (rainbow pens make writing much more fun) and remembering previous times I'd written down dreams and in the morning stared helplessly at the meaningless scribbles on paper, I thought, "My handwriting is completely illegible right now, so I better type it"... and then I thought, "Well, if I'm typing it I might as well really write down the whole thing"... so then an hour and a half and four single-spaced Word doc pages later, I finished typing up my dream.

It's probably the coolest dream I ever remembered upon waking.  It starred Pierce Brosnan, Audra McDonald, Sandra Bullock, a camera, and me.  Pierce plays a James Bond-like character, Audra plays the classic Bond girl who doesn't really know what's going on but is willing to help Pierce, Sandra plays a mysterious girl who we've only seen in passing and don't know what her deal is or if she's even significant to the story, the camera plays a really cool camera, and I play... well I can't tell you who I play because besides the camera that's one of the coolest parts and I want to turn this thing into a story or book or film one day....  And that camera.  The camera is awesome.  I love the camera in this dream.  The dream was a result, among other things, of having a conversation with my mom about the film Love Is All You Need starring Pierce Brosnan; reading an article last night right before bed about Audra McDonald (who I think is stunning and who has my favorite female singing voice) in Shuffle Along on Broadway; my frustration with the architecture of NYC public schools; a very unique book my brother got me for my birthday; and my desire to have both Sandra Bullock's career and Steven Spielberg's (and lamenting the other day as I read an Entertainment Weekly article about this man -- who as a teenager talked his way onto the Universal Studios lot and spent a summer without a lot-pass talking his way into post-production offices and onto sets and in this way created an unofficial internship for himself that ultimately led to his career -- that I once sat next to him for a Broadway show, including a 20-minute intermission, and never thought of a single word to say to the man who in many ways stands for the storytelling career I want and whose name I saw countless times in my finished Director's Chair "movies" as "A Steven Spielberg production, directed by Jessica Pollack," imagining the day that credit would be real).

I should probably explain Director's Chair.  When I was a kid I had a Steven Spielberg-produced computer game called Director's Chair.  It was a game where, after an introduction by the master storyteller himself, the player got to direct a movie, all the way from script decisions and budgeting and casting to making a shooting schedule and filming to editing, special effects, promotion, and finally to the premiere.  You'd encounter problems along the way (it's raining on an outdoor shoot day -- do you reschedule or shoot the scene indoors?  There's a problem with some of the lights -- do you have the DP figure out a way to shoot with what you have or get behind schedule by waiting to get new ones?  You're over-time and don't have the time to get all the angles you wanted, so what do you do?) and can ask crew for advice, but no matter what you decide you'll always have some crew who don't agree with you.  The post production takes place on the studio lot and you go from one building to another to supervise the various aspects of post.  The more successful you were, the bigger your budget got.  I loved the game and had quite a few different finished films.  I remember my favorite was one called "Burn Baby Burn" that I made with my dad and that I'm pretty sure ended with the main character getting charred in an explosion and winding up on a gurney.... (My dad can have a rather dark sense of humor.)  I loved the game, and as a kid who had not only always been on stage but also always written and produced home movies and plays and puppet shows, it fed my love for the production side of storytelling.

Anyway, I had some incredibly awesome camera moves and directorial choices in the movie that was my dream last night -- cooler than anything I did in Director's Chair and certainly cooler than anything I did in college.  My characters all had complex motivations and even considered and evaluated the other characters' motivations when making their own decisions. I had strong POV and perspective choices, very creative angles that served a purpose, and very specific post-production decisions that played an active role in the storytelling.  The entire dream was scored and had sound effects and was quite sophisticated, and I really really really want to make it into a movie (that exists somewhere other than just inside my head) and direct it.  In the Anthony Breznican-penned EW article I read the other day, Breznican refers to Spielberg's 29th film, The BFG, as a story where the main characters "venture to a magical place where they capture dreams and nightmares like fireflies, bottle them, and transport them back to our world to place inside the heads of sleeping humans."  Spielberg says, "It's a literal image for what all of us do as storytellers, without ever thinking about it." 

I want to capture and bottle dreams.  I want to transport them to our world and tell them as stories, thereby transporting the humans whose eyes and ears the stories reach.  I want to play Director's Chair.  But in real life.  So hey, someone please hire me to help tell stories.

Oh, did you think this post would end by me telling my dream?  Nope, you'll have to wait to watch the movie.  Or help me make it.  I promise it won't be called "Burn Baby Burn."  And it probably won't end with a charred body on a gurney... but no promises.