Rush 4: Surprise Yourself

From The 400 Blows, I chose how Antoine got himself mixed up in a somewhat elaborate lie, starting with waking up late for school, and his friend convincing him to play hooky with him. The two explore the town, going to various places, including a carnival when Antoine rides a barrel ride. He then faces his teacher the next day and tells him he misses school because his mother died, an unnecessary exaggeration that gets him in even more trouble. I selected this sequence of scenes because it connects to the metal puzzle seen in My Effortless Brilliance, which relates to the metal puzzles I used to play with at my grandparents' house.

The connection between the lie in 400 and my experience with metal puzzles is a little difficult to make. However, the idea of elaborate lying is much more easy to relate to. Antoine lies about his mother being dead in order to not get punished for skipping school, an offense that probably wouldn't have gotten him in so much trouble if he had said something a bit less extreme. Antoine's life at home is obviously conflicted in itself. He sleeps in a hallway/closet and doesn't receive much love. He and his father get along nicely but they also don't spend a whole lot of time together. The relationship between Antoine and his mother seems very disturbed, so it wasn't surprising that he decided to "kill her off" in a sense. Antoine's lie and troubles at school very much reflects how he is treated at home; it makes sense that he acts out.

As a kid, I would spend time at my grandparents' house and they would set-up play-dates for my brother and I with kids from around the neighborhood. Since we didn't visit more than once or twice a year, the play-dates never turned into any sort of friendship. I used to make up pretty detailed stories about my life when I met new people that I knew I wouldn't see very frequently. Nothing was ever harmful or totally unbelievable, they just weren't entirely truthful. I don't remember all of them but I know there was a storyline of my mom being some sort of model (she was really pretty) and my dad was a world a traveler & explorer (he did travel a lot for his job). In addition to these tales, I also tended to blame a lot of things on my little brother. I wasn't as big as a trouble-maker as he was so it was easy to swindle everyone into thinking he did anything bad I may have done. Plus, I was older and wiser.

I suppose I could say I came from a broken home, with my parents divorcing when I was five. However, I don't know if I actually see it as that. Broken is such a negative word and although there were many rough points in my childhood, I never had it that bad. I know that the specific story I shared above was derived from the vision I had of my parents: my mom being this beautiful person who took care of me and my dad who I saw twice a month that occasionally brought us gifts from around the world. Like Antoine, I took my relationship with my parents and elaborated on it.

For an autobiographical film, I would probably choose to focus on the stories I would create about my life. I can see a scene showing my brother and I playing (possibly with the metal puzzles) with some children as I tell them about our fabulous lives. We would be in my grandparents' garden and I would probably incorporate dream-like sequences showing the "memories" I created. I see a contrast happening between reality and the elaborated, perhaps in a way that a child would see it in their mind (more fantastical than needed.) I could actually see much of the film incorporating these types of scenes, showing what I thought was my ideal world and the ways I would achieve it through the telling of my stories.

Rush 3: Short Circuits(again)

My original link was from the metal puzzle seen in My Effortless Brilliance connecting to the metal puzzles I used to play with at my grandparents' house. In The 400 Blows, Antoine wakes up late and is convinced to skip school with his friend, which then prompts him to lie the next day about why he was gone. Instead of saying he was ill, he tells the teacher that his mother died, making the lie much bigger than it needed to be. He gets himself into a somewhat elaborate hoax that he must keep going or get into a whole heap of trouble. His parents soon find out and Antoine later runs away from home, trying to figure out his next move. This relates to those metal puzzles in the way that if you make a wrong move in the path to solving the puzzle, you might throw off the whole thing. Antoine works his way into an intricate puzzle and must then find a way to get himself out and separate the metaphorical metal pieces.

Rush 2: Short Circuits

In My Effortless Brilliance, Eric finds the metal puzzle in Dylan's cabin. He doesn't really try to solve it; he mostly jumbles it around and randomly hangs it on a ceiling hook. It comes up later when the men are drinking but not much is said about the puzzle. When I was a kid, I used to spend a chunk of my time at my grandparent's house. After having 6 children throughout the 60s and 70s, they acquired a lot of toys, most of which they passed on. For some reason though, they kept a few select things for their forthcoming grandchildren to play with. Among the wooden blocks and classic storybooks were a collection of metal puzzles. In my younger years, I ignored the puzzles and went for the books, but as I got older, I became more interested in these confusing metal scraps. I remember spending a few days going through each puzzle, figuring it out, and moving on to the next one. I repeated this process until I had memorized how the puzzles were solved and would then move on to something different. I only remembered the solutions for a short time afterward and since I only visited my grandparents about once every year, these puzzles always seemed fairly new to me. Even now, I love figuring out these puzzles; there is just something so satisfying when the pieces come apart and go back together with ease.

Final Project

For my final project in this class, I hope to further my work put into the Citizen Lebowski Project. We have already discussed how I can bring more thought into the overall design of the costumes, perhaps creating a more streamlined look that makes more sense than what the actors chose to wear that day. I know there won't be much design involved but even specific use of color and/or shape can make all the difference to the look of the scene, or even the personality of the character.
I would also like to continue working on the scene (Alex's apartment) that I helped design the set for and actually observe the filming of said scene. I have a feeling my final project process this semester will take place throughout the semester as you film rather than just at the end. I'm sure we will be figuring out the logistics of my role in this project pretty soon.