Not just Richard and I anymore

A photo, a few days old, of a Trailsend Bay sunset. Right now (Saturday afternoon) the wind has picked up, it rained but the sun came out, and we're all about to hit the water.

My orgy of Wagner reading/writing/Mime-esque brooding has been interrupted by a first wave of visitors, including my mom, my aunt, and some close family friends. They all arrived last night, just in time to rescue me from Wagner-induced madness, and we had a great jalapeno chicken salad and some aptly named "Oberon Ale" from southern Michigan. Tonight, on the new grill, we're planning to indulge in some mouth-wateringly nice-looking Lake Huron trout.

I've plowed through a small pile of Wagner books, including a careful rereading of his wacky autobiography. The autobiography is entertaining, full of insane adventures and weird characters; but it's also a tissue of lies! He dictated it to his second wife, for the sake of his weird teenage patron, so all of the stories are told from a bizarre self-edited point of view to try to make him look good in their eyes, and half the fun of reading it is to try to triangulate and figure out, story by story, what REALLY happened. (There are various biographies available, and each of them takes a different stance on the big question: Just how despicably horrible a person was he?)

I've also been grudingly watching the Tony Palmer Richard Burton thing again, which is available on dvd; the only thing I'm happy about is that, scene by scene through this entire 9-hour long film, I keep thinking: "Now, why on earth would anyone tell that story THAT way? I'd have done it THIS way!" So I'm confident I'm not talking about a remake. I object to Burton's characterization of Wagner: Burton is arrogant and obnoxious but doesn't have an ounce of charm, which Wagner obviously had and to spare. The film fails to capture what I find most valuable about Wagner, which is that he was a captivating storyteller, an amazing composer, and an artist of the most extreme visionary genius. I object to their use of music, which seems cheap, and to the dialogue track (the ADR is cheap and the use of accents inconsistent). And the writing...well, I'll stop crabbing about that film and try to propose a good one myself!

Below, one step (earlier this week) towards that goal: the carpet here is covered with little index cards, each of which outlines a potential scene for my film (working title MONSTER GOD). I understand completely why Tony Palmer's film was 9 hours; I drafted over a hundred scenes---and that's just about the creation of the RING, skipping much of Wagner's life! So the real creative work will be slimming it down to a story that can fit in one evening. I pitched an outline this morning, to the assembled guests here, and I think it can be done...it can be done. It will be expensive, but not impossible.