It really is heavy

Met with the director yesterday. It was our first meeting to really sink our teeth into the notes. Met at 3:30 at his apartment. Nice place. Oscar prominently displayed. I picked it up. Oscar is heavy! We spread computer printouts of the scene headings (done on 3x5 cards) on his sleek modern coffee table and dug in. We talked a little back and forth and drank our Diet Cokes. Round about the second hour of this, I realized that I would have to talk to him next time about how we discussed notes. We (he) did a lot of jumping around from scene to scene, various places in the script, different scenes, different characters... sort of the Jackson Pollack approach - lay out the canvass and spatter all over the goddamn place. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but after two years of living with this script in my head, I am very much looking to just have the guy tell me where the words go. I'm long over the "subtext" and "metaphors" and "hidden meanings" of everything. You know, there is a time when you are, say, building a building when you talk about the meaning of it all, the beauty, the poetry of the form, the sanctity of the spaces, the allusions, and the themes, and the dynamics...and then there is a time when you order ten million bags of concrete and build the fucking thing. Well, that's where I'm at. Let's build the fucking thing. And I don't blame the guy for wanting to talk and talk and talk... He's still trying to see the movie in his head. I've seen the movie forty times. I want to start the grunt work. So tomorrow we get together again. And hopefully we'll get a better crack at 'er.

New names in the mix: Sissy Spacek and Sidney Poitier. Sindey Fucking Poitier.