is two guys collaborating to write on writing and collaboration.

Friday
Apr 28, 2006

Trickster Raven Deserves a Movie posted by Martin

Northwest Coast Indians have an amazing visual art tradition—one of the most developed of any indigenous peoples in the world. Cultures like the Haida in British Columbia have an astounding history of a complex visual language. Bill Reid, the most famous Haida artist—and possibly the most famous native artist—of the 20th century said this:

Art can never be understood, but can only be seen as a kind of magic, the most profound and mysterious of all human activities. Within that magic, one of the deepest mysteries is the art of the Northwest Coast — a unique expression of an illiterate people, resembling no other art form except perhaps the most sophisticated calligraphy.

But more than a calligraphy (which, it seems references the symbology employed in his and other Haida work), the masks, carvings and work of the North Coast Indians are a full language in of themselves, acting as visual reminders for the legends and stories handed down.

The first time I saw Reid’s astonishing Spirit of Haida Gwaii at the Vancouver airport, I could swear it was moving in front of me. It’s practically alive with motion. You can sit and just watch it, which I’ve had the pleasure of doing a few times. You can imagine it alive.

So here we have a culture, long in story and rich in visuals. Why no Indian mythology movie? I would see it set long before Europeans. Instead we have a story of a man, maybe—and let’s say that he is confronted with the creation stories. He’s confronted with Raven, but Raven is created in CG, and appears as a moving, breathing Reid sculpture. His dreams or visions are alive to him. Give him this world to run around in, a quest to complete, and throw in some views of authentic life on the North Coast before the white people came in, and you’ve got a compelling film. I’d pay to see it in a heartbeat.

It seems an obvious thing to me, but maybe that’s just showing my own naiveté. Would this work? Is there any reason it couldn’t? Think of the recent slate of visual arresting films coming out of China based on Chinese mythology and history (I’m still waiting for the Zheng He movie, but I won’t hold my breath). Wouldn’t one in the same spirit about the Northwest Coast Indians be just as cool?

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What is Spitball!?

Spitball! is two guys collaborating to write about writing and collaboration. We're writing partners who have worked together since 2000, and placed in the top 100 in the last Project Greenlight for our script YELLOW.

Currently, we are both working on multiple screenplay, short story, and novel ideas independently and together, and collaborate on this blog.

What Spitball! used to be

Spitball! started as an attempt to collaborate on a screenplay online in real time. From January 2006 to July 2007 we worked on an interactive process to decide the story we were going to make. A full postmortem is coming, but you can find the find all the posts by looking in the category Original Version.

During this period, we affected the personalities of two of the most famous spitball pitchers from the early 20th Century. Look at our brief bios for more info about this, and so as not to be confused as to who is talking when.

We rebooted the franchise in early 2009 in its current form.


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Kent M. Beeson

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Kent M. Beeson (aka Urban Shockah) is a stay-at-home dad and stay-at-home writer, living in Seattle, WA with his wife, 2 year old daughter and an insane cat. In 2007, he was a contributor to the film blog ScreenGrab, where he presciently suggested Jackie Earle Haley to play Rorschach in the Watchmen movie, and in 2008, he wrote a film column for the comic-book site ComiXology called The Watchman. (He's a big fan of the book, if you couldn't tell.) In 2009, he gave up the thrill of freelance writing to focus on screenplays and novels, although he sometimes posts to his blog This Can't End Well, which a continuation of his first blog, he loved him some movies. He's a Pisces, and his favorite movie of all time is Jaws. Coincidence? I think not.

Martin McClellan

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Martin (aka Burley Grymz) is a designer and writer. He occasionally blogs at his beloved Hellbox, and keeps a longer ostensibly more interesting bio over here at his eponymous website. You can also find him on Twitter.