« "Sin City" tomorrow, sure enough... | Patrick's patois: Taiko, PersaCon, MFA... »
April 02, 2005Damn you, Zeno! You owe me an eyepatch!
I'm a measly six pages away from being done with my last of seven scripts to adapt--somewhere around the 97% mark. Just as I'm reaching for the tape at the end of the marathon, Zeno cross-checks me with his eponymous paradox and sends me flying into the spectators and the Gatorade stand. Yes, the closer I've gotten to being done, the less gumption I've had to soldier on. And now, with six pages left, my mind has ground to a halt.
There's a discount bookstore at the corner of Laurel Canyon and Ventura--one of those huge rooms, filled with nothing but fold-out tables heaped high with remaindered books. And if you can find something you want, a black stripe drawn edgewise across the open end of the book is a small price to pay for an 80% discount.
I poked around in there, nothing really jumping out at me--which is always a shame. It's one thing to walk out of a bookstore empty-handed because you don't have any money, or couldn't pick from among the roughly 3,000 books that caught your eye, or because you know you have a stack of books at home you should read first. It's quite another thing to leave sans purchase because nothing seemed worth buying. It's the same vague sense of disappointment you have when you espy a gorgeous stranger, only to have them ruin it all by giving a barista undeserved attitude or screeching inanities into their cell-phone.
Anyhow, while I was thumbing through the books, I came across a hardback book with a full-page, black-and-white photo of the author across the back of the book-jacket--not uncommon. This particular author was a man in his 30s or early 40s, seated, sharply dressed. He had a dog at his feet and an eye-patch over his right eye.
My mind keeps creeping back to that photo during idle moments. Call me crazy, but I'm totally intrigued by that guy's eye-patch. Think of it. If you're sporting an eye-patch, we can deduce the following things about you:
* You've had some adventures and/or have been met with injury.
* You're enough of a non-conformist to reject the use of a glass eye, which would hide your injury.
* You might be a pirate. You're a pirate sympathizer, at the very least.
From a screenwriting/story-telling point of view, an eye-patch is a great device. Much like the criss-crossing scars on Hartigan's forehead in "Sin City," an eye-patch hints strongly at a character having an interesting back-story, even if it doesn't give any details.
Eye-patches. Just think on 'em for a minute or two, yeah?
Posted by patrick at April 2, 2005 02:34 PM
CommentsYeah, but a peg leg takes a real commitment. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr... Maybe the guy was an undercover Ninja.
Posted by: Jon Bastian at August 25, 2005 02:08 PM
Post a comment