Paris, je t’aime

I came across this awesomely wonderful movie last week after waiting months until I finally decided to rent it. Isn’t that the weirdest thing? Waiting forever to see a movie that after watching it, you wish you watched it sooner? It’s happened before with movies like Boondock Saints and Casablanca although I don’t think it’s fair to include that one because I didn’t get interested in seeing it until a couple days before I actually saw it. Whereas Boondock Saints had been sitting on my college roomate’s dresser for practically the entire year before I finally saw it and was amazed that such a fun movie had been siting there that long.

You live and learn I guess. And really that’s just a generic phrase because it doesn’t have a great of relevance to what I’m writing about today. After watching Paris, Je T’aime I had been inspired to write my own little short story that would’ve been included had I been given the oppurtunity to take part in such a cool event.

The movie is comprised of 20 smaller short films directed by 20 acclaimed directors and starring several actors from across the world, specifically French, English and American… Others I’m sure, but I don’t remember. The title in English means “Paris, I love you” in case you don’t know. Hey, I didn’t know. All of the stories deal with the subject matter of love in the City of Love, if you didn’t guess from the cover art. Again, I thought it was great. They were all about 5 minutes each, and I saw that as a challenge and achievement because as a storyteller, you want to keep your auidence captivated and you need to hook them fast. Well, 5 minutes is a big difference from 90-120 minutes. I’ll be owning the movie within a week.

I thought about the story and after being woken up to get breakfast and coffee, I decided to write my own story that I hope would be worthy to be apart of this movie, or maybe a spinoff. I used an experience in my own life as inspiration, having the story take place in a parking lot where two people who are in affair have something very important to tell each other. The events in the actual story didn’t happen to me, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it actually has happened to someone before. I let one of my filmmaking friends take a read, and she wants to shoot it, which I’d completely allow her to do.

Later on that day, I wrote another one. This one is actually practically almost entirely based on a portion of my life of someone I know. A character tells a story about an unrequited love to an interviewer that he can’t help but think about over the years he knew her. Aptly titled “The One That Got Away.” This one scares me a little. Why? I’m afraid that out of some crazy circumstance, the person who is being talked about will realize it’s her and then come find me. Not that that would be a bad thing… But I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who has ever had such a feeling. Now that I think of it, I have another friend I’m looking for and could possibly use film to find them. In fact, it’s inspiring me for yet another script. And similar to “Got Away” it would be another “one-sided” story, but it’d only consist of one side of a phone conversation since the person would be talking to someone 3,000 miles away.

The trick that I’m afraid will work is having my name attatched to these stories, and those lost friends will recognize it and reach out. I know friendships have a way of fizzling out, but I’ve wanted to reconnect with the ones I felt I had strong connections with that kept me grounded.

That will probably be another movie. Like Martin Scorsese once told me, “start with the short films first [kid] and work your way up to the bigger ones.” I paraphrased…