Jane Merrow in “The Yellow Wallpaper”
New Chilling Tales, the whole anthology is now on the website, all four short films wrapped into one. I do hope you watch and enjoy it . I like it because the stories were written some time ago, by great classic writers, but really the stories are not old, because they all have some relevance today. Human nature never changes and the main characters are all largely motivated by characteristics
that we might recognize today….greed, isolation and an over active imagination, obsessive, compulsive behavior. And these stories were all written over a hundred years ago. I look forward to hearing from you if you have any comments.
The Tell Tale Heart
So now to another observation about our human condition. I adored my lovely talented, hard working mother, but she did me one big disservice in life, she led me to believe that the “Prince Charming” myth was a reality and that it was a foregone conclusion, that this Prince Charming would turn up, sweep me off my feet and that we would “live happily ever after”.
Prince Charming did turn up two or three or times in my life, but timing and circumstance did not work for our happy ending and and the fairy story with the one that I married did not go according to plan.
The kiss by Rodin
However, I do believe that love, in whatever form, is the one human condition that can smooth the way a great deal, provided we don’t expect too much and start to rely too heavily on technology. I believe that our expectations in our modern world are too high, we have become very self involved and want too much, need too much and often expect someone else to provide it. Hence we have a lot of lonely people in the world, sidelined by greed, neediness, technology and social media. Back to the old horror stories!
Much of this comes from reading the wonderful book “Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine”, by Gail Honeyman. I highly recommend it. Here’s a writer who really understands human nature. And our new short film “About Andy” focuses on two of those aspects dogging our society now, loneliness and technology. I love the modern technology and how it is easing our lives so much, but it is isolating us and controlling too much of us. (Don’t you love prescriptive spelling, for example?) In many ways we really have invented Frankenstein’s monster.
So like the old horror tales in New Chilling Tales, art continues to mirror nature and this is what I love about being in the media, whether it is the written word, films, television etc and it gives those of us lucky enough to be in it, the opportunity, indeed the imperative to study people and what is going on in the world and bring it to life for the audience. Keep the human story going.
That’s my ramble, grumble for today. Don’t forget friends its all happened before (if you know your History)…it would be nice if we weren’t always so predictable as a species! However don’t forget – technology doesn’t seem to understand love, passion or any of the other human emotions yet…hope still for us all!
