Impossible Expectations

Summary, Character Profiles, Conflict

Impossible Expectations is a character study of a divorced couple, Michelle and David, as they visit the gravesite of Michelle’s father on the three-year anniversary of his death.  Though somewhat estranged from her father prior to his cancer, Michelle appears regularly at his grave in what seems to be an extended period of mourning.  David, on the other hand, had been the son his father-in-law never had and is visiting the grave for the first time since the funeral.  Although he had been expecting to run into his ex-wife, David finds himself overcome with feelings he’d thought he repressed and accidentally causes more harm to their already tender relationship, resulting in Michelle lashing back in an equally vindictive and bitter manner.  These two damaged human beings ultimately break down their protective barriers to reveal how broken and alone they truly are.

Michelle Patrick (formerly Michelle Masterson) is twenty-eight years old and works as a privately practicing LPC.  She spends her spare time holed up in her dim apartment revising her eight-year-old novel, which she has been writing on and off since her final two years in undergrad.  She married her boyfriend, David, of six years at twenty-two and divorced at twenty-six a year after the death of her father’s two-year battle with cancer.  For the first year since her father’s death, she never stepped foot in the cemetery, finishing up her graduate work and dealing with her failing marriage that led to divorce.  After her split, she began making periodic trips to visit her father’s grave.  The visits started out first as a means to mourn the loss she’d spent so much time ignoring but soon became a way to grieve her failed relationship.  Although she tries to deny that her feelings for her husband remain as strong as ever, she recognizes how deeply the divorce upset her.  She visits the grave now out of a bitter grudge, hoping to sever herself from the past it stands for in order to move on with her life.

David Masterson is a thirty year old attending radiation oncologist.  When he’s not working at the hospital, he spends most of his time alone on the couch of his empty home.  The bedroom has been untouched for the past two years since his divorce from Michelle, as he has been unable to set foot in the room without having a nervous breakdown.  While he appears cold and angry outside of his work where he is often praised by his patients for his bedside manner, he hides behind a mask crafted by his deeply hurt feelings to protect himself from any further pain.  He is most prominently fueled by his own fear and paranoia of being abandoned and acts out against Michelle, thinking it better to provide her a reason to abandon him than to be left only to wonder why.  Still, he hangs on to the meager hope that she will return to him or at least see past his cruelty and recognize it as a defense mechanism.  He is in a torrent of confusion, and overwhelmed by his own emotions, he lacks the ability of forethought and logic.

If it were to be described in Freudian terms, Michelle would serve as an overactive super-ego, attempting to compensate for her emotional damage through critical thought and over-corrective behavior.  On the other hand, David appears as the uncontrollable id, acting on instinct and impulse, much like an injured animal.  Herein lies the conflict.  Where Michelle cannot forgive herself and allow the grieving process to overtake her, David has become consumed by the process and lost himself to it.  As the story progresses, they are forced into a position of clarity and realization, culminating the “ego.”

On Writing Impossible Expectations - Part III

It occurred to me recently while working on the last two pages of the script for storyboarding that I haven’t divulged into what ultimately started this project.  At the very least, I feel it’s an important thing to address to really emphasize the evolution of a story.

As most know, I began developing and writing the fanfilm Doctor Who: The Endless Reckoning with Cody about two years ago - since the summer of 2011.  As we worked on outlining what would soon come to be five episodes of the series proper, we decided that the third episode would need to establish a critical detail about our antagonist in order to set up his defeat in the final episode.  I took it upon myself to handle this aspect of the story since the detail revolved heavily around my character, Emily.

The first idea I had dealt with Emily visiting the grave of her great-grandfather, the biggest inspiration in her life, and being confronted by the antagonist at the cemetery.  He would proceed to not only insult her, but her deceased loved one, intentionally starting up a confrontation.  It would then end with the two agreeing to disagree and Emily following him away to reveal a single flower in front of the grave, implying that our villain had laid it there.

The image stuck with me, and although the idea was scrapped from The Endless Reckoning, I decided to use the bare bones of the scene to create a short story.  After a few more discussions with Cody about it, I decided that the two central characters were a divorced couple visiting the grave of the woman’s father.  I don’t know exactly when I decided on the psychology angle, but I remember first deciding that the father was a college professor who favored his son-in-law as a student for taking up his particular field of study and that the daughter instead had chosen literature and writing.

I know, however, that my decision on that field of study being psychology came about just before I began writing because, for a short period of time, one of the working titles I had chosen was The Electra Complex based on the ex-husband’s mocking of the woman’s father made early in the scene.  Psychology has always interested me, and for quite some time in middle school and early high school, I almost considered studying that instead of theatre.  After almost four years of theatre, however, I’ve come to realize that they’re not at all that different at the heart of things.

Nevertheless, the next point of development I faced dealt with names, specifically of my two characters and the story itself.  Having not decided on anything, I chose two placeholder names while writing and continued to look for names I thought would serve the story.  Those placeholder names just so happened to be David and Michelle.  After writing the first draft with them, I began to find it difficult to consider renaming them.  While neither their etymology or meaning reflected anything about the characters, I came to identify them best this way.  Though now looking at it in retrospect, I think the hard consonants in David’s name versus the softer sounds of Michelle’s really contributed to that.

The final challenge I had to overcome before the rewriting stages was settling on a title.  The Electra Complex held no weight aside from David’s accusation early on, and Adonis (the name of the flower I’d chosen for the last shot) implied everything but the one thing I wanted to imply.  I began looking through the script to find a line that I could somehow weave into a title, and after reading through it one or two more times, I realized how much David’s line about the expectations they had to live up to resonated with me.  Initially, I hadn’t thought much of it as a line.  My focus was much more on the deceased father’s relationship with my two characters.  Only after pulling back from the draft did I realize how I needed to shift my focus back onto David and Michelle and how those expectations affected them.  After all, though the presence of the father is meant to be felt, what the audience is really supposed to see is the way that presence influenced them and led them to this day.

Not only did the expectations of the father and superiors demand something from them but the expectations they had of one another are what ultimately caused their relationship to fall apart like it did.  David expected Michelle to let go of her father when it was time for him to pass on, and Michelle expected David to understand how her loss affected him.  The fact that they couldn’t move past their expectations of one another is what led to their divorce, and when they each throw caution to the wind at the end, they are choosing to let go of those expectations and instead take action to meet their hopes.

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Impossible Expectations

Michelle

David

On Writing Impossible Expectations - Part II

When I was scouting out the location for the film, I came across this beautiful gated part of the cemetery - the Beth Israel Cemetery.  It had many of the elements that I wanted for this story.  First and foremost, some sense of seclusion for Michelle to feel at a place of solace.  I wanted to drive home that not only is she mourning the loss of her father, but at this point in time, it’s become more about her mourning herself.  However, because of how vulnerable this activity is, if she did not feel at ease or isolated in some way from the public eye, it wouldn’t necessarily make much sense.  The gates provided the essence of some safe haven for her to escape to, which leads me to the next element that I wanted.

The gates themselves were what had drawn my eye first.  Most importantly, they are aesthetically pleasing.  They add atmosphere and almost a timelessness, which may not be necessary for the story at large, at the core of this film is a very human conflict that has been present throughout existence.  Secondly, I quickly grew fond of picturing David opening the gates and establishing the distance between himself and Michelle prior to him approaching her.

Finally, not only did the entrance gate itself add height to the scene, but just behind the grave I had been eyeing, a tree had been planted.  These added dimensions would have been a blessing to take advantage of when composing the shots, and I got attached to the idea almost instantaneously.  (I regret not taking a picture just to show this off.)

However, there were three glaring problems with this location.  First, the less pressing issue was that the graves were all facing towards the? gate, and because my original vision consisted of David walking up ?behind? Michelle so she’s unable to see him when he first speaks, it overall wouldn’t make any logical sense.

The next issue was that, although the gated cemetery provided the necessary isolation I was looking for, it also suggested through its many and closely arranged graves a sense of belonging and/or family that I did not want to imply for the three characters.  As I mentioned before, I did want to give the impression that Michelle and her father were the only really close family they had for each other.  I wanted to suggest both a dependence Michelle had on her father’s life but also, when it would be discovered later, the dependence her father had on both her and David.  This was important to help drive home Michelle’s break down at the very end when she revealed how desperately she needed David to be there with her.

But by far the most pressing issue was that it was simply a cemetery for the Jewish.  Even though they could be Jewish by heritage and not by nature, it ultimately seemed too risky for me to chance.  It was not that I didn’t want to suggest something of their heritage but that I didn’t want to suggest the possibility of religion for two reasons.  First, religion is ultimately not imperative to the narrative.  It seemed unnecessary to imply something to the characters that would not contribute to the momentum of the story or the analysis of the characters.  While, because I know the characters like I do, I’m aware of their own beliefs.  (David and the father are both atheists while Michelle is agnostic.)  Second, it goes back to the idea of belonging that I wanted to avoid.  By belonging to a specific group of people, it gives the impression of a place to return to, and one thing I felt very crucial to Impossible Expectations was that none of these characters have a place to go back to or call home.

With quite a bit of regret, I decided against the use of the Beth Israel Cemetery and afterwards came across the grave that I ended up choosing in the end.

On the Filmmaking of Impossible Expectations - Part I

As I briefly mentioned in the writing blog, I chose to wait on defining the action (and thus, the storyboard) of the film until I got to the cemetery.  This was, I repeat, the worst decision I could have ever made, and although I stand by my actions following this, I can’t help the overwhelming feeling of disappointment.

I’ll preface this with honesty.  The remaining months in the semester were taking a huge toll on my mental and physical health, and while it is not much of an excuse, I was not fully capable of completing the work I had put on my plate.  By the time finals had passed and I was on the plane to meet Cody, I ended up coming down with a serious sinus infection and later some sort of stomach flu.  And of course, as is the case whenever one is in close proximity with another who is ill, Cody ended up getting sick after me, only to pass it back to me just before I left.  This, plus some fairly uncompromising weather, made filming impossible to complete.

I decided ultimately to start over, having not completed a satisfactory vision to begin with, and we instead began planning a more concise storyboard in order to work around any future unforeseen circumstances.  If I am lucky, I will have it completed prior to spring break and be able to film then.  If not, I will at the very least have an animated storyboard presentation prepared.  I will be providing Cody with some rough sketches for him to help me frame and compose, and once this comes together, I will hopefully be able to see what comes next for this project.

On the Writing of Impossible Expectations - Part I

My process for writing this script was not unique to me, but perhaps a bit unconventional in reality.  As I typically do with scripts, I focused first on having dialogue.  Seldom do I have a clear idea for action to take place, as language comes more naturally to me.  With this story being so driven by the argument between David and Michelle, it seemed important to know what they were saying both verbally and subtextually, so I made it a point to write - or at least note - what the meaning behind their words were.

My biggest issue with this became David.  While it made sense for Michelle, an articulate writer, to be so verbose, David, who often speaks without thinking and thusly puts his foot in his mouth, was not developing his own voice.  It would take three or four more revisions before I could finally hear David separate himself from Michelle (and quite frankly - me.) In particular, when I began cutting lines and moving parts of the argument around, it became easier to set him apart.  By the time I’d written the line, “Dying is selfish, Michelle,” he became a very clear and distinct character - the man I had wanted him to be from the very beginning.

The next issue became the action, especially because I was writing the script so far away from my intended location and photographs don’t do 3-dimensional space justice.  I had to keep in mind David’s hands at all times, as I wanted to imply that he was the one who laid the flower on the grave.  I decided, much to my chagrin, to minimalize the action and wait until I could work on location.  This was admittedly a terrible decision on my part influenced by stress and a heavy workload, and I should have known better.  However, I will address this in my blog on the filmmaking.

The next problem I faced was a continuous issue that I ultimately decided to ignore.  The biggest criticism I received was that of how abruptly the conflict begins:

I think you get to the conflict to quickly. Having him insult her dead father while she’s at his grave just a few lines into the dialogue gives me an immediate negative opinion of him which hurts when I’m supposed to like him later on. 
Also, I was finding that I wanted to know more about these characters sooner. I think both of these things can be fixed if they have a more civil conversation at the grave that leads up to him insulting her father.

I made my best attempt at presenting David as a real person with flaws and feelings.  Whether the audience likes him or hates him doesn’t stop him from being a bitter and angry human being who fucked up because he was bitter and angry.  So to lessen his mistake in order to make it easier for the audience to have sympathy for him, in my opinion (and perhaps my stubbornness,) defeats the very purpose of what I’m writing.

Secondly, I have to address that if the genders were reversed, would Michelle still receive the benefit of the doubt?  While David is not necessarily provoked, Michelle is not pleasant or welcoming upon his arrival.  If this behavior belonged to a man responding to a woman, how would this change the way an audience reacts?  If we’re honest, we’d recognize that not only does Michelle receive the audience’s sympathy automatically not just because she’s in mourning - but because she’s a woman.

(Not only this- but to address also that had this exchange taken place in a coffee shop and not the graveyard, she also would not have been forgiven so easily for her rudeness.)

This brings me to something I tried to get across in writing this script.  The way that circumstances refract our ways of thinking.  The source to David’s anger comes from the fact that Michelle is forgiving a man not because he redeemed himself but because he had cancer.  Humane people tend to give the benefit of the doubt to a person because of unfortunate circumstances, clouding their judgment, and while there is certainly nothing wrong with a bit of humanity, if it gets in the way of a clear perspective, it can distort a necessary truth.  As a writer, I don’t want my characters to be judged based on the cards I deal them.  I want them to be seen for all their faults and not romanticized as some be-all, end-all good and evil.

So I guess I’m trying to justify my staunch and steadfast decision to keep the confrontation the way it is, and I hope my reasons come through…