Dispatches from the Fury Road: The Infinite Possibility of Ideas
Are you watching Severance?
If you aren’t tuning in to this wonderful show, I’ll speak obliquely about a particular scene in the off chance you’re “Severance-curious”. In the latest episode a character is at work and since he’s been doing a good job, his bosses reward him with a prize which is a Waffle Party. Already that sounds weird but trust me, this is the normal part. When the character attends the Waffle Party, he sits in a room by himself, eats waffles, then moves to a bed and watches four strangers dance for him while wearing creepy masks. It is a deeply unsettling scene. It is also funny and discombobulating. While watching the Waffle Party I couldn’t stop laughing while my knee jigged uncontrollably on the lounge. It was a scene that felt like it was devised by the grandchildren of Twin Peaks.
Yesterday I was reading an interview with the creator Dan Erickson in Variety where he said that the scene “…started as a joke in the writers’ room that then developed into something we thought was really interesting”. I read this and felt a level of envy I haven’t felt since my friend sent me photos of waking up with her mother’s cat snuggled alongside her in bed. (I have terrible pet envy at the moment) I would love nothing more than to sit in a room with an array of writers and throw crazy ideas around. Some ideas might be brilliant. Some might go nowhere. Some ideas might appear promising but then fizzle out while other ideas might not appear to work only for them to suddenly make sense when combined with another idea. Ideas! What can’t they do?
This story about the Waffle Party reminded me of the story Damon Lindelof shared about the writing process when creating The Leftovers. This is a TV series based on the book by Tom Perrotta where one day, without warning, 2% of the world’s population disappears. Nobody knows where they’ve gone and we follow the characters who are left behind. Lindelof spoke about a particular day in the writer’s room where they were sharing ideas on which famous people would be amongst those that disappeared. One writer picked Shaquille O’Neal. The Pope was another. Then someone suggested the whole cast of late 80s/early 90s sitcom Perfect Strangers. Everyone in the room laughed and they wrote it into the pilot. Funny idea. Then over the course of the next two seasons, this throwaway gag had two more beats that took the idea from funny to incredibly moving. I did not see that Perfect Strangers joke developing the way that it did, but I was delighted with where it landed. Who would have thought that a series with a character named Balki would evolve into something consequential?
I love ideas but I find not everyone shares the love. I’ve worked on shows in the past where the simplest ideas have been declared dead on arrival for the dumbest of reasons. I remember in the planning stages of a certain TV show I pitched a regular segment called, “Hot Take!” where an Australian celebrity would appear and be furious about a subject that’s just not worth being furious about. Think Osher Gunsberg getting angry about vanilla yoghurt having too much flavour or Larry Emdur being grumpy because the price wasn’t always right. These were going to be small vignettes to play coming out of a commercial break and could live online as easily digested clips. This idea tripped at the first hurdle because the producers had never heard the term “Hot Take” before. I then spent the next 3-days explaining it to them. I emailed Urban Dictionary meanings. I drew up maps with pins and threads on them. I shared myriad clips of sports and comedy shows using the term. Suffice to say the idea never landed but in good news I developed a twitch in my left eye. Is the idea the best idea ever? Maybe. Maybe not. That’s not the point. The problem isn’t that they hadn’t heard the term “Hot Take” before; its that they didn’t show any curiosity and therefore follow it through. They had no interest in engaging with an idea that they had no reference for but they did find time to all comment on my new twitch. Bless.
I remember working one morning on a radio show in Sydney and our head producer wanted a woman to come in and sing a specific song for us the following day. I told the producer that I was friends with cabaret artist Meow Meow who was in town at the time. If you haven’t seen her before, Meow Meow not only has a beautiful voice but she is also incredibly funny. The radio producer looked at me like I’d just taken a crap on her carpet. She told me she had never heard of this Meow Meow before so I pointed to the massive poster just outside our window advertising her show. That poster had been there for three weeks but our producer had never looked at it and wondered who Meow Meow was let alone what that particular show might be about. Instead our producer booked someone who came seventh on The Voice in season eleventy-three whose singing was fine and when I say fine, I mean they’re probably quite good at their local karaoke night.
Before this turns into a “Wah Wah Wah” piece about ideas I’ve had rejected, I’m not advocating that any of these should have been followed through with. What I take issue with is the inability of people to engage with any level of curiosity to see if an idea has legs. What I am advocating for is that people ask, “What’s that?” rather than, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” One is an invitation while the other is a door closing.
I saw the film, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” on Sunday night and I loved it. This movie was full of ideas and experiencing it in the cinema was a rollercoaster ride as it threw me from one emotion to the next. It was funny, dramatic, silly, thrilling and poignant. Sometimes I experienced all of those feelings in the same scene. One of the most absurd moments in the film made me teary before it lurched back to absurdism. It is one of the most inventive movies I’ve had the pleasure of watching in a long time and after it ended, my friend and I had to find a bar to talk about what we had just experienced. This movie was so exciting I thought I might stay awake forever until I arrived home and immediately fell asleep. I was exhausted but in a very satisfied way, like when you’ve eaten a delicious meal or you’ve seen someone you don’t like make a faux pas in a small private moment. Delicious!
I was relieved that the writers and director hadn’t pitched their movie to some of the producers I’ve worked with in the past. If they couldn’t understand what a “Hot Take” was, how could they get their heads around the concept of the Multiverse? Even if I boiled it down to a very simple, “Imagine a universe where I’m talking to a version of you that is open to ideas and inherently more fun”, you know the explanation would have dissipated in the air and a wonderful movie would have been reduced to another person’s blog about what might have been. When an idea comes your way that feels strange and different, embrace it and see where it takes you. By saying yes you might discover the tastiest of treats are surprisingly within your reach.
Justin Hamilton
Surry Hills
April 2022