The World Between the Cuts

"Movies are life with the boring bits cut out."

That's a quote I heard long enough ago that I can't properly credit it to it's originator and have probably mangled it badly enough anyway that it more properly should be refered to as 'a paraphrase'.

But, to me, it begs the following questions:

What does Indian Jones do between adventures?
What does 007 do on his days off?
What did Luke do during the endless days on Uncle Owen's moisture farm before he became a Jedi?
And in romantic comedies, what do 'the guy' and 'the girl' do in their 'down time' on the way to 'happily ever after'? When they aren't interacting with each other / friends / co-workers in order to reveal character and/or advance the plot, how do they spend their time?
Take a classic, like 'You've Got Mail'.
We never saw Tom Hanks in his tee-shirt and boxers clipping his toenails on the coffee table and not being funny.
And remember the part where Meg Ryan was sick? What was she doing before Tom showed up with daisies ('the happiest flower')? She was hocking up phlem!
But we never saw that!

Way back in the day, when motion pictures were in their infancy, a camera was set up, for example, on a busy metropolitan street, and cranked until it was out of film.
And that was it.
That was your movie.
A single shot of jerky, grainy, black and white film from a non-moving camera.
Pretty boring, right?
But think about what a revolution it was back then. All of a sudden, Farmer Bob, from Bugfart, Arkansas, could walk into a dark room and be transported to Paris, or London, or Bombay.

Over time, audiences gained sophistication.
Single scene 'movies' lost their novelty.
And boredom bred revolution.

Enter the Russians.

Sergei Eisenstein was not the only guy to have theories about movie clip 'montages', but he was one of 'the biggies', and he was one of the guys who helped turned motion pictures from single scene vignettes into a visual storytelling artform.
That sounds grandiose but his working theory was kind of interesting. In a nutshell, his theory was about the effect of putting two pieces of film together and what they meant. A rough mathmatical equivalent would be something like: (shot A) + (shot B) = C [a new meaning that is a hybrid of shot A and shot B].
Sounds pretty artsy and poetic, and perhaps a bit primative and prosaic now, but it was the beginning of the visual narrative styles that we see everyday on tv and in movies. With few exceptions - notibly Alfred Hitchcock's 'Rope' (made of 10 minute 'takes' without any cuts) and the newer, fascinating film 'Russian Ark' (made up of one 90 minute moving shot through the Russian Hermitage museum) - all movies are made of a series of 'cuts'.

Cuts.

Kind of a violent term, if you think about it. Something that someone thought was unimportant or uninteresting was cut out. Back in the day, the editor, leaning over an old Moviola film editor, literally cut the film and ended up with a floor full of celluloid strips.
Today, it's the computer recycle bin.
There are ways to sneak up on a cut, like a fade or dissolve, but the bottom line is that something that happened on film will never be seen.

Indiana Jones picks his nose on a camel.
007 cleans his ear with a Q-Tip.
Luke Skywalker takes a dump behind a sand dune.
And Meg Ryan hocks up phlem before Tom Hanks brings her flowers.

'Movies are life with the boring bits cut out.'

Ok.
Metaphor time.

If I were the editor of my own life, would today make the final cut? Would it even make the deluxe 'director's cut' double DVD set? I'm not sure. It might be okay for a 'behind the scenes' section, but it had little that was dramatic about it.

During the last month, what would have not been cut out? Has there been -

Drama? - a bit. Some at work, a bit of my own, and boatloads from a friend or two who have drama to spare.
Romance? - next question.
Comedy? - I'm funny and have funny friends. So, yes.

Specific events?
- Alisa's house party.
- Difficulty with an underhanded co-worker.
- A lady I didn't know at my condo who walked past me one morning and said, 'I found my basket.'
- Lunch dates with my favorite DJ.
- Going to Maxine's new place to pick up a microwave.
- Fun phone and text tagging.
- House of Blues with Angela.
- Having to break plans with Courtney because of a family situation.
- Thursday nights with Becca and Jess.

But how much of the last month would end up on the floor?

I philosophically and theologically believe in down time as much as I believe in up time. Growing up as a Jesus boy, I see lots of Biblical precendents for it. Just by reading the Psalms of David, there are obviously so many 'ups' and 'downs'. Psalms of exaltation right next to psalms of despair. The joyful, vicious pendulum of life swings with wild abandon. Like muscles in the extremes of contraction and relaxation, like desperate inhales and exhales, there are mountains to enjoy and valleys to endure.

But what happens between the extremes?

Moses. A good bit of what Moses did was recorded. The circumstances of his birth, his commiting murder, his flight into the desert, his return to Egypt, and his journey towards the 'promised land'.
This is the news reel. This was what Cecil B. DeMille was interested in.
But I wonder what Moses did while he was in the desert for forty years.

Four decades of his life - on the cutting floor.

And Joseph, with his poetic, prophetic dreams. Sold into slavery by jealous brothers, thrown in jail by a lying mistress, then made second in command of the most powerful nation on the planet.
But what was life like for him as a slave?
How did he spend his days in prison?

And Jesus.

Born under extraordinary circumstances. Parents had to run away to Egypt.
Cut.
Jesus is a toddler. Joseph gets direction to go back to Israel.
Cut.
Jesus is twelve years old talking with the rabbis in the temple.
Cut.
Jesus is thirty years old, is baptized by his cousin John, and begins his ministry.

With only one exception, from about two years old until he was thirty, the events of Jesus' life are not recorded. They, too, are on the cutting floor.

The last month has been fairly dull, and I have been dulled by it. Perhaps I'm high soul maintainence. Admittedly, I thrive on novelty. I'm a bit of a hedonist for new experiences and situations. And perhaps trudging the daily treadmill has temporarily made a mental troglodyte of me.

My pal Marlon and I were chatting tonight about Facebook maintainence. Any new pictures, he asked. No, I said, I haven't had many things happen recently that are picture-worthy.

There haven't been many things to take pictures of and few new things to write about.

I admit, I long for the 'clack' of a clapboard and a rousing shout of 'Action!' But, having reviewed this particular public catharsis, it seems a bit foolish resenting this season of silence.
This dull rhythm is the humming factory that makes life happen.
This daily trudge is the line between points on a map.

This is the world between the cuts.