How to Find Movie on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I know how to brandZen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance into a moving-picture show. At least, I retrieve I do. If you're non a fan or the book, this is not the mail service for y'all. If you are a fan, or haven't read the book but are supremely bored just near now with what's trending on Twitter, well, maybe this is the mail for you lot.

Robert Pirsig and his son, Chris, 1968.

There'due south a scene in Lila, the follow-upward to Zen, where Pirsig has a coming together with Robert Redford, who had, I believe, optioned the first novel and wanted to brand a moving-picture show of information technology. Redford'due south thought was to showtime with a scene where Pirsig, as a college professor, was sitting in front of his class, at his desk, non saying a give-and-take. From at that place, Redford planned to tell the story through flashbacks.

It never went anywhere, obviously, and Zen remains ane of those kinds of books that Hollywood, I call up, hates: popular, merely unfilmable. There is a standard narration that carries Zen, but the meat of the book, what really makes it such a classic, is virtually all the commencement-person thoughts that the narrator presents as he'southward making his cross-country motorcycle trip, and it's all very heavy on philosophical exposition. Avatar this ain't, Hell information technology's not even as accessibly as The Cracking Gatsby. Nobody could make a film out of ZMM.

Just I think I could. Not just that, I call up I could do information technology well.

I first read Robert Pirsig'south novel more than 25 years ago. Since then, I've gone dorsum to it once again and once again, re-reading information technology, and then re-reading it again, every time cartoon new insights from it, every fourth dimension appreciating it more. I've surely read the book more than a dozen times, I don't know, I lost count; at ane point, I was reading it once a yr.

I also read all, I think all or most of the books that Pirsig references in the book:Walden,Tao Te Ching, Plato'southPhaedro andThe Meeting of Due east and Westward, a philosophy book by a little known Yale professor, FSC Northrop, that Pirsig mentions only in one case, but notes information technology was a critical book for the narrator. I plant it by chance in a used-book store upwardly in Hudson, New York, totally by random run a risk. Took me nine months to read it; information technology literally was the densest book I'd ever picked up. Very time-consuming, merely valuable read. And then you can see I'chiliad serious.

I also spent a lot of time trying to write screenplays. For some odd reason, I thought this was a realistic career path for me. I probably wrote ten or so. Never sold any of them, mayhap I didn't endeavor hard plenty to sell them, perchance they weren't very practiced, but I did learn at least how to write a standard three-human activity screenplay.

All of this makes me the perfect person to tackle a Zen screenplay.

Now, Zen is one of those books that seem impossible to translate onto the screen. Indeed, any filmed version of this novel would fall brusk of the volume itself, unless you lot wanted to make a 12-60 minutes picture show with endless flashbacks and exposition. But I practise remember there's a way to make a good, solid, even commercial moving-picture show out of the book that would practise justice to Pirsig'south story and philosophy (I know Pirsig himself isn't interested).

I'grand non sure if I'll e'er find the spare time to actually write this screenplay, and so I might as well just flesh out my full general ideas here, for posterity'southward sake.

You're still hither? Great. Allow'due south get. There are 3 main aspects to this screenplay that set information technology apart: the timeline, the narrator, and the flashbacks/exposition.

First off, we won't get cute in terms of the timeline (like Redford proposed). The picture opens with the narrator and companions biking across Wisconsin marshlands, and ends with the narrator and his son on a California highway, just like the volume. In fact, this screenplay will mostly adhere to the novel's plot. The existent trick is in presenting that plot, and in knowing how much and what parts of the philosophy to cut out (to be clear: ideally, I wouldn't cutting any, but that would brand for a very, very long flick).

Next, this motion picture, just like the book, has to take a narrator. In that location is absolutely no way around this. There is far as well much background and exposition to non have somebody taking the viewer through the story. He'll suspension the 4th wall, also, and talk directly to the audience. Here's the twist, though: this narrator may be insane.

Pirsig's narrator is somebody who, as the story progresses, is slowly losing his mind, has lost his listen in the past, and has had electroshock therapy that was supposed to erase everything he'd ever known. Literally, every bit the story'south progressing, his mind's fragmenting. He'due south what's chosen an unreliable narrator. The film'south narrator would reverberate this. You ever run across a crazy person? Know how they kind of talk past you? That'due south what our narrator would practise. So, not simply would he directly address the audience, he would also at timestalk past the audience.

There's a scene where the narrator and his son Christopher are coming down a mount. In the volume, the narrator is talking out loud,to the reader.It'southward an inner monologue; in the story itself, he isn't saying a word. In the movie, the narrator will exist speaking out loud the narrator's inner monologue. So, he'south clamoring down this hill, talking out loud, looking around, talking to the audience, talking by the audience, and losing all sense of where he is and what's really going on.

Playing this function, actually, would be quite the challenge for an player. He plays ii roles, really; one is the narrator, who at the get-go seems a harmless, nebbish sort, but progresses through the movie into a homo who's mind is literally coming apart. He would besides play the narrator in the past, Phaedrus, a rebellious man of towering intellect who is the story's true hero. This part'due south got Oscar written all over it, I tell you.

The hardest part of the storytelling is in how to handle all the flashbacks to Phaedrus and the philosophical exposition. This is, I think, where the biggest adventure of the movie falling apart lies, considering the philosophical stuff is almost incommunicable to tell on-screen, but it's really the biggest part of the book. Without it, there's literally no point to the book. So how do y'all handle it? Like I said, we're sticking to the timeline, so the flashbacks volition be handled with flashbacks. The philosophy will be handled with flashbacks likewise. So not simply do you lot have flashbacks of Phaedrus'southward life, but you have flashbacks to different historical eras. We would literally see Plato and Aristotle and Socrates, a flashback within the flashback of Phaedrus's days in Chicago.

This is probably the trickiest function of the story. Not only is this where the greatest risk of the film failing the book lies, but it's where the greatest run a risk of the film failing the audience lies as well. The pace will have to remain balanced between not cut out and so much exposition that none of what actually matters is left in the film, and not leaving in then much that the audience just completely loses interest. Merely I don't come across any other way to practise it. Gotta take the gamble hither.

So y'all have Phaedrus locked into a boxing of the heed with the Chairman of the University of Chicago's philosophy department, which the narrator is telling in a flashback, and within that yous flash back to the earliest battles in ancient Greece between Plato and Socrates and the sophists, who are fighting the very showtime boxing between reason and emotion, between feeling and thinking, betwixt logic and emotion. It'due south the fight that underlies the unabridged book. Information technology's the reason Socrates drank the hemlock. If you tin show this, explain it in a moving-picture show, prove why it's important, how it yet affects our lives today, wouldn't that exist a great thing?

I'm out there, Mr. Hollywood Producer. Ping me.

nobleandings.blogspot.com

Source: https://paulvigna.blogspot.com/2013/08/i-know-how-to-write-screenplay-for-zen.html

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