Ian Glendinning stated July 3rd 2012: Most of the marquee quotes anyway. - the funeral procession of cars for example, is used, but put into Sylvia's mouth later on if I recall correctly.
Ant McWatt comments: Yes Ian, as I said, it is reduced to one line in the play though confusingly in a section about a missed turning. Fortunately, the "funeral procession" analogy is mentioned later in the play (as per the book) in an expanded form by Chris and the Father/narrator so some of the flavour of Sylvia's "lost quote" is retained. This is what the Father says in the play: "Civilization. The funeral procession. The hyped-up, fuck you, oh so modern, egotistical bullshit people who not only think they own America, they think they are America. We’ve arrived at the West Coast." The original quote in ZMM reads as follows: "I just forgot the biggest gumption trap of all. The funeral procession! The one everybody's in, this hyped-up, fuck-you, supermodern, ego style of life that thinks it owns this country. We've been out of it for so long I'd forgotten all about it." Now this paragraph did require re-writing because the theme of gumption traps is not mentioned in the play. However, in the book, it is directed at the reader while in the play it is directed at Chris - which means the father is using the "F-word" in a conversation with his eleven year old son. This doesn't ring (artistically) true with me as it sounds out-of-character behaviour for the socially minded narrator. If I'd been re-writing this section in this way, I would have at least taken out the "F-word" or, if it wasn't too much work, shifted the context to the listener. Best wishes, Anthony Ian G said July 2nd 2012: Hi Ant, I thought given the tricks they had to play to get it all in without literally going through the original narrative sequentially, it came across very well. Blogged a brief review last weekend. http://www.psybertron.org/?p=69 [It states at the above link:] "The characterizations, tone and atmosphere were dead right, and despite the need for selective editing to fit the 0 minute format, all the main aspects of the narrative, the back-stories and the underlying chautauqua on quality and mental illness came through. Many original scenes re-ordered and combined, and some dialogue recalled in the mouths of others, to get all the ideas and the marquee quotes in, without losing the context or intent, and still maintaining the overall sequence of the journey. An excellent production." Ant McWatt commented July 3rd: Ian, Thanks for that. I agree with most of your review though I'm not too sure ALL the "marquee quotes" are there! For instance: "You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame." I read this quote (which appears very early in ZMM) as a metaphor of the SOM viewpoint (being a separate passive observer of the world - the car passenger) as compared to the Zen viewpoint (being a Dynamic agent in the world - the motorcycle rider). It's gently introducing to the reader the difference between where Western culture is at and - with a little Zen help from its friends - where it could be. This sentiment is then reinforced (about three pages later) by this other "marquee quote": "'It was all those people in the cars coming the other way,'[Sylvia] says. 'The first one looked so sad. And then the next one looked exactly the same way, and then the next one and the next one, they were all the same...' 'They looked so lost,' she says. 'Like they were all dead. Like a funeral procession.'" Now this whole quote (a metaphor for SOM alienation) is reduced down to just one line in the play which means its significance is rather lost especially without the preceding "car window" quote which sets the scene. . Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
