about twenty years ago, i was deeply involved in a writing project i was working on with a few friends of mine, called "Metatokyo." it was an epic-length story, and helping bring it to a close is one of my proudest creative achievements. i started a sequel to it with a mostly different group of writers, and we got stranded somewhere around the middle, we all got busy and kind of lost the drive to keep writing it. that happens sometimes.
i think about our plans for the story often, especially the stuff we didn't write, scenes and spectacle that i've carried with me in my head for decades now. much of it is beyond my ability to put to paper.
of course, this project had a soundtrack, spanning dozens of tracks that invoked the emotions and actions of what we were trying to portray. if we had ever attempted to produce an animated or live-action version of MT, the music licensing alone would have bankrupted a small country.
i was thinking about this the other day, walking the dogs and listening to the Propellerheads' "DECKSANDDRUMSANDROCKANDROLL;" a track from which i had intended to accompany an intense chase scene--one character on a motorcycle, pursuing a group of limos down a bombed-out urban highway, one of which held another kidnapped character. as i was thinking about it, i realized that what had never really gelled for me about the scene as i had originally envisioned it--which involved a large amounts of motorcycle stunts, outlandish violence and 'SPLOSIONS--was that i hadn't made it big enough.
why would there only be like five limos in the chase? the reality of the setting might have called for it, but there was nothing stopping me from making it a couple of dozen, or a HUNDRED limos for Trixie to destroy in her roaring rampage of rescue. at that point in my creative process i was, if not obsessed, highly distracted by notions of realism in a highly unreal setting; i wanted to make sure characters were grounded by realistic things like, i don't know, their weapons running out of ammo or whether or not g-forces would allow them to do a certain maneuver in mid-air or if an evil corporation in a quasi-post-apocalyptic setting would have the budget for more than five limousines to spare for a kidnapping attempt. i failed to aim high enough and make things truly exciting by relying on my need to be believable, and it just wasn't necessary. i wonder if these internal limitations were one of the things that made my desire to continue this story dry up. i'll probably never really know.
to this day i'm left with a head full of movies nobody else will ever get to see. but there are worse things in the world.
anyway, here's "BANG ON."
