The Pursuit of Happiness Just Seems a Bore

1. INT. OFFICE. MORNING

A small yet industrious office is bustling. People are arriving and sitting down to their work. Others are chatting in the tea room. We pass by the cubicles, noting interesting items on desks. On one desk sits a plaque that reads: 'One of these days I gotta get myself organizized'
We stop at an occupied desk. There sits a girl in her early 20s, very well-dressed - and we're talking high street brands all the way here, appears to be on the phone. A flooded in-tray threatens to flood her desk, which would take out a framed photograph sitting on her computer's monitor.

We close in on the girl in order to catch her conversation.

REBECCA

Hello, you've reached Rebecca Gibbons, Marketing Officer for -

She looks up at her computer, and sees an appointment on her work calendar.

REBECCA
- oh, for fuck's sakes. This sucks.

We hear a beep on the phone, followed by an automated voice.

VOICEMAIL MESSAGE

Greeting saved.

Rebecca hears this and her eyes widen. She quickly tries to re-record the greeting.

***

This is something I had in mind for an episode that I'm tentatively calling The Dare. I've blogged about this idea in an earlier post; about the housemates acting like children for a week. I've also been thinking a lot about Rebecca and some of the themes she represents. I think that she can be quite a reserved person and something extreme would have to occur for her to let loose in this way.

I was at a staff retreat last week and I think that I would like to recreate (and exaggerate) moments from it. Not least because it totally reminded me of the training day episode of The Office. Sadly no one quit. Perhaps luckily, no one asked any of us out on a date, mistakenly thinking we'd split with our partner. This is just a rough draft and I wrote it several minutes before this. And I'm writing it under the influence of many cold and flu tablets, an annoying phlegmy cough and a crap runny nose, so it's possibly a big pile of crap, but hey - that's where you come in, dear readers (ok, Jessica)!

A couple of notes: I wanted to give Rebecca a name that referenced a famous character who has lived through office politics for comic effect. I felt Canterbury would be too obvious and looked toward Office Space. The protagonist of that absolute gem of a film is named Peter Gibbons.

The plaque that reads 'one of these days I gotta get myself organizized' is a reference to Taxi Driver. Do I need to elaborate on that?

Also, as always, the script formatting in this post is no reflection of my ignorance of, well, script formatting. It's the best I can do after copying and pasting from CeltX. K? Alright.

Not sure where to go next. I would like to do an episode more or less centred on Rebecca. I do like the idea of using one particular character to introduce a theme that will affect everyone. I think The Dare will be Rebecca's introduction of a theme, just as I see Francis doing the same in The Great Goldstein and both Dan and Sam in our pilot. But this is merely a jumping off point to start negotiations, if I may quote Cher Horowitz. And I may.

Watch this and marvel at how at just 15, Dakota Fanning wins at life more than you.

- S

I Was Looking For a Job and Then I Found a Job...

...and Heaven knows I'm miserable now. Corporate nonsense has been one of the themes I want to explore in The Innocents. It's a double-edged sword because there are some humorous moments at work, but sadly they are few and far between. The incidents of tears in the office are much closer together. But my job has inspired me, so maybe I should be happy, right? Erm...

It pays my way but corodes my soul

As I've mentioned before, Rebecca is very much based on my feelings about my studies and my current job. But I have a friend who works as a marketing coordinator and it got me thinking that perhaps Rebecca works in a similar area - but her position is completely bereft of any real authority. Perhaps she applied for a job thinking she would be The Marketing officer, only to be told that she's merely A Marketing officer.

I like the idea that Rebecca is working in a field similar to her undergraduate degree but completely uncreative compared to her studies. While I feel frustrated because my job has little to no relevance to my study and chosen career path, I think that for many people, this is what happens when we leave university - we head into jobs based on our study but soon realise it's nothing like what we thought. And usually we continue to hear stories about classmates who have gone straight from study to an amazing job and it makes us feel even more inadequate.

Rebecca's job is most likely mostly admin - emails, phone calls, listening to people whinge at her instead of talking to her bosses and having her bosses on her back about ridiculous things.

Rebecca's friends from uni will mostly likely be girls and guys she studied with, and even though they all get along really well, they still feel a competitive streak and approach their friendships they way they approach their work. They're much happier selling the image that they're succeeding in life. They're friends you'd go to brunch or cocktails with once a month, not the kind of friends to confide in. And because Rebecca internalises stress and has no one to offload to, her stress manifests itself in different ways.

She resorts to things like online shopping and self-help, and buys chocolate she never eats. I imagine her yelling at Samantha one day and calling her selfish because she isn't home to sign for one of Rebecca's parcels. I'm also toying with the idea of her becoming obssessed with a 24 hour gym and not going before 3am to work out.

While she is ambitious on one hand, she avoids thinking about investment in her future. She won't apply for a credit card or phone plan or even think about a personal loan for a car or similar because she can't stand the idea having to stay in her current job for a long period of time. She hates the thought of being trapped there for the rest of her life.

Any opportunity, however remotely creative, to use her former skills is something Rebecca throws herself into. She will engineer the housewarming party and put in a ridiculous amount of work, treating it as a PR exercise.

Making Christmas Cards with the Mentally Ill

I get along particularly well with two of my colleagues and they have inspired some fun times in the office. One of my workmates plays indoor soccer and his grand final was a couple of weeks ago. On the Monday, someone asked him if his team won and he said, "Well, no. But the last time we played that team they beat us 7-0 and this time they only beat us 4-0. So I feel it was a moral victory for us." I would love one of our characters to participate in some kind of competitive sport to use that gem.

We now have to email our leave dates to everyone in the office, so we all know when people are off and what we need to do (if anything) to compensate. One of my workmates, upon hearing me say I was going to use the bathroom (I say I'm going wee wees - very professional), made me email it to her for her approval.

...and now for something completely different

In a series of ridiculous paternal humour (or in layman's terms - dad jokes), I came up with a few I hadn't shared already (but if I have already it only adds to the comedic power of the dad joke, as they are always repeated).

I went to the cinema with a friend a few weeks ago and our seats were T-19 and T-20. I mentioned that it would be pretty bad if we got seat T-1000 and she looked at me blankly. I explained the T-1000 is what the Terminator model is called in The Terminator. That joke doesn't really even make sense. So I feel it stands alongside the Google is my Homepage joke of the previous post.

About a month ago I was conversing on MSN (yes, I'm in my late 20s and I still use MSN. Moreover, I still call it MSN) with a friend who said she'd bought a pair of vegetarian shoes. Me, in full dad joke mode - sends a message that says: so, I guess they don't eat the tongue. Yes. I am that awesome.

I feel I should have more to share but I think this is a vast improvement. This time last week I felt more like washing a bottle of nurofen down with a bottle of vodka than updating this blog with ideas, so baby steps, friends. Baby steps.

Watch this - it's good for you.

P.S. - the decision to use lyrics from two different songs by the Smiths is a conscious artistic decision. A conscious decision to be a wanker.

But my faith in love is still devout

Yes, much like Backstreet, I am back. And I daresay the time between posts was much longer than the time between pop releases from the aforementioned Backstreet Boys.

And in the same way we all questioned their whereabouts while they were gone, I'm sure you've been wondering where we've been during our hiatus. You're also probably wondering how far I'll take this whole Backstreet Boys thing.

I'll just say that sometimes online shopping is easier after 35 hours of stress a week than trying to stay creatively motivated and I apologise, dear Readers (Reader). I can't afford to be as creatively uninspired as I have been. Topshop has a new collection...back.

I'm still sort of working on the basic structure of our Great Gatsby homage, so that episode I feel is getting closer to being ready for first draft status. But more character work is required, I feel.

In the meantime, here's some random scribblings and vague, half-formed musings.

I came up with a really lame joke and I thought a character could think it's hilarious, even though it's completely dated.

Remember those 'Jesus is my Homeboy' and 'Mary is my Homegirl' t-shirts? Wouldn't it be hilarious to have a shirt that says, 'Google is my Homepage'? Ha? Geddit? See? Ha - humph.

I get a kick out of awkward situations I'm not really part of, and awkward jokes are quite hilarious. It's why I tell so many of them.

A Short History of the World

Eventually I suppose we'll have to write a pilot and introduce the shit out of our main characters. I've been thinking more about the Gatsby episode and to me that feels like it's episode three or four. Yes, I think about the order of episodes. You gotta, am I right? Am I right?

So, I'm thinking:
We start with Samantha's weird dream (see post with section marked Zonkeys on the Gaza Strip), and we see her room filled with boxes marked 'clothes and shit', 'books and shit,' etc. Then she sees her sister sneaking out of the house to go to school.

Stuff happens, she moves in, blanks to be filled in with the assistance of my colleague.

But I thought: could Sam's stuff end up in another state? Say she splashes out on removalists and they take it to a city interstate with the same name?

the last scenes over the end credits could be of the removal van driving along a country road, stopping at a farm and leaving Sam's boxes on the front verandah?

I had an idea for the structure of the episode. Surely you mean the Three Act Structure, you all cry out. Well, yes, I suppose so, if you want to be boring and...conventional...sigh. No. I mean, how we construct the narrative and by that I mean, which film are we going to steal from to base our episode on.

Could we start with a housewarming party as the frame for the story of how our protagonists moved in, by recounting how each of them got to the party? Yes, a reference to the film Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang. Incidentally, that is what my American friend and I would both like to do to Robert Downey, Jr. The magic of a student exchange really is finding people from all over the world with the same interests.

United States of S

The two characters I feel are different versions of myself are most definitely Samantha and Rebecca. Samantha is the frustrated writer in me, who wants to write but struggles to feel creatively motivated and lives in constant fear that her desire to write is completely unequal to her actual talent. While Rebecca is the unwitting career girl in me, who enjoys the security of a steady income but is frustrated by the monotony of working in a job she's not passionate about, and being drawn into the politics of a workplace she doesn't see herself being part of in the long-term.

I wanted to combine some of my coping strategies - online shopping and Facebook - with the ones I imagine Rebecca would use - like sitting in the toilets and crying on her lunch break. And working in admin, I've come to realise that meetings and forums and office gossip are great material for writers. Just ask Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. I thought that maybe Rebecca's obssessions outside of work would change as each coping mechanism becomes unsatisfying. We were talking about 24 hour gyms and I thought this could be a new thing for her to try. Maybe laughing therapy or Tai Chi as well.

So...I really thought I had more to offer after all these weeks than that, but here we are. End of inspiration. Or is it? I hope not.

Have you always wanted Kraftwerk to cover Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen? Of course you have! Watch this and your dreams will come true.