Got it!
The Flies, by Jean Paul Sartre.
My movie is going to be a fly's-eye view of that play, which, you may recall, is a retelling of the fall of my favorite dysfunctional family: the House of Atreus. [*Synopsis below]
Except in this, my version, the Fly is like Terry Malloy, Marlon Brando's character in On the Waterfront.
She--[played by Bink, so I guess it's a she; but this is blind casting--non-gender-specific]--anyway, this fly doesn't want to be an avenging fury. S/he wants to be Fred Astaire.
(Cue dancing scenes, as encouraged by the Edward Lear illustration a few posts back.)
Spoiler:
Like On the Waterfront, but unlike Sartre, it will have a basically happy ending.
The point being, a life of art can save even a fly from a life of crap.
So, that's the story I'm developing, while the papier-mache fly-heads dry.
If you have a knife with a retractable blade (for fake stabbings, like in Harold and Maude) and/or a white tie and tails I could borrow, please let me know. (I don't think a top hat would fit on the fly head.)
*House of Atreus RSS (Really Simple Synopsis):
Agamemnon and Menelaus are brothers--sons of King Atreus of Mycenae [Greece].
M.'s wife Helen of Troy runs off with Paris.
Agamemnon sacrifices his own daughter Iphigenia in order to get the Trojan War started.
When A. returns home, ten years later, his wife Clytemnestra arranges his murder to avenge Iphigenia's death.
C & A's remaining children, Electra and Orestes, then murder their mother to avenge their father. Or, rather, E. gets O. to do it.
So...the avenging Furies are set on Orestes---and in Sartre's play, they are flies.
Well, Grrlll! I am salivating--metaphorically and, almost, literally--in anticipation of your opus/labor-fruit--(will it be a small or large piece?)! Yup, that's one of my favorite dysfunctional [Greek] families, too. I'm trying to remember which class it was at the u of m for which we read that work by Sartre and The Eumenides. Just finished reading "A Jury Of Her Peers" by Jean Hanff Korelitz which riffs a bit on images and symbolism and the sound of the word "Eumenides". (This novel is out of print, but available to buy in the cyber book world; it's also set in two of my most favorite places on earth to live in or be). Will there be any cuyos/cuys--guinea pigs-- featured? Let me know if I can help with any Greek translations if you want to throw in other language stuff. Or, I could just cook some Greek lusciousness for you and feed you while you're in the throes and don't have time to cook. Then I could see ya and sort of fulfill my fantasy of being an amenuensis. I Love that word!
ReplyDeleteLove, Your still Hoping to Be A Professional Greek Living on Lesbos Friend,
Stefalala
Stef!
ReplyDeleteWe've gotta get you in here somehow too!
Beyond Baklava!
Thanks for your wonderful words. I'm having too much fun, already, except that is not possible.
I have a great novel by Barry Unsworth that retells the story of Iphigenia. It's called The Songs of the Kings.
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