This week I saw what is one of the worst films I've ever seen: Striking Distance with Bruce Willis. I hadn't heard of it, and had to check to see whether it was meant to be a comedy - because it had some of the funniest scenes I've seen in a thriller, stuff that I thought surely had to be intentionally played for laughs...but no, it doesn't seem that's the case.

Examples:

Bruce Willis' character Tom is assigned to River Duty (basically coast guard) after ratting out his partner and alienating all the other homicide detectives. He drinks too much and doesn't get along with his partners (surprise) until a woman (Sarah Jessica Parker) is assigned to work with him. After she's introduced, he stands on his boat, looking back at her - and picks up her wet suit. It has molded cups. He looks at the molded cups, then at his new partner, then back at the cups again. Now, forget the campiness of the scene...I've never seen a wetsuit with molded cups. I have female friends who dive and surf, and just to be sure, I Googled women's wetsuits. Nope, they don't come with prominent boob holders. The intent of the scene seemed to have been to emphasize the potential awkwardness in working with a woman...


Then there's the fact that their first time out on the water together she saves his ass. There's about five minutes of "tense" (or not really) emphasis of their differences before they jump into the bonding crisis.

And I knew they'd end up sleeping together. Because all female cops are sluts who sleep with their partners. But then, there was no set up for it. I think the (one) scene where she's wearing a dress to the policeman's banquet (despite the fact that most of the others are in their uniforms) and he tells her she looks "different" was supposed to let us know they were falling for each other, but I was surprised when suddenly with no precursor there was a scene of them waking up in bed together. [HINT: You need more than one comment before characters risk ridicule and their career to have sex for it to be believable. And failing to set something up is not the same thing as making it surprising]

Of course, some of the best bad stuff comes early on. The partner Tom ratted out for beating a suspect doesn't show up to the sentencing hearing, most likely because he's making a scene on a bridge over the river. The partner's dad, who is Tom's uncle (cop families) and the partner's brother are trying to talk him down, as he gives a maudlin speech about how mom drove in the river and they never found her body.

Tom, against the advice of everyone else, tries his hand at talking the partner down, and it involves a weird kind of baby talk. The partner says, "Who's the best cop? Who's the best cop?" and Bruce Willis answers, "You the best cop". He reaches out his hand, the partner reaches back and then suddenly whips around and throws himself in the water. I was completely baffled as to why these men were speaking baby talk to each other, but it's revealed near the end that these guys grew up together and used to try to out-do one another to see who was the best cop. I guess it was supposed to be touching, or maybe even creepy - but instead it was weird as hell and funny, especially since we didn't know any of that when the scene occurred.

But the best scene in the movie, the one that helped set the comic tone for me, happens near the beginning - at the inciting incident.

Brucie (Tom) is driving a car with his dad riding shotgun (since he's ratted out his partner,) and they're chasing a bad guy, with several other cops behind them. The bad guy goes off the road and flips. Bruce follows and flips too.

Next scene, three cops are pulling Bruce Willis out from under the car as he re-gains consciousness, helping him try to stand. Because that's what you want to do when someone's been crushed in a car accident and knocked out - move them, pull on them and get them upright. There was no imminent danger of the car exploding, the paramedics were already there - we know, because that's the next shot, a body in a bag being flopped onto a gurney. Because it's more important to load up the dead guy than attend the wounded and heavily bleeding one.

Bruce asks about dad, realizes that's his dad, and kind of stumbles/falls to his knees (on the legs that weren't working at all a second ago) and (get this) strokes his dad's hair as he sobs over the body. Which, y'know, had me groaning - but I didn't get a full belly laugh until I saw that in the background, they popped open the trunk of the bad guy's car, and there, out of focus, as Bruce makes out with his dad's corpse, the body of a woman in a red dress pops out and flops over with a bounce.

I'm all for making a single shot convey as much info as possible, but this is better done in more subtle ways than bouncing bodies - even if they are out of focus.

There's more, there's more - but you get the idea.

I finally watched Volver last week. As with all of Almodovar's films that I've seen so far, i spent the first 20 minutes or so not sure I'd like it, and by the end was totally engrossed in the fates of the characters. One of the reasons I get so involved in an Almodovar movie is the fact that the women are all crazy, contradictory messes...in other words, something like me. Admittedly, the women in the earlier films (in particular Women on the Verge) are more like drag queens, but the stories themselves were more like soap operas - over the top in content, color, and style as well as character. But by All About My Mother, there's a definite shift. As his storytelling becomes a little less strident, so too his characters become less exclamatory...and many of his characters are women. This may not seem remarkable, but just try to think of films where the leads are women. Where the female characters have a relationship or interaction with each other, especially one that's not simply about men. But simply featuring women isn't enough. The women are presented with difficult circumstances, hard choices, uncertain alliances - and they find their way through. Volver, in particular, features some of the most mature portrayals of women I've ever seen in a movie. There is insanity and a kind of willful superstitiousness, a desire to believe the stories and myths because they work for the narratives each person creates about their own lives - and when these narratives these women create intersect with parts of other people's narratives in ways that don't fit, the characters are forced to examine themselves. The women find ways to make reality work in their own personal stories. A lot of it is like the fake bottom Penelope Cruz wears to make her look more womanly (can you imagine an American actress doing this, and not for fat jokes but because she's too skinny to be a believable mom?) - it's a fiction that gives an illusion of reality as part of a myth, but those myths are ultimately what allows everyone to function. SPOILERS Raimunda's mother is dead. We start the movie at her grave. But when they visit the auntie, there's evidence that the mother is there in that house. Her smell in the air, her special cookies baked for them. They dismiss it at first, then they subscribe to the idea that Irene (Raimunda's mother) is a ghost, taking care of the old auntie. The sister even takes her in, and continues to half act as if Irene were a willful spirit - but no, she is alive. Everyone continues to pretend she is dead, however, because it hides another truth that's buried in a myth - the fact that Raimunda's father was with another woman when he died. It's only by managing a difficult balance of truth and myth that the characters are able to confront what really happened, and only as a ghost that Irene is able to make amends with the daughter of the other woman. Of course, it's all much more complicated than that. This is Almodovar, after all. But it is this complexity that makes the women real. That makes us go from one outrageous circumstance or belief to another, without ever being thrown out of the story. Raimunda, for instance, is very good at pretending and ignoring the truth. She's had to be since she was a teenager, when she hid the fact that her father impregnated her. Pretended that the loser she ended up marrying to cover her shame and provide her daughter a father was more than a convenience. I also love Almodovar's women because when faced with situations that would crush so many others, they simply go on, as we all must. They make terrible messes and then they find a way to live with them. They find the strength, sometimes in their friendships with each other, sometimes in themselves, and they are often surprised by it. Isn't that how we all muddle through? With some myths about ourselves, a few hard truths, leaning on our friends a little and managing to find surprising strength in ourselves to not only muddle through impossible situations but even managing to shine once in a while. It's refreshing to see such beautiful messes in a movie.

I knew there was something I was forgetting. When Malvin Wald died recently, I tried to remember what I actually learned in his class...but that was so long ago. I only remembered that he didn’t know how to use a VCR, wrote the script for the most popular documentary of Marilyn Monroe, and the guy who wrote a Crossroads won the Nissan FOCUS award.

What I was missing, and so desperately needed to remember, was Sequence. I was reminded of this when someone on Triggerstreet asked if anyone used the Sequence approach. Ding-ding! Bells went off, and I Googled it. Turns out there’s a book on the subject now.

Now, you read a lot about the Three Act Structure, which is the most common (though certainly not only) dramatic structure for plays in Western literature. Screenplays, in many ways, evolved from stage plays...but there was one physical element of early movies that was a stronger determining factor than drama in how a film was put together: the reel.

Reels were ten minutes long. Each reel typically was a self-contained mini-movie, or sequence. The sequences still hold together in the context of a larger narrative, build on one another and move the overall story forward - but by making each ten-minute section it’s own piece of narrative, you keep the movie, well, moving.

An average movie would have eight or nine sequences. Each one focuses on a character, leads up to a complication, and has a resolution (if only a partial one, that leads to further complications - and thus further sequences.) These sequences can blend well with a three-act structure, the mini-resolutions falling around the turning points, or they can be seen as following their own rhythm. Shorter sequences, interspersed, can be used to develop sub-plots.

As a screenwriter, it’s less intimidating to approach ten- to twelve-page sections. As a film-goer, it’s more interesting to watch a film that has smaller sequences with rising action, conflict and resolution in each of them. It’s also closer to the approach used by TV writers (each section between commercials is sometimes called an "act" but is really a sequence.)

By focusing on sequences, it becomes much easier to keep the story moving through the dreaded middle-of-the-second-act doldrums.

I’ve been stuck on a screenplay for months. Starting it, stopping, looking at my outline, re-evaluating my characters - because I couldn’t find a way to get through the middle to the end. I had my beginning and ending down, and was on the verge of letting this one go...but remembering Sequences has let me work out an outline for the entire main plot of my screenplay, and I’m going through now and fine-tuning it. But it’s all there. And my "second act" has not four Sequences, but five. And if I feel that I need to break them down further, I can - keeping in mind that each one needs to have rising action and a resolution.

I do well with deadlines, so something like Script Frenzy is perfect for me. A complete screenplay in 30 days (or less.)

Also -
I used to direct those seeking a quick summary of screenwriting format to the Nicholl’s page on the subject, but Script Frenzy’s is more complete, plus they have worksheets for character, setting and such. So this is my new go-to.

This is why I have a massive intellectual crush on Mystery Man,
and why he has respect from many as one of the most interesting and informative bloggers on screenwriting on the web.

Imagination is a powerful tool. It can carry us into areas that no one before has ever conceived of, it can solve problems, it can pull beauty from nearly nothing. Imagination is essential to a writer. So why then, are new writers so often admonished to "write what you know?"

The truth is, for a writer who knows themselves, there is no contradiction.

Our imaginings are the product, just as everything else about us, of a combination of genetics and instinct with experience. It serves a function in our personal cognitive and social development (and in our development as a society, allowing humanity the diversity and adaptability that makes us so distinct from other species...even our ability to communicate with one another through language involves a level of abstraction that's greater than most species and thus an imagination to interpret - but that's another topic.)

In short, even the most grandiose or unusual imaginings are founded on things we know. But for most writers, imagination is not a problem. Those of us who are driven to create are more likely to have an active imagination that tends to wheel off in its own direction, that becomes it's own incentive to create. Thus, the admonition "write what you know" is a way to help ground our work.

It can function in the basic sense of knowing your material. Do research, character background studies, and know the reality behind the story.

It can function to encourage writers to experience life, to have a broader range to draw from.

But I think that the most useful and powerful function of writing what you know is specificity. The more specific and personal a work, the greater the likelihood that it will transcend itself and become universal.

It becomes "real" in ways we can't anticipate when we know that a brand of tennis shoes that were popular in a time a place our characters occupy, when we know that a certain carpet color is common to cheap motels built in the 80's, when we know how you hold a fishing line and how much room you need to cast a fly. Because when we know these things, our audience has a point of reference, and it becomes real to them.

Humans are social. We desire belonging, we are constantly (usually unconsciously) searching for connection. When a writer provides points of connection by giving specific, clear details, then the audience will join them.

It becomes "real" in ways that are surprising when we talk about our bi-racial friend who buys giant dubs to prove he's black while bragging about "sounding" white on the phone. Or about the dweeb who tells us for weeks how beautiful and sexy we are, turning up when we're out for coffee or at the grocery store, but the minute we say clearly that we're not interested pointedly calls us a fat bitch, and then whines because being a "nice guy" gets them nowhere. And the feeling of helplessness as we watch our mother on life support, surrounded by plastic tubes and wires that seem to hold a once-dynamic woman in stasis. The more specific you are about your experiences, the more likely you are to have people tell you they understand, and that it's "just like" something they've gone through.

So that feeling of helplessness gets attached to an image of an astronaut, so dependent on the tubes that connect her to life. Or the dweeb backs up their aggressive response to rejection with a knife. And bi-racial guy becomes a human raised in an alien environment. Focus on the specifics, and these situations will become familiar not only to us, but to an audience.

Thus, a writer must know themselves, so that when they do imagine flying, they can place the sensation of the rush as they dive through the air as something akin to riding a roller coaster. So that when feel a rush as they ride a roller coaster, they can think: this is what superman feels like when he's flying.

Know yourself. Pay attention. And then write what you know.

My contribution to the Triggerstreet collaborative screenplay titled Hate.



INT. SQUAT ENTRYWAY, PRAGUE - DAY

An iron gate with a rusted chain and heavy padlock guards the stairway into a dilapidated apartment building.

At the top of a short flight of stairs a dark wooden door, pulled off its hinges, leans against the frame.  

Plaster, painted an ugly late-communist shade of yellow, cracks away from crumbling brick walls.

From behind the door, JIRI emerges with a ladder and a toolbelt.  He runs a hand through his limp black mohawk, sets the door in its frame, and attaches the lower hinge.

(O.S.) A loud slam followed by muffled cursing.
 
Jiri jumps down the steps and peers out the gate.

Cobblestones line the floor of the entryway before the gate.  The graffiti is a mixture of the political and the obscene - anarchy signs and cunts.

One end of the entryway is open to a courtyard enclosed with a two-story brick wall.  At the other, a pair of heavy doors shelter the space from the street. 

The doors open and JACK (40, American) steps in, walking with the especial purposefulness of a drunk attempting to look sober.  He cradles something inside his motorcycle jacket, and gestures for BESNIK to follow him. 

Besnik's dark hair and moustache are streaked with gray, as is the dingy black coat that tops his workman's jumpsuit.  He shakes his head, and steps into the entry.

JIRI
Jezis!  Drzhobo.

JACK
Are you telling me to shut up?  Me?  Do you forget who I am?

JIRI
Tak fine: drzhobo, Sensei.

He bows slightly.

JACK
That's more like it.  Come, have a drink with me and...

BESNIK
Besnik.

Jack pulls a bottle of Becherovka out of his jacket.

JIRI
OK.  Let me finish this.

He turns back to his work, and nods at someone coming down the stairs.

SARA (26, American) sticks her head around the corner.

SARA
I knew that was you, Jack.

JACK
Saranova!

SARA
You're drunk.

JACK
And I'll still kick your ass.

SARA
Ah, yes, drunken master.

JACK
Aw, you speak so sweetly to me, my darling.  Sara, me girl, come have a drink with your husband for it is cold in our abode and I must numb myself before I sleep.

Sara steps around Jiri on his ladder and unlocks the padlock. 

JACK
This is Besnik, he works across the street, on the restoration.
Jiri hops down from the ladder.  Offers Besnik a cigarette.

BESNIK
Yes.  I am a mason.

He takes the cigarette, lights it, and then offers one from his own pack to Jiri, and to Sara.

JIRI
What will it be?

Sara declines the cigarette, but Jiri accepts with a nod.

BESNIK
A bank, I'm afraid.

JIRI
That's not good.  We're not quite legal yet.  The neighbors don't like us.  A bank...They will not like a squat across the street.

LATER - DAY

The door at the top of the landing is attached now.  It's been painted bright blue.

(O.S.) A loud slam, followed by the sound of several pairs of booted feet.
Police in black riot gear storm the building.

One officer has a bullhorn.

OFFICER WITH BULLHORN
(in Czech)
Police.  Open the gate.

Jiri opens his door, sees them, and immediately runs further up into the building.

JIRI
(O.S.)
Polizei!
OFFICER WITH BULLHORN
Have your identity ready.

Another officer with a large pair of bolt cutters snaps the lock.  The gate swings forward, and the police rush up the stairs.

Out in the courtyard, Sara and Jack jump from a window onto the top of a low building.  Sara reaches behind her and catches a baby.  Another couple drops onto the roof, and all of them run across it, and disappear into a neighboring yard.

LATER - NIGHT

KAREL, his hoodie up, drinks a beer and sits on the steps just inside the gate, which is held closed with a new lock.  A candle burns beside him.

Jack and Sara return.

Karel hands them keys and pulls out a smoke.

KAREL
We had to get you out.  We knew they would be looking for you.

JACK
Why?

KAREL
In Germany, they claimed foreigners in the squats were proof of an international conspiracy.  The squat is not illegal, but conspiracy...

He opens the gate.


LATER - NIGHT

The couple with the baby return.  HELENA sings a Russian lullaby to the baby in IVAN's arms.

They see the new lock on the gate.

HELENA
Ahoj!

She walks to the courtyard, and from the shadows jumps a SKINHEAD BOY with a bat, followed by two others.

They knock her down, and kick her.

IVAN
Skinheady!

A boy rushes Ivan.

SKINHEAD BOY
(in Czech)
No foreigners in our fatherland.

He turns around and covers the baby with his body as the bat strikes him across the back.

Footsteps on the stairs.  Half a dozen anarchists come running down, shouting.

Helena tries push herself up to stand, but one of the skinheads kicks her arms out from under her. 

She screams as her arm breaks.

The skinheads run away, taking advantage of the moment it takes to get the padlock open to get away.


LATER - DAY

Jiri, Karel, and Ivan stand  with a few other at attention in a martial arts stance, facing Jack.  Some of them wear a black gi under their hoodies. 

Helena, her arm in a cast, watches.

They go through their forms in pairs, sparring.  Jiri and Karel are good.  The others are less practiced.

Jack walks through them and corrects their form.

JACK
Stop, stop.

They stop.

He hands a stick to Karel, and lights a cig.  Karel swings at him, and he deflects it without even turning to look,  then quickly strikes Karel, stopping his fist less than an inch from the kid's nose.

JACK
This is real.  Not something to look cool.  Do every movement knowing that you are being attacked.  Next time, we will be ready.  Now, again.

They spar again, this time with renewed focus.


LATER - DAY

Snow drifts into the entryway from the courtyard.  Karel and another kid play guitars and thrash their heads, while a girl with pink dredlocks dances.  Beer bottles have started to pile up around them.

A pounding on the street door, and it flies open.  The police are back.  The kids hold up their hands.


LATER - NIGHT

The gate is on the ground, the hinges cut and the frame pulled from the wall.
Anarchists sit on the stairs, holding bats, sticks, and flashlights.  Some are in the courtyard.  They are on alert.

JIRI
(in Czech)
The fascist police, and their friends the skinheads may force us out before the bank opens, but this is our home.

JACK
Put out those lights.  Get ready.

The anarchists disappear into the dark.


LATER - NIGHT

The street door creaks open.  Five skinheads come in, quietly.  One reaches down and picks up a loose cobblestone.  One opens the blue door and Jiri and Jack come out at them.

The skinheads are surrounded.

Someone puts on blaring punk music, and shouts of "skinheady" and "fascisti" punctuate the fighting.

The skinheads make their way back down the stairs, noses bloodied and eyes blackened.  More anarchists come at them from the courtyard.  Jack gives one a kick that makes him fall and hit his head on the broken gate.

The Skinhead Boy that attacked Ivan tries to help his fallen comrade up, but the anarchists pummel them.

JACK
Let him go!

Reluctantly, everyone backs off and the skinheads limp away.


LATER - NIGHT

Besnik plays a soulful violin, as Jack, Sara, and the others pass a bottle.  Snow catches the moonlight in the courtyard.

Karel fingers his guitar.

KAREL
Can you play anything a little more exciting than that gypsy stuff?

SARA
I like it.

KAREL
You Americans.  We have a saying:
(in Czech)
The only thing stranger than a foreigner is a gypsy.

SARA
What do you mean by that?

KAREL
I just want some good punk music!

The other anarchists shout in agreement.

BESNIK
So, get up here!

Karel stands beside him, and Besnik begins strumming his violin like a guitar.


LATER - NIGHT

It's still and quiet.  The street door opens, and the Skinhead Boy backs into the entryway, dragging a body.

He lays it beside the broken gate.  It's Besnik, unconscious or worse.  Blood shines in matted hair on his forehead.

The Skinhead Boy pulls out a gun, and hides around the corner in the courtyard.
Jack and Sara come down the stairs.

JACK
Wait, I have to piss.

SARA
You drunk.

JACK
Yup.

She crosses her arms, and notices Besnik on the ground.

Jack unbuttons his pants as he walks.

Sara bends down, touching Besnik's forehead.

SARA
Jack.  Oh no.

When Jack turns to see what's wrong, Skinhead Boy steps out.

SKINHEAD BOY
(in Czech)
Death to gypsies and foreigners.

Jack looks down the barrel of the gun.

Gunfire.  Blackness.

Sara screams.

Stumbled on this site today:
http://www.filmsite.org/oscars.html

A fascinating breakdown of the nominations and winners for the major awards. Looks like your best chance of getting nominated for a Best Actress award is to play a mute hooker with one leg.

Most of the films that have won Best Picture have been adaptations.

Cool stuff.

The death of Heath Ledger, whether or not it's actually attributable in any way to his depression, sparked a few conversations about the connection between creativity and depression.

This is a subject I've given a lot of thought to, because for most of my life I've based a large portion of my identity on being a poet - and poets are so frequently associated with this romanticized view of depression.

Does an artist need to suffer? Do they need it in order to have the material to produce art? To have the impetus? The insight?

Does being mentally ill provide an advantage to an artist? Does it allow them to step outside normal boundaries and access greater creativity? Does it inspire them? Drive them?

Over the years, I've had different answers to these questions for myself. I do think that it's hard to produce art if your life has always been easy, if your challenges have been small and easily overcome, if you've lived inside the "norm" comfortably.

In terms of suffering due to external causes (as opposed to mental illness, there's a saying that it's impossible to create art when you're starving, or the idea that art is a luxury... yet I've witnessed some of the most inspired work from people in duress, people on the edge.

I'm reminded of a singer I saw on the streets of Prague when I was homeless. I was begging for spare change in one of the main squares, it was early winter, and the first real snow had fallen. A pale, thin woman in a cheap quilted coat stood near one of the churches, a man beside her with a little tape player. He set the player down, pushed play and the tinny sound barely reached a few feet... and then she began to sing. Not simply sing, but reach up to heaven with her voice, the purest and most passionate soprano I have ever heard. It was simply transcendent.

A few months later, in the early spring - I saw the woman again. She had a better coat, more color in her cheeks, and the weather was turning warmer - and her voice, though still accomplished and beautiful, lacked that extra dimension.

On the other hand, being too far outside society for too long is more often a disadvantage - "outsider art" has it's own appellation because it's simply not as accomplished as other forms. Being pushed to extremes is more often a distraction, or can wear down an artist until they haven't the energy to produce anything.

And what about mental illness?

This article mentions the "creative fire," and associates mild mania (specifically with bipolar disorder) with creative intensity - but is that an accurate association? the specific characteristics they describe are, indeed, also components of what is sometimes called the "creative trance" which many artists enter when they create. A hyper-sensitivity to stimuli, especially emotional stimuli; lowered inhibitions; and the tendency to become intensely focused while working. I find that those are actually part of the reason I sometimes avoid writing - especially the absorption. When I get into a project I have to allow things to effect me more deeply, to drop my inhibitions, and I become intensely absorbed...and it can interfere with my ability to function. During my most creative periods I have trouble keeping a job, embarrassed myself and done damage to professional and personal relationships by simply saying too much because I lose my sense of what's socially appropriate, and I had difficulty relating to others in a rational manner. So yes, I would agree that there is some level of social dysfunction associated with intense creativity... but is it an advantage, and is it necessary?

Most people who have bipolar disorder or major depression do not become great artists - so it's not as though these illnesses automatically will make you a genius.

An article on the APA website suggests that part of the connection may be self-reflection. Both creative persons and people with depression exhibit a higher degree of introspection than average. So it may be that the conditions which encourage and develop creativity also tend to encourage the development of depression or manic-depression.

Another factor, as mentioned here, is that creativity can be stifled. It's dismissed, or put down, or set aside for "real" problems. And that stifling of potential can lead to depression. Another article discusses this in a more complex manner, and even suggests that some of the characteristics of creativity can be mistaken for mania.

Mary Rocamora, who counsels gifted people, and heads The Rocamora School in Los Angeles school, which provides awareness training classes for gifted and talented adults, says those "who are passionately engaged with their talent but are constantly separated from the creative experience by relentless self-criticism, self-doubt, and feelings of inferiority often suffer from depression and the periodic shutting down of their spontaneous creative impulses. The drive to express their inner creativity is heightened in many gifted individuals, and when the drive to create meets the wall of shame, it implodes into numbness, rage, depression, and hopelessness." She also notes that it is well known among researchers of the gifted, talented and creative that these individuals "exhibit greater intensity and increased levels of emotional, imaginational, intellectual, sensual and psychomotor excitability, and that this is a normal pattern of development." Dr. Linda Silverman, Director of the Institute for the Study of Advanced Development in Denver, has also cautioned that this higher level of excitability and intensity may be perceived and misdiagnosed as manic depression.


But the article I found most helpful was this one: An interview with a doctor who did an empirical study on creativity and mental illness, and so is speaking from facts rather than supposition. In his study, around 70% of the writers had depression, which is just massive. However, he noted that during a depressive or manic phase, an individual is not motivated or organized enough to actually create. It is only after they emerge from that state that they are able to use those experiences as fuel. He addresses the fear that some have of medication stifling their creativity with examples, and states that creative people are more functional and more able to actually produce work while their illness is under control. He also notes that besides major Depression and Bipolar disorder, schizophrenia has a link to creativity - but once again, not when it is out of control.

Which makes me optimistic.

Does an artists need to suffer? I would say that yes, they do - they need it as fuel. But who, in their life, has never suffered? And that suffering, like branches gathered in the woods during a storm, is only useful to light the creative fires once it has cured and dried, after the rain is gone.