Wednesday, January 14, 2009

"Pilgrim's Progress"

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I've made some more progress on "Pilgrim" this week. The story is starting to develop momentum. I've introduced the main character and his dilemma and I've arrived at the first action sequence. It's an "escape" sequence that is drawn from the book, but given added intensity and danger. The scene is taken from the beginning of Bunyan's work, where Christian, determined to escape judgment, plugs his ears and runs away shouting "Life! Life! Eternal life!"


The circumstances for his departure from the "City Of Destruction" are a little more dire and with a lot more "fireworks", but the emotional material from the original version of the scene naturally lended itself to the creation of the more "explosive" version I'm developing now.


I also gave my main character a last name yesterday. His first name is Christopher, or Chris, in reference to the main character, Christian, in Bunyan's work. The title of "Pilgrim" is not one we use anymore, even in fantasy fiction. Nor do we use the term pilgrimage. But I thought "Pilgrim" would be a fitting last name for our main character. I'll be using his first name almost exclusively in the script, but adding Pilgrim as his last name will hopefully work well and serve as another nod to Bunyan's classic.


This has also led me to remove the "The" from this project's title. Calling it simply "Pilgrim's Progress" attaching it more to the main character as a unique individual, while still undeniably retaining recognition as an adaptation of the original book.


Well, that's it for now!




-Paeter Frandsen



4 comments:

  1. Is this an intentional reference to the comic book character (with a movie, coming in 2009) Scott Pilgrim?
    Looking forward to the updated version of a classic.

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  2. Nope. No connection. Tell me about Scott Pilgrim. His story isn't based on The Pilgrim's Progress, is it? Yikes!

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  3. No, not related to Bunyan, just another use of the word as a last name.
    From Wikipedia:
    "Scott Pilgrim is a comedy/action/romance comic book series by Bryan Lee O'Malley, intended to eventually consist of six digest-sized black-and-white graphic novels. The first volume was released in 2004 and, as of 2007[update], four have been released, all published by Portland, Oregon independent comic book publisher Oni Press.
    The series is about 23-year-old Canadian Scott Pilgrim, a slacker, hero, wannabe-rockstar, who is living in Toronto. He falls in love with American delivery girl Ramona V. Flowers, but must defeat her seven "evil exes" in order to date her.
    In 2005, Universal Pictures announced that they had optioned the property for a possible future film adaptation.[1] Edgar Wright is attached as director, and Michael Bacall is to write the screenplay. Michael Cera is playing the lead role.[2] The film will be called Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.[3]"

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  4. Sounds pretty "outside the box"! I'll be interested the see the movie trailer when it's ready.

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