Selling the Future


The opening scene of Up In The Air written by Sheldon Turner and Jason Reitman is compelling. Ryan Bingham, a flight-hopping corporate down-sizer, is giving a speech in the conference room of some anonymous hotel. His must be one of the toughest jobs on earth. He's hired to let go of many people in few days.

Ray Bingham knows people don't like change. And he knows there's only one way to deliver it to them. He must sell them the future. A future unburdened by the past and packed with possibilities. His message is simple: what you own ends up weighing you down. And since "moving is living", getting rid of your possessions, of your job, of your past is not something to fear. It's a chance to start over.

Shameless and effective.


"How much does your life weigh? (Ryan pauses to let us consider this.)

Imagine for a second that you're carrying a backpack... I want you to feel the straps on your shoulders... You feel them? (gives us a beat) Now, I want you to pack it with all the stuff you have in your life. Start with the little things. The stuff in drawers and on shelves. The collectables and knick-knacks. Feel the weight as it adds up. Now, start adding the larger stuff. Your clothes, table top appliances, lamps, linens, your TV. That backpack should be getting pretty heavy at this point - Go Bigger. Your couch, your bed, your kitchen table. Stuff it all in... Your car, get it in there... Your home, whether you have a studio apartment or a two story house, I want you to stuff it into that backpack. (Ryan takes a beat to let the weight sink in.)

Now try to walk. (We hear people around us chuckling. Ryan smiles).

Kinda hard, isn't it? This is what we do to ourselves on a daily basis. We weigh ourselves down until we can't even move. And make no mistake - Moving is living. (We see nodding. People's gears turning.)

Now, I'm going to set your backpack on fire. What do you want to take out of it? Photos? Photos are for people who can't remember. Drink some gingko and let the photos burn. In fact let everything burn and imagine waking up tomorrow with nothing. (a beat of emphasis) It's kind of exhilarating isn't it? That is how I approach every day."



Alberico Collina

Starscrapers

The film The Right Stuff based on the book by the same name written by Tom Wolfe has one of the greatest narrated openings ever. It's a movie about the first men in space. And it begins with a myth. A myth that was waiting to be broken. By one man. Chuck Yeager. The first of a long line of pilots, whose heroic exploits fired the imagination of generations. Pilots and astronauts who reached the stars and made us dream. Men who became legends in their lifetime.

"There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. Their controls would freeze up, their planes would buffet wildly, and they would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, seven hundred and fifty miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man could ever pass. They called it the sound barrier."


Alberico Collina

THE CLOUDS’ CONSPIRACY (a 55-word story)


The pilot was ready.

He knew this mission would change everything.

His orders were to drop the bomb on Kokura by sight - no radar.

But clouds conspired to hide Kokura from view.

So Kokura was spared.

But the pilot proceeded to the alternative target – Nagasaki.

And there were no clouds over Nagasaki.

Not yet…



Alberico Collina

WHEN METAPHORS MAKE THE DIFFERENCE


The following is an excerpt taken from a NY Times article dated 14 July 2014 by HELEN T. VERONGOS breaking the news of the Nobel prize-winning novelist Nadine Gordimer’s death (Note: the italics are mine).

“Ms. Gordimer did not originally choose apartheid as her subject as a young writer, she said, but she found it impossible to dig deeply into South African life without striking repression. And once the Afrikaner nationalists came to power there in 1948, the scaffolds of the apartheid system began to rise around her and could not be ignored.”

The digging metaphor is interesting because it takes the idiom “to strike gold” and substitutes “gold” with “repression”, taking us by surprise and making us think. While the construction metaphor paints a vivid picture of the author’s growing political awareness as a physical condition from which she cannot escape. And its visual impact remains with us long after we’ve read the phrase.

Alberico Collina

Below is the link to the article in full:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/books/nadine-gordimer-novelist-and-apartheid-foe-dies-at-90.html?emc=edit_na_20140714&nlid=57736699&_r=0