Honestly, the real story behind the Cat Person film/short story sounds more interesting and chaotic than the movie itself.
So, basically how bad was real life Robert?
The original girlfriend, whom the author based it on, insists he was a decent enough guy, they dated for a few years. She says the bad sex and foul text messages never happened. She remembers him fondly. But acknowledges she was 18 when they started dating and he was 32. (red flag.)
But then the author, who also knew and dated him, paints him out to be a terrible guy, then based the story on the original girlfriend, who is reasonably pissed about it. And the author included every exact detail so everyone in their social circle knew it was about them. But then made up all the nasty stuff..
Original girlfriend says when the story went viral it sent real life Robert into a spiral of depression. He died suddenly in 2021. She never explains why, but the suggestion is suicide.
Today is the day I start hitting submit on applications for MFA programs; my chest feels tight, and I am paralyzed with nerves. Wish me luck friends <3
What Do You Learn The First Week Of An MFA Screenwriting Class? by Marty Lang via FilmCourage.com.
Film Courage: Weād like to hear about your first day or week in the MFA screenwriting program. What topics were initially taught? Was everything an introduction to the courses?
Marty Lang, Screenwriter/Director and Assistant Professor of Film at the University of Central Arkansas/Director: It was a little bit of both. The first semester we had three classes. We had an Introduction into Screenplay Analysis and that was with Professor Edson [Eric Edson of California State University Northridge]. That was the beginning of his explanation of screenplay structure. We didnāt actually write in that class but that first class was sort of like a top level introduction to the terms he would be using, kind of a general overview of what the structure paradigmĀ is and then sort of an assignment where we had to watch a film and then break down the first act of that film of what happens in every single scene...(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
Want more Film Courage videos? Check out new videos 5:00 p.m. dailyāāāsubscribe at the main Film Courage Youtube channel. Subscribe to the second Film Courage Youtube channel hereā¦
We came to an MFA creative writing program. We eat food, and read books, and attend classes to learn things, and secretly hope to publish something and win accolades and fame and fortune, before our Panoptical doubt sounds the alarm and rushes in riot-gear clad. We attend the cool readings of visiting writers. We smoke cigarettes, which according to science, activates the writer gene in our DNA. We struggle and struggle to write human characters.
By āwe,ā I mean me and the baby in my stomach. But not in a pregnancy way. Iām a guy. I have balls. The baby is also a guy, but really, heās just a small dick motherfucker. I mean, look at that little baby dick. Iām laughing.
I only include him in the we because he goes everywhere with me. He just bounces around in my gut, as we ride the bus, buy milk, go to coffee shops. I feel I should explain the bouncing verbāIām not an idiot with no conception of human anatomy; I understand human midsections are full of organs and blood and digesting shit and the whole 37 yards, or whatever our 8th grade science teacher told us, of coiled up small intestineāso I get that the kid wouldnāt literally be bouncing around in there; heād be drowning, and clawing at my liver, and trying to poke a hole in my lung to put his little mouth against to breathe. Iām laughing. But anyway, I say bouncing because in my visual representation of my guts, I imagine a dark pit: itās part prison (my ribs as a cage), and part cave (I fancy the imaginary floor of my pit gut as nature-ish, with dead leaves, dust, maybe the skeleton of a dead squirrel, etc.). The kid has room to move is what Iām saying.
But Iām also saying he doesnāt move, at least of his own volition, for two reasons. Firstly, Iāve been beating the shit out of him for as long as I can remember. Not because heās a bad dude or anythingārather, when I was a kid, I thought he was pretty awesome; we were pretty tight. I couldnāt even tell the difference between him and me. If weāre talking pronouns, him and me was probably just I. But as I got older, I learned there was supposed to be a weāI saw other guys beating their babies down into their guts, and I was like oh, guess thatās how itās done, and I started beating mine. Since I spent so much time depicting the gut pit, Iām probably obligated to depict how the violence works (and youāre a real sick fuck for expecting that from me)āessentially, the brain secretes an ooze from the stem that drips down the nasal cavity, coagulates in the squeezing tight throat, gains size and speed at the chest, and runs four taut knuckles straight at the small, scared, upturned faceā¦no, no, I wonāt be describing that after all (if youāre disappointed, you need Jesus).
[SCENE OF VIOLENCE]
I learned, I would say in adolescence, that you are supposed to cripple the little bitch, but you shouldnāt kill him. When you kill him, he decomposes worse than roadkill and mucks up all the plumbing (back to the more anatomically correct conceptualization). Most guys usually try to drown the putrid carcass with alcohol (I mean it makes a kind of sense, right?). Or they just take to beating someone else. Usually once you kill the kid, youāre on a timer until you kill yourself. I donāt recommend it.
Secondly, I keep him asleep. You can beat him into submission, but he will still catch a mood occasionally and start screaming and screaming, and thatās never fun. I went to cut out his tongue one day, and shit, heās a little goddamn savage. A lullaby of grinding my teeth and clenching my fists accompanied with steady rolling melodies of seething anger usually keeps him quiet. Because as we all know, the world, or is it society? or is it family? or is it friendship? or is it romance? is essentially an airplane, and no one wants to hear your baby cry on an airplane.
Except in an MFA program. (And weāre back, I hope you can forgive the digression.) The MFA is all about the baby. Or maybe thatās wrong. The MFA is all about people who seem to have actually raised the baby, became the baby, but, you know, like the adult-version of the baby. We walk into class and see other baby-saturated adults doing cool things like talking about their feelings and encouraging each other. Suffice it to say: some weird ass shit. Which is all well and good as a tourist, but the thing about MFA programs is theyāre full of sharers: you have a turn.
And so, Iām up for workshop and Iām sitting with my laptop trying to think of a story. I look to the baby for help: Hey! I need you right nowābut as usual when Iām writing, he runs feral, smearing himself in intestinal oils, slippery as a greased pig. I grab at him, chase him, catch his ankle before he squirms away, lose him entirely and hear only his mocking laughter, until I finally pin him down. I cut off one of his fingers and leave him to howl and kick. I fingerpaint the story.
When workshop begins, they start with a round of compliments. The round lasts 1 minute and 47 seconds. Long enough for the baby to flush pink and crawl inside my head, nestling warm, and to look out my eyes, little mouth pressed so close it fogs the pupils, trying to see other children like him in their faces. The round ends. Ā
The workshop is unimpressed.
āIt needs more paint.ā ā I throw him from my brain.
āDeeper color here.ā ā I shove him back down into the pit of my gut.
āAnother stroke here.ā ā I grab his shoulders and shake him and blame him.
āThis character just doesnāt feel human to me yet.ā
I GOT ACCEPTED TO NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY!!! Now all I need to do is finish the paper work for the scholarship a;ldfkja;lfkafadslkaĀ
Since I was a child I dreamed about living in the UK, like I used to sayĀ āiāll marry a writer and weāll live in England and be happy with 4 children and a dogā and sure my fiance is not a writer but we are getting married and moving to fucking England! Talk about dreams coming true!Ā
Should A Writer Go To School For Screenwriting? by Eric Edson via FilmCourage.com.
Eric Edson: Ā The answer is simpleā¦And the answer is absolutely āYes. Ā Of course they can.ā Ā They can. Ā Butā¦that for most of us is choosing a very difficult and lonely road. Ā And here is why. Ā Any art formā¦before anything can be art and be appreciated as anything that has reached to the level of art, it is a craft. Ā First art is created by craftspeople who have some inspiration at one moment in their lives or 50 moments in their lives when the craft that they do so well, rises to the level of art. Ā But you cannot cut to art without swimming through craft, without creating an understanding the craft of anything...(Watch the rest of the video here for more information).
I'm getting ready to submit my first grad school application so I'm reading through my final drafts of my materials. I hated the moment it occurred to me that I should probably rewrite one of the sentences in which I used a grammatically correct em-dash because I'm afraid of being flagged as using AI! What kind of world is this where an English major can't write with fancy punctuation for fear of being accused of using a robot to write your papers?
