The Little Green Bag
The movie that made me begin to question the structure of storytelling, ‘Reservoir Dogs’.
I was told to be in bed, for the long day of school ahead of me. After getting prepared and ready for the night, I heard a movie just past the lounge room doors. I tried join but was reprimanded for my insolence and told to go to bed. But out the corner of my eye I was caught in the gloom of the CTR television, 7 minutes and 30 seconds in, I had missed the mumbled introduction, but it didn't matter. I was already devoted to my god and was prepared to suffer the consequences of my actions with the nobility of a 17th century missionary in Japan.
A voice like silk and a soundtrack that made me hold my feet so they wouldn’t tap against the varnished floorboards, convinced me. Making me peer in awe, through the crack of the lounge room’s sliding doors. Which blocked a quarter of the emotional roller coaster, and timeless needle drops. Wrapped up in the aftermath of a diamond heist gone suspiciously wrong, that a child probably shouldn’t see.
The story of 5 unlikely companions unfolded burning a newfound inspiration in my mind. Every moment a twist that kept my eyes glued to the screen, and my ideas of its predictability squashed at every corner. Every conversation added to the continuously evolving space between characters, drawing me further in. The curiosity hit me fast and strong, how can I write like this? A question that made me replay every scene till the disc started skipping in the DVD player. Another movie that wasn’t Airheads or Lords of Dog Town that I had selfishly ruined with my chocolate covered fingers and ear to ear grin of childish glee.
It was then when I knew that writing could be more than what was on top of spaghetti and covered in cheese. Or lead by a misguided little scamp breaking and entering into a secluded house of three, eating their food and sleeping in their beds. That writing could be something other than stoic knights fighting dragons and frogs being kissed, or a list of abstract rules about how to live from someone existing before the lightbulb.
Fiction that had the swing of a 70’s greatest hits radio station. Fiction that had the readers rooting for the underdog, wishing that a cold-blooded killer with a soft spot for the new guy will get the happy ending. Instead of an abducted cop, tied to a chair. At the behest of a well-dressed, happy Michael Madsen, dancing in front of him with a straight razor in one hand, and his recently severed ear in the other. All begging to the eventual and seminal question of human existence, do you tip?