Zen Pencils--Creative Struggle by Gavin Aung Than

Author:Gavin Aung Than
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Published: 2018-01-10T19:21:24+00:00

“At some point in the writing of every script, I feel like giving the whole thing up. From my many experiences of writing screenplays, however, I have learned something: If I hold fast in the face of this blankness and despair, adopting the tactic of Bodhidharma, the founder of the Zen sect, who glared at the wall that stood in his way until his legs became useless, a path will open up.”

--Akira Kurosawa

A complete dedication to reading and writing were the seeds from which all of the films of the great director, Akira Kurosawa, would grow. He wrote or co-wrote every film he directed. Sometimes he would make a straight adaptation of a work, like of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot (1951), but mostly he would use another story, novel, or play as inspiration and expand or change it for his own original film.

For instance, Rashomon (1950), which launched Kurosawa to international fame and won the Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film, was based off two different short stories. Throne of Blood (1957) was a Japanese version of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and Ran (1985) was a retelling of King Lear. Yojimbo (1961), Kurosawa’s classic tale of a nonchalant samurai playing the two rival gangs against each other, was inspired by the hard-boiled noir of Dashiell Hammett, in particular the novel Red Harvest. Kurosawa got the idea for his most famous film, Seven Samurai (1954), after reading a story about a group of samurai defending a farming village.

Now Kurosawa didn’t just steal other people’s ideas. He added his own experiences, his own ideas, and his own culture to make them his own. It’s easy to look at your favorite books, films, or TV shows and think to yourself, “How do they come up with that?” or “There’s no way I could create something out of thin air like they did,” but then you discover that it’s OK to recycle and reinterpret old ideas.

Suddenly, creating your own art doesn’t seem as daunting when you realize even a master like Kurosawa needed a little help to get his films off the ground.

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