377 Days - Blog #59 - how it still really looks like that and other musings on writing and that movie, Braveheart

So last week the Scotland vote was a big deal.  I confess I didn’t pay a whole LOT of attention to it (John Oliver gave me the perspective and details I required).  But even he couldn’t resist the reference to that movie.

Braveheart.

Now, I suppose I have a unique experience with that movie.  Something that only a couple other dozen tour guides of Higgins Armory experienced in the late 90’s before Gladiator and the LOTR movies came along can appreciate.  It is a hate/love/mostly eye roll kind of appreciation.  It was rare if I gave a tour or demonstration when I didn’t hear a sixth grader mutter ‘just like in Braveheart.’  Though, to be fair, in those demonstrations, I was pulling a two handed sword out of the closet and lifting it over my head.  Damn, I had a cool job then.

Then there were our anachronistic outreaches.  But they were so much fun.  Such an excellent lesson in improvisation and teaching for me… as my colleague (frequently Lady Erica) and I would try to convince our audience that we arrived with our trunks of armor from a fly-ridden, stinky castle with toothless graybeards and Sir Monkeyface.  Whenever the kids tried to prove to us that we were in fact from the 20^th century (yes, it was last century), they often tried to tell us about the movie, Braveheart… which in our playing back, ended up being a puppet show with tiny horses and tiny soldiers, holding very tiny sticks.  Um… yeah… it was fun.

That said, I heard a lot about Braveheart.  Of course, that didn’t stop me from buying the soundtrack and listening to it all the time.  Or the two cassettes of the actual movie, that we would watch in the wee hours of an Overknight to keep ourselves awake with snarky commentary… or the question of whether it still really looks like that over in… Ireland.  Because, you know, they went back in time to film the movie.

Okay.  I owe the movie a lot of inside jokes.  Inside jokes that get dragged out at parties or drinks out with friends at least once a year.

I also owe a bit to that soundtrack.  I typed up a lot of pages to it.  I copied the CD so I could play a cassette in my car, which I wore out from too many rewinds.  I would sit on my couch and listen to the music and map out the intricate plots and character relationships of my epic.  Battle scenes as well as moments of tenderness.  My favorite was track #11.  You’ve probably heard it in a bunch of previews for other films.  (I think they used it in Castaway, among others).  The variation of it underscores nearly every clip of Braveheart ever played anywhere.  But I really, really liked it.  So much I wanted to steal its title for my book.  For the Love of a Princess.

Then, I overdosed on James Horner.  (Sometime after Troy and the fact I started hearing Titanic and Glory in every one of his scores.)  Higgins and the humor of how WRONG that movie is faded out of my present.  Never mind the whole Mel Gibson is a tool thing.   I can’t watch any of his movies now, knowing what a complete prick he is.  The Passion sealed the deal for me.  Ugh.  

I was content to live life without Braveheart.

Then, of course, I started working close to those knights again (well, some of them).  Looking at Teuffenbach’s etchings brought back all those silly inside jokes and kids (kids who probably have kids now) who talked about the tiny puppet show with horses.  

And this week, I’ve started reading all those scenes and characters that the melodramatic score provoked my imagination to conjure.  Every day I open up a document labeled with my shorthand for that title, For the Love of a Princess.

So you know I’m listening to it.

Right this second.

I still like the title.  I don’t know if I will keep it… now that I’ve confessed the allusion in published content, James Horner could come after me for the pennies I will make in royalties.  Plus… if this does end up being multiple books, it’s not the name of a series.

But it is the theme.

I actually only 'finished' the first book (or that one could be two or three).  I have elaborate notes for the final two novels.  Very elaborate scene bullets written in purple ink after that last trip to Ireland… when I climbed those green hills… and verified… that it really does still look like that.

And the book(s) still look like that theme.  But I’ll save the explanation of that for another blog.