Northeaster
I spent five days in Maine, writing and researching my next project. A few observations, in bullet point form:
Part of my motivation for visiting Maine was that I’ve always claimed to have visited all 48 contiguous states, thanks to endless summer roadtrips with my family growing up. But my mom recently told me that we’d never been to Maine, which kicked in my set-completion instinct.
I was reluctant to try to pronounce any place names in front of people. Bar Harbor is on Mount Desert Island. “Desert” is pronounced like “dessert,” which conjures images of a fantasyland of fudge and sprinkles.
Even though a screenwriter isn’t trying to capture an accent per se, it’s important to choose words and patterns that can work with the accent when spoken by the actor. (”Down the road apiece. Can’t miss it.”)
That said, I feel lucky that this won’t be a big accent movie, because several Mainers were adamant that Hollywood always gets the accent wrong. Which is probably true. But what I resisted pointing out was that no two Mainers I met had the same accent. It’s all over the place, particularly when you talk to people under 30.
Going somewhere to write has become my standard operating procedure. I barricade myself somewhere without TV, internet or familial distractions, and crank through as many hand-written pages as possible in three or four days. I fax these pages back to Los Angeles, both for safety and to let my assistant type them up. This time, I faxed to an eFax account, which had the bonus of creating a digital backup in .pdf form.
I took a lot of photos, which you can see on Flickr. It wasn’t really location scouting — we’re not at that point yet. But since there’s already a director on board, it can give him some sense of the place.
One place had flies. A lot of flies.
Man, I was lucky not to be flying on American. Or ATA. Or SkyBus. Or Aloha. (Though the last one would have been an unlikely choice.)
Another reason for the trip: we had to have our house tented for termites. This is probably alien to readers in colder climates, but in Southern California, termites can become pervasive enough that you need to nuke the house. Generally, you do it when the house is sold (and thus empty), but we’re not moving anytime soon, so we had to bite the bullet. But it looked cool, like a Christo project.
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April 10th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Sounds like a good, fruitful trip. eFax sounds interesting. Would something like that ever have a handwriting scan function, so it could understand your handwriting?
April 10th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Being born and raised in Maine (but now out in LA) I will be very curious to see what your vision of the state looks like. Needless to say, I am in complete agreement with you that it is impossible to nail the accent, but I have found most writer/directors have been unable to nail even the “feel” of the state (could I be any more abstract?)– that being said, The Myst is a good movie to check out for Maine done right (in my opinion).
April 10th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
I’d keep the house like that. “Welcome to John’s magic circus house!” Good luck with the termites =)
Nice shots on Flickr. The entire area looks like it would work great in a movie.
April 10th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Wow! Did you leave the furniture inside while the house was nuked? How do they do it? Pesticide?
Iceland has neither termites nor cockroaches, nor sun for that matter.
April 10th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Great pictures. If you get to go south, stop by York Beach and hang around the Nubble Lighthouse. And get some ice cream (and candy!!) at the Goldenrod. They have amazing little old fashioned sandwiches and lime rickeys and weird stuff like that. Yum!
April 10th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Are you adapting a Stephen King book? Whenever someone mentions Maine, King immediately springs to mind.
April 10th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
hey if you are the curious type, which it strikes me that you are, take a look at the maine coastline on google maps satelite images…it is brutal and beautiful…and in itself makes Maine like no other state in the US.
April 10th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
hmm, lots of gravestones; maybe it IS a King adaptation.
April 10th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Yes, they’ve got black flies except the dead of winter. On the other hand, at least you didn’t have to put up with the mosquitos as well.
April 10th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
As another Mainer now living LA I too am interested to see your take on it. Maine is a great place to write - there is very little to get in your way. Welcome back to the warmth.
April 10th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
You know how hard it is for those of us who grow up on the Penobscot Bay to learn how to spell Desert and Dessert?! Not to mention the fact that I still struggle against the words “idea” (idear) and “drawing” (drawring).
A Maine accent is, indeed, impossible to capture, possibly because with the exception of the floating r, it really is never the same from one little inlet to the next. And while a lack of accent won’t throw me, a really bad one makes me groan.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
What’s fun is movies that take place in northern New England that make everyone from Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine have Bostonian accents. Blagh.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Blair, what’s worse is when they all have that awful Tom Bosley Murder She Wrote accent. Hrmph.
April 11th, 2008 at 12:22 am
Pretty country. The baby headstone shot is quite moving.
April 11th, 2008 at 1:47 am
And I bet you own that house, you lucky dog. I always comment to my friends who majored in marketable skills in college, “oh you, with your silly dreams of, “Home ownership.”
I someday hope to afford a small apartment based upon my writing.
April 11th, 2008 at 5:52 am
“What’s fun is movies that take place in northern New England that make everyone from Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine have Bostonian accents. Blagh.”
When I lived in Connecticut, it seemed like the majority of people there had various Texas accents.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:00 am
While I’m a Masshole long-since transplanted to LA, I must agree with Nick the Great on the Mist. That’s Maine, all right. In general, Frank Darabont seems like the kind of cool cat one might strike up a conversation with at the bar in the Portland Brewing Company.
Pumpkin ale… Mmmm.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:02 am
Bear in mind, Portland is very much a frontier town, kind of like Wall in Stardust.
April 11th, 2008 at 11:30 am
This is because you Americans build your houses with wood instead of stone, right? G And that’s why your houses break into a thousand little pieces when there’s a heavy storm. Use stone and screws instead of nails!
April 11th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Hey John,
Interesting adventure. Did you run into Stephen King? I hear he’s all over that state.
Mark
April 12th, 2008 at 7:42 am
John,
Can’t thank you enough for going “accent-less.” I’m down in Boston (pretty similar accents) and I have to say it is embarrassing listening to some of these actors try their hand at dropping the R. Usually, instead of the harsh “ah” sound we use (cah, yahd), it comes out sounding more like a dying crow: “Pawk your caw in Hawvawd Yawd.” And how much do they get paid?
That being said, there HAS to be a good amount of actors who were born and raised in New England out there. Why not try and find them? Glad you had a nice time out here. Can’t wait to hear more about the project.
-Brendan
April 14th, 2008 at 12:55 am
Oh, here’s a good word for you — I’ve heard many Vermonters use this, some New Hampshireites, and a few Maine…ers… anyway.
Puttin’ear. (or some variation thereof, pronounced pretty much as I wrote it, as if they were directions for some ointment — “Put in ear.”). Used thusly;
“He bought a whole lotta land up there. Puttin’ear a hundred acres.”
Meaning “close to” or “nearly”.