Today we shoot a scene the actors improvised in rehearsal, because it is chronologically early and I like the actors to have a linear memory to draw from for events. We will keep the shoot as chronological as possible, apart from shooting several of the childhood scenes in a second unit. It is more important to me that grown Ashur, his friends, and Amon feel as though they are drawing on real memories.
So today was Ashur’s induction into the Knights of the Black Temple. Imperator Ur, dark wizard, inducts him into the secret cult of his knights, not aligned with the larger dark religion of Hiss. A cult that secretly worships Light in the form of their princess, but in a toxic way that keeps her captive.
This aspect—of our hero being first recruited to the armies of the villain and then seeking redemption—has always been what drew me to the material. Our lead actor, Kenneth1 took some cajoling. This often happens—the actor, over-identifying with their character, at first attempts to change the character to better fit their own angelic self-image. It is the job to fight this reflex, and instead inhabit the awful truth of the character that you do not recognize in yourself. In this, we discover a part of us we cannot normally see, and becoming it, can finally face it. All art is therapy when done correctly, you see? Ken is trying to run from his Jungian Shadow.
I spent several hours convincing Kenneth last night that he would join this cult, as he had been raised in it from the moment he was kidnapped, and that, like Patty Hearst, he would have by now embraced its belief system as a matter of survival. In today’s scene, it is ironically as he gets to an inner circle that these beliefs are for the first time questioned—and yet, he does end up a more radical believer on the other end. Why? Because all questions would emerge first as if the Hiss religion is false, then what makes this true? Then the memory of childhood follows, of believing in the Light. Then, the reveal that this is what Ur is suggesting. Now, he will be swallowed by the cult-within-the-cult, because of how it aligns with his own internal epiphanies. Ultimately, it will take another catalyst to show him the compounded error of Ur’s way.
As I stated previously, the idea of the Light and monotheism as a villain and such things as serpents, horns, Darkness, paganism, and witchcraft as heroic made everyone uncomfortable. It did myself, which is why I capitulated without much argument. But having finished my first rewrite draft, I feel a pang. For a moment they occurred to me as real factions, as if I’d switched the Star of David for the Swastika but kept the events of World War 2 otherwise intact. Luckily, these are armies of the fantastic, so no real peoples are being propagandized or slandered. Still, it sits with me everyday. If they had been real groups of people, this would be an offensive redrawing of lines.
Matejka has the simpler of the assignments and yet the more difficult—to rewrite the good guys’ holy book, the Chaos Gospels, into a Bible of sorts, the story of the Light, their Golden Ratios. Hard for him, because he comes from a horror background primarily, despite his wish to make lighter fair. Easy because he will have plenty from which to derive. There is—from Apollo to Zoroaster to Zohar to Krishna to Moses to Buddha to Christ—no short supply of holy books espousing the virtues of the Lord of Light. But as I said, there is something disingenuous in the feel of the job. Something dirty, If I can be permitted to be maudlin. Meanwhile, I must construct almost from scratch a Book of Darkness, the Chaos Gospels, and rationalize its evils as necessary or good in the mind of its followers. This is in one way, easy. Much like the rest of the film, I need only think of evil and apply the appropriate metaphor. But in another way, it is more difficult. I have a distaste for the profane and the devilish, since a boy. I loathe the sight of blood, and I change the television station at the first sign of true cruelty. It shall be a task—to write a Mein Kampf of sorts—which I find not a little distasteful, I don’t mind telling you.
There—I’ve said it, haven’t I? Perhaps there are just as many wicked bibles to choose from, but no one prior has attempted such a thing? I'll construct a list, and have Laura send away for it. It will certainly get me put on some sort of Nixonian watchlist. Off the top of my head, there is the Manifesto of the Chinese Liberation Army, the Charter Oath of the Meiji Restoration, Thus Spake Zarathustra by Nietzche, and the afforementioned Mein Kampf. Dangerous territory, for anyone but the Dragon.
Ken Fielding