An introduction.

Hello.

This is quite a difficult thing to begin writing, because as a general rule of thumb, or rather, rule of not being able to do anything else, I write in a way that puts as little real emotion into what I’m saying as possible, uses ironic use of racism and gay jokes to the point of tedium, and people are normally left with a taste in their mouth like I did when I woke up this morning, which I can assure you isn’t good. I’ve been drinking.

It’s also hard to not make this overly depressing. It’s a depressing blog, and if I knew how to, you’d be reading this on the back of a rather large three-dimensional skull as linkin park told you how their day was in D minor.

But, here we go.

My name is Liam Beale, and recently my best buddy Darron Wong got leukemia and later died of a brain hemhorage, which although funny at the time leaves a rather nasty sting. We were working on a short film together at the time, or rather had been before a rather stupid and childish fall out, creative differences and pie. I wouldn’t be exaggerating at all if I said that Darron asked me on his deathbed for me to finish the film, although I feel deep down, that I do with most things, that I’m only saying that because it sounds like something out of a movie – and then after I press myself for self acceptance, I realise that just because they change the sheets, it’s still in fact a death bed.

Semantics aside. his mother asked ever-so profoundly that I finish (Start) the film, because it’s ‘as Darron would have wanted.’ Which I know for a fact it is.

I’ve realised that poeple might read this and not sense the obvious fact, that while I can joke about things like this, my life is in fact it’s own unique brand of hilarious hell. In fact, my life is hellarious.

I love(d) Darron. He was my very first real friend. (Please ignore my self indulgance for the moment – afterall this is a blog). When I was in middle school I had my own teacher, which although may have been best for my education, left me completly useless at socialising. When I first came to secondary school I say on my own in every lesson, and one day Darron sat next to me just because I looked sad. In a very real sense he was my very first friend.

Also, Darron is an intresting person in a world of people trying desperately to be as acceptable as everybody else. Most people are predictable, and talking to them is at best, dull. Darron didn’t work in those same confines, Darron acted as if he’d been brought up eating nothing but sugar and uranium. Sometimes it was hard, sometimes it was incredibly funny. You’d never be bored. Not for a second, this person was actually alive, and being with him made you feel the same. You weren’t didn’t have think about anything. It was just fun.

But there are many problems with making this film, as I’m sure I’ll whine about over this diary.

Firstly, and with as much sensitivity as I can possibly have – Me and Darron fell out because of differences in opinion over how the film should be made, what it should include etc. And I hate to say it, but many of the ideas that seperated our two ideas, I would call stupid, and nothing has changed since then. An example of this is that Darron decided to change the name of the lead character from Fyfe (after the lead singer of the Guillemots) into Frye (Which as far as I’m aware isn’t even a name.) And he didn’t tell me that he had made this change a whole three months after he had decided.

I don’t really care what the name of the main character, which might sound like a lie considerring how up in arms I am about it. But for me, FR sounds are very hard to pronounce, and always have been. I was quite careful not to give myself any R sounds in the original script at all.

Plus, I just don’t see the point in working ‘together’ on something, but then keeping something from the other, how could you work like that?

There was a lot of differences like that, which eventually made me feel like stopping working with Darron altogether. I sent him an email explaining that I just didn’t think he was listening to me, and he became more depressed than I’d ever see him, even when he was dying. I automatically dropped five spaces in his Myspace page, which although I realise that myspace is not the definitive authority on quantifying friendships, is now the single most depressing thought in my mind – that when he died, I was number seven, when I’d been his best friend for the last nine years.

He also threw his camera down the stairs. Something I’d never, ever imagine him doing.

One of his sister brought up the idea that maybe he just didn’t have much motivation for living anymore. I wasn’t totally sure whether she was serious in what she was implying (this was a conversation about how we’d falled out when she said this.) and whether or not she was saying this as a reaction from her own pain (Which I understand and don’t blame her at all for.) But it stung me because I felt that there was a huge amount of truth in that – not that I had indirectly killed him, of course, but just that we had left each other on much worse terms than our lives had laid out for us. The last few months were certainly not a fair representation of who we were, and although I knew that Darron felt the same, there was something hard about that.

It’s a hard situation for a whole heap of reasons really.

At the moment there’s the whole problem of making Darron’s film, as opposed to just making something that is soley my own, especially considdering that I disliked many of his ideas immensely, and there seems something wrong about making a film that I just dislike. Obviously this isn’t such a huge issue as I might make it seem, but remember that I’m not making my own film, that would be a pointless and shallow endeavour.

So for now my job is to set out to lay down some personal rules for myself to follow. These should hopefully keep me grounded on the basic idea of mine and Darron’s. Any build up on the basic foundation will of course be the results of other peoples work, but with the foundation in place, hopefully there should be something recognizable as Mr Darron Wong’s in there.

So here are the basic rules.

-Stick to the original idea, characters, and storyline from the very first script and following conversations.

-Sticking to Darron’s opinion of what is good, and what is not. Unfortunately this will have to be done from my own memory as much as anything.

- Make a film that the graphics project that Darron did is actually apllicable to. Images/characters etc. Doing this means that we should pick out Darron’s other work for inspiration.

-Complete the film using as many as Darrons’ friends as possible, or at least have their involvement, which would have been the case if Darron was to make this film himself.

This is all I have for now, but might add later as we go. Probably as things become more defined it’ll become more obvious how Darron’s influence will come out.

As he says on his Youtube Profile: “2 trademarks in Darron filming, three angle super attack and a incompletely needless explosion. And maybe a kiss…”

Also maybe putting in as many references to Darron as I can.

You may read this and think that maybe this isn’t all so important, and no, it isn’t. Darron did tell me that he would like me to rewrite everything again anyway, for us to have a new script, and really there’s very little that we ever completely set in stone. We talked in suggestions more than anything, and I’m sure he would have trusted me with using my initinative as much as he would his own.