When I was recovering from my knee surgery in late 2019, I spent the time reading everything I could about opera libretto writing and then Screenwriting which is very similar. I need a refresher. But I developed some cool methods. For my birthday present Lila and I are going to rearrange her old bedroom so I can have a workspace up there for composing these operas, including libretto writing. I am occasionally in touch with the great librettists Mark Campbell (The Revolution of Steve Jobs, Silent Night) and Gene Scheer (Everest) - (I listed the ones I have heard and really like) who offer some minimalist guidance. I was able to send Gene and the composer Joby Talbot (Everest) a good quality recording boosted off a live stream from Austin’s January 2020 production. I had tickets and plane tickets for that to meet Gene and Joby and spend an entire day with my dear friend and great baritone Craig Verm who reignited my passion for opera composing after we fell into a sudden friendship. That is another story. In Austin I was going to stay with my friend Anthony aka “Mr. Kohiba” and do more work on his amazing Caranga (Cuban) flute collection. But my knees still hurt and I was still draggy from drugs and was actually worried about this virus in Wuhan, which I had been following in the scientific literature since it was discovered in November (the things one does after surgery). days before my travels the first documented case of Covid popped up just 25 miles northeast of me. The person had just arrived a few days before from China. I decided to check how many flights arrived daily from, say Beijing. I was expecting 1 or 2. Instead it was 42. Same with Hong Kong and all the other big international airports. I had been isolating since November 7th anyway so it was no big deal to extend that. Craig was sad that our quality time together wouldn’t happen and is still pending. He was to be recording at BBC in the opera in May and that didn’t happen. Thus at the time the only decent recording in existence was my bootleg off the live stream! There is now a Graphic Novel version on YouTube but Greg wasn’t cast in that one. Here he is in the Premier (see below).
A few weeks before my knee operation I told him that wth my painful bone on bone knees I was singing “One more step - until the pain of wanting this so badly goes away - forever! One more step, one more step, one - more - step”. Craig (in the dark parka) said “Wait a minute! That is MY song!”
So here is some screenwriting roughed out:
This will be the dramatic ending of the movie screenplay that I am writing along with my friend Mark Leone that we will call "The Blue Flute". When Sundance produces it, Harrison Ford will hopefully fill the part of the old Claude Laurent on the day Claude dies. Elsewhere in the movie, Danny Devito will play Napoleon on his way to exile with his 16 wagons of possessions. I will play myself. Not “with” myself.
In this scene Claude will have just tripped over someone's foot at a ceremony celebrating his lifetime of clockmaking and innovative flutemaking, and drops one of his final Glass Flutes onto the floor where it explodes. Claude falls onto the shattered and sharp glass remains, cutting himself severely. He’s bleeding out blue colored blood - having absorbed way too much Cobalt Glass Dust that turns the blood blue and is 100X more powerful as a blood thinner than Elequis and Warfarin combines with Aspirin.
People rush to his aid as he terminally bleeds out and screams in pain. He looks at each of his worried friends Breton, Boehm, Martin, Godfroy and Thibouville, and says to all - with a perfect Harrison Ford Ironic Wry Smile:
"Fils de pute!!! Quel genre d'idiot ferait une flûte en verre, de toute façon?"
He dies and the credits roll as they haul him away.