Summertime is generally a time when I allow myself to just play in my studio. It’s a time to follow whatever idea flits through my mind and catches my interest without pressure or expectations. I give no regard to reason, viability, feasibility, good taste, curators, deadlines, financial constraints, if its a medium I’ve worked in, or whatever. This period often proves fruitful and surprising. Here’s an example of something slightly preposterous I may be pursuing:
This week I was watching the 1996 Iranian film Leilia about a couple who cannot have a child. The mother of the husband, determined to have a grandson, convinces her daughter in-law to let her husband take a second wife so he can have a child. This scenario gave me a kind of crazy idea. What if I took the scene pictured below as a starting point for a lesbian screwball comedy/sperm donor screenplay? The story is about a woman in Iran who upon hearing the news that her son and his wife cannot conceive is devastated that she won’t have a grandson. However she is placated when she learns that her son was a sperm donor for an American woman who now has a 9 year old boy. She travels (somehow) to the US to meet her grandson and being raised by a lesbian couple in Brooklyn. Naturally, a light-hearted, madcap cross-cultural comedy of errors ensues.