Sunset Boulevard fic
1 September 2022 01:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeWell, I got the Sunset Boulevard fic posted with about half an hour to spare; I had to make up a title and summary while actually in the process of walking to the library, so it is now known as "With the Best Intentions".
I was rather taken aback to discover that this turns out to be a *tiny* fandom (much smaller than 'Love Never Dies') with only about a dozen stories ever posted -- yet again I've managed to come up with a fanfic that is only ever likely to be seen by people who are subscribed to me as an author personally, or who are looking to see what else I've written :-(
(Although the 'forum contest' angle should actually boost traffic a lot, if the figures on the first chapter of Hertha -- originally published for the 'Break the Cliché' contest -- are anything to go by!)
I'm a bit puzzled by the lack of stories, as I'm sure I remember coming across "Sunset Boulevard" fanfic quite randomly in the past without searching for it at all. I did double-check to see if there was also a section under 'Movies', which I suspect is an older category than Plays/Musicals and which might thus have absorbed the Andrew Lloyd Webber material by default, as happened with 'Phantom' and the Leroux/ALW versions. In fact there doesn't appear to be a "Sunset Boulevard" section under 'Movies' at all, rather to my surprise. (AO3 does have both, although they have mapped Sunset Boulevard - All Media Types to the 1950 movie page, which is basically the same as sticking all works under 'Movies' by default -- and there are only eleven stories there, though one of those appears to be the one I have a memory of coming across earlier.)
I still haven't done a full check-back against the manuscript (and it's too late for that now), since I didn't have time for anything more this afternoon than a straight read-through of what I'd typed up the previous night. I only spotted one typo -- a full stop instead of a comma -- but inevitably then I noticed a couple more at the point where I was actually reading it back after posting on FFnet :-p
The story as a whole hasn't really come out as well as I'd hoped when I originally had the idea, I'm afraid. I had a lot of trouble with Betty Scheafer's narrative voice, since most of her lines in canon are so sunny that they are not very helpful for characterising an angsty scene; I'm not sure I really got Joe Gillis either, or managed to distinguish him sufficiently from Betty. (They are both doing 'Generic Hip Young American', though I think I've managed to get Betty simpler and sweeter and Joe more snarky and cynical.) Max's slightly stilted and foreign delivery is easier to mimic, and for Norma I cheated and basically switched to the familiar refuge of third-person 'deep' viewpoint rather than the character narrating directly.
(One thing I did notice about this fic is that Max and Norma's sections are both in the past tense, while for some reason I switched into present tense for Betty's and Joe's! So I've got first-person past tense, first-person present tense (and arguably a little bit of second-person with Betty) and then a shift back to past tense and a third-person viewpoint for the finale, with a couple of framing snippets that are straight authorial narration. A little bit of everything, which is probably not the best of ideas when trying to construct a story, especially if people are likely to sit down and aim to critique it...)
Known problems: I'm not sure I managed to convey that Max himself was 'the first husband', and in fact on rereading I think I've accidentally managed to suggest that he was the third or fourth! That whole second paragraph is a bit of a mess and probably needs tweaking.
I was very pleased with the final paragraph of Max when I originally managed to come up with it, but I'm not at all sure that it works in combination with a final scene that effectively hinges entirely on the fact that Norma calls and Max is *not* there :-( It doesn't really come across as dramatic irony (and wasn't conceived as such) or foreshadowing, but just as a retrospective inconsistency...
As mentioned, Betty's voice isn't really right, but I'm not sure what I can do with it. Also, for consistency with the other two chapters, maybe it should have had a more upbeat/hopeful ending? Norma's fate is supposed to be the ironic twist while the others are busy daring to allow themselves to hope.
The meaning of Joe's 'lazing by the pool' section doesn't really come across, even though I went back and tried to clarify it in what follows.It might be better to excise some or most of that paragraph altogether and simply drop that concept :-(
[Edit: I did do this.]
Agaim the ending to this section isn't terribly effective and doesn't 'ring' all that well -- sadly I don't think *any* of the endings are particularly good, which is a problem given a portmanteau piece of work like this one.
I had a lot of trouble coming up with a way to introduce Norma's section; it dawned on me rather too late that this section actually occurs *before* most of the rest of the story, and certainly before the passage immediately preceding it -- a timeline which as a result needs somehow to be established, especially if there are likely to be fandom-blind forum readers in the offing! However, I'm pretty happy for now with how it eventually came out, and with the section as a whole ;-)
Unfortunately yet again the final sentences just don't 'ring', despite a lot of last-minute fiddling -- and I'm now stuck with that version for judging purposes, since I can't update it after the deadline :-(
I did mean to download the other entries for offline reading/reviewing, but I forgot to try -- so I have no idea at all of how the other entrants tackled the challenge, or even if I interpreted it correctly. (Also, apparently FFnet is currently having a review bug again...)
I was rather taken aback to discover that this turns out to be a *tiny* fandom (much smaller than 'Love Never Dies') with only about a dozen stories ever posted -- yet again I've managed to come up with a fanfic that is only ever likely to be seen by people who are subscribed to me as an author personally, or who are looking to see what else I've written :-(
(Although the 'forum contest' angle should actually boost traffic a lot, if the figures on the first chapter of Hertha -- originally published for the 'Break the Cliché' contest -- are anything to go by!)
I'm a bit puzzled by the lack of stories, as I'm sure I remember coming across "Sunset Boulevard" fanfic quite randomly in the past without searching for it at all. I did double-check to see if there was also a section under 'Movies', which I suspect is an older category than Plays/Musicals and which might thus have absorbed the Andrew Lloyd Webber material by default, as happened with 'Phantom' and the Leroux/ALW versions. In fact there doesn't appear to be a "Sunset Boulevard" section under 'Movies' at all, rather to my surprise. (AO3 does have both, although they have mapped Sunset Boulevard - All Media Types to the 1950 movie page, which is basically the same as sticking all works under 'Movies' by default -- and there are only eleven stories there, though one of those appears to be the one I have a memory of coming across earlier.)
I still haven't done a full check-back against the manuscript (and it's too late for that now), since I didn't have time for anything more this afternoon than a straight read-through of what I'd typed up the previous night. I only spotted one typo -- a full stop instead of a comma -- but inevitably then I noticed a couple more at the point where I was actually reading it back after posting on FFnet :-p
The story as a whole hasn't really come out as well as I'd hoped when I originally had the idea, I'm afraid. I had a lot of trouble with Betty Scheafer's narrative voice, since most of her lines in canon are so sunny that they are not very helpful for characterising an angsty scene; I'm not sure I really got Joe Gillis either, or managed to distinguish him sufficiently from Betty. (They are both doing 'Generic Hip Young American', though I think I've managed to get Betty simpler and sweeter and Joe more snarky and cynical.) Max's slightly stilted and foreign delivery is easier to mimic, and for Norma I cheated and basically switched to the familiar refuge of third-person 'deep' viewpoint rather than the character narrating directly.
(One thing I did notice about this fic is that Max and Norma's sections are both in the past tense, while for some reason I switched into present tense for Betty's and Joe's! So I've got first-person past tense, first-person present tense (and arguably a little bit of second-person with Betty) and then a shift back to past tense and a third-person viewpoint for the finale, with a couple of framing snippets that are straight authorial narration. A little bit of everything, which is probably not the best of ideas when trying to construct a story, especially if people are likely to sit down and aim to critique it...)
Known problems: I'm not sure I managed to convey that Max himself was 'the first husband', and in fact on rereading I think I've accidentally managed to suggest that he was the third or fourth! That whole second paragraph is a bit of a mess and probably needs tweaking.
I was very pleased with the final paragraph of Max when I originally managed to come up with it, but I'm not at all sure that it works in combination with a final scene that effectively hinges entirely on the fact that Norma calls and Max is *not* there :-( It doesn't really come across as dramatic irony (and wasn't conceived as such) or foreshadowing, but just as a retrospective inconsistency...
As mentioned, Betty's voice isn't really right, but I'm not sure what I can do with it. Also, for consistency with the other two chapters, maybe it should have had a more upbeat/hopeful ending? Norma's fate is supposed to be the ironic twist while the others are busy daring to allow themselves to hope.
The meaning of Joe's 'lazing by the pool' section doesn't really come across, even though I went back and tried to clarify it in what follows.
[Edit: I did do this.]
Agaim the ending to this section isn't terribly effective and doesn't 'ring' all that well -- sadly I don't think *any* of the endings are particularly good, which is a problem given a portmanteau piece of work like this one.
I had a lot of trouble coming up with a way to introduce Norma's section; it dawned on me rather too late that this section actually occurs *before* most of the rest of the story, and certainly before the passage immediately preceding it -- a timeline which as a result needs somehow to be established, especially if there are likely to be fandom-blind forum readers in the offing! However, I'm pretty happy for now with how it eventually came out, and with the section as a whole ;-)
Unfortunately yet again the final sentences just don't 'ring', despite a lot of last-minute fiddling -- and I'm now stuck with that version for judging purposes, since I can't update it after the deadline :-(
I did mean to download the other entries for offline reading/reviewing, but I forgot to try -- so I have no idea at all of how the other entrants tackled the challenge, or even if I interpreted it correctly. (Also, apparently FFnet is currently having a review bug again...)
no subject
Date: 2022-09-05 01:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-05 08:47 am (UTC)I wrote it off for a long time because the only numbers from it that ever got featured in "Best of..." compilations were Norma's big silent-movie-diva songs, "With One Look" and "As If We Never Said Goodbye", and neither of those particularly impressed me; unlike "Phantom", "Cats" etc. the West End production had long since closed, and I assumed this was another of Lloyd Webber's late-period flops. But it turned out that there were a lot of *other* songs -- the ones that don't involve a middle-aged woman being over-the-top operatic -- that were much more to my taste, and that fitted so vividly into my vague memories of the film that I could almost visualise them. So I listened to the whole soundtrack, and got tickets to see a touring production that just happened to be passing through the local theatre around that point, and was very impressed.
Norma's solos still aren't my favourite numbers from the show in terms of performance, but I can appreciate them melodically now, having heard them show up in the typical Lloyd-Webber leitmotif usage in the score, and having enough emotional engagement with the character to appreciate what's being depicted at that point. I just wouldn't recommend them to represent the entire work to someone who has never heard it -- a bit like playing somebody the "Notes" ensemble from POTO and expecting them to become a fan based on that. It's brilliant as a piece of intertwining ensemble writing (it's actually one of my favourite numbers) and of dramatic characterisation, but it's not going to sell the show in the way that a straightforward hit melody like "Music of the Night" or "All I Ask of You" will.
It's interesting that Lloyd Webber is clearly a B&W film buff as well as an advocate for the (at the time highly unfashionable) Pre-Raphaelite painters. He has chosen to write three musical adapatations based on classic movies (visually at least, POTO clearly owes as much to the silent 'Phantom' as to Leroux) -- although I've always written off "Whistle Down the Wind" as well, given that it didn't have a long run and failed to appeal to me based on what little I've heard. Maybe I shouldn't...
However, this story-idea of mine is definitely based on Lloyd Webber and not on the Billy Wilder movie, which I've only seen once and many years ago; it made a deep impression, but my recollection isn't vivid enough at this lapse of time for me to write any kind of fan-fiction based on it. So far as I do remember, the musical adaptation is pretty close in terms of plotline, probably closer than "Phantom", aided no doubt by the fact that the story was conceived for a visual medium in the first place -- although the Buster Keaton cameo scene definitely isn't there! But any details I've quoted, like Archie being in "Clinch, Tennessee" (apparently a real place...), are direct from the "Sunset Boulevard" lyrics/soundtrack.