You Just Gotta ask Yourself, What If?

You Just Gotta ask Yourself, What If?

You Just Gotta ask Yourself, What If?

The first ever Chilliwack Independent Film Festival was held this weekend, organized by Taras Groves, originally from London, England. A film director whose movie “Nowhere” took me by surprise. A short film about a down-and-out street bum, yet when he speaks, eloquence flows from his mouth. And I think; what made this man the way he is, and how? Someone who has nothing in his life but goes out of his way to help another soul in distress. These are the things a writer should think about and ask themselves.
So many of the other short, low-budget films did the same. The film about shoe-shiners made me realize they are people with hearts and souls; the story of a man alone after the holocaust who seems to go insane and I wonder if that atrocity would do the same to me. Or a film about a young girl, an only child with parents that fight all the time, who finds a scruffy toy to befriend. A rich kid, from the feature film RAW, that has wasted his life with drugs and must now pay the price if he is to grow up. These films raise issues, make me ask the age-old question that as a writer I always ask, the question that made me a writer and I’ll never stop asking it. What if?
What if this man in the movie didn’t make those decisions? What if he doesn’t help another person when he has nothing? What if the rich kid doesn’t make the right choices?
Then my mind begins to roll and the pen doesn’t sleep.
If a film or a book does that, then it has done its job for the writer. If the same film either makes people laugh, cry or wonder ‘hmm’, then it has done its job to entertain. If a book does the same, it has also done its job. There is a great thrill internally for me and, I would think, all writers, to know they’ve lived up to their soul’s driving need. But the true gift, the return for all the hours spent making the book as perfect as we can, is to have someone say you made them laugh or cry, or made them think of something they never thought of before or take a different look at life. Yeah, that’s the payback for me.
As for me, it made me walk up to a young man I’d seen nearly every weekend for the last year or so, playing his guitar. He’d sit in the strip mall beside the restaurant my wife and I frequent. He plays beautiful ballads, has a wonderful singing voice and smiles, even on the coldest day. It dawned on me I didn’t even know his name.
I learned he is Rain August, part native, part Norwegian. Yes, there’s a whole new possibility for a character there.
So next time you get a chance to go to a film festival or some local artistic event, do it. Let it entertain you and make you think or ask that age-old question. What if?
Then the internal magic takes over.

And maybe you get a chance to get on the red carpet

With the Festival's Director, Taras Groves

With Canadian Film Producer, David Strasser, his Featured Film, RAW

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