Use the link above to view the script. If that doesn't work, then I've attached the script as images below.
Artist Statement:
Whether or not an artist intends to insert a theme
into his/her story, a theme will be there.
Sometimes, it exists only because the audience seeks for one, but
generally speaking, you find what you look for and miss what you aren’t looking
for. Many people will see the more
obvious exterior themes and motives while missing the deeper, underlying theme
that bears the true message, like roots that go unnoticed because people are
too enamored by the leaves. Thus it is
with our story.
On the exterior, people may think that our story is
about how to woo women, but if you notice, Izzy has very few speaking
lines. The story isn’t about her. She functions more as a catalyst. The story is about some of the greatest
inventions, and the fact that many times the greatest inventions are not
accompanied by the greatest motives.
Admittedly, there are worse motives that foster
creation than to win over someone’s heart, but even that seems selfish when we
step back to a bird’s eye view and see how the inventions of fire and the wheel
have revolutionized the world we now live in, and how both inventions are still
used today. The fur coat was probably
important as well for survival during the cold, winter months or during the ice
age, but that is where some of the irony comes in. Because none of the cave people were able to
recognize how impressive the things they created really were, the person who,
by comparison, made the least important invention was the one who ended up with
Izzy.
One example from recent history that mirrors this
concept is the invention of the Post-it
Note. Sterling had heard the story
from his mother at the dinner table and decided to investigate it further. According to Wikipedia.org, Dr. Spencer
Silver, a chemist working at 3M, accidently produced an adhesive that could be
reused with pressure. He tried for years
to promote his invention at conferences within the company, but the value of
his work wasn’t recognized until a colleague of his, Art Fry, saw that it could
be used to keep his bookmark in his hymnal.
He later used the companies “permitted bootlegging policy” to promote
what eventually came to be known as the Post-it
Note or Sticky Note. The company has made millions, while,
according to what Sterling’s mother told him, because of the bootlegging
policy, the inventers have made very little.
Obviously, no one exists that still has memory of
the invention of the wheel or the fire, so blatant creative liberties were
taken. That does not make our version of
history of less importance than other people’s versions of history. Just as Ethan Canin’s story, Vivan, Fort Barnwell demonstrates, our
own memories – even when based on physical artifacts – can betray us. Ethan had a memory of playing in a pool and
soaking blankets. The way he remembered
his mother’s appearance and the memory of soaking blankets were both based on a
photograph that was supposedly taken that day that included neither blankets,
nor his own mother but was a picture of
leaves and his grandmother.
History, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
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