{"id":222,"date":"2010-06-19T13:51:28","date_gmt":"2010-06-19T18:51:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattcasarino.com\/?p=222"},"modified":"2010-06-19T15:16:02","modified_gmt":"2010-06-19T20:16:02","slug":"anton-chekhov-vs-vince-mcmahon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattcasarino.com\/?p=222","title":{"rendered":"Anton Chekhov vs. Vince McMahon"},"content":{"rendered":"

or,<\/h3>\n

Forever seeking the “oh shit” moment<\/h2>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a rare but transcendent sight in professional wrestling: the slow epiphany. Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how it works (or did when I watched wrestling, anyway \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a period of my life that ended roughly 25 years ago): <\/p>\n

Two wrestlers have teamed up to be on the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bad\u00e2\u20ac\u009d side. Often, one of them is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153foreign,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d representing the enemy du jour (today, it might be a BP exec). A tag team match ensues, and after much drama and cheating, the bad guys have knocked out the ref and are mercilessly pummeling the good guys. Only\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6something\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wrong. One of the guys \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153foreign\u00e2\u20ac\u009d one \u00e2\u20ac\u201c is breaking the rules, the bond, whatever bound them in the first place. And then the crowd senses it. Something big. Something wonderful. One of the bad guys is just standing there, watching the other as he pummels his hapless opponent. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6troubled. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thinking. He looks around the arena \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the crowd is building to a fury. The pummeling continues. He looks at his partner. The crowd sounds like a Concorde. We see it in his face\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009dthis wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t part of the deal. This isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t right. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m better than this.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And then\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6it happens. He approaches his partner. He taps him timidly on the back. The partner ignores him. He does it again, more forcefully. The partner pushes him away. The crowd has never known bliss like this. Their throats will be sore for a week. They don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care. The guy does it a third time. The partner stops the pummeling and faces him. Our man smacks his partner with the fist of a thousand furies. The partner is stunned, but doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go down, so our man performs his signature move \u00e2\u20ac\u201c preferably, a jump-kick to the chest \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and his partner is out cold. The crowd will need to do laundry when they get home.<\/p>\n

I write all this not just for the juicy (and not a little guilty) nostalgia, but because it occurred to me that the slow epiphany is a rare thing in entertainment. Instead, when we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re lucky we get something just as sweet: the sudden realization, an event I like to call the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153oh shit\u00e2\u20ac\u009d moment. Raymond Carver used to keep a 3\u00e2\u20ac\u009d x 5\u00e2\u20ac\u009d card on his wall with a quote from a Chekhov story: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And suddenly, everything became clear to him.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Carver liked the mystery behind the phrase, but I like visualizing that moment, when in a flash the subject saw the big picture clearly and it changed his life. Such a rich visual \u00e2\u20ac\u201c he stops mid-speech, his eyes widen, his mouth opens a touch, and maybe, if we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re lucky, he even drops his coffee cup and it falls in slow motion, breaking as it hits the floor and Keyser gets away. Oh shit.
\n

\"\"<\/a>

Say, this corkboard is made by Quartet! Isn't that a funny - OH MY GOD.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

Does this ever happen in real life? We cling to our worldviews so tightly, we fight against anything that contradicts what we have chosen to believe, we barely listen to other points of view. We brag that we have friends with different political views, but we are careful to counter their arguments without really thinking about them, lest they dent our belief system. Perhaps we allow a change of heart now and then, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a slow process. So here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a case where professional wrestling is actually pretty true to life.<\/i> Let THAT<\/i> sink in for a bit. Still, even wrestling can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t afford to let things take a truly natural course. It would take too long to watch someone truly deliberate in real time \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the audience would never stand for it. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Is he gonna turn on \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThe Libyan Liberator\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 or not? Cause NASCAR is on in an hour.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n

I yearn for one of these. Not cheap shots at wrestling fans \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I already feel bad about that. No, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the epiphany I seek. The slow ones might be great for riling up the crowd, but I want one of the fast ones. I want to suddenly \u00e2\u20ac\u0153get it,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to drop my glass (not if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s full of Smithwicks, Samuel Smith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, or anything that begins with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Glen\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) and freeze for a moment while the implications of what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve just figured out wash over me. <\/p>\n

In short: I want everything to suddenly become clear. <\/p>\n

I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think that will ever happen. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m too slow on the uptake, too careful, too considerate, too damn stubborn. Even if I did figure out in a flash that Verbal had just made up his whole story, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d probably have another sip of coffee and say \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Say, I just thought of something\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6nah.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Maybe eventually, in bed that night, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d get as far as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Huh\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6that fellow may have snowed me.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But even then I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d fight it.<\/p>\n

I know I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not alone here. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure I try to load my plays with epiphanies and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153oh shit\u00e2\u20ac\u009d moments to make up for the lack of them in my life. And why not? Some of the best moments of true drama are based on the Sudden Realization that Changes Everything. (Side note: I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not talking about those movies where a clue is discovered and the killer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s identity is revealed. Those moments are supposed<\/i> to happen, and while they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re generally fun, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not nearly as satisfying as the bombshell that rocks our hero\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s world.) It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a clich\u00c3\u00a9, maybe, but when it comes about honestly, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing as jaw-droppingly satisfying as a great \u00e2\u20ac\u0153oh shit.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Yes, you can remove the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153oh\u00e2\u20ac\u009d from that last sentence and it still makes sense, maybe even more sense, but seriously\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6try to stay with me, people.) <\/p>\n

But man, are they hard to do. They only work when the timing is just right \u00e2\u20ac\u201c when the audience catches on just seconds after the character does. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been successful once or twice \u00e2\u20ac\u201c one of my favorites comes in The Trophy Wife,<\/i> one of my early dramas. A couple \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a man and his mistress \u00e2\u20ac\u201c has plotted the death of the man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wife, and the man lets something slip that allows the mistress to figure out that he has killed before. It happens as she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talking \u00e2\u20ac\u201c her sentence just stops midway, her mouth opens in horror, she drops her coffee cup in slow-motion (just kidding about that last part\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6I think). He starts talking again, she cuts him off and asks him a very direct question \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and, hopefully, the audience figures out the answer at the same time she does and has to catch its collective breath. <\/p>\n

So that one kinda works, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve failed far more often than I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve succeeded. For every successful \u00e2\u20ac\u0153oh shit,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d there are a dozen that fall flat, usually because the audience is already ahead of the character. Nothing more excruciating than waiting for the hero to catch up. Sometimes, the opposite is true \u00e2\u20ac\u201c our hero suddenly \u00e2\u20ac\u0153gets it,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6gets what? Watch the movie of A Few Good Men <\/i>and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll see Cruise suddenly figure something out, leave his meeting, drive to the victim\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s place, look in the closet, and \u00e2\u20ac\u201c EGAD! His clothes are still there. This clearly Means Something, but damned if can figure out what it is. He explains it to us later, but frustration has already set in: if we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get to share in the moment, what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the point?<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll continue to seek the perfect moment of epiphany \u00e2\u20ac\u201c in story, and in life. Since I no longer watch wrestling, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m hoping to go the Chekhov route and experience a full-on, shameless \u00e2\u20ac\u0153oh shit.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d There have been some great ones in movies: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153All’s you’d need is a target tracking system and a big spinning mirror and you could vaporize a human target from space!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Johnny Ola knows these places like the back of his hand.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153(looks at penis of the girl he was just making out with<\/i>).\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Those moments are as iconic as they are rare, so naturally I long to create one \u00e2\u20ac\u201c almost as much as I long to live one. (Well, maybe not that last one.) <\/p>\n

\"\"

So...THAT'S new.<\/p><\/div>\n

Either way, once it happens, I hope I can actually act on it. Playscripts may not always reflect real life, but I think both need a jolt of cheap, impulsive drama now and then.<\/p>\n

Besides, I have enough coffee mugs. I can afford to drop one.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve become quite the Twirp lately \u00e2\u20ac\u201c follow my Tweets!<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

or, Forever seeking the “oh shit” moment It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a rare but transcendent sight in professional wrestling: the slow epiphany. Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how it works (or did when I watched wrestling, anyway \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a period of my life that ended roughly 25 years ago): Two wrestlers have teamed up to be on the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bad\u00e2\u20ac\u009d side. Often, one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11,19,15],"class_list":["post-222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-playpen","tag-playwriting","tag-truth-hurts","tag-writers-block"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattcasarino.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattcasarino.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattcasarino.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattcasarino.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattcasarino.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=222"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/mattcasarino.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":235,"href":"https:\/\/mattcasarino.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions\/235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattcasarino.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattcasarino.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattcasarino.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}