Saturday, November 3, 2007

The Mom Syndrome is Alive and Well - Scenario #2

Fast forward six months and I'm sitting in a restaurant having dinner with my parents-in-law. Since the rough cut was pretty much done, I wanted to share the progress of Shiro's Head, so I take out the iBook from my backpack, excited to show a two-scene rough cut. They attentively sat and watched the Inarajan Pool scene and the baseball field scene. When the clips were done, their response was, well...how can I put this...their own.

Weird Silence
No comments, no suggestions, no questions. Just a straight eye-to-eye-to-eye silent head nod.They just sat across from me and nodded silently. Wow - it was the "Mom Syndrome" alive and in concert. I love my parents-in-law and they're the nicest people, supportive and happy. But, as with my own mom, the diagnosis was the same - a case of the "Mom Syndrome".

My wife went on to remind me that her parents aren't exactly the demographic that Shiro's Head was directed towards. I know...it's totally understandable. At first, I thought that it was just the fact that it was the process of "moviemaking" that they didn't really understand or know how to respond to. Or maybe the clips were just flat out bad. But the more I thought about it, the I understood. I broke it down to two possibilities:

That's nice. What's on TV?
#1: They needed to see the scene in its entirety to fully understand the importance of the clips that they viewed.

#2: It wasn't that they didn't appreciate the hard task of moviemaking...it's just one of those "you had to be there" moments.The new porch you just built, the money you saved on your vacation, your kid's excellent report card...no one will actually really care as much as you do or be as excited as you are, because they won't understand the journey/effort/time that it took to accomplish it.

But...because all art is subjective, the arts are more susceptible to the Mom Syndrome since most people aren't able to relate to the feelings of expression through a creative entity. It's not that they don't care...it's just that they may not know how to relate. Either that or the material really is bad. Only kidding.