Visible – Adaptation

Fey’s chapter on managerial style, ” A Childhood Dream, Realized,” explicitly expressed Calvino’s quality of Visibility. It is a series of quotes from Lorne Michaels, one of which reads “Television is a visual medium.” Although he was talking about how you should look your best if you’re on TV, for me it harkened back to screenwriting. Two quotes later, Lorne comments on how style should always dictate the writing (discussed in my Experience post). These things seem contradictory but after reading Krevolin’s How to Adapt Anything Into A Screenplay, I think I have a better understanding of what he means.

That being said, the way that this chapter is written is in a serious of anecdotes which give managerial advice. I think that if I were to adapt this section into a screenplay it would likely be included in Act II. As Krevolin explains, Act II is the longest act and it allows the viewer to explore the characters and the relationships. I think that Fey’s relationship with Lorne Michaels is really significant because he gives her the tools for her success. I also think it is important because throughout the memoir I felt there was a strong theme of a strong male mentor relationship with Tina and her father, Alec Baldwin (star of 30 Rock and everything awesome), and Lorne Michaels. I think her father taught her everything she needed to know about being a human, Baldwin taught her everything she needed to know about being a actor, and Lorne taught her everything she needed to know about directing and writing.

Visible – Experience

Something I’ve noticed when trying to draft my Experience posts is that I keep going back to my Part I posts, seeing my Emblem, and am reminded wholly of the concept for that quality. Anyways, I saw the image of the Parker pen and I remembered that Calvino’s quality of visibility has everything to do with the writing! As a child, Calvino would see images and make up a story line from his imagination. When he became an adult, he realized that the more important feature of a story is the writing. The writing should guide the story in such a way that the visual imagination has no choice but to tag along.

This quality was best expressed in Bossypants when Tina Fey is describing some of the managerial tactics that she adopted from  her mentor and friend, Lorne Michaels. Lorne once remarked, “Never cut to a closed door” and Fey extrapolated meaning out of his advice. The situation happened as such that the camera cut to a closed door before an actor entered and Lorne felt that they lost the audience in the moment: “Lorne would have preferred that the camera cut follow the sound of the actor knocking on the door. Which is to say that the sketch should lead the cutting pattern, which is to say content should dictate style, which is the say that in TV the writer is king”

I feel that this quote (and managerial tactic)100% conveys the feeling of Visibility from Calvino. Maybe Lorne wasn’t making this point, but it is still a good point to follow and one that I think has resonance between Calvino, Bossypants, and Krevolin.