Up and Interpretations of a Story

Chapters Edited: 20
Scenes Edited: 67
Words Murdered: 5078 (6.6%)

People whose butt Sam has kicked: 42
People who've kicked Sam's butt: 2

People whose butt Hagai has kicked: 0

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Last time, I chided George Lucas for revising Star Wars after they'd been released to the public saying, "Once it's out there, it's no longer yours." What I mean is that the story you write, and the story someone else reads (or watches), are two entirely different things.

Here's an example. My wife and I went to see Pixar's Up last Friday. Up is about a retired old man named Carl. His wife and childhood sweetheart dies; they couldn't have children, so he's alone now. For her sake, he decides to go on the adventure they always said they would go on but never did. Along the way, he learns that the seemingly boring things in life are what make memories - they're the real adventure.

My wife and I had different reactions to it. Superficially, I liked the airships, and she didn't like the talking dogs, but then we started talking about it and discovered we had different ideas about what was important.

I liked that Carl pursued his dream, doing what he'd always longed to do. I also liked the relationship he formed with Russell, the young boy who went with him. These are themes I'm commonly drawn to: doing what you're born to do and fatherhood, which says a lot more about me than the movie.

Cindy, on the other hand, was more interested in Carl's relationship with his wife. To her, the fulfillment of the wife's lifelong dream was more important than anything else, so when Carl chose to set the dream aside in order to rescue a bird that had become important to Russell, she kind of lost interest.

And the thing is, she's not wrong. She latched on to what she had brought to the movie, just like I did. In both cases, we got things out of the movie that were not its primary focus - were maybe never intended by the creators at all.

That's what I mean. Once someone else reads your story, it becomes something different, something that belongs to them. You can revise it, but in doing so you may wipe out the story they thought they had read. If it's a beta reader or something, they'll understand. If it's a fan of 20 years[, George,] they won't.

Sigh... I liked that Han shot first. It made him cooler.