Aug 202010
 

DG and the blue dog heading into the woods together

Strange the things that educate our emotional responses to life. I just finished a draft of the story called “Uncle Boris up in a Tree.” One of the characters, Bjorn, the straight arrow, buys a bright yellow Land Rover. The yellow Land Rover is, for me, a dream image, a symbol. But the “Land Rover” part doesn’t seem right. I think and think. I realize I meant it to be a yellow Rolls Royce. Rolls Royce seems right. And later I remember that when I was a kid I loved that movie The Yellow Rolls Royce, that for years I played the soundtrack over and over. The Yellow Rolls Royce is an unusual movie. It’s a triptych,  three different love stories connected only by the object, the image, the yellow Rolls Royce. I think the dramatist Terence Rattigan wrote the script. Very romantic, sentimental, sad. So then I realize that this movie, and the emotional education I derived from it, stands unconsciously behind the story. The yellow Land Rover is the clue. And I think there is a certain attitude to life and love that I try to get at in the story that comes from the feelings I got from that movie and the music, when I was a kid (and maybe I haven’t grown up so much).

Here are two of the songs from the soundtrack. “Forget Domani” and “Now and Then” (this one still shakes me). I think Riz Ortolani wrote the music. Katyna Ranieri sings.

dg