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Blog 04: LA Bound

02 September 11

Peter Bowden

Luis Beltrán who?Tom and I edit our script to make it acceptable for an American audience, as American culture is different from our own. “Oxford Street” is gone, with “Los Angeles Street” in its place. The “You Lift Me Up” musical number is now “You Elevator Me Up”, which I think doesn’t scan, but which Tom insists will capture hearts and minds.

The middle twelve scenes see heavy rewrites, as Tom has the opinion that American audiences are stupider than British ones and won’t know who Luis Beltrán Prieto Figueroa even is, never mind get that his chess game against Caesar is a metaphor for modern abuse of commodity markets.

I passionately argue the opposite, but it is Tom who is holding the typewriter. The edits go through, and art weeps.

Now that I have basically decided to move to LA, the only question remaining is which of their two fraternities I sign up to…

“I didn’t think it was funny anyway”, says Tom. I scramble for a comeback. “Shut up.”

Now that I have basically decided to move to LA, the only question remaining is which of their two “fraternities” (another American word!) I sign up to. The problem is that right now I don’t really see myself as either a “Blood” or a “Crip”. I do have a few blue blazers—and blue is the traditional colour of the Crips—but I doubt they’d want the choice to be made so whimsically.

Crips or Bloods?I talk it over with Tom, telling him that I’m leaning towards the Crips. He says that’s a shame, as if he had to pick one, it’d probably be the Bloods.

“Imagine if you were a Blood and I was a Crip? That’d be embarrassing.”

“We’d probably have to drink in different bars, move in different circles…”

“And we’d probably have to kill each other.”

“Yeah. God, yeah.”

I don’t want us to become yet another pair of English writing partners torn apart by Los Angeles gang warfare. I don’t want us to add to that statistic. So now I’m thinking that if I do move, I’ll ask all my friends which side they’d join first, and try to make sure it’s the same as mine. I wouldn’t risk doing it alone, I mean. Maybe joining a gang is something you should do as a group.

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