Amidst Nelly Furtado's "Loose" album, there've been a handful of others tracks I'd been listening to help me put some things together for "Te Busque."
[awesome picture, the only thing this post was missing ;) ]
Considering the female empowerment theme that the story has, or at least I'm trying to make it about that, rather than the other way around... Lady Gaga's been a huge part of this playlist I'd been working through to inspire different scenes.
I'd tried to make it a fine line, that everything Furtado is Talia's main storyline... or vice versa... but there have been a few tracks from Gaga (aka Mother Monster) that have been creeping in.
Alejandro is an easy choice because the song felt like a great send-off for one of the characters and for the hell of it, I'll give him the same name.
But I'd been considering over and over about how "dark" I want Alejandro to be... I'm almost to the point where I really don't want to make him a villain at all... that he's just a friend that "benefits" from Talia's line of work. Of course he encourages it and they work together with this business that she kinda started with the Montiel Brothers
I'm starting to think that maybe Alejandro came into the business because one of the brothers died and his dying wish was that he teach him the ropes of what he now calls "the family business"... even though they'd only been in it for a short time, I'm thinking a couple years.
There is something of a "mobster" mentality there and I kinda see Italian New Yorker/"Soprano" types playing these guys
and to be fair, I got the name Montiel from Dito Montiel, whose life was brought to life in the film "A Guide to Recognizing your Saints" based on his autobiography/memoir... I wouldn't count it among my favorite Downey films because it's a little dramatic, he doesn't have a huge presence in it and when he is in it, most of the acting is non-verbal. Really great non-verbal acting for sure, but it was like his work in "The Soloist"... it was hard to think of it as him playing a role rather an reinactment of something that really happened... you see less of him in it...
That's my Downey side-track for the day...
Based on the themes of a lot of Gaga's work, the gears in my head started turning with a bunch of them. Right now, I have a bunch of the songs in pairs and sometimes these pairs include songs by multiple artists
One example is this one song from the Furtado album that's all in Spanish, No Hay Iqual... Choreography came to mind the first time I heard it for the opening part of the song. Then there's a Green Day track that has me thinking the same choreography because it has the same count and amount of measures in the opening of their song and the title fit right into the piece.
"No Hay Iqual" is all about sensuality, sexuality and desire... so I can easily see it being your run of the mill performance with Talia front and center with her girls Scarlet and Vanessa backing her up. Something of a tribal dance is what I'm thinking.
I imagine this as her 2nd encounter with the new guy in town, Juan Paulo, or for the ease of my typing, J.P. ...he sees her on stage, once again enamoured by her beauty. She sees that he came and she ducks out on him.
Maybe this is the point where she tells him what she really does for a living, or he at least finds out about it. "Extraordinary Girl" is about a girl who can't seem to escape her fate and he wants to help her do so.
I've started to pair Karmin's track "Hello" with "Heavy Metal Lover" for similar reasons... the choreography... like I see some of the same movements going on during the chorus of both tracks...
although they don't have much in common thematically.
Now for the Gaga-inspired combinations:
in the 3rd act, Emilia goes on to dance during a VIP night despite Talia's wishes. She gets picked by one particular nasty customer to where the encounter escalates to attempted rape. J.P. saves her life and he takes her to Talia, despite the fact she and him aren't speaking at this point. Alejandro stops by and is horrified that he encouraged Emilia to dance that night. His words to her were that Talia was being overprotective and she can't always be so. She admits that she was wrong to hold her back and that she should have been there to at least support her.
Somewhere along the way, its revealed that Amber was the one behind everything... to fracture ties between Talia and Alejandro because she secretly wants him all to herself.
so as a show for Amber's benefit:
Emilia performs "Monster" to bring to life what happened her that night, but as a way of stepping away from it and becoming stronger.
Then Talia performs "Alejandro" to make it seem like the two of them have "broken up" despite the fact they were never officially a couple
That's a huge part of the final part of the story.
I'd played around with "Dancing in the Dark" and "I like it rough"
earlier, I was wondering if I want to move that combination from the first act to the final act... that it wasn't about Talia, but about Amber
"baby likes to dance in the dark, but when he's looking she falls apart."
the song is about being uncomfortable in the bedroom unless its in total darkness... and perhaps a fear of sex itself because it brings out a lot of vulnerability in people...
images have come to mind before about a montage of Talia bedding her clients, but when nobody's around, she torn up about how she makes a living... most of the time she's strong and comfortable about it, but deep down, she wishes she had a better path to pursue.
"I like it rough" kinda speaks for itself... the other side of the coin... kinda says "don't pity me, this is the way I like to do things and that's that"
It's funny how I've written previously that Scarlet and Vanessa are Talia's besties and closest cohorts and quote "Amber and Scarlet are mentioned in passing, but only in a couple of scenes"...
they really get to spread their wings in the 3rd act, which may be the first time I really write about the shows they do.
Which brings up my final Gaga-inspired combination:
Everyone has their own specific number that they do on their VIP nights. This is where my affection for the film "Sucker Punch" comes in.
According to Ruby, their numbers are personally tailored to bring to life past experiences... and they either show things as they are, personificiation or they show how things change and move on from that....
[all three tracks are from the "Born this way" album]
Emilia opens "Government Hooker"... which I can see having similiar choreography to group number "Love Game"... except its a little more erotic and provocative... it's a little rusty and unrefined compared to the other two, but they'd been doing their numbers for at least 3 years
Amber, who I can see being portrayed by someone like Jamie Chung (who played "Amber" in "Sucker Punch") or Naya Rivera (Santana from "Glee")...
does "Bad Kids"
she's obviously playing the bad girl here, channeling Santana for sure... wanting to be the center of attention... somewhat ironic considering Gaga wrote it for her little monsters as her way of saying that its okay for them not to be normal, brace your weirdness and all that...
but Amber comes off as a princess to be revered... a showman that dismisses the intensity of her subject matter, makes it less than what it is...
I swear I must have a list of 20+ songs I'd played on heavy rotation since I'd been putting this together... a bunch from "Born this way" obviously... at least 5 tracks from the Nelly Furtado album... Love Game, I like it rough ("The Fame"), Alejandro, Monster, Dance in the Dark ("The Fame Monster"), G-Spot & Sex Shooter (both written by Prince)...
I didn't know what to make of "Heavy Metal Lover" the first time I heard it... there was a lot of autotone in it, so I didn't know if I took it seriously at first... I think my unexplainable love for it came from one time where I couldn't hear it too well so I put it on repeat... from there, always been a huge fan
if you listen to the lyrics, they're extremely provocative and strongly suggest that an orgy is about to happen...
listening to it today, it was like everything in my head lit up and images started to come in attention to the choreography I have set for the chorus...
I see exotic red lights that flash in time with the beat and after a certain point, they stop flashing and just grow and diminish in intensity... if it was a more upscale place, there'd be lasers... but I see those red lights. I see Ruby wearing the "hooker" uniform Rocket (Jena Malone) wore in "Sucker Punch"... some red, but mainly the top has some black leather and she's wearing these black stockings...
Her performance is extremely sexy, hot and sensual... as time in the song passes, the girls start to band together on stage where there's a lot of physical contact almost to the point they're in a lip-lock... oddly, the racist thing I've come up with to date with any of these performance numbers and Talia isn't even at the helm of it.
My imagination went on overdrive as I drew on the similarities and differences between Ruby and Amber... they're similar in their backgrounds, but took on different sides of it... and the two can't stand each other, which is why they only perform one night together...
I see Ruby and Scarlet (twin sisters, btw) having a similiar relationship as Sweet Pea and Rocket do in "Sucker Punch"... sisters that are super close... Rocket ran away from home and ended up at the asylum... Sweet Pea followed to keep an eye on her, but unlike Rocket, she got along with their parents, so she really didn't need to leave
I also see a little bit of "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" being thrown in there too... in a very minimal way...
Harmony Faith Lane and her sister Jenna were living in unpleasant circumstances somewhat glossed over in its introduction... Jenna was repeatedly molested by their father, Harmony got her into foster care before she left for Hollywood to become an actress...
part of the storyline comes in that Jenna ended up dead and Harmony wanted to prove it was a homicide rather than a suicide...
but unfortunately it was a suicide...
a little of that is figuring into my head a bit with this... Harmony made a comment after finding her sister dead was that she never forgave her for leaving her...
Ruby & Scarlet lived in similiar circumstances, both were abused by their father. So they planned to run away. When they try, Scarlet gets away and promises Ruby that she'll come back for her...
she never did... but a couple years later, Ruby turns up at the venue where all the girls work and perform...
Ruby insists that Scarlet doesn't need to blame herself for not coming back and that she's okay with how things turned out.
Yes, that is demented, that she was okay with the abuse and molestation and all that... but she takes strength from the fact she survived it while bringing her past to life on stage...
Amber, meanwhile, was in a group home where "you name it" happened on a frequent basis... and in fact, what she went through is even worse than what Talia went through... but what's worse, really... the actual abuse or being taken advantage of and ultimately being made a fool... from a psychological standpoint, what Talia went through was pretty F'd up too...
I wrote that Amber left the group home when she was 18, took a job as a waitress at the venue... Sirens' Cove or whatever I wanna call, still haven't figured that out... and after a couple years of watching Talia getting all that attention on stage, she wanted a piece of the action. Even though she spent a couple years denouncing her past and trying to make a clean break from it... old habits die hard, I guess, especially when there was a point her teen years where she felt like she was heralded as a princess... a term that Talia absolutely hates and will royally flip out on anyone who dares to call her that
Amber is sadistic in that she glosses over a few things in her dances, but very deep down, she's hiding some heavy stuff darkness
also noted that Ruby is the most candid of all the girls... she told Emilia about her past and how she chooses to view it in her dancing...
the case often is that the girls don't ask about each other's pasts and volunteering information is the only way they learn anything.
Ultimately I think that Talia doesn't want Emilia involved in the business because she doesn't have a past that haunts her like everyone else. There's no need to subject herself to that if she hadn't already lived through it... when things like that happen, it changes you and there's no going back to how things were before.
And the more I talk about this story, the more demented it sounds... girls choosing to sell their bodies for sex because it's all they'd been taught how to do things... not all hookers and prostitutes come from that nor do they use it for these particular reasons...
I know next to nothing about all the above, but it doesn't stop me from having huge bursts of imagination when I listen to music... that had to be one of the coolest things I've ever experienced...
Makes me kinda wonder if I'll ever get around to writing the actual story rather than going into all these impromptu brainstorming sessions
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