Orpheus’ Blues
All myths meet at a Crossroads
It has been said that The Blues are a mystic form of music. The music of an enigmatical journey. One with it’s own gods and goddesses, hero’s, warriors and demons.
From the story of Balaam Foster’s Fiddle, Robert Johnson at the crossroads to The Stone’s Sympathy for the Devil, we hear hints of the supernatural in this intoxicating music, music with the power to transform and transcend even the most common of lives.
The Greek myth of Orpheus is also a tail of the power of music, and the power of love. Returning home from his band’s three month road trip, Night (Orpheus)discover that his wife CC(Eurydice) has been overcome by a frightening illness. This illness not only renders her tired and forlorn looking, but it seems to have stolen her soul as well. His once loving wife seems distant and angry, almost resentful that he has returned from his journey across country.
When CC dies from the venom of heroin, Night must decide his own fate by continuing to play with his band, or by venturing into the city of the dead to try and win back the woman he loves. Weighing between his two passions, Night chooses to confront death and reclaim his beloved. And in this journey to hell, he encounters many strange, almost otherworldly denizens of the twilight. Plying them with his intoxicating music, Orpheus makes his way into the darkness to confront Hades, the very god of the dead, himself.
What makes Orpheus’ Blues different: Though the story of Orpheus has been told and re-imaged countless times, the approach here is to frame the screenplay and direction with the very real art of the Blues. Placing this story in contemporary America will allow the production to reinvent mythology itself with a fresh new face, one that is cinematically different from it predecessors. I have modeled the production design to combine elements of surrealism and urban decay in order to place the story both in the tradition of ancient Greek tragedy and the neon lit outsider world of the Blues.
Being connected with the Blues scene here in the New York-New Jersey region, I am working with several area musicians to build a score that reflects both the hard life of the musical tradition and it’s people, as well as that intangible force of a sweet melody that laments suffering the memory of a love lost too soon, the music worthy of legend.
IndieGoGo URL: http://www.indiegogo.com/Orpheus’Blues
