From my first screenwriting class taken over Summer 2005 (FILM 4250 Prose To Screenplay) I worked on two pieces.
The first of which was an adaptation of Octavio Paz’s “The Blue Bouquet”. It is a story about a Latino man who mugs a tourist to take from him his “blue eyes”. In the end the mugger is frustrated to find that the Caucasian man doesn’t have blue eyes after all.
We discussed it in class and came to the conclusion that Paz differentiated the Mezcla with the Caucasians by the color of their eyes. And if you had blue eyes you must be part of the group know as “the man” who oppress those who have brown eyes, that is the natives of the country. He was clearly out for revenge against the white man and the oppression he had imposed on his country.
I decided that it was to create a bouquet of blue eyes for his girlfriend.
What could possibly motivate someone to that desperate act?
After seeing many students take the most literal route with the story and just embellishing their favorite images I decided to look at the character that intrigued me the most. That being the Latino mugger.
I chose to motivate him based on more primal urges and to tell a non-diegetic adaptation of Paz’s “The Blue Bouquet”. A rite of passage short about a sixteen year old boy and his “girlfriend”.
Read “Little Guard Dog“