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The Not Polite Tonight Project (NPT) is an actual, feature-length film in development that takes Dante’s Divine Comedy, updates it to modern times, with Dante now taking the part of a salesman, and the underworld now taking place in the commerce-fueled, advertising-overloaded world of grocery stores, malls, department stores, highways lined with billboards, fast food restaurants, and basically anywhere wide-scale advertising exists. NPT also happens to be set at the end of the world, supposing the world ended tomorrow; the world doesn’t end apocalyptically, with explosions and meteors, but with subtle apathy, that eventually turns into insanity. In NPT, the world ends because everyone simultaneously goes insane, or stops caring enough to even notice.
There are a number of projects building behind this, utilizing the NPT universe and themes, in order to get a richer experience, and inevitably cultivate the actual film. One of these projects is Marlboro Tomorrow Tango, a short film set at the very beginning of NPT, during a point in NPT called the cigarette war, wherein cigarettes have become objects of immense value, enough to cause a massive world war.
Background
If you’re unfamiliar with the Divine Comedy, here’s a brief synopsis: It’s an ancient Italian epic poem – simultaneously the first great work of the Italian Renaissance, the last great work of the dark ages. Dante, the poet, is also the main character, and is taken by Virgil through the layers of Hell, and Purgatory, and then by Beatrice through the layers of Heaven. Hell (the Inferno), is the most famous and influential portion, and incorporates many of Dante’s contemporaries from Italian society and politics, as well as many Biblical and mythical figures. All of these people, mythological or otherwise, are placed in ironic, fitting, and torturous punishments that varied based on what sort of sins they were famous for.
Basically, the Divine Comedy mixes usually unrelated settings (myth, religion, and modern day) with ironic symbols (the tortures of the damned), and an epic journey positioned at the end of the world (or, more so, in the Divine Comedy, the end of Dante’s life).
The Artistic Goal
The NPT/MTT world is going slowly insane.
The NPT project is taking advertising images, big company logos, etc, and slowly altering them, eventually blending them together into insane, illogical, and surreal versions, so as to directly reflect and comment on society and commerce and symbolize the decline of the world into madness.
Music should be similar to this. It ought to meld old and new types of music, unrelated types of music, while remaining edgy, catchy, and interesting. Strong back beats are important. Eventually, the songs need to take on more and more of a remix-remake feel, possibly doing a remix/meld of two or so different and already well-known songs that are also remixes or covers of older songs. This ought to largely involve the original songs, as well as the new versions, into something entirely new, but distinctly familiar, keeping in line with the postmodern, recycled art theme used heavily in the film.
This is, by the way, why the titles have so much alliteration and repetitive sounds in them: it’s to be reflective of the repetitive nature of advertising, and the theme of recycling already used things --- the idea that ‘nothing is new under the sun’ is explored extensively.
And that’s just about it. |
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