pas cu pas.

Word of warning: scroll down to THE POINT if you're short on time and/or less interested in rambling.

The title of this post could also have been 'pas à pas', which means step by step, except in French. In both French and Romanian, pas means step, from the Latin, passus. Yes, Romanian is a Romance language (meaning it descended from Vulgar Latin--the language of ancient Rome, not that it's necessarily going to help you on a date. [Sidenote: it has]). In modern French, pas is used to negate a regular phrase. For example je vais (I go/I am going) or je ne vais pas (I don't go/I am not going). But why, you demand to know, is the word pas, which means step, used to say you're not doing something?

Well, it wasn't always so. You used to only have to use ne to negate phrases, like no in Spanish. But back in the day, to emphasize your point, you would add pas to the end of the example phrase (I am not going) to express the idea that not only are you not going, but you're not even going one step. And you could use other words for other verbs. Je ne mange mie--I'm not eating, not even a crumb. Je ne vois point--I don't see, not even a point. Well, eventually the other words were dropped and pas took control like a totalitarian dictator. See, more often than not in casual conversation you drop the ne and just use the pas (je veux pas)--which loses the original negation all together. (Thank you, Dr. Hurlbut.) Fascinating, huh? OK, maybe just to me.

The fact that you have to use both ne and pas to negate was always something for French 101 students to complain about--Two words? Why can't we just use NE? But if you think French negation is confusing, just try explaining to a student of English why the verb to do suddenly pops up when you negate in English: I see/I don't see.


OK, one more thing about pas and I swear I'll get on with why I'm writing today:
When I was an LDS missionary in Romania, I was stationed with a guy who had just arrived from the States. He was a go-getter and was constantly studying the language. One night we were knocking doors in an old, communist block apartment building which we often found ourselves doing. After knocking twice at a certain door, I started to move on when he stopped me and said, in Romanian, "Wait, I think I hear step-mothers."

THE POINT:

Yesterday I took a big step. Really, it was just a small step that felt like a big step, but life is made up of small steps...

I submitted my screenplay to the LDS Film Festival's feature-length screenplay competition. This means that three producers will read my script. Up to this point, only people who know me have read the script--people who seem to like me and maybe just like the script because they like me. Now three producers that don't know me and probably don't know anything about Alfred de Musset (the guy who wrote the French play that I adapted) will not only be reading it, but judging it. Here goes nothing.

I am also a little nervous because while the script does express certain LDS ideas, having been written and worked on by LDS individuals, it is not a Mormon film. And it maybe swears a couple times. Twice in English and twice in French, if I remember right. And it maybe deals with some more adult situations. Not adult as in adult films but adult as in intense and/or heavy situations. And so maybe it will be disqualified?

No matter what, it was a very rewarding experience just to print off the hundred pages that have taken up  much of the last eight months of my life to create, along with chunks of other people's lives. The girl at Kinko's probably thought I needed to be medicated.

What's the next step? Besides a few more revisions, I have an incredibly awesome friend who is doing an internship for a production company in LA that might be able to sneak it in front of her people. And another awesomely incredible friend that has a friend that has a friend that might be able to read it and might work for a very large production company in LA.

So, folks, let's get the ball rolling.