Dream Log: 17th-21st-Century Action-Adventure Movie

I dreamed I was on the set of an action-adventure movie, with a minor role in the cast but a major role as one of the producers, almost a co-director, having a lot of back-and-forth discussions with the director about how this film was going to look and sound.

Many recent movies have had scripts by Shakespeare in contemporary settings. This movie took its script from some later 17th-century English playwright, from a play with lots of swordfighting. In our movie, as in some of the above-mentioned Shakespeare movies, the swords were replaced by guns. The setting was midtown Manhattan, in and among the skyscrapers.

Most of the characters had the hair and clothes of conventional 21st-century businesspeople, but many of the people carrying 21st-century guns -- not all of them -- had an appearance with strong 17th-century touches: very, very long 17th-century hair, knee-high boots, black jackets with a bit of brocade. I played one of the minor gunmen. Although in the actual 17th century the hair-impaired often wore long wigs, I had real hair which reached almost to my waist. Black and curly hair. It wasn't clear whether my hair was naturally black and curly or had been colored and curled for this role.

We didn't look like 17th-century people who had traveled here in a time machine, but like 21st-century people who had made some bold fashion choices. Besides our guns, there were other 21st-century notes to our appearance: belts, watches, gloves, etc, tended to be contemporary. Trousers which didn't balloon up. There weren't many 17th-century moustaches to go with the long hair, nor many 17th-century hats. Men were mostly either clean-shaven or had 21st-century-style trimmed beards. We didn't wear a lot of ruffles. The overall effect was very butch both for male and for female killers who borrowed fashion touches from the 17th century. When we didn't walk, we drove cars rather than riding horses.

The script, however, was pure Baroque, taking delight in long and elaborate sentences. All of the characters were very sophisticated speakers. Long speeches mixing aggression with wit took place in boardrooms, and punctuated gunfights in parking garages and on sidewalks.