On the Discussion of Saving Mr. Banks

Today I viewed a movie based on the author of Mary Poppins, Pamela L. Travers, and how she came to turn Mary Poppins into a feature film with the aid and attempted direction of Walt Disney himself.

I write today making claims based on the allegations of the film and its contents and the portrayal of Pamela and Walt’s handling of the Mary Poppins adaptation. For, seeing as I am an aspiring novelist, my potential to firstly write a novel, then to have it become popular enough for it to be adapted into a screenplay has driven me to express my feelings about my connection with each piece of writing I have created, and how highly I place them in contrast to how others see them.

The first story which comes to mind that I have written was when I was in sixth grade. I was asked to write a creative piece, so I wrote it about a young boy who was visited by a winged creature similar to a unicorn and would fly away with it on adventures, nightly, and would safely return the next morning. It was like the Harry Potter series, and I could not finish it in the duration that I was required to, so I had to end it abruptly. The second piece I recall came after that, and had a similar storyline to Pirates of the Caribbean, except it was not as dramatic. Both pieces I took seriously, and both pieces remain in my memory to this day. Even though they probably are not as great as my mind makes them out to be, I know that for a person of my age in that time, they were quite grand. From that point on, I kept on writing and drawing without keeping track because of all the reading that I prioritized and because of the overflowing of ideas I kept acquiring. The receiving of my first Game Boy Colour might have also contributed to this.

This Christmas, to avoid weeping from the loss of our things from a potential theft, seeing as though we celebrated Christmas at my grandmother’s home, my mum suggested that we all took our valuables with us. My sister brought her laptop, my dad brought the money and mum brought her jewelry. As for me, I grabbed my big box of writing ideas, contemplated taking along the rarest of my book collection, and brought my latest sketchbook and diary and poem book. Upon seeing what I had brought along, my mum projected a look on her face which questioned whether I was serious or not. And I was very, very serious. I told her that people, especially those who write, acquire their ideas from anywhere. This box, labeled ‘writing’, is the holy grail of ideas. It contains ideas which have sprung from my very mind, that I keep adding to depending on post formation ideas. I treasure this box because when the time comes where I will actually attempt, and finish writing my first novel, that box will be the feeder of my mind. It will be my muse, my motivation, and my fuel.

All of these things flung to my mind as I was watching Saving Mr. Banks, particularly when none of those who were assigned to work on different aspects of the Mary Poppins screenplay had taken Pamela seriously. She had rejected Walt’s proposal to go on with the screenplay several times, yet had finally accepted due to her need of money. Disregarding her dire need of it, she still cared deeply about each character in Mary Poppins, and how they dressed, how they acted, what they looked like, where they lived and how they spoke, to a point where she gave the crew working on it a horrible time. She rejected most things that they came up with, and whenever she did they thought horribly of her. My connection to this is that I can understand how she feels. If I had to sit down and watch other people interpret those who I had designed, I would be metaphorically pulling my hair out. I would not stand it, especially if these people continued veering away from the essential characters at hand.

People who do not write stories need to appreciate those who do. They need to appreciate the time and effort it takes to create these almost-beings, and how attached writers get to them. We writers conjure up these characters in our psyches and continue to develop them until they become more real to us than our realities. Their lives become our realities, and until you can appreciate that, you will never understand how deep of a connection we hold with our writing, no matter how small or lacking it sometimes may be. An idea is still an idea, nonetheless, whether it consists of one word or a million.