When I was a boy, everyone in the city-state packed their urns with stuffed grape leaves and feta and headed to the amphitheatre for the nightly entertainment. We played discus until Helios’ chariot plunged into the wine-dark western sea. Then, together, the community experienced great kingly struggles against Fate and meddling gods... and so we learned our mortal plight and discovered our humanity.

...A far cry from today’s media landscape. With Fox pulling the plug on Sophocles’ development deal and Euripides creating content for mobile phones, can our communal entertainment - prime-time TV - provide any insight into the human condition? It can and does in today’s version of epic poetry: the moody montage... or “mood-tage,” as I like to call it.

I discovered the mood-tage one night when the remote got lost under a pile of laundry and I ended up watching an episode of Grey’s Anatomy with my wife.

After 53 minutes of fairly standard medical, romantic and career story arcs turning and twisting and spraining their ankles, a soulful chord rose up on the soundtrack and the action dissolved into a series of slow-motion embraces, meaningful glances, enigmatic cutaways to a clock, an empty apartment... a symphony of moments, if you will, all set to a brooding heavy-rotation pop tune.

And God said, “Let there be Meaning.” And there was Meaning. And God separated the poignant from the mundane and gave it a music bed. And suddenly these characters’ lives gained an undeniable sense of Importance.

And it hit me that maybe I’m just a mood-tage away from a meaningful existence. Maybe we all are.

So, next morning, I called my friend who owns a production company. The plan: film, edit and post-produce my ordinary suburban life into something transcendent.

It’s unsettling and yet exhilirating to be followed around by a film crew all day. Try it some time. And though I wondered, as I set up for my fourth take of ordering chili-cheese fries, whether this experiment was worth it, I think the results are not without merit.

Soundtrack: Snow Patrol/Chasing Cars

FADE IN: BEDROOM, EARLY MORNING
We’ll do it all...

CAT CLAWS A SLEEPING LUMP
Everything on our own...

SLO-MO: A USED COFFEE FILTER PLUMMETS INTO TRASH CAN
We don’t need anything or anyone.

CLOSE UP: PEANUT BUTTER SANDWICH WRAPPED IN FOIL... A JUICE BOX... A BAG OF MINI CARROTS
If I lay here....

SOFT FOCUS - MY DOG CHASING A SQUIRREL UP A PALM TREE, YANKING LEASH TAUT AS I HANG ON.
If I just lay here...

ME AT WORK DELETING SPAM
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

ME ON PHONE, DRINKING BOTTLED WATER
I don’t quite know...

ME AT OFFICE DEPOT, DECIDING BETWEEN REAMS OF PRINTER PAPER
How to say how I feel...

ME BACK AT WORK - A WEBSITE HAS CAUGHT MY ATTENTION
Those three words...

ME AT GAS STATION, SQUEEGEE-ING WINDSHIELD
are said too much...

SUBJECTIVE POV - COMING THROUGH FRONT DOOR, SON ON COUCH WATCHING TV, EATING CORN CHIPS
They’re not enough.

A KISS FROM MY WIFE.
If I lay here...

MACARONI AND CHEESE
If I just lay here...

MY DAUGHTER PUSHES HER MILK AWAY IN MOCK DISGUST
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

SLO-MO: THE DOG BOLTS THROUGH THE OPEN FRONT DOOR AFTER A CAT
Forget what we’re told...

COAXING THE DOG OUT OF THE NEIGHBOR’S BACKYARD
Before we get too old

DISSOLVE TO: LATER, DOG TAKING A DUMP IN NEIGHBOR’S DAY LILIES
Show me a garden that’s bursting into life.

WASHING DISHES
Let’s waste time... chasing cars around our heads.

DISHES DONE. WAIT, NO. THERE’S THE MACARONI AND CHEESE POT.
All that I am.

ENTERING DAUGHTER’S ROOM - SHE’S BOUNCING ON BED.
CUT TO: HER DESK - HOMEWORK UNDONE.
All that I ever was...

EXASPERATION, YELLING, TEARS. DOOR SLAM
Is here in your perfect eyes... They’re all I can see.

KIDS BRUSHING TEETH
I don’t know where...

WIFE IN BED WATCHING ANTIQUES ROAD SHOW
Confused about how as well...

ME ON COUCH EATING CORN CHIPS WATCHING SPORTS CENTER
Just know that these things will never change for us at all.

LATER: ME ON COUCH EATING CORN CHIPS WATCHING SPORTS CENTER
If I lay here...

DISSOLVE TO - NEW ANGLE: ME ON COUCH EATING CORN CHIPS WATCHING SPORTS CENTER
If I just lay here...

ME GETTING UP, CORN CHIP CRUMBS FALLING TO FLOOR, CLIMBING STAIRS...NOW IN PAJAMAS CLIMBING INTO BED... CAT CRAWLS UP ON TOP OF ME, KNEADS ME WITH CLAWS.
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

I feel realer already.

By Toby Muller