The Girl Who Came Out of the Ceiling
Thursday, August 26, 2021
In 1987, while I was in the final leg of working in the cutting room on the animated feature When the Wind Blows, my friend Reinout Goddyn challenged me to come up with an idea for a short film that he could produce and his sister would animate.
I told Reinout, absolutely, yes, I would love to do it – as long as I would not have to take on 
the editorial chores for the animated production. After a couple of years doing those duties professionally, I wanted to focus on more creative matters, and my short film Board Game had just earned me a little bit of acclaim.
So, we agreed. I went into my cave and came up with an idea inspired by a favorite LP: Pierre Boulez conducting the Cleveland National Orchestra in a Deutsche Grammophon recording of some Claude Debussy classics. What caught my attention was the B-side, Rhapsodie pour Clarinette et Orchestre – a haunting, impressionistic piece that lasted about eight and a half minutes – perfect for our needs.
I pitched the music as soundtrack to a peculiar science fiction fairytale about a lonely little blob, named Smith, who works in a giant machine city where a beautiful robotic Tea Girl 
descends from his factory ceiling to steal his heart.
Reinout invited me to a cabin in the Ardennes forest with his sister, Sylvia. He brought along a sign REALITY STOPS HERE and we spent four days, walking in the woods, throwing snowballs, eating good food, drinking whiskey, and writing.
We ended up with a ten-page script timed to maestro Debussy’s rhapsody. We hatched an odd, David Lynch-ian title, The Girl Who Came Out of the Ceiling, but it was a charming story and a magical creative experience.
I sent Reinout drawings. We couldn’t afford to license Pierre Boulez, so Reinout wrote to madame Debussy, seeking rights to make our own recording. Sadly, after a couple of early pencil tests, the scope of the production defeated us. The film was never made.
Decades later, I decided to dust off the manuscript as a writing sample, with a handful of our conceptual sketches below (best viewed with Debussy):
