About My Cat

Don't mistake the quiet here as some sort of evidence that nothing is happening—far from it! We have (magically, thankfully, almost unbelievably) attained the services of an honest to goodness casting agency that has agreed to cast this little piece of work. The results of that incredible turn of fate are coming down the line shortly and you (all two of you out there in blog-reader land... Hi Dad!) will be the first to know what those results are.

I've secured a location. Ironically (by which I mean very deliberately) one of the scenes takes place in an office... and I work in an office! The beloved day job is allowing us access to film there. Big ups CB&S! Plus I found a coworker with production experience and she has agreed to help us. Whoop whoop, Karrie!

See it's all coming along nicely.

In the meantime I've been alive, doing stuff. I don't do much in the way of personal anecdotes here so, if you have a minute, I'll tell you a little about that stuff. It's not terribly interesting but I missed you guys so I just wanted to chat...

I've been listening to Pandora. It's place where music goes to be meticulously organized so that it may be delivered to the people in a precise, spot-on, and inordinately cool way. If you haven't checked it out yet, go now. All they want is an email address and so far, I've encountered no spam, just useful messages on how to improve and tweak a resource you never knew was indispensable. (Basically it works by having you pick "seed" songs or artists and they stream music to you that shares qualities with those choices.)

Currently, I'm listening to my "Writing Station". It's based on Peter Gabriel's soundtrack to The Last Temptation of Christ, and the music of God Speed You Black Emperor and Explosions in the Sky. No words. All songs are at least 7 minutes long. They go from soaring to grinding to quiet and back to flying. Listening to this, one is reminded of wheat fields as the wind blows through them, or burnt down, post-apocalyptic shopping malls with tiny shoots of green growing up through the rubble, or rain descending on deserted streets. This was the music I was listening to when I wrote the second half of the short. I think the music allowed the contemplation necessary to arrive at the specific ending we now have. Yum.

When I don't write movies (or commercials for grocery stores) I like to write stories. Did you know that one of my stories almost got into McSweeney's once? Print version too! No really! Yeah, we all know the relationship between almost, horseshoes, hand grenades, and everything else. Right now I'm brewing a story about scientists, disappearing birds, and faith/pride versus love. One of the characters is named Benito. Fun to say, yes? Ben-eee-toh.

We also rearranged the living room. This task involved a quick trip to Ikea (sometimes you want a square table to go next to the couch and you want it right now and it's 8pm on a Sunday and all the cute thrift shops have long since closed so you go to Ikea—surprise! I'm a freakin' American). But during this trip, our cat was locked inside the temporarily empty television cabinet. Poor Maude. When we got home she had to walk around the entire apartment and smell each and every thing in it. This little tale has little or no bearing on the world at large, but sometimes I wonder if I'm not misusing my Blog privileges by not relating minute, inconsequential details about my offspring and/or pets. So there you go. I talked about my cat.

That said, I must sign off. Triviality gives me hives. Thanks for stopping by.

Everybody Loves Samples!

If you look at the side bar (right hand side of yer computer screen), you'll see a link to the first eight pages of the script. I have posted it not only for your viewing and reading pleasure, but also so potential actors considering working with us will be able to get some sort of clue about what might be instore for them should they decide to join forces with our motley crew and fight with us the forces of evil.

It's a pdf file and if you are one of the last members of society to not have Adobe Reader, click here and get it for free and dance the dance of the modern era.

Thanks for taking a look. If you like it, feel free to comment. If you don't like it, remember that lying is okay if it makes someone feel good.

Eleven Pages of Wonder and Delight

I finished the script for the short. Here's a picture of it in a mini-blind-striated pool of light:


It has received director approval. Glorious songs from the heavens shine down upon us.

In death, a member of Project Mayhem has a name

And like that. The movie is dead. Or at least it's very cold and not moving when we poke it. So now I can tell you...its name was Archie Hotel. Or at least that's what we called it.

Over the weekend, the Company ventured out into the woods and attempted to film one of the simpler segments of the film. A man lost in the forest. We had a forest. We had a man. All that was left was pointing the camera and pushing the big red button... Ha. Let me restate that: Ha.

We didn't focus the camera properly. We acted tired in one shot and angry in another. We wore the wrong shirt. We planned for a three hour tour, but were stuck on the island for three years. And none of us was as forward thinking as the Howells.

So the movie died. We didn't realize it right away. We put sunglasses on it and carried it around for a while, Bernie Lomax style. Then it sunk in. Brandon noticed it first. Then, perhaps due to the fetid smell of the footage or the realization that the task at hand was as heavy and crushing as a cubic ton of burial dirt, I too saw how our film was no longer with us. We met with the rest of the Company, shared the bad news, and collectively pored over the autopsy report. Then we drank.

It's been a little while now. I'm getting used to its absence. I'll admit I wasn't ready to let it go, kept holding on to its hand asking it to please wake up, yelling at Brandon, telling him to stop lying to me. It wasn't dead, it just needed better organization, more effort, more love. I made lists and forms and schedules and promises, anything I could think of to revive it, anything to not to give up. But it was gone. It is gone. That which once rang so blue and clear in our hearts is now but a dull, raw hole in our chests.

However.

We are still alive. And we have ten freakin' thousand dollars' worth of camera and editing equipment. And we have you: friends and family and co-workers to whom we've made this silly declaration, this threat, this promise that four people dedicated to the idea of independently creating a diversionary narrative from pictures and sound can do so if they try. So we are trying.

I'm back at the studio. I'm writing a short that involves four locations, all of which we have access to, and four speaking parts. It will be smaller, more manageable. And I'll tell you all about it. Right here.

You may have noticed the "About me" description has changed. This here will still be about bringing Archie Hotel to life. That process is just taking a little longer than we first expected--it's not overnight that you learn how to make radios from coconuts.