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.