I'm Not Arguing That With You

Slight Change in Plans...

2011-07-13T21:42:00.000-07:00

...not that we had plans to begin with. But.

We're going to live here:

It's an off-the-grid straw bale house. This is the view, twenty acres of which is part of the property:

The power is solar, the heat is propane and water comes from the sky and collects on the roof and flows into this cistern:

The person who is not me in the above picture is renting the place to us. She's from the English Midlands and I share that because Patrick asked. She's a certified clown, a published author, volunteer firefighter and has her own twenty acres just up the dirt road from us.

Also she's awesome, as evidenced here.

The property is about a mile from the town of Madrid (say MAD-rid), New Mexico. Coal miners, hippies, artists, bikers, a very awesome pub, a yummy restaurant, country western bands, tourists and, apparently, once a very odd amalgam of movie stars spent some time together there... Lots going on for a population of about 300.

Check it out over here.

We should be moved in by September. We may very well freeze in the winter and last, but oh so certainly not least we'll be using and one of these:

(I'm also not sure if we'll have internet access and I think my mobile phone works, but I'm not totally sure.)

Believe it!

Hesher Is God

2011-05-19T10:35:00.000-07:00

Not like "Clapton is God," but like Hesher is the embodiment of the actual guy-who-lives-in-the-clouds-and-does-or-doesn't-make-shit-happen.

He's indifferent. He doesn't protect or help you when you think He should. You even start to see that God's got his own problems. Sometimes He'll show you something cool, throw some inspiration your way, and that's nice. But eventually you learn to get along without Him.

And one day He gives you what you think you've always wanted, but of course, it's too late and too small and unusable.

Yet for all that, you're glad He exists, and thankful for everything He's ever done. Even hitting you with a van.

Ta-Dow.

2009-04-11T10:21:00.000-07:00

It's done.

One complete, fully edited, credited piece of cinema is ours. We've planned a screening party for two Saturdays from now and we've chosen the festivals we will enter.

Pretty frickin' cool.

And now... on to the next one!

Dave Foley is that guy from The Kids in the Hall

2009-03-20T14:07:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while. And there’s a reason for that. If, of course, you’re willing to accept my idiosyncratic neuroses as a reason.

See, the short is almost done. Done done. Not almost, kinda, but just needs one more thing done—it’s almost freaking COMPLETE and ready to be tossed out to the big bad world. Jeffrey is working his people-skills magic trying to secure us a location for the screening. And I’m working up the financial courage necessary to pay for entrant fees for the festival circuit. That kind of done.

So, I wanted my next post to be all Pomp and Circumstance, all fanfare and heraldry. But alas, the blessed day of completion has not yet arrived and the continuing blog silence is too much to bear (for me and two, possibly three, other people).

While we wait, let me impart here a lesson we learned the hard way. Always get sound. Even when the director says, It’s fine, we don’t need sound on this one. Tell him No. Refuse. Jump up and down. Mutiny if you must. He will thank you later. Also. On those takes when you think you’re getting sound, go ahead and give a little double check to the "microphone on" switch.

We failed both lessons a few times. Which means we had to foley some of the sound. In the video below, you'll see how we went about getting sound for a scene. Brandon and I went back to the office and, while watching a DVD of the movie on my laptop, recreated Jonathan’s movements. Movie magic!

PS: To anyone who got to this page looking for information on Dave Foley, I appologize. To make up for it, here's a fact about Dave Foley: He's the youngest member of The Kids in the Hall. That's a fact you'd learn if you looked at his trivia section on IMDb. So you should probably go there. And not here. But thanks for stopping by!

Another Log for the Fire

2009-02-26T16:34:00.001-08:00

Quick note: I just finished a screenplay for another short (not the next short, just another short -- soon the Company will have a big cache of scripts and we can sift through them and pick one out and film it at our leisure, with funding and golden fairy wings)

This one is a mystery! With dialogue! And action! Brandon reads it now. I await the judgement of a Director Directs, then, if they so desire, I will subject it to the scrutiny of the Company. Then one day we will perhaps film it and it will be subjected to the scrutiny of the world at large. And I realize, everyone just wants to be loved, including me.

Which reminds me, if you're reading this and want to "Follow This Blog," please do so. Just click on the little link to your right. It will make me feel loved. And like I just said, that's what everyone wants. Including me. Still.

And Then Here We Are

2009-02-21T12:01:00.000-08:00

This blog has been around for a year now. Happy anniversary.

When this started I was writing the screenplay for Archie Hotel. I finished it. Brandon and I fought like squirel versus weasel to come up with the final draft. Then the company began filming it. Then we realized a feature was too big and somewhere between July 8th and August 3rd we gave up on it.

Not 10 days after relating our defeat we had the script for a short. We casted it. Filmed it. Took pictures. By mid-October we were done with production.

And now we sit in post-production limbo as we wait for the final edit. A few days past we watched a rough cut. I'll tell you all now: it was good. Prepare yourselves.

Yes. Exactly. Yes.

2009-02-12T16:46:00.000-08:00

Sometimes someone says something you have always known but never put into words. Ted Hope said this at Hammer to Nail:

In terms of the filmmakers who create them, some films are challenges; some are proofs. In the Challenges, the filmmaker is hoping to discover things, hoping to learn things in the process. In a Proof Film, the filmmaker is showing the audience what she or he knows. With a Challenge, the audience is aligned with the movie, trying to discern whether the filmmaker will meet the challenge; whereas with a Proof, the audience is dictated to, watching something unfold according to a recognizable formula. A Challenge is involving, whereas a Proof is a passive experience for the audience. Ambition is to go to places you have never gone before with the hope that you will discover something positive in the process—a challenge and not a proof.

Read more.

Here's to challenges.

Dialogue

2009-02-07T09:44:00.000-08:00

My posts are long. And far between. So here's a quick thought on dialogue, the 2x4 of the screenwriter's trade.

I wrote a play once. Back in junior college when I wanted to be Eugene O'Neill. I sent it off to Jeffrey and received back one of the only pieces of literary advice for which I have ever had much use. This was a two-man, one-act ditty about a hit man, his mark, and the inevitable change of heart, all set in the junior college romance of a Vegas all-night buffet. Jeffrey said, "Both these guys sound like you." It was true. And that fact has become one of the guiding principles of my screenwriting.

Now this is not to say that you can't have a successful work wherein the characters all sound the same, far from it. But a 60 year old retiree and the 30 something punk who has been sent to off him should not sound like a middle class 19 year-old chick from California.

How, then, do you make ten characters have their own voice, and not sound like you? Personally, I cheat. Syd Field says, "Dialogue is a function of character. If you know your character, your dialogue should flow easily in line with the unfolding of your story." Now that would be wonderful. But knowing the ins and outs of a character and knowing how those ins and outs influence the way they construct sentences is a whole new world of "Knowing".

I say, why go to all that trouble when the world around you is already filled with people who talk in a way that is wholly unique, wholly their own?

So, the main character in Fine Arts? A guy I had a crush on in high school. His coworker in that script? A current coworker of mine.

And in the new script I'm writing, the love interest talks like my ex-boyfriend. The protagonist takes word right out of the mouth of one of my best high school girlfriends. Fun fact: I sometimes futz with the names of the characters to give a little homage to the source material.

Now this is not to say that the characters ARE the people I'm referencing. They most certainly are not. I'm just borrowing the way people I have known talk, as a tool to get out of my own head, out of my own way of saying things and constructing thoughts.

Damn. That wasn't a very short post, was it? I blame god.

Sucking Blood Without Sucking Ass

2009-01-16T16:34:00.001-08:00

I saw the best vampire movie ever last night. Although I'm a big fan of the Vampire in all its cinematic manifestations, Vampire Movies have always been categorized in the “Guilty Pleasures” section of my film appreciation catalogue. I’ve seen every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in chronological order, not once, but twice. I enjoy repeated viewings of Underworld. I’m even contemplating seeing Twilight, despite the fact that every shred of reason in my movie-loving brain revolts at the thought.

But last night, Let the Right One In went ahead and let me put an honest to snot Vampire Movie in my “Good Cinema” section. It was beautiful and cold and quiet and satisfying and romantic and wonderful. And it was about vampires.

Aside from the exquisite use of silence and sound, the beautifully composed scenes, spot-on character development, and heart-wrenchingly perfect relationship development--you know, all the stuff that went into making it a good movie--this film did something that the Vampire Genre has been sorely wanting for years now: it treated vampires like vampires.

The vampire myth is old, old, old. And with anything that’s been around so long, that’s been re-imagined in so many novels and films and TV shows, there’s going to be a bit of variation in the lore. Some vampires have to sleep in coffins, some don’t. Some are harmed by crucifixes, some are “quite fond” of looking at them. Sunlight is a generally agreed bad thing for the undead, though the degree of adverse effects seems to vary. But one fact that's consistent, or else you just aren’t dealing with vampires at all: Vampires drink blood. This should, then, result in human death.

But just look at all the pussyfied ways the purveyors of vampires on screen go about getting around this messy fact so as to make the Vampires more "sympathetic" or some crap. In Buffy, Angel, and later Spike--the Vampires with Hearts of Gold--drink blood from the butcher shop. The "good" vampires in Twilight are known as “vegetarian” vampires, feeding off animals, not humans. In Underworld they drink synthetic blood.

Come on.

First off, vampires are not people, they are a myth. One we created for myriad reasons--to fablize death, to exemplify man's exploitation of man, to scare ourselves, to entertain. They are human-like, but not human. They occupy a position both above and below man. Vampires are immortal, they get to see in the dark and have superhuman strength and can climb buildings and can sometimes change into bats, but they are also monsters, doomed to feed off humanity. Finding convenient, "inoffensive" ways of dealing with this "problem" does a disservice to the genre specifically, and to storytelling in general. It's like eating just the middle part of the brie. Sure it's yummy and creamy and easy to take, but without that rind, you don't get all the complexity of flavor, the bitterness with the smoothness, and you're just cheating yourself.

Let the Right One In took the Vampire Genre and used it to a most spectacular advantage. In the cold nether regions of Sweden, everything and everyone is insulated, metaphorically as well as physically. The camera even keeps its distance, never giving us a clear image of who we're looking at until a young boy, one who is rarely interacted with except as the punchline to a bully's torment, meets a young vampire. Then the camera is all up in there, intrusively close to the young couple's faces. So close that we see every nonexistent pore of the young boy's paleness and youth, and see the flecks of color in the young girl's very dark and very old eyes.

The relationship they form becomes furiously close, but because she is a vampire, there is necessarily some unpleasantness. In one scene, a working class man embraces his friend at the end of a pleasant evening as both men prepare to head their respective ways home. They tell one another how lovely it is to be friends, and how they look forward to seeing one another again. They part. The working class man goes one way, his friend another. The friend turns and walks beneath a bridge and the vampire girl eats him. Later, she eats the girlfriend of that newly bereaved working class man, and when the working class man comes to rightfully seek revenge and slay the vampire girl, the young pale boy intervenes, thereby sealing the fate of the working class man, and cementing his devotion to this violent, murderous girl. And that's love.

In another display of strength, this movie also doesn't shy away from the problem of immortality. It shows it straight on, in all its sad, unfortunate glory. And consequently creates one of the most fully realized love stories I've seen in years. The boy and girl are both 12, but she has been 12 for a very long time. And will continue to be 12 long after the boy is dead. We're shown just what this will mean for them. At the beginning of the film, the vampire girl arrives in town with an old man. What we assume to be her father turns out to be a servant of sorts, going out into the cold and trying to bring her back blood. Slowly we realize he is in love with this girl, and as his age renders him useless, as he sees the girl necessarily begin to move on to the young, pale boy, the old man offers the ultimate sacrifice to her. And she moves on. In this, the film shows us simultaneously the beginning and the end of a budding relationship.

In every relationship there is self-sacrifice and loss off self. There is heartbreak. And ultimately, the relationship will not last. This is truth. Fairy tales be damned because no story is happy if you follow it long enough. But we run around falling in love anyway. And fairy tales be praised because that's why we're here. To ruin ourselves and mess up and get hurt, but not before loving. Not before love.

Let the Right One In was able to do so much more, show so much more than any genre-less picture. It made love all the more real by showing the terrible things we're willing to do for it. It made love all the more lovely by showing the inevitable end of every romance. It was able to do all this so well and so effectively because it used the Vampire Myth properly. There's just not as much life in synthetic blood.

You and Me: Let's make a resolution!

2008-12-28T12:49:00.000-08:00

The end of the year brings year-end lists. And as you might guess, the ones I'm interested in are critic's lists of the best movies of 2008. But there's a problem out there in critic land. As newspapers fold and merge and the printed word goes the way of the abacus, good thoughtful movie critics are losing their jobs. Many of them are finding nice homes online, but the problem still remains, there are fewer and fewer men and women doing the good work of finding cinematic treasures that we'd otherwise never hear about.

Face it. The marketing campaign for most movies outweighs the entire budget for other (often better) films. Without critics, we might see Beverly Hills Chihuahua and The Dark Knight and think we've covered the spectrum of what's out there - and we would be very very wrong. So we support these pontificating film connoisseurs, learn from them and see for ourselves what we think. Many of these critics are damn fine writers and all of them have a passion for film that is unmistakable in their prose, even when that prose is lacerating a recent offering.

The food critic Anton Ego says in Ratatouille (a film you didn't need a film critic to make you aware of, but may have needed to tell you it was worth your time):

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends...

I am not a critic. I want to be on the other side. Perhaps one day, one of the critics whose opinions I value might see one of my films and rip it a new one. And I'll consider it an honor. Looking to these men and women for advice as they sift through this overwhelming landscape of media, I feel damn lucky that there are still people who care about good, solid, challenging, flickering beauty and are willing to write about it.

So, if you'd like, take a gander at what the critics say:

Andrew O'Hehir
Roger Ebert
Glenn Kenny
A.O. Scott
Matt Singer
And here's an interesting list of top 10 cities in which to make movies. (Current hometown Portland is number 8. Former hometown Los Angeles didn't make the list.)

Okay, now that you've read about some movies that might interest you, here's the resolution: See them.

Poke your head out of your whack-a-mole hole and you'll hear it: Things are bad. Economy swirling the drain. Stock market taking a big poo. Joblessness. Et cetera and so forth.

So why am I lobbying for you to periodically shell out an extra 8 to 14 bucks (double that if you take a friend) from your hard earned, and possibly shrinking, supply of cash? Now, of all times?

Call it a personal favor. But one that will ultimately benefit you. And your brain and heart. In bad times movies are a catharsis, in good times they are a complement to joy. They make us think and feel. They are art. And what, I ask, is the point of us, of humans walking around eating and talking, if not to make something grander than ourselves, to communicate and be communicated to in the thoughtful language of beauty and sorrow and joy?

And for god sakes, if people stop seeing movies, what the hell am I gonna do with my life? Seriously.

Even the most delicious tomato was grown in poo

2008-12-20T11:03:00.000-08:00

I asked Brandon how the editing is coming along. He said, "Good." So there you have it, you're all up to date.

In the continuing meanwhile, here are a few more goings on: the screenplay (that will not feature bad guys) is coming along. Characters have been sketched, relationships mapped out, scenarios developed, and two whole pages written. Whoop-dee-doo.

This screenplay, however, will not be the next short the Company is to film. Next on the docket: an Ariana-helmed documentary. And not just any documentary, a documentary about the pursuit of a possibly mythical, but irrefutably fascinating beast. I'll add only that this particular beast is partial to our forested backdrops here in the Northwest, and say no more so as to not spoil the fun.

Jeffrey is also writing a narrative. It involves a coffee shop.

As you can see, the Company is busy making this whole filmmaking fantasy a plausible reality. You may wonder, where did this whole business begin? Well, since you're wondering...

It started with a Christmas present for our families. We wrote, acted in, and edited together a fifteen minute Noir. For reasons of copyright (we used music that didn't belong to us) and artistic integrity (we acted), this particular production will never be posted for any sort of public viewing. If you happen to know a member of one of our four families, ask them to arrange a screening for you. Barring that, just know that our little project turned out about 87 degrees more awesome than we'd expected, and we saw that our love of watching movies could become a love of making them.

Of course there were all sorts of technical things to consider. Editing? How the hell do you do that? So I decided to try something out. Film a scene from a movie, edit it on Apple's magnanimously free iMovie, and convert it to a Quicktime movie file. What resulted is not good, but functional. It helped convince us that it was possible to film things. Recently, Jeffrey (the one member of the Company who turned out to posess acting skills) posted his fantastic and infamous crying scene from our ill-fated attempt at filming the Feature. So I thought I'd post this seminal snippet. Also my grandfather lives in Vietnam and has asked for a recent picture. Hi Ted!

Please note: I do not generally do not wear tights on my head; at the time (mid 2007), the Flight of the Conchords reference in the credits was current; and at all times, in all worlds, in all cultures, and to all humans Deep Forest's Sweet Lullaby is a fantastic and awesome and super great song.

No Such Animal

2008-12-10T16:04:00.000-08:00

I’m writing my second screenplay for our Shorts Series. As I mentioned to the Company this weekend, as atonement for the sins of my last script (the internal, pensive, self-reflective slowness of it), I want to write something full of vim and vigor, movement and action and intrigue and all that. A mystery! A thriller! The problem? I don’t believe in bad people. Huh? Yeah, I don’t. People do bad things, but I have a hard time believing there are such things as “bad guys”.

And unfortunately, bad guys are one of the easiest ways to engineer conflict. To make a story that follows a character from desire to the thwarting of the desire to the overcoming of the thwarting to the ultimate attainment of the desire, the easiest method is to stick a bad guy in there. Calvera, Lars Thorwald, The Wicked Queen. From wonderful movies, all of them, and I’m not saying that the respective writers took the “easy” way to writing their stories. I’m just saying that it’s taking me a long goddamned time to come up with mine.

So if I don’t believe in bad guys, I’m tasked with the problem of figuring out why people do bad things. When I was sketching out the antagonist, I came up with four scenarios. I thought they were interesting enough to share. Thoughts?:

1. Anonymity fosters antisocial behavior. See: comments on any Internet site. Good luck reading more than five without someone calling someone else a cock sucking idiot. Something I have to hope they’d not do if they were having the same debate over Heath Ledger’s Joker performance face-to-face. See also: flipping the bird while driving.

2. Authority has the ability to supplant individual responsibility. See the electric shock experiment. See also: war.

3. Public opinion supersedes personal morality. See: American Slavery. See also: Nazi Germany.

4. Fear and self preservation.

Not an exhaustive list, but it’s a start. And that’s what we have to do: Start.

The place where henceforth I'll do it to it.

2008-11-25T17:40:00.000-08:00

I had a writing studio for 10 months. And now it’s gone.

It was strange, the space came to me at a time when I felt I needed it. I was having trouble writing while surrounded by all the distractions of home: the Internet, a fridge full of food, boyfriend, soft comfy bed, etc. Having the space allowed me to write two screenplays and a smattering of other stuff, so it worked.

Lately I’d been going less and less, feeling guilty for not using it… feeling extra guilty for not using it and paying for it.

So it’s gone. I still have to write. But now I don’t have to trek across the river to do it. I’ll do it right here. There will be more distractions, no doubt. But that’s just the way it is. The hamster in my head gets angry when I don't write. Makes me feel fat and useless and slobbering, dirty almost, when I don’t write. When I do, it seems like it’s okay that I take up space, ingesting and excreting, daily polluting this world with my big American-sized carbon footprint.

So there it is, my new space, wedged in the corner of the bedroom. Wish us luck.

Nameless Blogger Passing Holy Judgement (with thanks to Mary Shelley)

2008-11-16T09:43:00.000-08:00

You might remember what happened the last time the Company tried to catch some Film Festival Fun up here in the great Northwest. Well, this time we bought our tickets early and showed up with oodles of time to spare and see a part of a film festival we sure as heckfire did.

In particular we saw "Shorts II: the Judges Selection," part of the NW Film Center's 35th Northwest Film and Video Festival. It featured nine shorts produced by people living in Portland, Seattle, or Vancouver BC. The judge who did the selecting is a New York director who used Oregon as the setting of her two films. I haven't seen either, but now would like to, if only to look for tendencies or artistic impulses within them that in some way mirror the tendencies or artistic impulses that informed her selection process.

If they were anything, the selections were eclectic. Now I'm not in the business of critiquing fellow filmmakers. I can't say that I was overly delighted with each and every one of the selections. Some I didn't like all that much, though in at least one film, that was the point. I can say that I'm glad we went, if only to see what else is out there, to see what other people are choosing to do with cameras in these northern lands of no sun and so much rain.

The night started out with Smile by Julia Kwan, a film about a Chinese-Canadian family getting ready for their free Sears portrait. It was a subtle character-driven piece about disconnection and other family joys. I thought it worked. Laugh, cry, all that. Of course, I'm a sucker for subtle, character-driven narratives. When you see Fine Arts that fact will no doubt be wholly and perhaps excruciatingly evident.

Smile was one of only two narrative films selected and the only narrative with dialogue. The other nod to story on film came towards the end of the evening, in a piece called The Rifle Workbook by Vincent Caldoni. Set in a nebulous late-nineteenth century Appalachia-esque time and place, it tells the story of towns folk who meet an angel figure in a forest and, after offering up tokens and personal effects, they receive in exchange a lost member of their community. It was a simple story, nicely shot with cool oldey timey film effects. It is also further evidence supporting my position that you can add emotional impact to anything with a soundtrack of either Philip Glass, Godspeed, or, in this case, Explosions in the Sky. No, believe me, it's true. While testing the camera, Brandon filmed me washing the dishes. He edited a two minute bit together with music from The Truman Show and profundity ensued. Try it, you'll see.

Another highlight of the evening was a dance number filmed in Prague called Aboard the Pater Noster by Daniel Conrad. Aboard the Pater Noster translates to "aboard Our Father." In the Q&A following the screenings, Daniel explained that the Pater Noster is the name of the strange (and a little dangerous looking) elevator device that he used in the piece, basically a series of phone booth-sized wooden boxes that are strung along a vertical conveyor mechanism, like beads on a rosary. The short begins with the dancers doing slow, confined movements inside the elevator boxes. This segment goes on long enough to border on tedium, which makes the subsequent explosions of movement and music--on buses, on the streets of Prague, in old museum-like hallways--seem fully alive and unrestrained. Awesome. Beautiful to watch. Made me wish I were more bendy and rhythmically endowed.

The other selections ranged from documentary to performance art to art pieces--all with varying degrees of success. One piece actually elicited a boo from some Podunk audience member. Another made more than one member of the Company physically ill. And of course the warmest applause of the evening was reserved for the tell-it-like-it-is noble homeless guy doc.

In all, I'm glad we went. Sometimes you have to be reminded that it's not just you out there using your strength and will to force something into existence that is bigger and hopefully a little better than its constituent Frankenstein parts. And who knows? Maybe in a year or two from now, some nameless, opinionated blogger will be passing holy judgement on just such a monster offered up by this humble Company. How awesome would that be? Snarky as that future demi-pundit may be, t'would be a blessing that our poor creature was alive enough to be commented upon, before being borne away by the waves, and lost in darkness and distance...

Good Films to Comfort Us in Our Waiting

2008-11-02T12:06:00.000-08:00

Brandon edits. We wait.

There's a fifteen second scene with Sam at the window that has this beautiful angle of sunlight in it. It's a great shot. One of the best. Unfortunately it also has about a hundred pieces of dust that light up like Christmas when the sun hits them. Brandon has to go through each frame and erase each piece of dust with After Effects. It has to be done one piece of dust at a time. Take the first piece of dust, erase it from frame one. Go to frame two. Erase that piece of dust from frame two. Go to frame three, etc. Until the end of the scene. Then go back to frame one and start the process all over on the second piece of dust.

To put it in numbers: 15 seconds of footage at 24 frames per second with approximately 150 pieces of dust equals around 54,000 instances of erasing. Poor Brandon. Luckily he recently acquired something to give him solace when his eyeballs are about to explode.

While we wait for that, we can turn our sights to Other Movies. For the first time in a long time, there are movies coming out that actually look interesting, to me at least. Because of the remnant producer-y tendencies that prance about my mind, I've categorized them. They break down nicely into five general groups: Obvious, Hopefully Beyond Mumblecore, French, Guilty Pleasures, and Runners Up.

OBVIOUS Films made by people I already know I love (or at least like):

Doubt December 12 limited, December 25 wide.
The writer of two of my favorite movies of all time, John Patrick Shanley, wrote the stage play Doubt that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He's now adapted it for the screen and directed the film of the same name starring Meryl Streep, PSH, and Amy Adams. Nuns, Priests, accusations. Top of my list.

Synechdoche, NY Out now in the big cities, hopefully out soon elsewhere.
Charlie Kaufman directs! We liked all that other stuff he did, right? Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine, hey, even sorta kinda Human Nature. This is another opportunity for Philip Seymour Hoffman to show off his acting skills. Watching the trailer for this movie, I'm reminded of a conversation I was having at a wine and cheese thing where this Film Major was saying how there are a few great active male actors out there (PSH being primary among them) but not so many female thespians working their stuff these days. It was one of those situations where you want to scoff, not dignifying such drivelling inaccuracies with a response, but instead are forced into the melee, throwing every piece of evidence you can think of into battle. Grrr. Interestingly enough, an unusually large number of the names I threw at him appear in this film: Dianne Wiest, Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener, Emily Watson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Hope Davis. Also Michelle Williams, and I don't know yet if she's one of the good ones, but could be.

Rachel Getting Married, Out now. Even in Portland.
Jonathan Demme getting back to his roots, or something like that. It's getting good reviews. That says something, but I don't always know what. Sometimes after seeing one of those everybody-loves-it movies, I think the rest of the world saw a different film than I did. This one seems like it could be a well done, straightforward, humanist family dramedy thing. When done well, stuff like that is why we watch movies.

HOPEFULLY BEYOND MUMBLECORE Three films made for very small amounts of money that promise to move beyond "Um, I don't know, y'know":

Good Dick, Out now in the big bads, might not make it beyond that.
Indie love story set in LA. Andrew sums the premise for us thusly, "She's a ferociously bitter loner who spends her evenings jerking off (if that's the right word for, you know, a woman) to bad softcore porn flicks, and he's the semi-homeless video-store clerk who rents her the movies." Hilarity ensues.

Momma's Man This one probably won't make it to a screen up here to the Big Rainy.
Son of uber artsy filmmaker and artist writes and directs this weirdly autobiographical narrative about a son who goes to visit his uber artsy filmmaker and artist parents in their curiously hermetic and museum-like New York apartment, and refuses to leave. The parents are played by the director's real parents and it takes place in their actual apartment. Another guy plays the son. Andrew interviews him here.

Pleasure of Being Robbed No screens, apart from a brief, already over stint in NY.
Features a main character you're not supposed to like. About a young woman who wanders New York being a clepto. Fun. Here's Mr. O'Hehir's take.

FRENCH Trois films en francais:

A Christmas Tale Came out in May in France, Limited release November 14th
This is the same director who did Kings and Queen, a film the Company watched and one that elicited very mixed reviews. Jeffrey and Ariana were not impressed. Brandon liked it. I hated it, couldn't stop thinking about it for two days, then realized I loved it. This film also shares some of the same actors with Kings and Queen, including Mathieu Amalric, the very attractive actor who is extreemly adept at playing worriyingly unstable men.

I've Loved You So Long Out now in NY. No plans for Puddletown.
Heartbreaking, heart wrenching, tear-filled, emotional encounters between two fantastic actresses. In French!

The Class Limited release December 25th.
An inner-city Parisian high school teacher wrote this film about his experiences. He stars as the teacher and his actual former students play fictional high school student characters they developed themselves.

GUILTY PLEASURES Movie connoisseurism is like maintaining a well-balanced diet and sometimes you just have to eat candy bars.

JCVD Limited release November 7th.
Yup. Jean-Claude plays himself as a washed up action star. Very meta.

Twilight Freakin' everywhere November 11th.
I was first awakened to the already widespread phenomenon that is the Twilight Series when I was asked to write an In-Store Audio (Yup, those annoying garbles of words you hear above you while you're trying to buy groceries are written by a person. And that person is sometimes me) to announce the release of the fourth instalment in the series. While researching what to write in the ISA script, I found the author's website and became fascinated, not only because she writes about vampires, which I love so much, but because she's a Mormon housewife who writes wildly bestselling young adult novels about vampires. I read a few chapters. Plain, easily digestible, action-driven pulp about hot teenagers. I'm totally on board. Brandon refuses to see this movie with me. Anyone interested?

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans Spreading awesomeness everywhere January 23rd.
Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes.

RUNNERS UP They look good. No cartwheels, maybe a jumping jack or two.

Sunshine Cleaning Coming March 13th
From the people who did Little Miss Sunshine. Apparently they like the word Sunshine.

Milk In theaters November 26th
Gus Van Sant, Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, Gay rights.

Fears of the Dark In NY now. Don't know if this will make it to wider release.
Comic artists make scary stories on film. Neat.

Okay. Perhaps the longest post in the history of this blog. Hopefully you're excited as I am to know that not every movie that comes out these days sucks ass. Although you'll notice from the release information I was able to find that not a lot of these will be coming to a theater near you. That's why there's DVD. But want to see High School Musical 3? Or Max Payne? Throw a rock and you'll hit a movie palace playing such dreck, no problem. And do us a favor, throw it hard.

And now I need to take a shower.

Yay film!

Action! Packed!

2008-10-11T09:23:00.000-07:00

Below you will find more pictures, courtesy of Chris and Karrie, for your viewing pleasure.

But first, I must tell you that we're just about to wrap principal photography on the production of the short film tentatively titled Fine Arts. Just have Rollie, our musician, to film on Sunday and then... and then... we're done!

With that part.

Then we enter the month- to two month-long session of Brandon at the computer tweaking and nudging and cutting and splicing. Every once in a while I'll hear him say, "Shit!" And I'll say, "What?" And he won't say anything, so I'll say, "What?" again, now convinced that the computer has eaten/erased/vaporized the original footage, plus all copies of it, as well as sent a virus to the camera, and also there's a terminal bug in the software for which we paid over a thousand dollars.

And then after an interminable silence, he'll look up, notice me standing there wide-eyed and sweating, and he'll say, "Huh? Oh nothing." And my heart rate will return to normal and I'll go back to writing for a half hour or so until I hear, "Fuck! What the? Oh come on!" And the scenario begins anew.

But first... pictures!!!

These come both from that first Saturday at the Studio and the following Saturday at the Clinton St. Pub.

Super Woman Production Assistant Karrie holding the thunder stick:

Check out the ready-made ad for Clinton St. featuring the back of Phillip's head:

Here I am looking like I know what I'm doing with the thunder stick:

Here's Jeffrey looking like he knows what he's doing with the camera.

Here, perhaps not:

Half of the Company (the Artistic half), Ariana and Jeffrey:

I'm actually just talking about what I had for lunch yesterday. But it looks like I'm saying something important, yes? Though my favorite part of this image is Jeffrey's expression.

Well there it is, another photographic tour of movie making history (microcosmic).

Stay tuned for more...stuff.

Happy Saturday!

Pretty Pictures of Pretty Men

2008-10-08T17:17:00.001-07:00

Chris, the photographer boyfriend of Production Assistant Karrie, took some awesome photos of our first Saturday at the studio. Here are a few that highlight the Men of this production:

Cinematographer Jeffrey

Contemplative Background Jeffrey

Star Jon Ashley Hall

Director Brandon

Oh, don't worry. I've got more. Just you sit tight.

Two Days of Grueling Euphoria

2008-09-25T10:57:00.000-07:00

‘the hell? This is the most interesting part of the process—the MAKING part—and where is the update?

Here it is:

I’ll make no excuses for the delay… Yes, producing is a draining, tiring process, and yes, I also work my forty hours a week, plus I belong to a volleyball league, and a book group. But, honestly, I’ve still had time enough to throw a little update to the people. Something else has been occupying my thoughts and time. I’m not proud. But it could be worse.

So. Last weekend. We started by putting our star in the bathtub. Throughout the weekend, Brandon had Jonathan do a whole slew of strange and extra things not in the script. He came up with one particular series of actions for the first Studio scene. All strung together, it was about a straight 5 minutes of action. These weren’t things in the script, Jonathan was told what to do once, ran through it with Brandon once, then we started rolling. And Jonathan nailed it. We did a series of these very long takes and he made them funny and interesting and sad and cool all at the same time.

One thing about these epic takes: someone has to hold the camera. We don’t have time for tripods so our living, breathing cameraman has to hold a not unheavy camera in an awkward position and not move for a very long time. Even though his nose may itch and his leg may ache and his hand muscles start to rebel. I was getting tired and antsy just being still enough to not make noise while rolling, then I looked at Jeffrey, doubled over, motionlessly holding the camera through the entire take and my fidgetiness felt petty. And standing next to him, Karrie held that boom aloft with the same degree of stoic immobility. To say it was impressive is to say the Meteor Crater is a divot in Arizona.

Also, we were lucky enough to get a real live photographer to take production stills on Saturday. I’ll share some with you as soon as Chris uploads them.

On Sunday, we descended upon the offices of CB&S, set up shop in the conference room and shot Jonathan and Ladawn’s scenes. Ladawn was priceless. She came up with little improvisations and tweaks on her delivery that just killed. We have so many good shots of their two brief interactions that we want to use them all…

Around one, pizza came and Jeffrey and I ate cheese, which later proved unpleasant to our internal processes… Corey arrived and didn’t bat an eye when Brandon told him his first scene would now take place in a bathroom. He added a specific something to one scene that I can’t tell you about because, if it makes the final cut, I want you to experience it with no forewarning.

Then Jeffrey contorted himself into new and unnatural positions to capture more of those long wonderful shots that Jonathan again pulled off flawlessly. In one particular shot, Brandon helmed the camera, while Jeffrey and I checked the monitor for focus. And yes. It was the one shot out of focus. Aside from that, we only had one other flaw. One scene of dialogue was too quiet from one end. We may have to do a little ADR. That's okay, it'll make us feel fancier.

By the end of the weekend, we were tired, we were spent, we were sore. And now, I want nothing more than to do it again. And again. And again until I expire.

I’m putting together the next script in my head. I’m thinking… more bathroom scenes.

Before

2008-09-16T09:36:00.000-07:00

Here it is... the day of the first cast and crew meeting. I've taken a vacation day from work to prepare. Ariana is coming around noon with things to cook.

At 6:30 tonight, nine people will gather in this room to read the script, discuss the project, sign the contracts, and eat the food.

But first I must do the dishes and clean the cat box. Well then, shall we...

Ladies and gentlemen, we have been casted.

2008-09-05T15:25:00.001-07:00

Please remain seated and make no sudden movements...

Danny Stoltz Casting Agency is cooler than the underside of a satin pillow. And Sally at Danny Stoltz casting is like a crazy wizard of spectacularity. She auditioned a bevy of fantastic talent for us and if ever I have felt in awe of what a person can do at their respective beloved day job, it is now. So we have a Rita. And our Laura. Mr. Eriksson is on board. And Sam. Our Sam is walking and talking.

I watched the audition videos in Kate’s cube at the beloved day job. I noted how different people said different lines, the way they paused here and sped up there, the size of their smile, the movement of their eyebrows, the narrowing of nostrils… Then something hit me.

No, not literally.

Ever see that episode of Quantum Leap where Sam Beckett leaps into the body of a concert pianist? In the middle of a concert? He looks out at the packed audience, the eager, open faces. He turns back to the piano. Sam Beckett is not a concert pianist. Oh boy. He pauses. It’s a long pause. Then he plays “Chopsticks” and walks off the stage. The audience goes wild at this fantastically wry ending to a wonderful performance.

That’s how I suddenly felt. People were taking me seriously. Reading the words I wrote. Giving these characters the same validity as a Charles Foster Kane, or even a Cosmo Castorini. It was like I, some hack off the street, had jumped into the body of a Film Producer, and no one knew! They’d fallen for my Chopstick script!

Then another thing hit me. The words they were saying…they were kinda good. Hearing the lines of dialogue spoken aloud by people who’d put some thought into them had made them come alive. And that’s the point of this whole endeavor. Breathe life into an idea. Make something where previously there was nothing. I took off my self-deprecating screenwriter pants and looked objectively at the words with a pants-less Producer gaze and I saw that they were good words.

And we haven’t even talked about the actors themselves. It was weird. Among the those who auditioned, there were four that just became the characters. A man named Corey delivered Mr. Eriksson’s lines with just the right amount of assurance and familiarity, his character toed the line between corporate suit and a likable human. He was our first definite.

Then there was Rita. Brandon knew just from the still shot who to pick. I had no idea until I saw the tape where this young lady named Ladawn brought humor and warmth and just the right amount of awkwardness to the role. Per-fucking-fection.

Laura came to us in the lovely form of Genevieve. Laura is a tough character to pull off. She really just has one scene with dialogue, wherein a complete stranger starts talking nonsense to her in front of her place of business. She’s halfway weirded out and halfway intrigued. She’s not meek, she’s not overly intense. She’s subtle. And Genevieve nailed it.

Finally there was Sam. This one is hard. This is our main character. With out Sam, we have nothing. Anyone wanting to watch this final project is gonna have to stare at this guy’s mug the entire duration of the film. He is our backbone. Our movie is an unformed puddle of flesh without him. He had to be right. The gentleman we picked has a face you can stare into. Just the right mix of handsome and interesting. His voice has that gravity you want in an aloof poet. Plus there was this… something. Sometimes you just know when a thing is a thing. And Jonathan is our thing.

Now begins the process of giving myself an ulcer trying to coordinate these people and our crew and the locations and the food and the equipment and all the other crap I haven’t thought of but will become desperately necessary at a moment's notice and, whoa, I’m getting light headed so tonight, I am going to drink and begin all that jazz tomorrow. And you better get ready, Mr. Tomorrow. I’ve got chopsticks.

Also too: Kate has offered to provide our desserts. She has a new Monster Machine Stand Mixer and I’ve had her baking before and let me tell you, if this thing all goes to hell, at least we will have something sweet and tasty to cram in our sobbing, slobbering mouths.

About My Cat

2008-08-25T17:26:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-08-13T10:16:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-10T11:54:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-03T09:44:00.000-07:00

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.

Locations, LLCs, and Love

2008-07-08T17:37:00.000-07:00

The motherboard has arrived from the motherboard fixers. The mighty computer will be back online in a jiff.

While we whittled away the whiles waiting for that wonky whatnot, we’ve been working!!

In what way?

Well. It seems the yokel who wrote this thing decided our narrative should take place in not one or two, but FIVE distinct, commercially owned locations. Two bars, a flower shop, a café, and a hotel. Good job, yokel.

The bars aren’t a problem. We drink enough to have developed strong, alcohol-laden friendships in local establishments. And yes, Phil, I’m holding you to your whiskey-coke promises.

But that still leaves us to find a café, flower shop, and hotel that would be cool with the headache of an inexperienced, no-budget production company coming in and mucking up their junk. But you get nothing if you don’t try so we drove around on Saturday, pointed our wishful fingers and said, “There. That is where we want to shoot our film.” We wrote down the addresses on pieces of paper and took pictures and found our dream locations. So, blessed readers, any of you have friends here, here, or here?

UPDATE: An awesome co-worker at the beloved day job has an in at the Ace! He’s gonna pass on the good word. Things like this happen and you think god must be a movie buff.

We’ve also legitimized ourselves. The screenplay has been officially submitted to the United States Copyright Office. We can now freely pass out copies of the script like enticing candy that lures children into white vans.

And the wheels have begun to roll on the LLC wagon. Ariana, Jeffrey, Brandon, and I are soon to be the Organizers and Managers of Such a Pretty Garden, LLC.

We’re getting there. Sometimes this endeavor feels like looking into a big pile of string that you’re convinced is your job to unravel and you’re poking around looking for the end of the string and soon, you realize you’re bound up in string, no closer to finding either end and now all of the sudden you have to pee.

To come…a list of things we need and how you can help!

(SPOILER: You will be able to help by giving us the things we need.)

Technicalities

2008-07-07T16:43:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I mess things up. I was trying to get the "comments" link to work properly on this here blog (comments weren't registering, even though they were there) and I became frustrated so I began pushing buttons. Apparently they were the wrong buttons. Some of the wonderful and very, very welcome comments were apparently deleted because now, I can not find them. Some comments are still here. But some have gone away.

If any of the lost comments were yours, please know that I am seriously sorry for my techo-retardation. Please please re-post! Comment long, hard and often!

It helps me to know that I'm not writing into a vortex, dancing with myself, or falling in a forest when no one's around.

The yeasty smell of the dead

2008-06-19T16:54:00.001-07:00

Things go wrong. Even when you want nothing more than for them to go right… When this happens, do you breathe deeply and evenly, trying to get your soul and heart to flow with the capricious randomness of the world around you? Do you curse the heavens and grit your teeth and notch up your resolve? Do you nap?

Our newly purchased, super-fast computer—the very computer that will edit, add effects to, and make perfect our collective filmic vision—has crapped out. Specifically, the motherboard crapped out and now we must send it back to its maker and get it fixed. It’s under warranty, but let me tell you, when you have a shooting script sitting on the dining room table, looking at you with wide-eyed potential every time you pass, the last thing you want to do is wait while some company in Korea fixes its crapped out product.

But then there are signs that things are going to go right. Witness: in our script, one character uses and describes a certain strange and bad-smelling plant. Brandon chose which particular plant through an on-line search of strange plants that smell bad. I’d say he chose this strange plant about two weeks ago…

Two days ago, we found that selfsame strange plant growing in our tiny patch of dirt in front of our apartment. I have not seen this plant before. I did not plant it. It is a voodoo lily and it is growing in our front yard. It smells like death meets halitosis, it looks like it wants to poison you, and I will not remove this plant because I know it is a sign that even though things happen that I desperately do not want to happen, such as our motherboard taking a big dump on my sunshine, things will work out. We have voodoo on our side.

The Shooting Script by the Numbers

2008-06-14T13:06:00.000-07:00

Do you love stats? Here are a few:

SCRIPT INDEX

Number of roles (not counting extras): 23
Ratio of female to male roles: 11:12
Number of swear words spoken: 21
Instances of the word "potato": 8
Approximate age of youngest character and oldest character, respectively: 25, 60
Number of scenes involving a swimming pool: 2
Number of statues of former Presidents of the United States: 1
Ratio of action vehicles to parking tickets issued: 9:4
Number of separate locations: 35
Percentage that are commercially owned: 26
Minimum number of alcoholic drinks consumed: 18
Number of medicinal drinks: 1
Amount a main character claims is in his wallet when asked if he'd like to buy another character's artwork: $10

Blam! Hip Hop Pool Party!*

2008-06-01T22:09:00.000-07:00

I've finished writing the screenplay.

Brandon is having his way with it, then he will present the shooting script to the Company this weekend.

So it begins...

*

The Sins of the Ha-Ha's

2008-05-26T09:51:00.000-07:00

In preparation, the Company decided to watch a few movies produced for under $100,000. True, that figure is astronomical compared to our budget, but in movie terms that's like buying a house for a paper clip.

We started with Funny Ha Ha, the film that was at the fore of the Mumblecore movement. Apparently this is a genre defined by low budgets; the use of real-life, interpersonal, everyday situations; minimal or fluid scripting; and naturalistic acting. Yes, I know what that sounds like.

So, because "low budget" is a language this interconnected community of filmmakers and our specific Company share, we watched Funny Ha Ha. It deals, intensely, with the trouble people-- specifically twenty-something people--have in expressing themselves. So a representative slice of dialogue would be: "Y'know, I don't know... I mean, I just feel bad, y'know?" to which the reply would come: "Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm sorry. Okay?" It was as if everyone had been given the same set of words from a severely repetitive, filler-filled set of poetry magnets. Communication is difficult. No argument here. They made their point.

Next on the film's list of directives was to highlight the absurdity and capricious nature of interpersonal relationships. So a pursued man rejects his pursuer, hastily marries another woman, then begins to pursue the former pursuer. True, true, all true. Love and life make no rational sense.

It seemed the film also wanted to focus on that post-college drifting that afflicts many white middle-class twenty-three-year-olds. Going to parties and accepting free red plastic cups of booze worked for us for years, why does it seem to lose it's effectiveness post-graduation? And now we have to decide what we want to do with the rest of our lives? No thank you, a bit more wallowing please. I hear ya. Lord knows I'm puzzled by my post-college procrastinations.

Of course, I think what the film most attempted to do was focus. Find the truth and humor and, perhaps, the beauty in the closely-examined ordinary, relatively uneventful life. Shine a light on the not-so-much. An attempt that could be considered indulgently introspective, mundanely voyeuristic, or worse: interminably boring. In that respect, it becomes an almost daring, or at least a decidedly self-possessed endeavor.

So while I understood, and even agreed with, the points the film made, I think this film acted less as inspiration for what the Company would like to emulate, and more as a focusing device. Certain aspects of the film did not match our aims. While it is true that it's hard to communicate and relationships are inscrutable, I think we're more interested in the time-honored tradition of gather-'round-the-fire storytelling. Less introspection, more imagination. Much, much more attention to detail. Less "letting things happen" and more "Cut! Who left that can of soda in the shot?! This character would never drink diet! Okay get that out of there, we're doing it all over."

And as for me personally, "minimally scripted" is a freakin' unholy technique.

Inspiration Weekend, part II

2008-04-24T11:07:00.000-07:00

So why is Audio Cinema our new best friend?

Their website says they are a “production facility” dedicated to serving “the culture producing community by providing a space to work, play, perform, network, screen, rehearse, exhibit, produce, record, shoot, fundraise, teach, eat, and drink.” Neat.

It’s located in one of the coolest parts of Portland—the eastside riverfront industrial area—right underneath the Hawthorne Bridge. And the space is cavernous and old and has lots of rooms and offices and basements and such. They also sell Stella (good beer, mignon website) in the bottle for 3 bucks. Extra neat.

On Saturday they held a monthly Portland Independent Film Night, hosted by Los Moustachios, a spunky group of young men who seem to be quite familiar with audio visual equipment and enjoy making hilarious short films. Fully neat.

When I stumbled across the announcement for this event I decided the whole Company should attend to both see what other lusty film builders were up to and to talk to said individuals in a practice known as Networking. We have unofficially nominated Jeffrey as our unofficial communicator with the outside world as he is confident and even eloquent around people he doesn’t know. But it turned out Jeffrey and Ariana could not come. That left “talking to people” to either Brandon or me. It was not going to be Brandon, so that left me. Crap. Not neat.

Amazingly and thankfully, I introduced myself to office supervisor/ bartender Kelly and the Networking was done. She introduced us to every person of worth who walked by the bar. We met directors, actors, a/v guys, and all sorts of other people who were into making and watching no-budget cinema. Unassailably and undeniably super neat.

So we will continue our relationship with this wonderful place, with wonderful Kelly and her wonderful gang of fresh-faced indifilm enthusiasts. Love and kisses, Audio Cinema. See you soon.

Inspiration Weekend, part I

2008-04-21T17:02:00.000-07:00

In the Willamette Week's review of Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, a movie the Company and I saw this weekend, the author says the “homemade Indiana Jones movie is exactly as amazing as it sounds.” A wholly incorrect assessment. A homemade Indiana Jones movie does not sound awesome at all. It sounds tedious and unnecessary. After the first 10 minutes, the cuteness or novelty of such a thing should most certainly wear off.

But this movie…this movie was genius. A group of Mississippi kids in the 80’s so loved the Spielberg film they lovingly and quite painstakingly remade it shot for shot over the course of seven years, building, borrowing, and improvising all the major props, settings and costumes. The beta max video quality was awful, the sound was worse and an entirely sold out theater full of hardened, irony-weary hipsters and nerds could not have cared less.

The big rolling boulder? Check. They dug a hole in the ground and made the two halves out of fiberglass, then glued them together and sent it rolling after Indiana. The part where Jones gets dragged behind the Nazi truck? Check. Someone gave them a broken truck, they pulled out the engine, painted it army green and pushed or pulled it with another vehicle, depending on the angle of the camera. Snakes? Check, thanks to a local pet store.

They pleaded and bargained with parents, land owners, a Navy Captain, and little brothers to get what they needed. They built detailed sets in family basements, sewed Nazi flags, invented explosive devices out of Tylenol gel caps, doused things in gasoline (then lit them on fire), and almost got arrested to make it happen. And make it happen they did.

If anything has ever been a testament to the magic of film or to the tenacity of the impassioned human spirit, this is it. And here I’m worried we won’t be able to find a proper doorman’s uniform. Pshaw.

To come in Inspiration Weekend, part 2: AudioCinema is our new best friend.

Madam, what have you done to your child!?!

2008-04-18T16:02:00.000-07:00

The Script: the script has been abused. It has been cut and pushed and strangled and wrangled. Plot lines have been abandoned like newborn kittens. Characters have been contorted into alien mockeries of their former selves. New characters have been rubbed into the script's wounds like Pica Limon. Two more plot lines have been added, glomming onto the first draft with ferocity and vigor. We went from having a complete first draft to having a bucket of Frankenstein parts and a collective headache.

But this is good for the script. It is good for the film. We gravitate towards our goal by inches and degrees, moving perceptibly closer to possessing that first glorious component of our heavenly machine, a shooting script.

Now, when I leave this mild-mannered alias existence of a day job, I will fly home and become... mwahahaha! The Script Writer. Tonight, however, I shall become The Script Writer With A Martini...and hope this version of super hero will mind her manners and get to work, not succumbing to the Friday night pull of prancing around the house in borrowed boxers singing Go Team songs.

We can hope. That is all we can do.

Big, Pure-Hearted Babies

2008-04-15T18:33:00.000-07:00

Move over King James, there's a new Bible in town.

I bought Digital Filmmaking 101 2nd ed for Brandon for his birthday. I then took it from him and am in the process of reading it cover to cover. It tells you, yes, You, that guy who busses tables at Little Jimmy's Breakfast and Lotto Shack and owns no equipment beyond a pencil and a pair of pants how to make a feature length film for less than $8,000 dollars. From purchasing the camera, computer and editing software to feeding your cast and crew, this book tells you how to do it.

It's not some philosophical exercise on the nobility of bringing your Vision to film, it's a practical, tough-love guide to making a movie. It doesn't tell you you're beautiful and if you just dream hard enough and have a pure heart, your movie will come true. Rather, it tells you if you really want to make this movie, but you also really want a new pair of shoes and you aren't willing to sacrifice the latter, then you really don't want to make a movie... And you should probably go do something else, you pure-hearted big-dreaming baby.

Good Stuff. Real Good Stuff.

Naturally, there are things that will and will not apply to this particular production. For instance, the $8,000 budget. We're already there and we don't even have a script yet. And we've already broken the authors' most adamant piece of advice. We used our credit card. I know it is wrong and I will pay for it later (in accordance with my credit member agreement). But that's it! The rest of this film will be beggared, borrowed, stolen, free, or almost free.

I am a convert to the gospel of these two men. Can I get a hallelujah?

Draft the First

2008-04-05T09:41:00.000-07:00

Last week I finished the first draft of the screenplay. That was a nice sentence to type.

I then immediately fell ill. Because somehow the germs know when to strike. I have not yet read this so-called first draft. I'm about to right now... I'll keep you posted.

just so you know we're not dead.

2008-03-23T10:36:00.000-07:00

The script is coming along. At this rate, we should have something to work with in a few more weeks.

There will be much more to relate at that point.

Until then, I'll spare you the details of Motivation! Characterization! Plot Points! Dialogue! Story Arc!

Onward and so forth.

How to use Word X for Mac to format a screenplay

2008-02-24T11:42:00.000-08:00

Here's how to use styles and keyboard shortcuts to format a screenplay in Word.

(Note: these instructions are for Microsoft Word X for Mac. For PC users or those with more recent versions of Word, the whatnots may vary slightly. )

1. Open a new document.

2. Go to> Format> Document> set the margins as follows:

Top: 1.o"
Bottom: 0.5"
Left: 0.0"
Right: 0.0"
Header: 0.5"
Footer: 0.5"

Click OK. Word will let you know that you've set margins outside the printable area. Click Ignore. This step is important. The styles you will make are measured from the edge of the page. If you leave margins, they will measure from the edge of the margins. And that's dumb.

3. Make sure you're in Normal Style. (That's the leftmost drop-down menu on the formatting toolbar.)

Go to Format> Style...
Normal should be highlighted in the Styles box (if you don't see it, choose All Styles under the List drop-down menu)
Click Modify...
Click the Format drop-down menu in the bottom center of the Modify Style box
Choose Font...
Change font to Courier [1]
Change the font size to 12
Click OK
Choose Paragraph from the Format drop-down menu
Set the Special drop-down menu to (none)
Click OK
If the Automatically Update box is checked UN-CHECK it! [2]
Click OK
Click Apply.

4. Now you'll make the title page. It's easiest to just do this manually.

Center Justify your TITLE in all caps, three inches from the top edge of the page
Skip a line
Type, "by" (don't let silly old AutoCorrect capitalize it to "By")
Skip a line
Type your name
Now Type a Left Justified, single spaced, five line block of text with:

Your Name
Your Address
City, ST ZIP
Your phone #
Your.email@you.com

I just use return carriages and tabs to get the block eight inches from the top edge of the page and five inches from the left edge (bottom right corner of the page)

Looky there, you gots a title page...

5. Now you'll format the page numbers.

Go to Format> Style...
Highlight Header in the Styles box
Click Modify...
Chose Font from the Format drop-down menu
Change font and font size to Courier 12
Click OK
Chose Paragraph from the Format drop-down menu
Change Alignment to Right
Set the Right Indentation to 0.75"
Click OK, OK, Apply.

6. Now you'll insert page numbers.

Go to View> Header and Footer
On the Header Footer Toolbox that pops up, click Insert Page Number (it looks like a page with a # sign on it)
Click Format Page Number (it looks like a page with a hand pointing at it)
Under Page Numbering, click Start at:
Enter 0 (zero) in the box
Click OK
Click Different First Page (it has a page with a 1 on it)
Close the Header/Footer toolbox.

You shouldn't have a number on the title page. The numbering should start with a 1 in the upper right hand corner of the first page of your actual script.

7. Here's the fun part. (No. Really this is just more of the same--clicking and choosing and setting, but I like it because what you do here will be used as you write the script.) This is how you'll format the Scene headings or Slugs [3].

Make sure Normal is selected in the Style menu on the Formatting Toolbar
Go to Format> Style... (again check that Normal is highlighted in the Styles box)
Click New...
Name it Scene
Choose Font from the Format drop-down menu
Make sure Courier 12 is the Font/Size
Check the All Caps box
Click OK
Choose Paragraph from the Format drop-down menu
Set Left Indentation to 1.0"
Set Right Indentation to 0.75"
Make sure the Special drop-down menu is set to (none)
Click OK
Choose Tabs from the Format drop-down menu
Type in 1.5", click Set
Type in 7.5", click Set
Click OK once (stay in the New Style Screen for the next step)

8. To make it easy to switch between styles, assign shortcut keys.

Click Shortcut Key... (bottom left corner)
Press the ctrl button (not the Apple [command] button, the Control button) then press the letter 's' where it says Press new shortcut key
Unless you have used Shortcut keys for other things in Word, it should say Currently Assigned: [unassigned] underneath where you just typed.
Click Assign
Click OK
Make sure the Automatically Update box is NOT checked
Click OK (stay in the Style screen for the next steps)

9. You'll use these same basic steps to format for Action [4], Characters [5], Dialogue [6], Parenthetical Direction [7], and Transitions [8].

10. Action

Click New...
Name it Action
Choose Font from Format drop-down menu
Make sure the Font is Courier, the size is 12, and none of the Effects boxes are checked
Click OK
Choose Paragraph from Format drop-down menu
Set Left Indentation to 1.5"
Set Right Indentation 1.0"
Click OK
Click Shortcut Key...
Set the shortcut key to ctrl 'a'
Click OK, OK

11. Character

Make a new style
Name it Character
In Font, make sure it's Courier 12
Select the All Caps box
OK
Choose Paragraph
Set the Left Indent to 4.o" (unless you have some long-ass character names--His Royal Highness Sir Prissy Von Bitcherstein the Third of Asschester Manor comes to mind--You probably won't need to set a Right Indent. But if you must, set it to 1.0")
OK
Shortcut Key...
Set it to ctrl 'c'
OK, OK

12. Dialogue

Make a New Style
Name it Dialogue
Check that the Font and Size are courier 12, and no Effects boxes are selected
OK
Choose Paragraph
Set the Left Indent to 3.0"
Set the Right Indent to 2.0"
OK
Shortcut Key...
Set it to ctrl 'd'
OK, OK

13. Parenthetical Direction

Make a New Style
Name it Parentheses
Check the font, size, and no effects
OK
Choose Paragraph
Set Left Indent to 3.5"
Set Right Indent to 3.0"
OK
Shortcut Key...
Set it to ctrl 'p'
OK, OK

14. Transitions

Make a New Style
Name it Transitions
Make font Courier 12
Select the All Caps box
OK
Choose Paragraph
Set Left Indent to 6.0"
Set Right Indent to 0.5"
Click OK
Set shortcut Key... to ctrl 't'
OK, OK
Click Close

15. Now save this Document as My Super Awesome Script Template.doc or something. Keep it on your desktop. Every time you write a new script, open this document and Save As. Of course you could save this document AS a template. Or you could check the Apply to template box in the Style screen. Long and varied are the possibilities in Word. I like doing it this way.

There you go. Now you have all the parts you need to make a properly formatted script. Try it out. The best thing to do is compare what comes out on your page with this awesome page. If you followed all instructions, it should come out the same.

A NOTE ON LINE SPACING:

I didn't apply line spacing to the styles. It works better for me to manually use the return key. Here's how to space lines:

Skip a line after the Scene Heading.
Skip line after a block of Action.
Skip a line after a block of dialogue.
Don't skip a line after the Character names.
Don't skip a line after Parenthetical Direction.
Blocks of Action, Dialogue, and Parenthetical Direction are all single spaced.

OTHER NOTES:

[1] Use Courier. Not Courier New. Courier is Monospaced. Meaning the skinny little 'i' takes up as much space as a wide-load 'w'. This is important when you consider that a rough estimate for the running time of a film is taken from the number of pages in a script. (One page equals about a minute of screen time.) This is also why the formatting is important. Say your dialogue was only indented two inches instead of three. Fewer pages, but the actors are still saying the same number of words, taking up the same amount of screen time. (back)

[2] The evil and vile Automatic Update is not your friend. It has been the cause of much pain and anger in my experience. Uncheck it and live in better harmony with Word. (back)

[3] The formatting here is intended to be used to include scene numbers. On a writer's draft scene numbers are not used. But as my screenplay will also be the shooting script, I'm including scene numbers. (back)

A new scene begins any time the setting or time changes. The fifth scene that takes place at night in front of a bar would look sorta like this (with no dots) :

5 EXT. JOE'S BAR - NIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

The scene number is on either side of the description. (That's why you made all those tab stops) If you're not using scene numbers, just set the Paragraph Formating for the Scene Style to Left Indent 1.5" and forget about the tab stops.

[4] Action! Wonderful action! This tells who's in the scene and what they're doing in the scene. Just put in the necessary stuff. DON'T put in camera angles and such. That's for the Director (and DP) to decide. Directors get all touchy if you try and direct them. I know. I live with one.

The first time you introduce a Character in the Action of the script, put their name in ALL CAPS. Just the first time they appear in the script. This helps to point out when a new character is added to the story. Directors and Costumers and Casting Directors and pretty much all people working on a film like this type of heads up. (back)

[5] Characters. Always in caps. Usually the only things that will appear next to a character's name are:

(V.O.) -- Voice Over
(O.S.) -- Off Screen
(CONT'D) -- When a character's speech continues after an interruption by a line of action. (back)

[6] Dialogue. It has produced such greats as "Forget about the fuckin' toe!" Good stuff. (back)

[7] Parenthetical Direction. This is mostly used to indicate something a character does while speaking. Things like: (handing her the note) or (pointing out the window). When this comes in the middle of a line of dialogue, you don't have to put (CONT'D) or retype the character's name--it's formatted to stand apart from the dialogue.

You can also use parenthetical direction to say how a character says a certain line. For instance: (sobbing) or (hesitantly). But use this sparingly. How an actor delivers his or her line is up to the actor. They should be able to tell from the action and the dialogue itself how a line should read. (back)

[8] Transitions. This is used in one place in particular--the end of the movie. FADE OUT. And also when you want to indicate a complicated sort of cut, different from a normal scene change. Like INTERCUT WITH: It would be used to indicate two scenes are happening at the same time. I haven't found much use for it yet. But better to have it and not need it...(back)

IN CONCLUSION:

Yeehaw bitches, you got yerself a screenplay template, complete with little shortcuts so your fast little fingers never have to leave the keyboard. You can type riveting dialogue and compelling action and create scenes all goddamned day long. Typing a line of dialogue and want to switch to the next character? Hit "ctrl+c "and boom sha-lock-lock --that cursor is four inches in from the edge of the page and ready to type in all caps. Magical. And better than a punch to the jaw.

The ghost of Christmas of fifteen years ago

2008-02-18T16:31:00.000-08:00

This is the boring part of the process. But this is a record of "the movie" and the script is part of the movie. So here's what I've been up to:

I've been using note cards to map out the story. Syd Field says note cards are the way to go. I like the idea of following a how-to book's instructions--something I've never done. I've had this particular how-to since I was fourteen. My grandma gave it to me after I said I wanted to write movies when I grew up. It's finally fulfilling its intended purpose. Fifteen years later.

Writing the script has produced something useful. I've cracked the enigma of formatting. You can buy software for 15o dollars and it will format your script for you. But 150 dollars on this project is ten boxes of cupcake bribes. And actors won't work for nothing. So with trusty/infuriating Word, lots of searching and searching for decent formatting information online, and an hour of futzing with Word's Styles function, I made my own damn template. I think it works real good. And since no one should go through that process alone, here's step by step what I did.

As far as the screenplay itself, I'm on page three. At one point I was on page eleven. But I had to scrap that entire idea and start over. So technically I'm fourteen pages behind. But it wasn't working. There comes a point when you have to cut your losses and move on.

Of course doing this too many times is a sign of procrastination. Syd calls it "resistance," something he says comes in many forms--from sitting down to write then realizing you should clean out the fridge or scrub the toilet or, my favorite, eat. It also comes in the form of abandoning one story for another. He says when you encounter resistance, it's okay. Understand that's what it is, understand what you're doing. Don't get mad. Don't get down on yourself. Just let it go. Let go of the resistance and get to work. Very Zen.

Despite the bouts of resistance, the script soldiers on. My eyes are getting sandpapery and raw from looking at a computer screen to write scripts at work (the kind that I'm paid to write) then coming home and looking at a computer screen to write another script. And I'm sure staring at the computer to write this mishmash is not helping my eyesight any. But what can I say, I can't resist.

Thank you, AMEX

2008-02-13T15:52:00.000-08:00

The equipment is here. Yesterday the UPS man delivered many, many boxes. In these boxes were components for a super-fast computer, Adobe's Creative Suite 3 Production Premium software, and a Canon XL2 digital camcorder. This is an upgrade from what we used to make Cupcake Confidential. Unlike that venture, "The Movie" will not be shot on a borrowed camera. iMovie will not be our editing software. And we will not have to store half the footage on the iPod while the eMac processes the edits. How did people of modest means acquire such shiny new things? I asked American Express to give me eight thousand dollars. Thirty seconds later they said, "Okay, here's $8,000." I got the willies. Then I got to spending.

So there it is, strewn across the living room, in boxes and in various states of construction. The monitor is wide and stately. The tower housing all the little computer parts is black and imposing. The box that holds the Adobe software and manuals weighs around 15 pounds. The camera looks like it means business. The tools are here. All that remains is putting them to use. After they're put together of course. Thankfully this is Brandon's job. So far, power cables have not connected properly, the video card wouldn't communicate readily, and Vista refused to install smoothly. (Big surprise. [My instinctive opposition to owning a PC has not fully faded.]) Brandon has gone nuts a total of five times thus far. It's good training for him. Things will be going much wrong-er as this project progresses and he will no doubt be driven far nuts-er.

I'd like to say that I'm excited. All this great new stuff. And I can. I am. I'm excited. There's tangible proof all over my living room floor and on my dining room table, physical objects that stand as testament to this being not just some sure, sure someday pile of maybe. It's real and touchable and expensive. I am excited.

But I'm also going crazy myself. Can we talk about the screenplay? Specifically, can we discuss the ways (so many, many ways) it is devouring my soul and my brain and my will to get out of bed? That's what we're here for, I suppose. It's not that I'm thinking it can't be done. It can. And it's not that I'm throwing my arms up in the air and saying I can't do this. Not yet, anyway. But lordy, I am flailing. I'm thinking about storylines in the shower. People at work talk to me and I stare at their lips and try to pay attention to what they're saying but really I'm thinking about the story. Always the story. The story the story the story. When the company got together to decide what "The Movie" would be about, we came up with a fairly complicated structure--a framework, really-- and a few guidelines, a few interesting elements to incorporate and so on. Details are up to me. I agreed to write this thing and I'm not complaining. But there are a lot of details in the world. There are a lot of stories to be told. I'm not interested in most of them. The one I'm interested in is out there. I can feel it dancing around the room, playing with me, just out of reach. It brushes against my skin then runs away. I'm hunting it down with an ax and a big jar of peanut butter, but it's a nimble little fucker and I think it prefers jelly.

Well, time to do it to it.

No Country for Big Macs

2008-02-10T11:53:00.000-08:00

The "company" (the three brave kids with whom I'm making "the movie") and I tried to see a film offered by the Portland International Film Festival, namely, Tyua's Marriage. We got there a whole half hour early. Turns out more people than we thought were interested in seeing a film about a reserved Mongolian bride diagnosed with a debilitating back injury. It was sold out. While I was bummed to not participate in one of the more interesting cultural events of my adopted city, I was also comforted by the fact that enough people were interested in seeing
something not produced by Judd Apatow that it sold out a theater.

So with heavy but mildly encouraged hearts we walked up the street to another movie house and saw No Country for Old Men. Again. Do I really, really like this film? Yes I do. Am I perhaps hard-wired to like Coen Brother's films? They had me at Blood Simple. Do I promise never to reference Jerry Maguire again? I do. Aside from the one-two punch of terribleness that was Intolerable Cruelty and Ladykillers (and my third least favorite short of Paris, je t'aime [after the one about the mimes and the one about the vampires {does Elijah Wood have expressions in his facial-expression arsenal aside from the bug-eyed-pinched-eyebrow thing?}]) I must say that the Coen Brothers generally know what they're doing when they try their hand at the filmic art.

Andrew O'Hehir quoted someone as saying the film was like the Hollywood equivalent of a burger and fries, in that it was a complete and satisfying, yet very consciously packaged experience. He admits that likening a Coen film to a fast food experience is a bit much (with an
aside about Javier Bardem's hair--and I have a whole essay of thoughts on that topic alone) but goes on to say that No Country doesn't challenge the idea of movie going as a consumer driven experience. That may be. I don't get to go to Sundance and watch little gems of films with other finely schooled film buffs. I sit in the theater next to my friend Ariana who sits next to a woman who, throughout the screening of this film, tried to tell her boyfriend funny jokes about the on-screen action which the boyfriend invariably failed to hear, forcing her to repeat herself, and who at the close of the film proclaimed, (thankfully loud enough for her companion to hear the first time) "That is the stupidest movie ever!" It is not the stupidest movie ever. (Coincidentally, Art School Confidential is the stupidest movie ever, for those who are keeping score).

No Country is darn near flawless as far as I'm concerned. It opens on vistas of harsh but beautiful landscapes, then proceeds to tell you a harsh but fantastically compelling story. Yes it's satisfying. Yes its satisfaction is very gut-level. It trusts its audience, knowing that what we imagine, once we have the basic gist of characters' proclivities, is far more effective than a series of graphic close ups of bullet wounds and splatter shots (but it gives a few of those just for good measure). It offers one of the most satisfying types of characters, murderers who also have "principles," like the killer in Seven or Hannibal Lecter or Léon from Léon or Ghost Dog from Ghost Dog. And its ambiguity and use of off-screen violence (one of Jeffrey's personal favorite devices) is satisfying in the way it makes you feel you're in some really cool club, understanding the winks and nods and handshakes to mean, yup, just what you think they mean, if you've been paying attention--letting you glean what other movies hold your hand and tell you in color glossy pictures with circles and arrows.

So yes I was satisfied. But like I had just experienced an expertly prepared home cooked meal, not a Big Mac. I felt the story-hole that all humans possess (not unlike the stomach) was filled well and good and I felt lucky to be looped into the grand story-telling perpetuation one more time. I felt good, not greasy.

All this is of course of course not to say I don't think Andrew O'Hehir is the awesomest. Because I do. Whenever I start to fret about the making of "the movie" I read him and I am instantly galvanized by his zest and verve and lust for film. I am inspired all over again and I am reminded of why movies are the coolest thing man has managed to do with light and sound. I also must say that I agree with the rest of what he was saying about No Country, that its prepackaged goodness may let people off easy; they see it and say, "Check 'see a Film' (with a capital F) off the list of things to do this month," without bothering to look further, to perhaps find the small things that people put out there, movies that do more with far fewer resources, movies that dare and try. But like I said, that film was sold out.

Posting the First

2008-02-08T16:07:00.000-08:00

A couple of my friends and I are making a movie. I'll be relating the interesting parts of that process here. When I have nothing to say on that particular topic, I'll talk about other movies and what I think about them. Well, then...