Slight Change in Plans...

...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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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!

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

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

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.

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)

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

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!

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

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

‘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

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.

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.