As I try and keep busy I've unfortunately caught a bit of that flu that's been going around like mad. Even now as I type my finger joints hurt a little with each key I hit, but I can't help it because I love to get down a sense of what I'm feeling when I'm sick because, especially if it's really bad, your mind goes a little bit crazy. You mix a very painful illness with some NyQuil and you start fading in and out and it's almost like a drugged out experience. I personally have never done drugs before but that is about as close as I've ever felt to being drugged.
And it's frustrating at the same time because I'm trying to continue moving forward on this film that I'll be starting production on in a few weeks. I have a lot more to do and while I'm certain I'll have no problem getting it all done, you feel rushed when you're a creative mind and you're energized about a project but then forced to sit here and be still because if you try and work through a sickness like this it often prolongs it cause you're body's having to work harder. The first night I had this I was waking up ever like five minutes and great lines of movie dialogue, not for any specific movie, were coming into my head. But I was so out of balance and so dazed I couldn't find the strength of mind to write any of it out and by the time I finally woke up I couldn't remember any of the dialogue I had come up with. It's that level of craziness that I love because it reminded me of something that's easy to forget, not just for filmmakers, but also artists of any kind. That is the fact of how inspiration for great work comes to you, and it never comes on schedule. It never comes when you want it to or when you're bored trying to come up with something. If you sit down and say, "I have a free day and I'm going to do my next great piece of work," it's not going to come.
You don't decide at the drop of a hat when to come up with your next great idea. It has to come naturally. It has to be inspired. Hell, many times I can't think of something or have a work practically finished but still with some holes to be filled. I fall asleep and have some vivid dream, a dream that bears no connection to my work, and it changes something in my story. I was working on a script wherein the climactic scene just didn't have enough strength to serve as that climax. It needed something more. I then stepped into a theatre where I work and the last five minutes or so of the film "Gravity" was playing. And it's this big conclusion as Sandra Bullock's character is cascading towards earth and there's this very dramatic music playing and there was just something about the structure of this brief sequence that put the answers as to how to fix that scene into my head. And the genre's of the films were completely different, no connection at all.
The fact of the matter is your best ideas and your greatest creations are not going to happen on your schedule or when you have time to come up with them. They are going to happen when you're busy or when you're doing something potentially bland that is still a part of your everyday activities and that's when the next great idea is going to come to you. That is something that it takes a great deal of patience and discipline to understand because it forces you to adjust yourself and maybe you'll have to sit for a couple of days with nothing really creative to do because the thought isn't there yet. You don't tell your mind when to create something great, your mind tells you. And I don't buy into that whole notion that well, if you can't seem to come up with something, just begin writing and the answers will come. That format can work, it can, but if you go into it with the expectation that just writing something at random is magically going to create something for you then you're in for disappointment. A process like that only works if you go into it without expectations that it's going to solve your problem, because then you're not thinking about your ideas and what you're writing but instead are being distracted by what is preventing you from solving that problem. In essence, your mind is not fully focused on the creation but rather the fear that the creation might not come. And that doesn't get you anywhere productive. In fact, it can often just make the problems worse.
So that's my correlation for the day. Things that might seem to mean nothing, even when you're dizzily sick, can often inspire something that seems to be completely unrelated. It's one of the miracles of how our mind works. And on that note I'm going to stop for the day because my fingers are really starting to hurt and I need some serious rest. Good day to you all and hopefully I'll be back on my feet in the next day or two.
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
The Struggles of Life
I always find myself reflecting on some significant life or social conundrum after sometimes the most random of events. I was at a Starbucks today getting some script organization and sides done for my upcoming film and I saw a girl walk in. Being a curious person, practically every time door opens to a room I'm in and someone enters I look up to see who it is. When this girl walked in I felt like I knew her from somewhere, but then when she passed by she seemed a little less familiar. She was there very briefly and when she turned to leave and walked past me again I felt again like I recognized her. However, I couldn't get a solid frontal view on her. I watched her as she walked out and she disappeared behind a wall, but then she came back to get a newspaper, and finally I got a frontal view of her and recognized her right away.
She had reddish brown hair but I remembered it being blonde in the past. She was actually the first girl I actually became acquainted with when my family moved to Milwaukie, Oregon early in my first grade year. She lived only two houses up from me so we quickly became friends. I'd hang at her house a few times. Her family lived in what would have been a really nice old house if only they took good care of it. Just to create the setting, I remember the exact date we met, because it was after our very first day of school that we met and became friends. It was October 29, 1992, over twenty years. And while this girl and I always remained cordial to each other, only a few years down the road we stopped really ever hanging out together. She introduced me to my friend Jason who was my best friend for about five years. But it seemed as though from the moment we met her life just began to go further and further downhill. I don't know any of the details but I remember her mom was a wacko and a hardcore alcoholic (and probably drug user). Her dad was a nice guy but a total deadbeat and as time went by they started having lots of bizarre people hanging out there.
I have a feeling she left home fairly young and I don't remember seeing her after middle school, and I don't think she was in middle school that long. I remember, my last serious interaction with her was when I had a crush on a girl at the start of seventh grade and she went and told her (apparently on my behalf). And I think even by middle school she had no stable home and had fallen into drugs. I recall hearing at one time that she served a stint in prison for serious drug possession. I believe she was selling drugs as well... but not as much as she was using them. Seeing her today, and not having the chance to speak with her, what stood out to me was her face, which didn't look terrible, but looked at least like the face of someone who had serious acne problems when she was younger. They were obvious effects from serious drug usage. Periodically she has popped into my head in past years, primarily because she serves as an example of what can happen when your life goes astray, especially at a very young age. It seems to me she hit rock bottom fairly hard.
But today, in seeing her for just a few moments, I felt a sense of happiness. I remember the few times I'd seen her before, during her drug-taking period, she was always chain smoking, her hair was dirty and stringy and she wore clothes that looked like she stole from some homeless guy. And of course her body would tweak out on her a little from time to time. However, when I saw her today she moved very steadily and she had a calm look about her. Her expression looked relaxed and there didn't appear to be a sense of fear or loss there. She was dressed somewhat nice as well and it all just made me hope and feel that life has become better for her and that her stable appearance was evidence that she had left that terrible life behind, or at least a part of it.
As I thought about that I pondered the path I had taken in these 20+ years. Back then life was simple and my family was doing well. The first signs of strain in the hope and my parents marriage sparked up around 1996, when I was ten. They started fighting more and my dad gradually was becoming more and more of an annoyance to deal with. By the early 2000s my mother had slipped into a place of, I guess, acceptance of what she probably felt was a pretty crappy life. She drank a lot and got heavier due in part to the alcohol, but also, I believe, due to a lack of activity and a general unhappiness in her life. At the start of 2005, I was early into college, problems became worse when my uncle came to visit us, but due to health problems he was forced to live with us for a year and a half. As with my father, my mother had a lot of unsettled problems with my uncle (her brother) as well. She was only marginally happy when my dad was gone during the day, but now she had her brother looming around the house as well. We were all angry and unhappy to some degree or another. After my uncle moved out in the summer of 2006 things seemed to be getting better. A year later my dad's family sold a big chunk of property of which we got $250,000 out of. But in that exchange my mom told my dad, who'd been working less and less so he could be off doing activist work, to promise that he wouldn't stop working. My mom had accepted at that time that it was my dad's job to make the money and thus wasn't doing much to get back to work herself. And I was working my first job and only making about $7,500 a year. And as the son, going to school and working part time I certainly wouldn't be able to support the family. And my dad got a good job, and then, about two months after we got this chunk of money he quit, claiming that his boss had accused him of using a company car to go to a stripper joint when really he was at a strip mall to make copies of paperwork at a Kinko's and there just happened to be a stripper place in the mall and the tracker on the vehicle marked the vehicle as being there instead of the Kinko's. Fine. I don't think my dad was at a strip joint and covering for it because he volunteered this information to me and mom. We wouldn't have known anything about these accusations if he hadn't come forth with them. But whatever the case, this was not a good enough reason to just up and quit, especially without having any prospects for another job.
But that was my dad. He put what he wanted ahead of taking care of his family, something he didn't do when he was younger. He was one of those guys who would justify when we got flat broke because no money was coming in. He'd just throw a hyperbolic scenario at us like, "Hey, we're not homeless," or, "You think we've got it hard? Trying going and fighting in the Middle East." And yes, it's true, were we the most unfortunate people in the world? No, not even close. But such is hardly a justification for being a lazy ass for the sake of one's own selfish desires, especially when it's at the expense of his family. And I doubt he was stupid enough to believe it when he said things like that. It was simply a justification for him. Finally my mom was fed up. The only time in my life when I was completely speechless was in 2008 when my mom told me she wanted to leave my father. Of course now I look back and see it was best. Damn, she should've left him much earlier than that. But that was the final undoing. They tried the whole separation route but, as is the case with so many middle-aged married couples these days, they waited far too many years for a simple separation to fix things. Had they started working on it a decade earlier, who knows? It would be months before they finally divorced and my father made my life hell through all of it. Then my mom moved out and it was just me and my father. I tried to deal with it as long as I could, but I literally became so fed up with him for so many reasons that it started effecting my health. He was going out drinking and going on several trips to Hood River, claiming he just needed to get out of town (but I'm pretty sure he had some chick up there that he was seeing, and fine, good for him).
There were two moments when it peaked for me. One was on my birthday that occurred in the midst of them trying a separation. As though it wasn't awkward having both my parents together along with many others who knew what was going on, we also went to a place that my dad went to frequently. And the whole time there was a waitress who flirted up a storm and got pretty cozy with my dad right there, on my birthday, in front of me and my mom, while they were both still married. Seeing as this girl was probably half my dad's age and, honestly, any woman would probably shy away from my dad after an hour because he's got a bit of an ego on him and he doesn't know how to shut up. And I don't mean that figuratively, I mean literally he has proven himself time and time again incapable of shutting up. Thus, I am totally convinced my dad paid her or talked to her beforehand and told her to do all of that to try and make my mom jealous. Sadly, he was the kind of person who would do that. And I don't mean to slam on my dad too much. He's not a horrible person, but he was the project of a crappy childhood in which he was dominated by his overbearing father. It's very interesting. Both my parents had three siblings, my father had the most strained relationship with his father and my mom had the most strained relationship with her mother. And, as human psychology often shows us, it's those who were the most cast aside that do their best to fix things later on. When my grandfather contracted Parkinson's Disease in the late 80s my dad went and saw him at least five times as often as any of his siblings and when a problem arose he was always the one who jumped in the driver's seat to take care of it. Later on, around 2001, my grandmother suffered multiple strokes that left her bed-ridden the final five or so years of her life. She slept pretty much 22 hours a day, but after that happened my mother went and visited her almost bi-monthly even though sometimes it was a 300 mile drive just over the Oregon/California border. When those parents got sick it was those they struggled with the most who jumped in to take care of them. So I certainly understand the fact that my parents had their issues.
But the final nail in the coffin between my dad and I was in May, 2009. Since I was a kid it had been understood in our home that if I busted my ass in school and did my best to earn grants and scholarship money that they would compensate for the rest so I wouldn't go into extreme loan debt. This was an understanding for years and aside from that my dad told me, as we were preparing that property to be sold that he was planning to use a lot of that money to "put me through school", not just throwing me a few bucks to help me along. And here we were, we'd just received $250,000 only a year and a half before and I had been accepted into the University of Portland, one of the most prestigious colleges in the west. They only had a 3,200 enrollment because it's so hard to get into. It's a sister school with Notre Dame University for goodness sakes! And here I was, out of college for almost two years, but my college grades among other things I gave them with my application was so impressive to them that I was accepted on the spot. And on top of that, I earned almost $20,000 yearly grant funds to pay for school. I'd say I more than held up my end. But here I was, stuck living with my father who was drinking and periodically vanishing, but still had a huge chunk of change on him. All I needed was an extra $10,000 to cover my two years there. At this moment my father took the opportunity to throw that classic "well who told you to go to such an expensive college?" at me before saying that he didn't just have that kind of money to give me (when the opposite was the case). When my parents divorce went through, only two months before, it was established my dad had approximately $240,000 to his name. And now, not even 60 days later, he suddenly doesn't have $10,000 for his son. He then denied that they ever made that pact with me to cover what was left over of my college funding and even claimed he didn't have the money because he'd spent to much on the divorce (in a manipulative way pointing the blame at my mom since she was the one who wanted the divorce). But theirs was not a financially messy divorce, and again, when the divorce was processed he still had way over $200,000. This was what my father was really good at, was convincing you that you were wrong and that such was okay. He did that to me for years, forcing me to let him off the hook when I really should have got in his face. He had done this for years to get out of things.
For some reason though, this little financial aid tiff stuck with me. With mom gone and more time around my dad to see what he was really like I suddenly realized, no! He's wrong. This isn't okay. That night I didn't come home and slept at the church I attended. The next day I didn't go home and stayed at my moms. A night at my mom's turned into a week..... and a month. And being my mom, she was like, "You can stay as long as you want." Of course, she knew I was probably losing my mind living alone with my dad and she even had a little guilt over that. I just never went home. My dad called and I didn't answer. Summer came and went and I was starting at the University of Portland, working a full time schedule with a 35-hour work week. I had no time to talk to anyone, let alone my dad. A night of anger turned into an estranged situation and I spent a good two years so angry at my father for years worth of pain that he caused me. Fortunately, that anger eventually passed, as it often does, and I was able to look at things more objectively. My mom and I both have let our anger go against my dad. As my mother simply puts it: "Your father's a good man. But he was a lousy husband and father." And sadly, that's a fairly accurate assessment. I didn't see my father again until the summer of 2012, over three years time had passed. It was good to see him and we didn't make a big deal about the time we hadn't seen each other. I think he just wanted to act like it didn't happen so he wouldn't have to, as he often avoided, admit that he was the problem. But he was still the same person. He left me a few embittered voicemails after that accusing practically everyone in my life of poisoning me against him. That really got to me, because by that time I was 26-years old and he was still treating me like a child, like I was incapable of making up my own mind about things and so easily dissuaded by the remarks of others. But again, that was just him trying to push the blame for our falling out onto the shoulders of others. He was still the same person with the same problems, and that's the reason I have chosen not to be around him. It's a conscious choice; when he finally decides to grow up and change maybe I will be willing to start a relationship with him again, but not one where I'm the child and he pulls all the strings. I acknowledge that it's a decision I've made. In issues regarding conflict with friends and family we often say we "can't" see that person, but still, in not seeing them we are making the conscious decision to do so. I haven't seen my father now for about a year and a half now and I am, unfortunately though it is, much happier with him not in my life than I ever was when he was there. Again, he wasn't a bad man but he just became more and more unbearable to live with.
There's lots of other trying experiences that have occurred in my life, but I went into such detail about my own life to make a point: has my life been shitty at times? Absolutely! Has it been the worst life ever? No, not even close. I'm glad for this challenges I've faced, especially in these more recent years. University of Portland ultimately didn't work out, but not because I couldn't hack it. I rocked a 3.55 g.p.a. during my one year there. But my directive just changed, moving from a focus as a writer to a focus as a filmmaker, which is where I am at now. Life is still good and I still have an upbeat and positive attitude in general despite the many opportunities I had to turn down a much darker path. Fortunately, my greatest challenges came as a young adult as oppose to being a child like my friend was when her greatest challenges began. And imperfect though my parents were, they were a damn sight better than a lot of parents out there. They still raised me, so whoever I am they deserve some credit on that. Whatever my circumstances were I never turned to drugs or alcohol, or a criminal life, or life on the streets. And that could have happened as it has for many people.
So while I acknowledge the struggles and imperfections of my life I don't try to hyperbolize them, especially those that happened years ago that I've had the time to deal with and hopefully move on from. And I acknowledge at the same time, regardless how much was her responsibility, that this friend of mine has suffered through experiences I couldn't even understand. We're all so good at exaggerating our problems, especially when we're teenagers. As adults we all know how frustrating dealing with teenagers can be as every little thing they "want" becomes a need. But it's not only teens. Lots of people, especially those with struggles at a young age, those who are incredibly insecure, grow into adults who still over-exaggerate their problems. One of my closest friends has a mother who is going through a divorce with his father who, unlike my father, has busted his ass working to support his family. So she hasn't really had to do anything to support herself and has been living somewhat as a princess for years and the things she complains about are astounding to me, especially when you take what she says and couple it with the reality that she has been living a rather simple life for years. But in part that has possibly enabled her, but the point I am making out there is that we all need to stop and check ourselves, especially if we know we have a tendency to act in selfish or erratic ways. I hear people say sometimes, "Why do I always do 'this'?" to which I'm not very remorseful towards. It's one thing to have a problem and not recognize it, but if you're mentioning the problem and acknowledging it as a problem, that means you know it's a problem and thus it's your responsibility to take care of it. Take comfort in that and be grateful that you know there is a problem there. But instead we just use comments like that as a way to make people pity us and, sadly, we do sometimes. How often do we see someone post some self-loathing comment about themselves on Facebook, only because they're feeling bad and they want a bunch of pity. So-and-so posts, "I hate life cause nobody likes me." And people who post statuses like that always have friends, but they're selfish and so they are willing to alter reality to get a bunch of attention knowing people will give it to them. The worst part of it is, every now and then, someone will post on there what really needs to be said and what will be most helpful, such as, "Come on, you know you have friends. Be grateful for what you have." And when someone makes a post like that, others come and attack that person for being a jerk in this other person's time of need, when most of the time those who post this self-loathing nonsense just want attention and aren't willing to do anything about their problems. Everyone should be telling that person to stop acting like a spoiled brat, which reminding them that these comments are harsh, but being made by people who really care. But it's just so much easier to pander and it conveniently avoids any drama rising from a situation, but it doesn't fix a damn thing.
People need to learn to deal with their problems and if they are struggling themselves to deal with them none of us are doing them a service by pandering to them when we know they're just being drama queens. We need tough love as much as we need compassionate love. How many times has someone shouted someone else down for being a brat, or being selfish, and a short while later they became the best of friends because both sides acknowledged that such a situation needed to happen to turn things around? It happens all the time because we do need to be brought back to earth, and sometimes we need that aggressively. But what we need to do is learn to accept it as the truth when someone lays down the law on us that they are doing it out of love and compassion. But we're so great at taking such situations as attacks. And we just need to stop. I remember in years past how easy it was to dismiss harsh remarks from others that really needed to be said. I dismissed them then and now I look back and think, God! Why didn't I listen to them, they were so right!
Despite the pain and frustrations we face in out lives, there are almost always an excess of people out there who are suffering much more than we are, especially if we are currently being housed and fed. That alone is more than can be said of lots of people all by itself. Sure we're going to fly off the hands and play the victim card sometimes, that's only natural, but we need to try and keep such a thing from becoming habitual. We often always find we are more happy when we see and notice that there isn't as much pain and drama in our lives as we previously thought. So today, when I saw that old childhood friend walk in and walk out I reflected on my life and all the crap that's happened and come to the conclusion that it hasn't been so bad. She had it a lot worse and hopefully she's finding a way out of it, and if we both find ourselves under better circumstances a few years from now her journey would be a lot more impressive than mine because she had so much more to overcome. And I can't complain. Sure life isn't perfect. I don't have a car right now. Boo hoo. I'm not filthy rich. So what? But I'm one of a relative few who is doing what he loves. A few years back I decided I wanted to be a filmmaker and I haven't turned back. Every piece of work I've done is a little better than the last and I've learned many lessons from various projects I've worked on. I'm ecstatic over my next piece of work, which the daughter of a colleague of mine, whom I'd known all of 15 minutes, told me was an utterly brilliant idea (as though my ego needs that boost). So, hard though it sometimes is, looking forward is the best I can do because the past isn't perfect and the future is still unknown and waiting to happen.
She had reddish brown hair but I remembered it being blonde in the past. She was actually the first girl I actually became acquainted with when my family moved to Milwaukie, Oregon early in my first grade year. She lived only two houses up from me so we quickly became friends. I'd hang at her house a few times. Her family lived in what would have been a really nice old house if only they took good care of it. Just to create the setting, I remember the exact date we met, because it was after our very first day of school that we met and became friends. It was October 29, 1992, over twenty years. And while this girl and I always remained cordial to each other, only a few years down the road we stopped really ever hanging out together. She introduced me to my friend Jason who was my best friend for about five years. But it seemed as though from the moment we met her life just began to go further and further downhill. I don't know any of the details but I remember her mom was a wacko and a hardcore alcoholic (and probably drug user). Her dad was a nice guy but a total deadbeat and as time went by they started having lots of bizarre people hanging out there.
I have a feeling she left home fairly young and I don't remember seeing her after middle school, and I don't think she was in middle school that long. I remember, my last serious interaction with her was when I had a crush on a girl at the start of seventh grade and she went and told her (apparently on my behalf). And I think even by middle school she had no stable home and had fallen into drugs. I recall hearing at one time that she served a stint in prison for serious drug possession. I believe she was selling drugs as well... but not as much as she was using them. Seeing her today, and not having the chance to speak with her, what stood out to me was her face, which didn't look terrible, but looked at least like the face of someone who had serious acne problems when she was younger. They were obvious effects from serious drug usage. Periodically she has popped into my head in past years, primarily because she serves as an example of what can happen when your life goes astray, especially at a very young age. It seems to me she hit rock bottom fairly hard.
But today, in seeing her for just a few moments, I felt a sense of happiness. I remember the few times I'd seen her before, during her drug-taking period, she was always chain smoking, her hair was dirty and stringy and she wore clothes that looked like she stole from some homeless guy. And of course her body would tweak out on her a little from time to time. However, when I saw her today she moved very steadily and she had a calm look about her. Her expression looked relaxed and there didn't appear to be a sense of fear or loss there. She was dressed somewhat nice as well and it all just made me hope and feel that life has become better for her and that her stable appearance was evidence that she had left that terrible life behind, or at least a part of it.
As I thought about that I pondered the path I had taken in these 20+ years. Back then life was simple and my family was doing well. The first signs of strain in the hope and my parents marriage sparked up around 1996, when I was ten. They started fighting more and my dad gradually was becoming more and more of an annoyance to deal with. By the early 2000s my mother had slipped into a place of, I guess, acceptance of what she probably felt was a pretty crappy life. She drank a lot and got heavier due in part to the alcohol, but also, I believe, due to a lack of activity and a general unhappiness in her life. At the start of 2005, I was early into college, problems became worse when my uncle came to visit us, but due to health problems he was forced to live with us for a year and a half. As with my father, my mother had a lot of unsettled problems with my uncle (her brother) as well. She was only marginally happy when my dad was gone during the day, but now she had her brother looming around the house as well. We were all angry and unhappy to some degree or another. After my uncle moved out in the summer of 2006 things seemed to be getting better. A year later my dad's family sold a big chunk of property of which we got $250,000 out of. But in that exchange my mom told my dad, who'd been working less and less so he could be off doing activist work, to promise that he wouldn't stop working. My mom had accepted at that time that it was my dad's job to make the money and thus wasn't doing much to get back to work herself. And I was working my first job and only making about $7,500 a year. And as the son, going to school and working part time I certainly wouldn't be able to support the family. And my dad got a good job, and then, about two months after we got this chunk of money he quit, claiming that his boss had accused him of using a company car to go to a stripper joint when really he was at a strip mall to make copies of paperwork at a Kinko's and there just happened to be a stripper place in the mall and the tracker on the vehicle marked the vehicle as being there instead of the Kinko's. Fine. I don't think my dad was at a strip joint and covering for it because he volunteered this information to me and mom. We wouldn't have known anything about these accusations if he hadn't come forth with them. But whatever the case, this was not a good enough reason to just up and quit, especially without having any prospects for another job.
But that was my dad. He put what he wanted ahead of taking care of his family, something he didn't do when he was younger. He was one of those guys who would justify when we got flat broke because no money was coming in. He'd just throw a hyperbolic scenario at us like, "Hey, we're not homeless," or, "You think we've got it hard? Trying going and fighting in the Middle East." And yes, it's true, were we the most unfortunate people in the world? No, not even close. But such is hardly a justification for being a lazy ass for the sake of one's own selfish desires, especially when it's at the expense of his family. And I doubt he was stupid enough to believe it when he said things like that. It was simply a justification for him. Finally my mom was fed up. The only time in my life when I was completely speechless was in 2008 when my mom told me she wanted to leave my father. Of course now I look back and see it was best. Damn, she should've left him much earlier than that. But that was the final undoing. They tried the whole separation route but, as is the case with so many middle-aged married couples these days, they waited far too many years for a simple separation to fix things. Had they started working on it a decade earlier, who knows? It would be months before they finally divorced and my father made my life hell through all of it. Then my mom moved out and it was just me and my father. I tried to deal with it as long as I could, but I literally became so fed up with him for so many reasons that it started effecting my health. He was going out drinking and going on several trips to Hood River, claiming he just needed to get out of town (but I'm pretty sure he had some chick up there that he was seeing, and fine, good for him).
There were two moments when it peaked for me. One was on my birthday that occurred in the midst of them trying a separation. As though it wasn't awkward having both my parents together along with many others who knew what was going on, we also went to a place that my dad went to frequently. And the whole time there was a waitress who flirted up a storm and got pretty cozy with my dad right there, on my birthday, in front of me and my mom, while they were both still married. Seeing as this girl was probably half my dad's age and, honestly, any woman would probably shy away from my dad after an hour because he's got a bit of an ego on him and he doesn't know how to shut up. And I don't mean that figuratively, I mean literally he has proven himself time and time again incapable of shutting up. Thus, I am totally convinced my dad paid her or talked to her beforehand and told her to do all of that to try and make my mom jealous. Sadly, he was the kind of person who would do that. And I don't mean to slam on my dad too much. He's not a horrible person, but he was the project of a crappy childhood in which he was dominated by his overbearing father. It's very interesting. Both my parents had three siblings, my father had the most strained relationship with his father and my mom had the most strained relationship with her mother. And, as human psychology often shows us, it's those who were the most cast aside that do their best to fix things later on. When my grandfather contracted Parkinson's Disease in the late 80s my dad went and saw him at least five times as often as any of his siblings and when a problem arose he was always the one who jumped in the driver's seat to take care of it. Later on, around 2001, my grandmother suffered multiple strokes that left her bed-ridden the final five or so years of her life. She slept pretty much 22 hours a day, but after that happened my mother went and visited her almost bi-monthly even though sometimes it was a 300 mile drive just over the Oregon/California border. When those parents got sick it was those they struggled with the most who jumped in to take care of them. So I certainly understand the fact that my parents had their issues.
But the final nail in the coffin between my dad and I was in May, 2009. Since I was a kid it had been understood in our home that if I busted my ass in school and did my best to earn grants and scholarship money that they would compensate for the rest so I wouldn't go into extreme loan debt. This was an understanding for years and aside from that my dad told me, as we were preparing that property to be sold that he was planning to use a lot of that money to "put me through school", not just throwing me a few bucks to help me along. And here we were, we'd just received $250,000 only a year and a half before and I had been accepted into the University of Portland, one of the most prestigious colleges in the west. They only had a 3,200 enrollment because it's so hard to get into. It's a sister school with Notre Dame University for goodness sakes! And here I was, out of college for almost two years, but my college grades among other things I gave them with my application was so impressive to them that I was accepted on the spot. And on top of that, I earned almost $20,000 yearly grant funds to pay for school. I'd say I more than held up my end. But here I was, stuck living with my father who was drinking and periodically vanishing, but still had a huge chunk of change on him. All I needed was an extra $10,000 to cover my two years there. At this moment my father took the opportunity to throw that classic "well who told you to go to such an expensive college?" at me before saying that he didn't just have that kind of money to give me (when the opposite was the case). When my parents divorce went through, only two months before, it was established my dad had approximately $240,000 to his name. And now, not even 60 days later, he suddenly doesn't have $10,000 for his son. He then denied that they ever made that pact with me to cover what was left over of my college funding and even claimed he didn't have the money because he'd spent to much on the divorce (in a manipulative way pointing the blame at my mom since she was the one who wanted the divorce). But theirs was not a financially messy divorce, and again, when the divorce was processed he still had way over $200,000. This was what my father was really good at, was convincing you that you were wrong and that such was okay. He did that to me for years, forcing me to let him off the hook when I really should have got in his face. He had done this for years to get out of things.
For some reason though, this little financial aid tiff stuck with me. With mom gone and more time around my dad to see what he was really like I suddenly realized, no! He's wrong. This isn't okay. That night I didn't come home and slept at the church I attended. The next day I didn't go home and stayed at my moms. A night at my mom's turned into a week..... and a month. And being my mom, she was like, "You can stay as long as you want." Of course, she knew I was probably losing my mind living alone with my dad and she even had a little guilt over that. I just never went home. My dad called and I didn't answer. Summer came and went and I was starting at the University of Portland, working a full time schedule with a 35-hour work week. I had no time to talk to anyone, let alone my dad. A night of anger turned into an estranged situation and I spent a good two years so angry at my father for years worth of pain that he caused me. Fortunately, that anger eventually passed, as it often does, and I was able to look at things more objectively. My mom and I both have let our anger go against my dad. As my mother simply puts it: "Your father's a good man. But he was a lousy husband and father." And sadly, that's a fairly accurate assessment. I didn't see my father again until the summer of 2012, over three years time had passed. It was good to see him and we didn't make a big deal about the time we hadn't seen each other. I think he just wanted to act like it didn't happen so he wouldn't have to, as he often avoided, admit that he was the problem. But he was still the same person. He left me a few embittered voicemails after that accusing practically everyone in my life of poisoning me against him. That really got to me, because by that time I was 26-years old and he was still treating me like a child, like I was incapable of making up my own mind about things and so easily dissuaded by the remarks of others. But again, that was just him trying to push the blame for our falling out onto the shoulders of others. He was still the same person with the same problems, and that's the reason I have chosen not to be around him. It's a conscious choice; when he finally decides to grow up and change maybe I will be willing to start a relationship with him again, but not one where I'm the child and he pulls all the strings. I acknowledge that it's a decision I've made. In issues regarding conflict with friends and family we often say we "can't" see that person, but still, in not seeing them we are making the conscious decision to do so. I haven't seen my father now for about a year and a half now and I am, unfortunately though it is, much happier with him not in my life than I ever was when he was there. Again, he wasn't a bad man but he just became more and more unbearable to live with.
There's lots of other trying experiences that have occurred in my life, but I went into such detail about my own life to make a point: has my life been shitty at times? Absolutely! Has it been the worst life ever? No, not even close. I'm glad for this challenges I've faced, especially in these more recent years. University of Portland ultimately didn't work out, but not because I couldn't hack it. I rocked a 3.55 g.p.a. during my one year there. But my directive just changed, moving from a focus as a writer to a focus as a filmmaker, which is where I am at now. Life is still good and I still have an upbeat and positive attitude in general despite the many opportunities I had to turn down a much darker path. Fortunately, my greatest challenges came as a young adult as oppose to being a child like my friend was when her greatest challenges began. And imperfect though my parents were, they were a damn sight better than a lot of parents out there. They still raised me, so whoever I am they deserve some credit on that. Whatever my circumstances were I never turned to drugs or alcohol, or a criminal life, or life on the streets. And that could have happened as it has for many people.
So while I acknowledge the struggles and imperfections of my life I don't try to hyperbolize them, especially those that happened years ago that I've had the time to deal with and hopefully move on from. And I acknowledge at the same time, regardless how much was her responsibility, that this friend of mine has suffered through experiences I couldn't even understand. We're all so good at exaggerating our problems, especially when we're teenagers. As adults we all know how frustrating dealing with teenagers can be as every little thing they "want" becomes a need. But it's not only teens. Lots of people, especially those with struggles at a young age, those who are incredibly insecure, grow into adults who still over-exaggerate their problems. One of my closest friends has a mother who is going through a divorce with his father who, unlike my father, has busted his ass working to support his family. So she hasn't really had to do anything to support herself and has been living somewhat as a princess for years and the things she complains about are astounding to me, especially when you take what she says and couple it with the reality that she has been living a rather simple life for years. But in part that has possibly enabled her, but the point I am making out there is that we all need to stop and check ourselves, especially if we know we have a tendency to act in selfish or erratic ways. I hear people say sometimes, "Why do I always do 'this'?" to which I'm not very remorseful towards. It's one thing to have a problem and not recognize it, but if you're mentioning the problem and acknowledging it as a problem, that means you know it's a problem and thus it's your responsibility to take care of it. Take comfort in that and be grateful that you know there is a problem there. But instead we just use comments like that as a way to make people pity us and, sadly, we do sometimes. How often do we see someone post some self-loathing comment about themselves on Facebook, only because they're feeling bad and they want a bunch of pity. So-and-so posts, "I hate life cause nobody likes me." And people who post statuses like that always have friends, but they're selfish and so they are willing to alter reality to get a bunch of attention knowing people will give it to them. The worst part of it is, every now and then, someone will post on there what really needs to be said and what will be most helpful, such as, "Come on, you know you have friends. Be grateful for what you have." And when someone makes a post like that, others come and attack that person for being a jerk in this other person's time of need, when most of the time those who post this self-loathing nonsense just want attention and aren't willing to do anything about their problems. Everyone should be telling that person to stop acting like a spoiled brat, which reminding them that these comments are harsh, but being made by people who really care. But it's just so much easier to pander and it conveniently avoids any drama rising from a situation, but it doesn't fix a damn thing.
People need to learn to deal with their problems and if they are struggling themselves to deal with them none of us are doing them a service by pandering to them when we know they're just being drama queens. We need tough love as much as we need compassionate love. How many times has someone shouted someone else down for being a brat, or being selfish, and a short while later they became the best of friends because both sides acknowledged that such a situation needed to happen to turn things around? It happens all the time because we do need to be brought back to earth, and sometimes we need that aggressively. But what we need to do is learn to accept it as the truth when someone lays down the law on us that they are doing it out of love and compassion. But we're so great at taking such situations as attacks. And we just need to stop. I remember in years past how easy it was to dismiss harsh remarks from others that really needed to be said. I dismissed them then and now I look back and think, God! Why didn't I listen to them, they were so right!
Despite the pain and frustrations we face in out lives, there are almost always an excess of people out there who are suffering much more than we are, especially if we are currently being housed and fed. That alone is more than can be said of lots of people all by itself. Sure we're going to fly off the hands and play the victim card sometimes, that's only natural, but we need to try and keep such a thing from becoming habitual. We often always find we are more happy when we see and notice that there isn't as much pain and drama in our lives as we previously thought. So today, when I saw that old childhood friend walk in and walk out I reflected on my life and all the crap that's happened and come to the conclusion that it hasn't been so bad. She had it a lot worse and hopefully she's finding a way out of it, and if we both find ourselves under better circumstances a few years from now her journey would be a lot more impressive than mine because she had so much more to overcome. And I can't complain. Sure life isn't perfect. I don't have a car right now. Boo hoo. I'm not filthy rich. So what? But I'm one of a relative few who is doing what he loves. A few years back I decided I wanted to be a filmmaker and I haven't turned back. Every piece of work I've done is a little better than the last and I've learned many lessons from various projects I've worked on. I'm ecstatic over my next piece of work, which the daughter of a colleague of mine, whom I'd known all of 15 minutes, told me was an utterly brilliant idea (as though my ego needs that boost). So, hard though it sometimes is, looking forward is the best I can do because the past isn't perfect and the future is still unknown and waiting to happen.
Sunday, January 19, 2014
"MY INSPIRATION" - The Backstory to My New Film
As is so often the case for a story or an idea, be it good or bad, it
always seems to come from nowhere. The genesis of the story can be
sparked from a thought that is not connected to it in any way. Then
sometimes, a great idea comes from pure frustration.
You could say the origination for my new film “My Inspiration” dates back to the end of 2006. While attending church I met and befriended a girl a few years younger than I named Shauna. Back then making films was just something I did for fun while I pursued the dream of becoming a fiction writer. Not long after we became friends I discovered she attended the same high school that I had just graduated from. As an ongoing joke, whenever we would meet up she would steal an article of my clothing and then wear it to school the following day and tell all her teachers that she was my younger sister. We had another ongoing gimmick where we would stand next to each other and ask others if they saw the resemblance, and some surprisingly did. Just to create an image: I am 5’10”, 160 pounds, with thick, wavy dark brown hair and average sized brown eyes. Shauna is about 5’2”, 120 pounds, with thin, flat dirty blonde hair and big, wide grayish green eyes. No resemblance at all. But that little joke spawned into an ongoing thing. Even my best friend Scott would refer to Shauna as my sister for several years.
In the midst of this, Shauna developed an interest in the fact that I made little films to pass the time and one night, I believe it was in December, 2006, we got together with our other friend Melissa, who turned the camera on and just let it run. What she captured was about 10 minutes of Shauna and I doing improv pretending to be a pair of spiteful siblings just yelling and saying horrible things to each other. That somehow turned into a crazy, disconnected short film. The moment we finished it we were aware of how horrible it was. It was so horrible that we decided to make a sequel to it that was moderately better and ran about 70 minutes. Not long after finishing that sequel we came up with another idea and shot a 120 film with our other friend Katria. Once we finished that one up we still wanted to continue making random films but, needless to say, we were getting a little worn out on the whole brother/sister dynamic.
As time passed and our schedules both became filled with other obligations we discussed the idea of making films together less and less and the idea of making future films together turned into something we would bring up maybe once every couple months. Neither one of us put much thought into it and so we never really broke free of a new idea that didn’t pair us up as siblings. For a little while we had an idea wherein we were roommates, but it didn’t really go anywhere.
Around the beginning of 2010 the idea of us doing a film together started rearing its head again when Shauna moved into the same house I was living in. She lived there for several months and with us suddenly seeing each other every day it was convenient for her to become like a whiny little girl wanting to go to the park. Complaining about wanting to do a new film with me became an almost daily thing. This went on while I was taking on a full-time college schedule at the University of Portland while also working 30-35 hours a week. I had about 30 hours of homework a week and a round trip from home to school to work and back home was nearly 50 miles. I was not really in the mood to cram thoughts on a new film idea into that mix. Little did I know that my love of film was only a few months away from being sparked into a dimension of love and appreciation I could hardly imagine. I returned to school that fall with my focus officially transitioned from becoming a writer to becoming a filmmaker.
Once I finished my spring term at the end of April, 2010 I found myself with some time to relax, but Shauna still wanted to make another film. I decided to dedicate some time to coming up with something, but at the time my heart wasn’t into it and I was still failing to come up with anything that broke that brother/sister dynamic. So I did the easiest thing and I decided to stop fighting it and let any idea come to me. This turned my thinking around entirely and suddenly I found myself intermeshed into the notion of a really good brother and sister film, however it turned out being.
I can recall when the first seed of the idea was planted. One day, probably in early summer, I became captivated by a thought. I began to ponder what the relationship would be between a brother and sister who were close friends but didn’t realize they were siblings and how discovering that after already being so close would effect them. The idea sounded outlandish to me. How could two people be siblings and so close and yet not realize they were siblings? But the idea stuck with me. I figured out rather quickly the only way this could occur was if these two were separated from each other at birth, and possibly had no idea that they had any biological siblings. On top of that little thought I thought back on one of my favorite classic comedies, a 1940 William Powell/Myrna Loy film titled “I Love You Again”. The film follows Powell who has been living life as what one might call the 1940s version of a yuppie. But while on a cruise he is struck on the head and his true personal, that of a con man, resurfaces after being lost in amnesia for almost a decade. The film then follows him as he tries to maintain his former identity when he goes home and to try and not lose his wife at the same time. I started playing with that idea that maybe one of the two contracted amnesia a long time before they became friends and thus did not recall the other as as their sibling. There were problems with that as well. Namely, if only one had amnesia, the other one would still recall them as being his/her sibling.
I had troubles out of the gate but I couldn’t shake that feeling of doing a film about a brother and sister who weren’t aware they were siblings. Furthermore, I still felt the best way to go about that was to interject an amnesia aspect into the story. Without having my whole vision established I still felt little moments coming to me and I started writing. I got about 10 half-baked pages written that just revolved around two people meeting who were related but had no idea. I returned to school and suddenly found myself working on other projects. For a short while the project was shelved again, but I kept coming back to me.
About three years ago I completed a 22-page script and just decided to try and shoot it with me and two other actresses. Shauna had become too busy with college herself and this was just going to be a project for fun. I spent about three days shooting what ended up being a 37-minute long film full of holes and brought down a notch by my mediocre acting. This was also before I finally purchased some high grade camera and sound equipment to allow for higher grade film projects. The film quality on this piece was bad to say the best. But it was just for fun; just to test the idea. I honestly thought I was done with it by that time. I had shot it and it was time to pursue other intriguing cinematic ideas.
Then the summer of 2012 came around. After taking several film-related classes I felt I was ready to take my DMC 192 course. The purpose of this course was for a student in the film program to use all that he/she had learned and put it to practice shooting their own film project. There were few restrictions on the course except that I would have about nine weeks to shoot whatever project I chose. All I had to do at that moment was determine what I was going to shoot. For some reason, I still don’t know how or why, but the idea from “My Inspiration” returned to me.
With the course beginning in late September I started planning to shoot a revamped version of “My Inspiration” in the middle of August, the moment my summer classes ended. I dug deep into the project, doing practically nothing else with my life for those six weeks between terms. I rethought the whole concept, filling in any holes or continuity issues. The script was transformed from a 22-page piece to a 50-page script with added scenes and the expansion of the lead characters closest friend (who went from three scenes and six pages to six scenes and about fifteen pages). For everything I reconsidered a new thought came and the whole concept become better conceived and more driven. Over the course of time this concept had expanded from a small idea for a movie with a friend to something that could be a serious film production. I had the script, I had the education, I had the drive, and I had the equipment. There was only one problem...
As with many things we are doing for the first time, with “My Inspiration” being planned to be my first serious high-end film project, I became to eager and was far too naive. Here I was, fairly new to the real world of filmmaking and all of the organization, networking, scheduling, working with crew, working with casts and so on. I had no real connections to any crew people and I had no real connections to any actors. And furthermore, being a working student, I had practically no budget. With those restrictions, along with a lack of “on the set experience” so to speak I thought I was going to shoot a 50-page, 62-scene script in about five weeks (allowing four or so weeks for editing). Casting was hectic. I didn’t even get two of my three leads cast until less than a week before shooting. I scheduled my first shooting date about three weeks into the term with my two primarily leads, the brother and the sister. Our shoot was pushed to a start time of 3 p.m. and I found myself becoming very nervous and making silly mistakes as I worked with a crew that consisted of only a sound guy. In about three hours we got about half a page of shooting done.
Three days later my lead for the sister role contacted me and told me she was no longer available because she had become busy with other work. I knew this was just an excuse and the reality was that I hadn’t created the best impression on that first day. So there I was, confused and overwhelmed, already a week into the term, with only half a page of script shot (that had to be re-shot with a new actress) and I didn’t even have the third major role in the film cast yet. In those few days I learned a lot about the stress and responsibility of filmmaking. While it was a total disaster I am still glad that it happened. I acknowledged the unfortunate truth that this film just was not going to get done with where I was currently at and decided to postpone the project for another one. It turned out to be one of the greatest decisions I’ve ever made.
Taking my newly learned lessons to heart and will time ticking against me I pulled a little miracle out of thin air. I took a bland, directionless script that I had never finished and turned it into a 24-page script titled “The Way We Are” about a repeat-assault victim encountering the first man who ever assaulted her while stranded out in the wilderness. It was a small project taking place at only a few locations and with only two actors. The project was much easier to organized and I still shot it with practically no crew over the course of five sporadic days. Considering how crazy that term had turned out I came away with my first serious piece of high quality film work and made it out of the course alive.
Once again “My Inspiration” was shelved. After shooting “The Way We Are” I came up with another short to shoot and then became entangled into a three-month long project for class. After that summer arrived and I found myself shooting a series of short films, mostly a mix between the dramatic and comedy varieties. There was another more significant piece of work that I wrote during the early months of 2013 that I shot during the fall. That took up a significant period of my life and when I had the piece all finished up I found myself wondering as to what I would do next. I had a web series in the works but the further along I got into preparing it the greater the project became and the less I felt truly inspired to do it.
This series was intended to be a rather wild comedy, but while I was working on it I found myself watching a series of great classic films. There were a few Hitchcock classics mixed in there along with films like “All the President’s Men”, “The Color Purple” and even a few later great Billy Wilder pieces like “Irma La Douce” and “Avanti!”. Watching these films I started feeling grabbed by one of the major commonalities between the works of Hitchcock, Spielberg and Wilder (possibly my three most favorite directors). All three of these filmmakers did epic pieces of work. Hitchcock had “The Thirty-Nine Steps”, “Rebecca”, “Strangers on a Train”, “Rear Window”, “Vertigo”, “North By Northwest”, “Psycho” and “The Birds” to his credit. These were all epic, dramatic, intense pieces of work. Spielberg had “Jaws”, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial”, “Schindler’s List”, “Jurassic Park”, and “Saving Private Ryan”. Again, a director with an extensive list of success utilizing very action-packed and dramatic styles to his work. Then there’s Wilder, quite possibly the most underrated director of all-time, with classics such as “Double Indemnity”, “The Lost Weekend”, “Sunset Boulevard”, “Sabrina”, “Witness for the Prosecution”, “Some Like It Hot” and “The Apartment” to his credit. Wilder probably was the best at this aspect that really draws these three directors together. That is their ability to make this epic, dramatic, emotionally-charged films that are, at the same time, packed with great comedic moments. In fact, those films that these directors had produced that were the least successful were those criticized for not being humorous enough. That was the great downfall to Hitchcock’s 1966 film “Torn Curtain” and it was a key criticism made against Spielberg’s 2005 film “Munich”.
Watching some of these directors, many which I could only hope to emulate, and catching onto that great correlation between the two made me really want to make something in that same vein. I wanted to have a dramatic, emotionally-charged story but not one devoid of humor or light-heartedness. “The Way We Are” was a very dark and yet uplifting story with little to no humor. The film that I spent the better part of this past fall working on as well was another serious story that did have moments of humor, but they were few and far between. Wanting to keep from falling into too serious of a consistent film structure and knowing I had a knack for humor, I knew I could make something in this style.
While thinking this over I was reorganizing papers in my room and I stumbled across the script for “My Inspiration”, which I hadn’t read since the early fall of 2012 back when I was still planning on shooting it. I thought I’d give it another shot and just sat down and read through the script. This short while later, having worked on many film projects and developed many connections in the film work I found myself immediately falling for the script and knowing that this time around I could make it happen. I immediately took that original 50-page script and began to break it down again. I added a few more lines when necessary and cut lines out in other places. I added a few scenes and made the overall story flow better together and more dynamically. As I did this I spent several hours visualizing the story and how it would come out on camera, which proved to be a remarkable assistance in producing a detailed shot list for the production (a much more detailed list than I’ve ever used before).
That brings us to the present day, as I make preparations to begin production on this film in the middle of February, 2014. There is one final thing to discuss in this regard however before wrapping things up: the storyline. I’ve been rambling on here about how the film came into being, more than once, but I haven’t gone in-depth into the story. So here goes...
“My Inspiration” follows a young writer named Daniel Kellerman, who has been a dedicated writer since discovering as a child that he was adopted and that he had a biological sister named Hanaley (Haw-na-lee) who was adopted as well. Learning he had a sister but never knowing her, Daniel began writing as a way of creating a persona for her. That elevated into becoming a well-rounded writer, while always being driven by his hopes and dreams of one day finding and finally meeting Hanaley. When the film opens, Hanaley has finally uncovered where Daniel is and is on her way to pay him a surprise visit when she has a car accident in town, when her car goes off a bridge and into a river. She is presumed dead and Daniel receives a call from Hanaley’s adoptive parents, the only other people who also know where he is, and he learns that his sister has died.
Daniel’s world is turned upside down. Despite his great talent and future in writing he finds himself unable to write and decides to give it up, assuming the lost dream of meeting his sister was the only thing driving him. While he struggles with this realization Hanaley is washed ashore, barely alive and suffering amnesia after being struck in the head. She has retrograde amnesia, which is the form of amnesia that makes you forget details and memories that existed prior to the trauma that caused that amnesia. As Daniel wanders around aimlessly, not knowing what to do, he finds himself continuously encountering Hanaley and becoming intrigued by her confused and lost demeanor as she wanders about trying to find anything that will remind her who she is. It is her bewildering behavior that leads Daniel to begin writing again, even though at first all he writes is about how she acts and how it effects his thinking.
Daniel finally conjures up the nerve to speak to her, discovering that she has amnesia and doesn’t know who she is or where she is going. This intrigues Daniel more and he continues to write about this amnesiac he’s just met, completely unaware that this is his sister. To help in his progression of writing he befriends Hanaley and becomes dedicated towards helping her remember who she is. As this goes on, Daniel has another important relationship going on in the film, which is that of his closest writing companion, a girl named Alex. Alex is the opposite, personality-wise, from Daniel who is very polite and soft-spoken. Alex is very outgoing and calls things as she sees him. To her, the bond she shares with Daniel is much stronger than just being writing companions. She’s been practically in love with her since the day she met as his writing ability completely astounds her. But Daniel’s greatest fault is the fact that he never finishes a written piece of work unless it’s perfect in his eyes. Thus he seldom finishes anything, which attributes to his status as a struggling writer. This is her one place of contention with him, the fact that he gives up so easily. She thus becomes the driving force in keeping Daniel on track as he engages in his most recent work, the story of an amnesiac girl who seems to have come from nowhere.
As the story progresses the bond between Daniel and Hanaley grows, ultimately forcing Daniel to face his greatest conflict which is facing the reality as to whether he is assisting Hanaley because he truly cares about her or because he wants her to remember simply so he can finish his story. This causes further conflict when it appears Hanaley isn’t going to discover who she is anytime soon, providing Daniel with a reason to considering giving up on yet another story. This leads us into the latter portion of the film so I will cease from discussing any further details and practically giving away everything that occurs in the film.
In reading this detailed description of the storyline however one can see how I managed to interweave those early thoughts such as a brother and sister who don’t realize they’re related and the theme of amnesia into a legitimate storyline that is both captivating and emotionally-driven. There is little doubt in my mind that this will be my greatest work to date and I am extremely excited to begin production on it in February. If you are reading this you may have possibly already made a contribution of some kind towards this production (and if you haven't the link to do so I posted below if you wish to), and hopefully this written piece gives you a much stronger idea as to the type of work your contribution is going towards. And I thank you again for your contribution and in helping this film become closer and closer to being a reality. And if you wish to monitor the progress of this production in pre-production, production and post-production you can follow that at any of the links listed below. Thanks again!
INDIEGOGO CAMPAIGN PAGE:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/short-film-my-inspiration/x/121165
MY INSPIRATION FACEBOOK PAGE:
https://www.facebook.com/myinspirationfilm
MY BLOG:
http://realvisionfantasyworld.blogspot.com/
MY TWITTER ACCOUNT:
https://twitter.com/SillySister85
You could say the origination for my new film “My Inspiration” dates back to the end of 2006. While attending church I met and befriended a girl a few years younger than I named Shauna. Back then making films was just something I did for fun while I pursued the dream of becoming a fiction writer. Not long after we became friends I discovered she attended the same high school that I had just graduated from. As an ongoing joke, whenever we would meet up she would steal an article of my clothing and then wear it to school the following day and tell all her teachers that she was my younger sister. We had another ongoing gimmick where we would stand next to each other and ask others if they saw the resemblance, and some surprisingly did. Just to create an image: I am 5’10”, 160 pounds, with thick, wavy dark brown hair and average sized brown eyes. Shauna is about 5’2”, 120 pounds, with thin, flat dirty blonde hair and big, wide grayish green eyes. No resemblance at all. But that little joke spawned into an ongoing thing. Even my best friend Scott would refer to Shauna as my sister for several years.
In the midst of this, Shauna developed an interest in the fact that I made little films to pass the time and one night, I believe it was in December, 2006, we got together with our other friend Melissa, who turned the camera on and just let it run. What she captured was about 10 minutes of Shauna and I doing improv pretending to be a pair of spiteful siblings just yelling and saying horrible things to each other. That somehow turned into a crazy, disconnected short film. The moment we finished it we were aware of how horrible it was. It was so horrible that we decided to make a sequel to it that was moderately better and ran about 70 minutes. Not long after finishing that sequel we came up with another idea and shot a 120 film with our other friend Katria. Once we finished that one up we still wanted to continue making random films but, needless to say, we were getting a little worn out on the whole brother/sister dynamic.
As time passed and our schedules both became filled with other obligations we discussed the idea of making films together less and less and the idea of making future films together turned into something we would bring up maybe once every couple months. Neither one of us put much thought into it and so we never really broke free of a new idea that didn’t pair us up as siblings. For a little while we had an idea wherein we were roommates, but it didn’t really go anywhere.
Around the beginning of 2010 the idea of us doing a film together started rearing its head again when Shauna moved into the same house I was living in. She lived there for several months and with us suddenly seeing each other every day it was convenient for her to become like a whiny little girl wanting to go to the park. Complaining about wanting to do a new film with me became an almost daily thing. This went on while I was taking on a full-time college schedule at the University of Portland while also working 30-35 hours a week. I had about 30 hours of homework a week and a round trip from home to school to work and back home was nearly 50 miles. I was not really in the mood to cram thoughts on a new film idea into that mix. Little did I know that my love of film was only a few months away from being sparked into a dimension of love and appreciation I could hardly imagine. I returned to school that fall with my focus officially transitioned from becoming a writer to becoming a filmmaker.
Once I finished my spring term at the end of April, 2010 I found myself with some time to relax, but Shauna still wanted to make another film. I decided to dedicate some time to coming up with something, but at the time my heart wasn’t into it and I was still failing to come up with anything that broke that brother/sister dynamic. So I did the easiest thing and I decided to stop fighting it and let any idea come to me. This turned my thinking around entirely and suddenly I found myself intermeshed into the notion of a really good brother and sister film, however it turned out being.
I can recall when the first seed of the idea was planted. One day, probably in early summer, I became captivated by a thought. I began to ponder what the relationship would be between a brother and sister who were close friends but didn’t realize they were siblings and how discovering that after already being so close would effect them. The idea sounded outlandish to me. How could two people be siblings and so close and yet not realize they were siblings? But the idea stuck with me. I figured out rather quickly the only way this could occur was if these two were separated from each other at birth, and possibly had no idea that they had any biological siblings. On top of that little thought I thought back on one of my favorite classic comedies, a 1940 William Powell/Myrna Loy film titled “I Love You Again”. The film follows Powell who has been living life as what one might call the 1940s version of a yuppie. But while on a cruise he is struck on the head and his true personal, that of a con man, resurfaces after being lost in amnesia for almost a decade. The film then follows him as he tries to maintain his former identity when he goes home and to try and not lose his wife at the same time. I started playing with that idea that maybe one of the two contracted amnesia a long time before they became friends and thus did not recall the other as as their sibling. There were problems with that as well. Namely, if only one had amnesia, the other one would still recall them as being his/her sibling.
I had troubles out of the gate but I couldn’t shake that feeling of doing a film about a brother and sister who weren’t aware they were siblings. Furthermore, I still felt the best way to go about that was to interject an amnesia aspect into the story. Without having my whole vision established I still felt little moments coming to me and I started writing. I got about 10 half-baked pages written that just revolved around two people meeting who were related but had no idea. I returned to school and suddenly found myself working on other projects. For a short while the project was shelved again, but I kept coming back to me.
About three years ago I completed a 22-page script and just decided to try and shoot it with me and two other actresses. Shauna had become too busy with college herself and this was just going to be a project for fun. I spent about three days shooting what ended up being a 37-minute long film full of holes and brought down a notch by my mediocre acting. This was also before I finally purchased some high grade camera and sound equipment to allow for higher grade film projects. The film quality on this piece was bad to say the best. But it was just for fun; just to test the idea. I honestly thought I was done with it by that time. I had shot it and it was time to pursue other intriguing cinematic ideas.
Then the summer of 2012 came around. After taking several film-related classes I felt I was ready to take my DMC 192 course. The purpose of this course was for a student in the film program to use all that he/she had learned and put it to practice shooting their own film project. There were few restrictions on the course except that I would have about nine weeks to shoot whatever project I chose. All I had to do at that moment was determine what I was going to shoot. For some reason, I still don’t know how or why, but the idea from “My Inspiration” returned to me.
With the course beginning in late September I started planning to shoot a revamped version of “My Inspiration” in the middle of August, the moment my summer classes ended. I dug deep into the project, doing practically nothing else with my life for those six weeks between terms. I rethought the whole concept, filling in any holes or continuity issues. The script was transformed from a 22-page piece to a 50-page script with added scenes and the expansion of the lead characters closest friend (who went from three scenes and six pages to six scenes and about fifteen pages). For everything I reconsidered a new thought came and the whole concept become better conceived and more driven. Over the course of time this concept had expanded from a small idea for a movie with a friend to something that could be a serious film production. I had the script, I had the education, I had the drive, and I had the equipment. There was only one problem...
As with many things we are doing for the first time, with “My Inspiration” being planned to be my first serious high-end film project, I became to eager and was far too naive. Here I was, fairly new to the real world of filmmaking and all of the organization, networking, scheduling, working with crew, working with casts and so on. I had no real connections to any crew people and I had no real connections to any actors. And furthermore, being a working student, I had practically no budget. With those restrictions, along with a lack of “on the set experience” so to speak I thought I was going to shoot a 50-page, 62-scene script in about five weeks (allowing four or so weeks for editing). Casting was hectic. I didn’t even get two of my three leads cast until less than a week before shooting. I scheduled my first shooting date about three weeks into the term with my two primarily leads, the brother and the sister. Our shoot was pushed to a start time of 3 p.m. and I found myself becoming very nervous and making silly mistakes as I worked with a crew that consisted of only a sound guy. In about three hours we got about half a page of shooting done.
Three days later my lead for the sister role contacted me and told me she was no longer available because she had become busy with other work. I knew this was just an excuse and the reality was that I hadn’t created the best impression on that first day. So there I was, confused and overwhelmed, already a week into the term, with only half a page of script shot (that had to be re-shot with a new actress) and I didn’t even have the third major role in the film cast yet. In those few days I learned a lot about the stress and responsibility of filmmaking. While it was a total disaster I am still glad that it happened. I acknowledged the unfortunate truth that this film just was not going to get done with where I was currently at and decided to postpone the project for another one. It turned out to be one of the greatest decisions I’ve ever made.
Taking my newly learned lessons to heart and will time ticking against me I pulled a little miracle out of thin air. I took a bland, directionless script that I had never finished and turned it into a 24-page script titled “The Way We Are” about a repeat-assault victim encountering the first man who ever assaulted her while stranded out in the wilderness. It was a small project taking place at only a few locations and with only two actors. The project was much easier to organized and I still shot it with practically no crew over the course of five sporadic days. Considering how crazy that term had turned out I came away with my first serious piece of high quality film work and made it out of the course alive.
Once again “My Inspiration” was shelved. After shooting “The Way We Are” I came up with another short to shoot and then became entangled into a three-month long project for class. After that summer arrived and I found myself shooting a series of short films, mostly a mix between the dramatic and comedy varieties. There was another more significant piece of work that I wrote during the early months of 2013 that I shot during the fall. That took up a significant period of my life and when I had the piece all finished up I found myself wondering as to what I would do next. I had a web series in the works but the further along I got into preparing it the greater the project became and the less I felt truly inspired to do it.
This series was intended to be a rather wild comedy, but while I was working on it I found myself watching a series of great classic films. There were a few Hitchcock classics mixed in there along with films like “All the President’s Men”, “The Color Purple” and even a few later great Billy Wilder pieces like “Irma La Douce” and “Avanti!”. Watching these films I started feeling grabbed by one of the major commonalities between the works of Hitchcock, Spielberg and Wilder (possibly my three most favorite directors). All three of these filmmakers did epic pieces of work. Hitchcock had “The Thirty-Nine Steps”, “Rebecca”, “Strangers on a Train”, “Rear Window”, “Vertigo”, “North By Northwest”, “Psycho” and “The Birds” to his credit. These were all epic, dramatic, intense pieces of work. Spielberg had “Jaws”, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial”, “Schindler’s List”, “Jurassic Park”, and “Saving Private Ryan”. Again, a director with an extensive list of success utilizing very action-packed and dramatic styles to his work. Then there’s Wilder, quite possibly the most underrated director of all-time, with classics such as “Double Indemnity”, “The Lost Weekend”, “Sunset Boulevard”, “Sabrina”, “Witness for the Prosecution”, “Some Like It Hot” and “The Apartment” to his credit. Wilder probably was the best at this aspect that really draws these three directors together. That is their ability to make this epic, dramatic, emotionally-charged films that are, at the same time, packed with great comedic moments. In fact, those films that these directors had produced that were the least successful were those criticized for not being humorous enough. That was the great downfall to Hitchcock’s 1966 film “Torn Curtain” and it was a key criticism made against Spielberg’s 2005 film “Munich”.
Watching some of these directors, many which I could only hope to emulate, and catching onto that great correlation between the two made me really want to make something in that same vein. I wanted to have a dramatic, emotionally-charged story but not one devoid of humor or light-heartedness. “The Way We Are” was a very dark and yet uplifting story with little to no humor. The film that I spent the better part of this past fall working on as well was another serious story that did have moments of humor, but they were few and far between. Wanting to keep from falling into too serious of a consistent film structure and knowing I had a knack for humor, I knew I could make something in this style.
While thinking this over I was reorganizing papers in my room and I stumbled across the script for “My Inspiration”, which I hadn’t read since the early fall of 2012 back when I was still planning on shooting it. I thought I’d give it another shot and just sat down and read through the script. This short while later, having worked on many film projects and developed many connections in the film work I found myself immediately falling for the script and knowing that this time around I could make it happen. I immediately took that original 50-page script and began to break it down again. I added a few more lines when necessary and cut lines out in other places. I added a few scenes and made the overall story flow better together and more dynamically. As I did this I spent several hours visualizing the story and how it would come out on camera, which proved to be a remarkable assistance in producing a detailed shot list for the production (a much more detailed list than I’ve ever used before).
That brings us to the present day, as I make preparations to begin production on this film in the middle of February, 2014. There is one final thing to discuss in this regard however before wrapping things up: the storyline. I’ve been rambling on here about how the film came into being, more than once, but I haven’t gone in-depth into the story. So here goes...
“My Inspiration” follows a young writer named Daniel Kellerman, who has been a dedicated writer since discovering as a child that he was adopted and that he had a biological sister named Hanaley (Haw-na-lee) who was adopted as well. Learning he had a sister but never knowing her, Daniel began writing as a way of creating a persona for her. That elevated into becoming a well-rounded writer, while always being driven by his hopes and dreams of one day finding and finally meeting Hanaley. When the film opens, Hanaley has finally uncovered where Daniel is and is on her way to pay him a surprise visit when she has a car accident in town, when her car goes off a bridge and into a river. She is presumed dead and Daniel receives a call from Hanaley’s adoptive parents, the only other people who also know where he is, and he learns that his sister has died.
Daniel’s world is turned upside down. Despite his great talent and future in writing he finds himself unable to write and decides to give it up, assuming the lost dream of meeting his sister was the only thing driving him. While he struggles with this realization Hanaley is washed ashore, barely alive and suffering amnesia after being struck in the head. She has retrograde amnesia, which is the form of amnesia that makes you forget details and memories that existed prior to the trauma that caused that amnesia. As Daniel wanders around aimlessly, not knowing what to do, he finds himself continuously encountering Hanaley and becoming intrigued by her confused and lost demeanor as she wanders about trying to find anything that will remind her who she is. It is her bewildering behavior that leads Daniel to begin writing again, even though at first all he writes is about how she acts and how it effects his thinking.
Daniel finally conjures up the nerve to speak to her, discovering that she has amnesia and doesn’t know who she is or where she is going. This intrigues Daniel more and he continues to write about this amnesiac he’s just met, completely unaware that this is his sister. To help in his progression of writing he befriends Hanaley and becomes dedicated towards helping her remember who she is. As this goes on, Daniel has another important relationship going on in the film, which is that of his closest writing companion, a girl named Alex. Alex is the opposite, personality-wise, from Daniel who is very polite and soft-spoken. Alex is very outgoing and calls things as she sees him. To her, the bond she shares with Daniel is much stronger than just being writing companions. She’s been practically in love with her since the day she met as his writing ability completely astounds her. But Daniel’s greatest fault is the fact that he never finishes a written piece of work unless it’s perfect in his eyes. Thus he seldom finishes anything, which attributes to his status as a struggling writer. This is her one place of contention with him, the fact that he gives up so easily. She thus becomes the driving force in keeping Daniel on track as he engages in his most recent work, the story of an amnesiac girl who seems to have come from nowhere.
As the story progresses the bond between Daniel and Hanaley grows, ultimately forcing Daniel to face his greatest conflict which is facing the reality as to whether he is assisting Hanaley because he truly cares about her or because he wants her to remember simply so he can finish his story. This causes further conflict when it appears Hanaley isn’t going to discover who she is anytime soon, providing Daniel with a reason to considering giving up on yet another story. This leads us into the latter portion of the film so I will cease from discussing any further details and practically giving away everything that occurs in the film.
In reading this detailed description of the storyline however one can see how I managed to interweave those early thoughts such as a brother and sister who don’t realize they’re related and the theme of amnesia into a legitimate storyline that is both captivating and emotionally-driven. There is little doubt in my mind that this will be my greatest work to date and I am extremely excited to begin production on it in February. If you are reading this you may have possibly already made a contribution of some kind towards this production (and if you haven't the link to do so I posted below if you wish to), and hopefully this written piece gives you a much stronger idea as to the type of work your contribution is going towards. And I thank you again for your contribution and in helping this film become closer and closer to being a reality. And if you wish to monitor the progress of this production in pre-production, production and post-production you can follow that at any of the links listed below. Thanks again!
INDIEGOGO CAMPAIGN PAGE:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/short-film-my-inspiration/x/121165
MY INSPIRATION FACEBOOK PAGE:
https://www.facebook.com/myinspirationfilm
MY BLOG:
http://realvisionfantasyworld.blogspot.com/
MY TWITTER ACCOUNT:
https://twitter.com/SillySister85
Saturday, January 18, 2014
Hidden Commonalities
For the past couple months as I pondered what my next film project would be (or whether to even make a film at all and possibly get involved in the productions others were making) I considered a great number of possibilities. Up until recently I had been struggling with not being sure what idea or genre type I wanted to go with. As this frustration was going on I found myself watching a collection of great older films - which often serves to jump start my mind and get me thinking a little bit deeper and harder about where I'm going.
Over these past weeks I've watched a few Hitchcock classics including "North By Northwest", "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and "Vertigo". I've seen just about every film he's ever done and there are many obvious parallels between them all, especially in the films he shot during the 1950s when his popularity had a massive upswing. After a period of struggle in the late 40s films like "Strangers on a Train" and "Rear Window" turned everything around for Hitch and he maintained a high level of popularity into the mid-60s when criticism of his works rose again and, in all fairness, his heath was beginning to decline.
In addition to a few Hitchcock films I also watched a few Billy Wilder films, mostly later works of his. "Double Indemnity", his 1944 film noir classic, is one of my most favorite films and my most favorite film of that genre. But he's done so much more, many films that people have heard of but I don't think realize he was the director on. I tend to be more partial however to his later works in that I think he thrived in doing legitimate comedy work. I stormed through "Some Like It Hot" yet again and also took in some of his later works like "Irma La Douce" (another underrated piece of work from Wilder) and I also saw his 1972 film "Avanti!" for the first time. While I wasn't exactly crazy about the ending I thought it to be a very entertaining and charming piece of work. Then again, it was a pairing of Billy Wilder and Jack Lemmon, so how could it not be charming?
If I had to pick three directors that were to top my list there would definitely be some honorable mentions such as George Cukor, Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, and as far as contemporary film goes, Christopher Nolan and Clint Eastwood are right up there. I really have the highest respect for those directors who were consistently successful in their work because there's so many directors out there that either come and go or remain fairly obscure because they either never or seldom did any film work that was worthy of remembering. But with Hitchcock and Wilder likely in my top three, I know it sounds like a fairly conventional list, but I would probably ad Steven Spielberg as my third and final director (and no, not because we have the same name).
Now the reasons why I would likely choose these three are many, but directly there is one specific correlation between them that I really admire and it ended up effecting my decision on what type of film project to do next. There is a definite and powerful correlation specifically between Hitchcock and Spielberg's work. They were both known for doing "epic" style films; films that poured the story out with great visual and cinematic power. While so many films, especially today, try and take a more passive and realistic approach to things, I still have a certain level of admiration for this style of filmmaking (it's true filmmaking at its artistic core). But something else they are incredibly well known for, probably because they were so successful doing it, is they were able to create dramatic and suspenseful pieces of work that were charmingly laced with comedy. For Hitchcock in particular, a film like "North By Northwest" has Cary Grant playing a character that is every bit as charming as those screwball characters he played in years past in films such as "The Awful Truth", "Bringing Up Baby", and "Arsenic and Old Lace". It's a classic mystery/suspense film, but the comedy truly brings everything together. Spielberg on the other hand was known for making great leaps with his comedy, often using comedy elements that loomed outside of realism, such as the famous scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" when Harrison Ford had taken ill and instead of having a duel with a rather large Middle Eastern gentleman with a large sword he just pulled his gun out and shot the guy. Now while that moment wasn't originally scripted, the decision to change it to something so outlandish and unexpected was all Spielberg.
Of course Billy Wilder is a great compliment between the two because he knew how to make hard-hitting serious pieces of film work that completely lacked comedy of any kind and at the same time the last 25 years or so of his career his did practically nothing but comedy work. And he was great with mixing the serious and the comedic. All of the escapades surrounding the story of "Some Like It Hot" revolve around the fact that Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis' characters witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, one of the most brutal killings in the history of Chicago. He took tragedy and made it part of a comedy film that still ranks number one as the greatest comedy ever done according to the American Film Institute.
The balance between drama and comedy is key in making this three directors so successful and so significant in the annals of film. They have had a certain expectation placed on them before they even started their next film production. And it can be of little surprise then, especially in the cases of Hitchcock and Spielberg, that in the films they done that lacked sufficient humor they were less successful. I think of films like "Torn Curtain" and "Topaz", both later Hitchcock works that were mercilessly criticized for their lack of "Hitchcockian" quality. Some people who previewed these movies honestly believed they had been duped because they were so convinced that these were not Hitchcock films. Their greatest criticisms too were that films such as these lacked those witty and comedic elements that made his previous works so successful. However, one must realize that in later works such as these Hitchcock was dealing with much more serious subject matter, much of it involving international intrigue and Cold War attitudes. For Spielberg, even though it successfully received an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture a few years back, one film I think of as far not being one of Spielberg's greatest was "Munich". Granted, again we have film dealing with very serious subject matter, but the film lacks those classic Spielberg moments of wit and comedy. The moments of softness and comedy almost feel forced as though they had to be put somewhere so they just conveniently stuck it in places. I really like the film myself, but I feel a lack of light-heartedness played a key part in not making the film more successful to others.
I also find it interesting with reputations such as this that Hitchcock and Spielberg have been sometimes their least successful in trying to do full on comedies. People love their comedy it seems as long as it's interwoven into a more serious storyline. "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", directed by Hitchcock back in 1941, primarily as a favor to Carole Lombard, is hardly considered a classic by many (and honestly, as a major classic comedy/screwball comedy fan, it's not one of my favorites either). He also did a black comedy in the mid-50s called "The Trouble With Harry", which, while being a fairly well respected film, even as a quirky comedy did not belong in the league of other films Hitchcock was doing at that time. This one is easily lost in the mix as it was done around other productions such as "Rear Window", "To Catch a Thief" and "The Man Who Knew Too Much". On the other end of things, Spielberg's only real full on foray into comedy was his 1979 film "1941", which revolves around the insanity that grasped the city of Los Angeles after the 1941 attacks on Pearl Harbor, when everyone felt that L.A. would be the next to be attacked. This is another film I enjoy, but more for its absurdity than its cinematic relevance. Like Hitchcock's 1950s effort into comedy, "1941" is easily lost in the shuffle as it was done around films like "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", "Raiders of the Lost Ark", and "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial". This is still a very interesting concept that when it comes to doing a straight up comedy these directors seem to disappoint the viewers whether their works were good or not. But much less comedic, and more subtle humor inserted into a serious film and they are kings of cinema.
All in all it was taking notice of that fact that these great directors found such great success in their abilities to blend drama and comedy together into one storyline. It finally popped into my head to give that a serious shot as most of my dramatic work was just that... drama. I wanted to do something a little more true to humanity, something that people could watch and connect with better as we can be comedic even in times of strife and trouble. Thus, my new film which I will be posting about frequently, especially now that I am trying to collect funds for it, will be following a similar line to that. It's a very serious film, but laced with honest and legitimate comedic moments to keep the mood from being constantly swayed too far in any one direction.
Having mentioned my funding, I may as well do a little asking... I am hoping to make an additional $750 by February 15th to go towards my production and help to make it the best I possibly can. If any of you reading this or future posts from me can make a donation of any amount to my Indiegogo campaign I would truly appreciate it! The link to it is: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/short-film-my-inspiration/x/1211654.
Thank you so much and see you all later!
Over these past weeks I've watched a few Hitchcock classics including "North By Northwest", "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and "Vertigo". I've seen just about every film he's ever done and there are many obvious parallels between them all, especially in the films he shot during the 1950s when his popularity had a massive upswing. After a period of struggle in the late 40s films like "Strangers on a Train" and "Rear Window" turned everything around for Hitch and he maintained a high level of popularity into the mid-60s when criticism of his works rose again and, in all fairness, his heath was beginning to decline.
In addition to a few Hitchcock films I also watched a few Billy Wilder films, mostly later works of his. "Double Indemnity", his 1944 film noir classic, is one of my most favorite films and my most favorite film of that genre. But he's done so much more, many films that people have heard of but I don't think realize he was the director on. I tend to be more partial however to his later works in that I think he thrived in doing legitimate comedy work. I stormed through "Some Like It Hot" yet again and also took in some of his later works like "Irma La Douce" (another underrated piece of work from Wilder) and I also saw his 1972 film "Avanti!" for the first time. While I wasn't exactly crazy about the ending I thought it to be a very entertaining and charming piece of work. Then again, it was a pairing of Billy Wilder and Jack Lemmon, so how could it not be charming?
If I had to pick three directors that were to top my list there would definitely be some honorable mentions such as George Cukor, Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, and as far as contemporary film goes, Christopher Nolan and Clint Eastwood are right up there. I really have the highest respect for those directors who were consistently successful in their work because there's so many directors out there that either come and go or remain fairly obscure because they either never or seldom did any film work that was worthy of remembering. But with Hitchcock and Wilder likely in my top three, I know it sounds like a fairly conventional list, but I would probably ad Steven Spielberg as my third and final director (and no, not because we have the same name).
Now the reasons why I would likely choose these three are many, but directly there is one specific correlation between them that I really admire and it ended up effecting my decision on what type of film project to do next. There is a definite and powerful correlation specifically between Hitchcock and Spielberg's work. They were both known for doing "epic" style films; films that poured the story out with great visual and cinematic power. While so many films, especially today, try and take a more passive and realistic approach to things, I still have a certain level of admiration for this style of filmmaking (it's true filmmaking at its artistic core). But something else they are incredibly well known for, probably because they were so successful doing it, is they were able to create dramatic and suspenseful pieces of work that were charmingly laced with comedy. For Hitchcock in particular, a film like "North By Northwest" has Cary Grant playing a character that is every bit as charming as those screwball characters he played in years past in films such as "The Awful Truth", "Bringing Up Baby", and "Arsenic and Old Lace". It's a classic mystery/suspense film, but the comedy truly brings everything together. Spielberg on the other hand was known for making great leaps with his comedy, often using comedy elements that loomed outside of realism, such as the famous scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" when Harrison Ford had taken ill and instead of having a duel with a rather large Middle Eastern gentleman with a large sword he just pulled his gun out and shot the guy. Now while that moment wasn't originally scripted, the decision to change it to something so outlandish and unexpected was all Spielberg.
Of course Billy Wilder is a great compliment between the two because he knew how to make hard-hitting serious pieces of film work that completely lacked comedy of any kind and at the same time the last 25 years or so of his career his did practically nothing but comedy work. And he was great with mixing the serious and the comedic. All of the escapades surrounding the story of "Some Like It Hot" revolve around the fact that Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis' characters witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, one of the most brutal killings in the history of Chicago. He took tragedy and made it part of a comedy film that still ranks number one as the greatest comedy ever done according to the American Film Institute.
The balance between drama and comedy is key in making this three directors so successful and so significant in the annals of film. They have had a certain expectation placed on them before they even started their next film production. And it can be of little surprise then, especially in the cases of Hitchcock and Spielberg, that in the films they done that lacked sufficient humor they were less successful. I think of films like "Torn Curtain" and "Topaz", both later Hitchcock works that were mercilessly criticized for their lack of "Hitchcockian" quality. Some people who previewed these movies honestly believed they had been duped because they were so convinced that these were not Hitchcock films. Their greatest criticisms too were that films such as these lacked those witty and comedic elements that made his previous works so successful. However, one must realize that in later works such as these Hitchcock was dealing with much more serious subject matter, much of it involving international intrigue and Cold War attitudes. For Spielberg, even though it successfully received an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture a few years back, one film I think of as far not being one of Spielberg's greatest was "Munich". Granted, again we have film dealing with very serious subject matter, but the film lacks those classic Spielberg moments of wit and comedy. The moments of softness and comedy almost feel forced as though they had to be put somewhere so they just conveniently stuck it in places. I really like the film myself, but I feel a lack of light-heartedness played a key part in not making the film more successful to others.
I also find it interesting with reputations such as this that Hitchcock and Spielberg have been sometimes their least successful in trying to do full on comedies. People love their comedy it seems as long as it's interwoven into a more serious storyline. "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", directed by Hitchcock back in 1941, primarily as a favor to Carole Lombard, is hardly considered a classic by many (and honestly, as a major classic comedy/screwball comedy fan, it's not one of my favorites either). He also did a black comedy in the mid-50s called "The Trouble With Harry", which, while being a fairly well respected film, even as a quirky comedy did not belong in the league of other films Hitchcock was doing at that time. This one is easily lost in the mix as it was done around other productions such as "Rear Window", "To Catch a Thief" and "The Man Who Knew Too Much". On the other end of things, Spielberg's only real full on foray into comedy was his 1979 film "1941", which revolves around the insanity that grasped the city of Los Angeles after the 1941 attacks on Pearl Harbor, when everyone felt that L.A. would be the next to be attacked. This is another film I enjoy, but more for its absurdity than its cinematic relevance. Like Hitchcock's 1950s effort into comedy, "1941" is easily lost in the shuffle as it was done around films like "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", "Raiders of the Lost Ark", and "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial". This is still a very interesting concept that when it comes to doing a straight up comedy these directors seem to disappoint the viewers whether their works were good or not. But much less comedic, and more subtle humor inserted into a serious film and they are kings of cinema.
All in all it was taking notice of that fact that these great directors found such great success in their abilities to blend drama and comedy together into one storyline. It finally popped into my head to give that a serious shot as most of my dramatic work was just that... drama. I wanted to do something a little more true to humanity, something that people could watch and connect with better as we can be comedic even in times of strife and trouble. Thus, my new film which I will be posting about frequently, especially now that I am trying to collect funds for it, will be following a similar line to that. It's a very serious film, but laced with honest and legitimate comedic moments to keep the mood from being constantly swayed too far in any one direction.
Having mentioned my funding, I may as well do a little asking... I am hoping to make an additional $750 by February 15th to go towards my production and help to make it the best I possibly can. If any of you reading this or future posts from me can make a donation of any amount to my Indiegogo campaign I would truly appreciate it! The link to it is: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/short-film-my-inspiration/x/1211654.
Thank you so much and see you all later!
Friday, January 17, 2014
My New Film!
Hey everyone!
I know in my last posting I was discussing the transition I went through in changing film projects I'm working on. I was planning on doing a web series for a while but it just started becoming more of a hassle than it was worth and, honestly, I kept hearing that voice in the back of my head saying, "This isn't you." I suppose I just have to accept the fact that while I'm interested in working on practically any type of film/video production, as far as the projects I control, I'm really just a through-and-through filmmaker. I'm just not a web series guy, at my core.
My new film, "My Inspiration", is set to tentatively begin filming in mid-February. I just launched a 30-day Indiegogo campaign yesterday hoping to raise an extra $750 to go towards the production of this piece. I have the link posted below as there's more information on the production as well as perks being offered for small contribution amounts.
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/short-film-my-inspiration/x/1211654
I hate to sound like that person who spouts, "I've got a great idea and a dream!!!! Now give me some money!" But this film production is going to be a significant piece of work and a far step up from my past work and to step it up you just need more money to make it happen. I wish it weren't that way because I know how to go a long way in a production with little cash, but when you bring others on board, whether they love film as much as you do or not, you need to be able to supply for those individuals. Not a single penny of these contributions is coming back to me. This funding is all to go towards those involved to compensate them in various ways for being integral parts of the overall production.
I plan on doing a blog posting for every day between now and roughly a month from now when production begins just discussing various aspects of this film itself and just talking about insights I have on film (which too will connect with my film in some way). I look at that as the best way to put something of interest up here on my blog while also giving some attention to my most recent film production as well as I hope to get it both attention as a film and attention so I can bring some more funds in. So get ready for a months dosing of me! Overall I'm going to keep it brief tonight because I still have so much more prep work to do tonight as I move towards beginning production on this film. And again, you can get more information on it at my Indiegogo campaign page at:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/short-film-my-inspiration/x/1211654
I'll be back with plenty more for you all!
Good day! And thanks for any contributions you can make!
-Steve
I know in my last posting I was discussing the transition I went through in changing film projects I'm working on. I was planning on doing a web series for a while but it just started becoming more of a hassle than it was worth and, honestly, I kept hearing that voice in the back of my head saying, "This isn't you." I suppose I just have to accept the fact that while I'm interested in working on practically any type of film/video production, as far as the projects I control, I'm really just a through-and-through filmmaker. I'm just not a web series guy, at my core.
My new film, "My Inspiration", is set to tentatively begin filming in mid-February. I just launched a 30-day Indiegogo campaign yesterday hoping to raise an extra $750 to go towards the production of this piece. I have the link posted below as there's more information on the production as well as perks being offered for small contribution amounts.
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/short-film-my-inspiration/x/1211654
I hate to sound like that person who spouts, "I've got a great idea and a dream!!!! Now give me some money!" But this film production is going to be a significant piece of work and a far step up from my past work and to step it up you just need more money to make it happen. I wish it weren't that way because I know how to go a long way in a production with little cash, but when you bring others on board, whether they love film as much as you do or not, you need to be able to supply for those individuals. Not a single penny of these contributions is coming back to me. This funding is all to go towards those involved to compensate them in various ways for being integral parts of the overall production.
I plan on doing a blog posting for every day between now and roughly a month from now when production begins just discussing various aspects of this film itself and just talking about insights I have on film (which too will connect with my film in some way). I look at that as the best way to put something of interest up here on my blog while also giving some attention to my most recent film production as well as I hope to get it both attention as a film and attention so I can bring some more funds in. So get ready for a months dosing of me! Overall I'm going to keep it brief tonight because I still have so much more prep work to do tonight as I move towards beginning production on this film. And again, you can get more information on it at my Indiegogo campaign page at:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/short-film-my-inspiration/x/1211654
I'll be back with plenty more for you all!
Good day! And thanks for any contributions you can make!
-Steve
Friday, January 3, 2014
A Remergence into an Old Story
For those stumbling onto this, this note just goes in relation to a
posting I made earlier today about postponing my web series plans and
turning towards another production. The piece I've decided to revert to
was initially intended to be shot in the fall of 2012 as a portfolio
project towards my degree in digital multimedia/communications and film
production. Unfortunately, I was not as well structured and not quite as
experienced as I am now and the project quickly became overwhelming. I
had only roughly nine weeks to do everything and initial struggles had
one of my key characters still left not cast for a week into the term. I
then lost my lead actress to another project and there I was: a naive
filmmaker with still some lessons to learn trying to shoot a 50 page
script with 62 different scenes with hardly any crew and now less than
eight weeks to put the whole thing together. This doesn't include the
fact that by this time two of my three main characters were suddenly
left unfilled, thus preventing me from rescheduling shooting dates. I
was also forced to borrow equipment from the school as I had yet to
purchase my own DSLR camera and audio equipment and so on. Therefore, on
top of all of these problems, I also needed to revolve around my
colleges equipment checkout schedule, which only allowed one to check
out equipment for three days at the most.
I had to come to the honest decision that this film was likely not going to get done with the time constraints I had found myself to be under. So I shelved the project for another one with a script that was half as long. That film ended up inevitably being a rush job as well but the final result was very well done in my opinion. So I consider that decision to have been the best to take under those circumstances. After working so hard on getting this film, My Inspiration, ready to shoot I had done all the script revising and paper prep work done and had somewhat burnt myself out on the project. So even when this fall term project was finished and I purchased my own film equipment in January, a month or two later, I didn't have much interest in reviving the project and, in the process, forgot a lot of what I really loved about this script. Other projects came up, including a grueling digital filmmaking project shot last spring that used up practically every free moment I had. Other projects came after that. I've been working like a horse on various project and about a month back I decided to make that leap and to try and produce a web series. Only two days ago, and about a month before I was prepped to begin production on it, I found myself postponing this web series indefinitely. I found myself with gaps in the story and filling them with what I felt was unsatisfactory material. But more than anything else, in those last few days I found I didn't really want to do it. And when that feeling creeps in before you've even begun setting up the shoot then those feelings need to be examined. I realized it was going to be more of an undertaking than I was willing to and even wanted to make for such a project.
Running parallel to this, I was cleaning up my room and came across a stack of semi-recent film related papers, which included the original 50-page script I had adjusted and completed at the start of last fall of My Inspiration. I found a rejuvenation towards it and sat down and read the script from beginning to end. I didn't stop to correct errors or mark changes or anything like that. I just sat down and read it, knowing I could make alterations later on. I was reintroduced to aspects of this story that I had completely forgotten about and my love of the story returned. I was considering doing it after the web series, which would have been a comedy-based one. But, as has so often been the case, I remembered that, despite my love of comedy and my rampant sense of humor, I am a dramatic filmmaker at heart. All of my best work has been in that vein. While I was preparing this web series I had watched quite a few films, or at least had them playing in the background. I watched one of my all-time favorite films, All the President's Men, and one of my favorite contemporary films, Silver Linings Playbook, and these other films that had a serious and emotional structure, with the occasional comedic moments and I started getting that feeling deep inside that I wanted to really make something more along those lines. Thus My Inspiration kept coming back to me and coming back to me and I kept telling myself, "Damn it! I wish I was doing that instead." Then I paused, took stock in my situation and tried to figure out how much I had invested into this series at that time. At the point I realized I hadn't put that much in it, in terms of how much investment had been made by others into it. I was at a point where I could still make a decision to change without kicking a bunch of people to the curb. And I knew any financial assistance put towards my web series could be refunded to whomever made those contributions unless they were willing to just let me transfer that contribution over to this new project. And so I took that leap. It's only the second time I have made the decision this deep into preparing a project in which I chose to give it up for another. Interestingly enough, the one other time was listed above, in which I chose to put aside My Inspiration for another more viable, time-friendly production.
But now I'm a year and a half older, more steeped in a strong filmmaking philosophy and I have much closer connections to actors and those in the film universe. I am more prepared to make My Inspiration more of a reality than I ever could back when I was originally planning on making this film. So here I am, back and ready to go on this film production again. On my Facebook page for this production I will be continuing to post information as the process continues and more people get involved in the film and so on. I am incredibly happy about making this decision and I'm just glad I made it when I still had the chance to make it. So a new journey begins - one that won't be quite as demanding but will be focused in on a more serious and creative piece of work!
I had to come to the honest decision that this film was likely not going to get done with the time constraints I had found myself to be under. So I shelved the project for another one with a script that was half as long. That film ended up inevitably being a rush job as well but the final result was very well done in my opinion. So I consider that decision to have been the best to take under those circumstances. After working so hard on getting this film, My Inspiration, ready to shoot I had done all the script revising and paper prep work done and had somewhat burnt myself out on the project. So even when this fall term project was finished and I purchased my own film equipment in January, a month or two later, I didn't have much interest in reviving the project and, in the process, forgot a lot of what I really loved about this script. Other projects came up, including a grueling digital filmmaking project shot last spring that used up practically every free moment I had. Other projects came after that. I've been working like a horse on various project and about a month back I decided to make that leap and to try and produce a web series. Only two days ago, and about a month before I was prepped to begin production on it, I found myself postponing this web series indefinitely. I found myself with gaps in the story and filling them with what I felt was unsatisfactory material. But more than anything else, in those last few days I found I didn't really want to do it. And when that feeling creeps in before you've even begun setting up the shoot then those feelings need to be examined. I realized it was going to be more of an undertaking than I was willing to and even wanted to make for such a project.
Running parallel to this, I was cleaning up my room and came across a stack of semi-recent film related papers, which included the original 50-page script I had adjusted and completed at the start of last fall of My Inspiration. I found a rejuvenation towards it and sat down and read the script from beginning to end. I didn't stop to correct errors or mark changes or anything like that. I just sat down and read it, knowing I could make alterations later on. I was reintroduced to aspects of this story that I had completely forgotten about and my love of the story returned. I was considering doing it after the web series, which would have been a comedy-based one. But, as has so often been the case, I remembered that, despite my love of comedy and my rampant sense of humor, I am a dramatic filmmaker at heart. All of my best work has been in that vein. While I was preparing this web series I had watched quite a few films, or at least had them playing in the background. I watched one of my all-time favorite films, All the President's Men, and one of my favorite contemporary films, Silver Linings Playbook, and these other films that had a serious and emotional structure, with the occasional comedic moments and I started getting that feeling deep inside that I wanted to really make something more along those lines. Thus My Inspiration kept coming back to me and coming back to me and I kept telling myself, "Damn it! I wish I was doing that instead." Then I paused, took stock in my situation and tried to figure out how much I had invested into this series at that time. At the point I realized I hadn't put that much in it, in terms of how much investment had been made by others into it. I was at a point where I could still make a decision to change without kicking a bunch of people to the curb. And I knew any financial assistance put towards my web series could be refunded to whomever made those contributions unless they were willing to just let me transfer that contribution over to this new project. And so I took that leap. It's only the second time I have made the decision this deep into preparing a project in which I chose to give it up for another. Interestingly enough, the one other time was listed above, in which I chose to put aside My Inspiration for another more viable, time-friendly production.
But now I'm a year and a half older, more steeped in a strong filmmaking philosophy and I have much closer connections to actors and those in the film universe. I am more prepared to make My Inspiration more of a reality than I ever could back when I was originally planning on making this film. So here I am, back and ready to go on this film production again. On my Facebook page for this production I will be continuing to post information as the process continues and more people get involved in the film and so on. I am incredibly happy about making this decision and I'm just glad I made it when I still had the chance to make it. So a new journey begins - one that won't be quite as demanding but will be focused in on a more serious and creative piece of work!
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