Is your next film the film you REALLY want to make? Is it the film that is going to just say that one thing that you really want to say? Are you assuming that you will be able to make another film after this one? Are you making the film people want to see, or the film that you will talk about these things that sound good.... or.. or... or is this the film you are making because this is the last thing you will ever do... because that could happen. Im really not saying this in the fartsy way.. Im just really trying to ask myself. If this was the last one, would you make it.

On the Audio: Into the West, by Annie Lennox.. and I just saw Cameron Duncan's piece on the Rings DVDs, and his short film Strike Zone. Just incredibly well done... I mean, of course the documentary piece was very well put together but Im demeaning this incredibly talented, sensitive, 16 year old, terminally ill gentleman by examining the semantics of that segment.

I dont know. I think it feels like I might have lost perspective. This isn't about having fun, this is about saying something that touches others. Suds, this is about saying something that you have both the time and the opportunity to say.

Click here for more on Cameron Duncan.

When you fail...

you have two options: scream, yell, cry, give up, drop the 'f' bomb a bunch of times and give up and decide never to do it again.. or to suck it up, and try harder. this is a good time to make some tall promises to yourself, give yourself grim goals, no rewards and a lecture. Sometimes, you just push the envelope too far... and it doesnt work like that. Everything has its limits and we need to heed those. I realize I'm being vague, but the specifities are boring. Would suffice to say I failed. I am never going to forget this moment. NEVER. The need to prove myself is now twice as much, and I always do better under pressure. BRING IT ON! I'm going to f-in show you all...

All Fresh-people...

...listen to me. If you're a freshman/woman/etc, listen to me. Chill the F out. Like seriously. Just go, have a good time. That's not fully true because everything you do later will be based on things you do right now but seriously, you will be working so much harder in senior year and you will realize that (1) you can do a whole lot more with 24 hours than you do now so you should be partying more / watching plays more / attending recitals in the music building more / watching films / sleeping over / camping more more more because so much more should be done in much littler time... Also (2) do not get burnt out by senior year. Which is why if you chill now, you will be all revved up for senior year. Right now, however hard I work, there is just no way I will be standing straight at the end of Fall 05.. and Spring 06 will be worse. And right when this mad house ends, I will be given a swift kick up my arse and asked to leave. Too damn perfect isn't it? Kinda like Angelina Jolie's lips. Just too damn perfect.

Getting there...

Hell yeah! PULL BITCHES! Im getting there... first 49 pages formatted, ordered, etc... target to hit 90 tomorrow and then have first draft done... here I go again, counting my chickens before they whatev.. you guys know the drill. I am super excited.

One of the other thngs I am doing this semester is DPing Jamie Anderson's Senior Thesis project. It's a light film so it gets my mind off of these other things Im thinking in all my other classes... its really relaxing actually... she's putting a feminist spin on the three-guys-order-a-stripper-and-she-dies-in-the-party-and-they-have-to-dispose-the-body tale.. the wierdest part about that story is that people can "order" strippers like they were candy or meat... well, in a way both.. here I go!

So its 2am, the temp is 40 outside but I got my Cap, inners, sweatshirt, jeans, Jessica's legwarmers, gloves, socks, shoes and brave spirit on me so I will be fine. Plus, its going to hit zero soon so I need to get used to it. Waiting for Jamie, off to shoot tests and such from then on.

In other news: Got a treatment for a music video for this local band.. like the song, don't like the money, like the band, maybe I'll do it. Or.... Go check this blog out, there is a ton of useful information about screenwriting.

Life Long Regret List: Item No. 1

Okay, I am going to regret this one for LIFE (probably). So, I landed in India on the 2nd of June, 2005. Reach India, chill for a couple of days and my roomie KIEHL (who was in China studying abroad) joins me for a little bit of fun. First thing we do is go to AGRA, to see the Taj Mahal with some cousins, etc. That was June 9, 2005. And while I am there, I see some people filming something in the distance and so I think, SWEET, I should go check that out. Except, I'm like: its too damn hot and Im dying and need water and food and everybody else with me was like: HELL NO! We're not going to see you ogle at some stupid camera... so, okay, whatev.. I don't go see what is being filmed.

Come back to the United States, discover this blog written by Kal Penn who is acting in favorite director Mira Nair's film The Namesake. Read the blog post about Agra and you will pee your pants too.. I was within 50 feet of her and I DID NOT GO MEET HER.. I really could have slammed my head against a wall when I first read that.. so, like I said, life long regret list had no items on it. Here comes the first. Grrr!

Designs for Mrs. Vertov

One Card, Festival Promo designs for Miz Crane. Grey looks like ass right!? I thought so...

Recipe for Confidence

Okay, I'm pushing this elephant along. Had taken some time off on other people's advice... give it some distance they said. So okay, I gave it some distance and will be revisiting it starting tonight. This time honey, Im nailing this script out of this door... I just kind of want to get it out. And then we can work on improving it and pushing bad scenes out of it but right now, I just need to be able to tell all the people who are waiting for it that its done.

Recipe for confidence: So, I pitched this project to Professor M. sound class. Got no response from people. Conclusion made: script sucks until ran into Professor M in the hallway today who asked me for a copy of the script coz she wants to work on it herself.. Done and done. Confidence level: um, its up there.

Is that MY script on screen!?

Hmm. Okay. Let me collect all my little pieces... I kind of fell apart in the theatre today.

I saw Me and You and Everyone We Know and it was unusual, which is my most emphatic way of saying that it was worth the watch. The characters are unusual and honest, and the film feels like a snapshot of the present, with no intention of predicting a future of giving its viewers any handle on the past. It's okay with not fully explaining many things, and leaving characters half-explained. I am giving it credit for doing this instead of assigning filmmakers that responsibility, perhaps, because I am in this situation myself. I am trying to figure out if I can really give out a person's life story in the time alloted to me. Can some characters be significant and others just supporting characters. Will that make this an ensemble film? All the answers I was looking for were there in Me and You and Everyone We Know.

In fact, there were too many answers, if you know what I mean. I saw After Midnight and this happened to me. I saw The Best of Youth and it happened to me, and I saw Jules and Jilm, and Masculine Feminine and now Me and You and it's happening again. I am constantly seeing my own film in films I see. It's not that I am influnced by these films as much as it is me seeing my own film in these films as I am watching them for the first time. This leads to relief (Okay, if they can think of it, then my ideas mustn't be that bad) and then dry-heaving (fuck, people are going to think I totally got "inspired" by this, and then embarassment (okay, Im clutching Jess's hand - who I came to watch the movie with - too damn hard.. she just screamed a little bit) and then depression (the logical end to any emotional state-string for a drama queen). And then I just sink deep into my seat, trying to keep my jaw from falling to the floor as these filmmakers just keep making their films more and more amazing. Suddenly the prospect of going home and working on my own script isn't that exciting!

Another big realization I came to today was the importance and immense respect for cinematography in these films. Not that I didn't respect it before but I was just okay with settling for half-ass cinematography in my own films because I just rely on the audience accepting that aspect about my film considering my budget and so on. So the question is, should I wait with this script so I get the proper financing (which won't happen unless I have my first student film done) or should I shoot this film to get teh next one set up? This Miranda July film was so well pre-prod-ed.. the cinematography was on the money, if you know what I mean... :)

Poof! Midterms are kicking me ass... Im still finishing papers. Got to get back to that,.. then my Zen like state shall demolish this thing called me script. Leave a comment, suds

Strategies Galore

1. Midterms are on. Welcome to the Suck (from that kickass Jarhead trailer, from that kickass director Sam Mendes)

2. Had a long meet with C. today. New strategies on the block. Roll out first draft on Oct 14, determine whether a short strand is to be made or the feature to be polished for a next semester shoot... Hmmm. Interesting. I don't feel any need to prove my masculinity or my skills by taking on a longer project. In fact, making a good short film seems to be more of an art than I can handle right now. My stories tend to be (and you might feel, rightly so, there aren't that many to justify a trend-statement from me) more execution dependent because they are full of silences and take time to develop - something the short film format doesn't have room for. I have little hope for my last short film which is in film festivals now, simply because it is impossible to program a 25 minute film for people who want quick characters, easy pay-offs.

3. Movie this weekend: Me and You and Everyone We Know at Cornell Cinema. See it people.

4. Fall Break Plans: Ha. Ha. Ha. Like I said, welcome to the suck.

Two New Links

Friend from Colgate returns to home, leaves behind two links for me to share with you. On the right, under Four Line Films, find two links for videos.. especially enjoyable is the LAST link on Excellent Commericals page. Enjoy.

It's time to do the 2046

Let us for a moment imagine that a filmmaker allowed us to sleep during the film if we felt we wanted to... and then imagine a film so set in its own temparamental ways, you felt as though it didn't care whether you were watching it or not.. imagine layers of reality and dream-like consciousness and being tricked into believing each layer was another, each reality an imagined one, and then color your imagination with saturated tones of greens, reds and golds. And then add Ziyi Zhang, Gong Li and Tony Leung to these dreams... you have Wong Kar Wai's exquisite 2046 that I, finally, had the pleasure of seeing last night. And will be seeing it again later this week. Faye Wong is a welcome back in WKW's gang after Chungking Express, that other fantastic movie made by WKW (also photographed by Chris Doyle).

Believe it or not, the soundtrack comes close to topping In The Mood For Love, that other beast of a movie these guys made a couple of years ago.. Criterion has it out, and our very own Prof. Gina Marchetti has an essay on the film in the special features section of the DVD... its a good buy basically.

Back to film work while I entertain a friend from Colgate U visiting with another friend from San Francisco (City of my future). Back to floating in Hong Kong's dreams...

Alones

Thought I would post some stills from my previous film, ALONES, the one that is in festivals right now.

So close....

Almost there.. it hurts to see the finish line so close and not being able to touch it. What I have right now are a stack of finished scenes, all ready and complete.

What I do NOT have is an order to put the scenes in. Like I have been harping about since day 00, there is no f-ing way to organize this shit in a satisfying and not crazy way.

I was in Cathy's office (advisor/professor/friend) the other day and I gave her the entire rundown and explained the whole script to her.

PS: Can I also say that the end of the narration did not ellicit much of a reaction from her... and she reacts to EVERYTHING...
PS2: It is really admirable how she can have something good or positive to say about the WORST projects; read: pervert kid pitching female exploitation project about tarantino-ish instincts but insists he is updating the Lawrence-of-Arabia myth for Gen-Y" I mean, makes-me-throw-up-inside-my-own-brain-and-eat-it gross... like take an original idea, now copy it and then copy it again.. then destroy it by lighting it on fire, take the ashes and make a photocopy - thats how original that idea was. I threw up. Cathy thinks about it and says, the importance of wide angle on the vistas would be particularly important to your project...
Disclaimer: Ofcourse this didn't really happen, no one pitched that, cathy didn't really say that.)
PS3: Back to that part of the post that is NOT digressing


So, when Cathy does not react, instant sweat patches forming everywhere and already nervous writer gets paranoid about quality of writing, etc... Cathy follows up this deft move by sprinkling some compliments about my general skills as a filmmaker which calm me down even though skeptic-me says: she is probably talking to that inflammation on your right cheek as a result of self-obsessed-insecurities... a disorder many people in my field seem to have.

So, anyway, Cathy gives me Robert Altman and Frank Barhydt's script of Short Cuts which is supposed to be an excellent screenplay that deals with this problem of multiple storylines stacked on the same time plane... looking forward to renting the film and reading the book too... grr! where is the time for any kind of a life - this coming from a guy who just spent like six hours collapsed near the laptop, flipping channels on the internet looking at crazy bitchy website about celebrities and a message from crazy texas lady who writes to Britney Spears: I am you, your baby is my baby or something close enough.

Again: brain throw up happens and then Suds comes to senses and starts writing script before quickly realizing lack of update on this blog, and so begins the grand process of procrastination.

So, gots to go back.

PS: Alones, the last film I made, went out to ten film festivals today: SXSW, San Fran International, Aspen Shorts, Sedona International, Bangkok Int'l, etc... Results start coming in in December so hella nervous about those... also, you should try and find out how much it costs to enter a film into a festival, such as BERLIN... I had to replace pants when I was filling that one out.

Rest is coo', later, Sds

Song on my brain: Ozomatli - Saturday Night

My Physical Self

Body resistence supreme.

To what? To organization. So I have a folder on my desktop that has the entire script in parts. Maybe 100 scenes spaced out over 20 documents.... sometimes the scenes are placeholders or loglines (1 line description of the scene as a substitute for the scene itself) and sometimes the scene appears in various documents in three versions. But the numbers I gave you are about right...

So. What do I need to do? I need to organize these 20 docs and make 1 master doc that has the whole script inside it so i can work from some idea of its total length, some idea about the whole's structure and shape, etc... The editing skills are, for the first time, becoming essential in determining the quality of my progress. Sometimes I just run around in circles putting a scene in 25 locations before I settle down on postponing the decision for later.

Okay, gots to try again. ~Suds

Tip for Smart Writers

So, when you are writing your next script Suds, try not doing some things:

1) Writing entire pages of scenes that are set inside a public transportation vehicle like the TCAT

2) Make a forty year old, sllightly obese, caucasian TCAT bus driver with white hair one of the leads of your film (exception: unless you already know someone who is this person)

3) Do NOT write a five minute musical sequence that has to be cut and shot to this internationally famous, amazing song; the rights of which you will never be able to get and the use of which you will never be able to justify in a small film like yours. Case in point: Joni Mitchell/Both Sides Now or Damien Rice/Blower's Daughter.

4) Write in a death scene at a busy public hospital because, let's see why not, because... hmm, i dont know... i can't figure this one out. O! My banker is here... let me go balance my GIANT bank accounts seeing as how I have enough money to actually stage and shoot a giant public hospital in turmoil...

Also, yesterday someone said: Smart people learn from their own mistakes and wise people learn from the mistakes of others... hmm, i think that is the central source of conflict between me and my parents...

Movie I am watching tonight: I am Cuba at Cornell Cinema at 7/15p.

Legal/Justified distractions: Film Festival applications for previous film / Seminar on film applications / This Blog (!!)

Celebrity I have some simple questions for: Snoop Dogg (did I spell that right?)

Director I DO NOT want to be: Michael Moore.
Director no one is letting me be ANYWAY: See previous.

Song on the Speakers: Ben Folds / Fred Jones Part 2.

Peace out, Suds

And then finally...

... comes that one singular, golden day - actually make that half-hour - when you actually accomplish something and we call that a BREAKTHROUGH!! YeAHHHH!!!



The rest of the time you are just aware of how the twenty three and a half hours were NOT this golden half-hour of creativity. And of course that doesn't make you happy. I just got my golden half-hour in three days and I made a major breakthrough in writing the ending of the film. I was looking for an end that weaves in all of the characters, that doesn't make any one concluding, thesis statement and one that clearly gave you some idea of the journey that each of the characters had taken in the last couple of hours. This one does that - at least that's what I think right now... There is this thing called "the morning after read" and that's when you smash your head against the wall because the breakthrough wasn't a breakthrough at all.. but we shall ignore that phenomenon right now continue down the celebratory path.

Alones, or UnADos as some of you might remember it as, is still being submitted to film festivals right now. That thing is so essential.. but I dont want to discourage anyone when I say this: its hella time consuming to the point where it makes a perfectly good and valid excuse for me not to EVER write.. but most happen simultaneously.

Gotta go back to writing now... milk this adrenaline rush except I am filming a project for Park Productions that involves me shooting in the commons for the Visitor's Bureau of Ithaca and that should be happening right now... but I want to write.. but I must.. but.. ah.. gah.... yes, im awesome!