Production Phase I

Buffalo Actor Matthew Pfohl as SPANE on the first day of production of I, Love, and You.


Local Actor Carolyn Lee as LEE and NYC actor Charles Powell as PAUL in I, Love, and You.


Local Actor Eric Look plays Paul and Lee's son NEAL in I, Love, and You.

Production is all about compromising, I've been told. I wish this wasn't true. Production is one other thing: mood swings. You can go from being happy and ecstatic to being sad and mad, all in the space of 3 seconds. The same scene can look like gold to you at 10 in the morning, and that same scene can such hardcore at 2 in the afternoon. Your conception of what the film looks like could change from A - Z in 10 seconds flat. That's accelerration for you!!

So, guess my mood as I write this. Well, regular production problems continue and they always will, peppered in with moderate successes. The successes you must attribute always to the pre-production work, or tasks we completed BEFORE filming started. The problems are mostly there because we couldn't take care of evrey little last detail in pre-production.

Four more days to go before production phase I wraps, on thursday I'm headed out to the Grand Canyon to shoot... That should be interesting. I have my last shoots on the TCAT bus tonight, some more bollywood stuff to go, some stuff in Sounds Fine.. heavy long days seem to be mostly over and now I need to take some time, sift through the debris and realize exactly how far away I am from the absolutely original scrupt I saw in my head.

Then production phase II begins, and more compromises and discoveries happen....

Finally...

... Okay. So. here. we. go.

A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks. So I came back from Berlin with the worst news in my pocket. I dont know if I should speak of it in the past tense or present, I guess I am going to go with the past tense because I choose to put it behind me. The news was the result of something I did. I screwed up and I was made to pay for my mistake. You can't be the criminal AND the judge, so I'm going with the payment I've been asked to make for my mistake. The point is, I might have pushed myself past it. Regretfully, what happened, happened BUT thankfully, the film might push past it. Never fully, but just.

Filming starts in less than 2 days, its that time when you take that HUGE deep BREATH and dive in. Its also the most appropriate time to thank all those people who are around you. All those people who put in blood, sweat and toil to make this idea you proposed to them come to life. These guys overwhelm you because they are very selfless and committed to ideas and the love for film. Otherwise, its not easy to do. All the work that has been done has been only so the stage can be prepared: well, the stage is close to being prepared and now its time to DANCE. Actors are coming soon and the dances will begin.

As long as the story is good, and there is good acting happening, you can shoot with a broken lens... - Ive heard a lot of people say this. Let's see what happens.

A film is made because many people say YES. The world and "material reality" (like Cathy Crane says it) resists BUT you have to just ignore it and keep going. And yeah, if you can do it with some integrity and dignity, thats just the cherry on the damn cake. You know what I'm talking about..