Sick Days

Ruby was out sick from school yesterday and today I'm recovering from a collision I suffered in a soccer game last night.  I'll be returning to posting tomorrow.

Filmmaking #1

Recently two people made related requests.  One person asked me if I could do a post about filmmaking.  The other asked if I could finally upload the movie I did for the Richmond 48 Hour Film Project this year, because it's only been seen at the screening and many of the people who worked on it haven't gotten to see it even though it's been months since it was finished.

Fortunately, these requests kind of go together because the 2013 48 Hour experience gives me something to go on in talking about making movies.

The first thing to know about making movies is that it is terrible.  You cry.  You shout at people who are trying to help you.  You want to crawl into a hole and die.  After you finish one, you get depressed and don't want to talk to anyone for weeks.  How can this be?  Isn't making movies fun?  Also, if it's so terrible, why do you keep doing it?

I'm not sure I have the answer to these questions.  They are certainly reasonable questions.  I've never made money off a movie - not a dime.  I've spent several hundred hours of my life making movies that range from fun-but-flawed to basically unwatchable.  I've repeatedly become so weighed down by the obligation of producing a movie that I never talked to the person I was making the movie for again.  It's been a more or less unmitigated disaster.  Yet I do, in fact, keep doing it.  It's rewarding in a way that's hard to describe.  It's much easier to describe what's terrible about it.

Zero-budget filmmaking is a process in which you come up with an idea that you think will be really great and fun and exciting and then you slowly watch as that idea is ground down by endless logistical problems.  The really significant part of film work is really just a bunch of list making and scheduling and paperwork, which are all things that I'm intensely terrible at.  The "creative" part, which is the part everyone wants to be involved with and help with, occurs in short bursts and often seems to be largely irrelevant.

When you have a budget you pay people to do a lot of the logistical preparations for your shoot, and this works very well because film directors do not tend to be great at logistics.  When you have no budget, of course you're relying entirely on volunteers and the logistical side tends to get neglected until everyone shows up the day of the shoot READY TO CREATE and then you realize you need some lists of things or else you're all just going to be standing around doing nothing all day.

The nice thing about 48 Hour is that you get one weekend to pack all this work in and once it's over it's over.  Except.  When you get done with the film often there is some aspect of it that seems completely unacceptable, and you tell people foolishly that you're going to fix that aspect of the film and then release a new cut for everyone to see and enjoy.  In my case this is always as mistake.  The new cut never gets done because once you get in to try to create it you realize there are real reasons the original film came out the way it did.

This year that particular detail had to do with a really great audio gag where we had two female voice actors come in and do various takes of distraught crying, which we were going to drop in over the beginning of three different funeral clips in the movie.  The takes sounded great, the women were really patient and understanding of my limited technical abilities, and just generally it felt really awful that in the scramble to get the movie finished we didn't get the crying in the movie.

Well, it turns out that for whatever reason when you drop the crying clips into the movie it doesn't work - it crashes when you try to render it.  I don't know what the problem is, and while I'm sure it can be fixed I am officially, today, declaring my involvement with The Death of Don Panini, Waterline Films' 2013 entry into the Richmond 48 Hour Film Project, to be concluded.  The good news is that despite a bevy of technical issues the film is pretty funny and enjoyable if you ask me.  I hope you like it.

To the two women who gave their time and talent only to see their work cut out of the movie, and to everyone else who helped on this very challenging project, thank you from the bottom of my heart.  As always, I hope next time I can be a little better director, and that a little more of your work and talent can make it onto the screen.  Until then, I hope you enjoy The Death of Don Panini.

Selah.

Running #1

Thursday means four miles.  Chilly at nine when my soles hit the street.  Starting out I know I'm overcooking it, I always overcook the first mile when it's cold.  They talked about it during the Series last night, in the cold your hands don't work; your feet don't work.  Nothing works right in the cold.  So you overcook the first mile in the cold.

It's all right.  I've overcooked it before.  I cross the first of the two east-west arteries on the route in front of a trucker whose eyes get big when he sees I'm not going to stop, but I don't even have to sprint to beat him.  Down along the quiet streets by the old boys' school, past the tennis courts and the manicured lawns, drifting down toward the college.

Now I'm really cooking, but this part doesn't count as overcooking it because the hill helps you.  After I skip through the weird traffic on Three Chopt it's dead downhill to the lake so you just lean forward and spin your shoes like a pinwheel.  "Free speed," my fitness coach used to call it.  "Ain't nothing free," I'd always remind him, which he didn't like.  He thought it was "negative" to think that way.  I never did see eye to eye with too many a fitness coach.

There's no one on the road as I hit the campus; sundress weather is over so it's no great loss.  There aren't even any geese to dodge as I round the lake, but I realize I'm starting to get tired.  As I always do when I'm overcooking it, I had started to believe at the end of the downhill "maybe I am in this good a shape; maybe I can run like this forever" but that shit ain't the truth as we've discussed before.

I lose myself as I cross onto the bridge to the gazebo and for a while I am nowhere, nothing, a pair of legs skittering along the edge of a tiny lake in a tiny city, getting smaller and smaller as I ascend to the sky, not in any kind of esctatic way, this is no "runnner's high" just a feeling of being far away, unconcerned.

Snap back to reality as I run by some poor girl on her way to class and I see alarm in her face because she's glimpsed the man I don't show anyone, the sweaty-toothed madman red-faced and grinning and relentless and she begins to fuss with her phone, her generation's version of clutching one's books to one's chest, and quickens her pace.

I continue on but I can't help imagining how tired I'm going to be at the bottom of the hill, before I've even begun my ascent out of this hole in which I find myself, the price of Instructor Gundlach's "free speed."

By the time I hit the bottom it's as bad as I feared, and worse - there is a pain starting in my side.  The price of too much coffee, too much breakfast, and not enough water the day before.  "Hydration," I hear Gundlach say in his charming Aussie accent, "is not drinking a bottle of water in the car park on the way to your workout.  Sipping on water," and here he would pause for dramatic effect, "throughout the day."

Which is what I did not do yesterday, it seems.  And now I have a cramp.  I realize now, in this moment, what I'm doing when I'm overcooking that first mile.  I'm leaving myself an out, an excuse if it gets too tough.  Now I've got a cramp, it's cold, and I'm out of gas.  It's excuse enough to quit, so I do.  Most days.

But not today.  Ratatat's "Loud Pipes" is on and it's inspiring enough that I at least give it a go.  I start up the hill, which really is a very steep hill, and try to think about soccer.  I try to think about how running hard up this hill will make me a better soccer player by waking up my fast twitch muscles and all that crap, but it's not working.  My thoughts devolve into imagery, much of it crudely, painfully Freudian.  I am a giant pillar of rock being forced up out of the earth.  The world is a woman lying on her back and I am standing astride her, sweating.

At long last I make it to the top of the hill and again cross Three Chopt.  Now even the drivers are scared of me.  I can see them trying to decide whether to ask if I need help or speed away as fast as their giant champagne-colored cars will carry them.

I'm on the bell lap now, and I look up at Karen for the first time.  Karen is what I call the sun when I'm running.  She is bright today but not hot, and I smile openly at her.  In the fall we are good friends.  I see now, just as I always do, why it is that I am so prone to overcook the first mile on this course - it starts out on a long, slow downhill, thus finishing on a long, slow uphill.

It doesn't feel uphill, and though there's a breeze in my face it doesn't feel into the wind.  It's just one of those days.  My smile broadens and I try to pick up the pace, to go into my kick, but suddenly the cramp is back and it's bad now, I'm doubled over, I'm done.  I check the GPS to make sure I haven't perhaps already finished four miles somehow, but no, of course not, I have over a quarter mile to go.  Well, three and three quarter miles is just as good as four.

I check the pace.  HOLY SHIT.  I can't believe it so I check the clock, but it's right.  I put my phone back into my pocket and my earpiece back in.  I start to run.  The earpiece falls out and I leave it out.  I say "I've switched off my targeting computer!"  Then I realize that's a stupid cliche' from a kids' movie and I put my earpiece back in.  It's "Clubbed to Death" from the Matrix.  Of course it is.

I pound the pavement and it pounds me right back.  My legs are done.  My lungs are raw with the chill.  The cramp in my side has found its voice and it is screaming, so I begin to scream too.  My neighbors poke their heads out and make the "should I call the police?" face?  The screaming starts to screw up my breathing so I have to stop.  With every step I grunt like Butch going out to beat Marsellus Wallace's house fighter to death in Pulp Fiction.

The cramp has come to life now and is pounding on my liver with constant Mickey Ward left hooks.  I can't go another step.  I check the phone.  4.03 miles.  31:27.  My goal of four eight-minute miles, back-to-back-to-back-to-back.  Done.  Done.  Done.   Done.

Done.

Staying Home #2

“Cover the mirror, look to the sky”

Right now I’m sitting at my desk because I told myself I would, that I’d sit down and write even if I didn’t have anything to say.

“Saturn is orbiting nothing” is the phrase that usually starts to rattle around my brain around this time, that is when my wife has been out of town for a few days.  It’s a mostly-nonsense phrase from an REM song, the natural habitat of many mostly-nonsense phrases.  I’m not sure what the metaphor is supposed to represent in the song but in my own mind it’s me, the way my I spin off into darkness when I’m alone with my kids without her.

There is a concept in physics called entanglement, when two photons come into contact and become part of the same system.  It’s tedious to try to explain why (and there really is no coherent arm-waving argument that can describe it anyway) but the entanglement of those two particles is the building block of what we call “time.”

Time does not exist until two entangled particles are observed separately by another observer.  Until that happens, the system is static, unchanging.  Once the observer becomes entangled with one of the particles, time begins.

This is all nonsense, of course.  It is the hanging of a human philosophical concept like “time” onto things that are in reality nothing but numbers and measurements and equations.  Nonetheless, it appears to be accurate, and has recently been experimentally confirmed.  Go figure.

There is a picture on my wall that my wife’s mother drew, many many years ago.  It is a picture of a man draped over the shrouded body of another person, a loved one.  We cannot see his face but his posture tells us he is distraught, devastated.

The man is wearing a watch on his left wrist.  His watch has always struck me as the point of the piece - his relationship with time has been changed forever.  He no longer has the luxury that I have, to wait for his love in scattered anticipation, wondering what will be left of her when she returns.

Voice #1

I bought this book.  I'll let you know.

Wake up to your alarm.  It is pitch dark and a voice is telling you "Don't get up; it's not even dawn."
DO NOT LISTEN TO THAT VOICE

Get up, get dressed, go downstairs, make coffee.  A voice is telling you "It's too much trouble to make breakfast; have some Honey Nut Cheerios."
DO NOT LISTEN TO THAT VOICE

Cook breakfast, eat breakfast, clear up breakfast, get the kids to school.  When you get home a voice is telling you "You don't need to run today; your legs hurt, you didn't get enough sleep, you can run tomorrow."
DO NOT LISTEN TO THAT VOICE

Start to run.  A voice is telling you "This sucks, let's just go by the coffee shop and get a pastry."
DO NOT LISTEN TO THAT VOICE

Halfway through the run you feel fantastic and a voice is telling you "You are invincible!  Run faster!  Run Longer!  This feeling will last forever and there will be no comeuppance!  You hear me?  No comeuppance!"
DO NOT LISTEN TO THAT VOICE

Run home.  Sit down to write.  A voice is telling you "This is a waste of time.  You never finish anything.  You're only pretending to be a writer to get out of getting a real job. Might as well just fuck around on Facebook."
DO NOT LISTEN TO THAT VOICE

As you move the pen across the page, you wait for inspiration that never comes.  No rising action.  No spark.  A voice is telling you "Look, you've wasted another hour writing something that's not worth reading.  Bravo."
DO NOT LISTEN TO THAT VOICE

As the evening winds down, your wife is going to bed.  A voice is telling you "Stay up, have a glass of wine, watch a Tarrantino movie.  You deserve it!"
DO NOT LISTEN TO THAT VOICE

Go to bed with your wife.  Read a book.  Fall asleep.

Wake up to your alarm.  Somewhere in your house there is a paper containing what you wrote yesterday.  Find that paper.  Read it.  On that paper is your voice, telling you, as best it can, who you are, what your condition is, and what may happen to you as a result.
LISTEN TO THAT VOICE

Death #1

A photo, downloaded from Facebook, of a piece of landscape art by Peter C. Allen of Bend, Oregon.




A few weeks ago an old friend of mine died in a house fire. I hadn't seen him in many years, but as I often discover when someone I once knew dies, his friendship had a great impact on me. In the days since his death I've thought a lot about the duty we all have to carry something of him forward into the rest of our lives. He was a brazen man, proud of his own quirky, self-destructive, passionate approach to life, and I know that it would have pained him to know how much I hide parts of me from the world because I feel ashamed of them.

In his honor here is something I want to get off my chest: I have a deep, unironic love for Facebook.

I hate being available to people. I hate phone calls, I hate emails, I hate text messages. I hate my electronic calendar with its constant reminders about things I've named so lazily and sloppily that when the reminders pop up I know how long until I'm late but not where the fuck I'm supposed to go. I'm terrible at all types of correspondence and look at "keeping in touch" as the most crushing of Sisyphian tasks. Yet for some reason I love Facebook. I think I love it for all the reasons that, objectively, I know it must be terrible. I think it facilitates the haunting loneliness that defines modern life by giving us a simulacrum of communication and togetherness and community that keeps us inside when we should be out building the real thing. I think it creates a disturbing temptation for middle-aged people to leer at young people, and that a byproduct of that temptation is a constant stream of guilt-tripping of the young by the middle aged for being too damn young and sexy for their own good. I think it makes it too easy to stay up late and reach out to your storybook lover instead of going upstairs and going to bed with the real thing.

 I think I like all of that. Facebook is the dead skin and dust bunnies of human interaction, assembled in the middle of a big common room for everyone to see. The aspects of human culture that we would most like to pretend don't exist are all too apparent on Facebook - our narcissism, our greed for attention, our pettiness, our sanctimoniousness, our frustrated passive-aggression. There are plenty of wars on Facebook, but I think what we see most days is the process of our worst selves making peace with one another. And that, ugly as it is, is a beautiful thing.

Vimeo of the Week #1

Blue Season from Katrina Christensen on Vimeo.

Woke up feeling like I never wanted to do anything ever again except maybe snap at my loved ones and sit on the couch watching Breaking Bad with the commentary on.

Fortunately on my birthday a prominent Richmond writing, theatre and film family provided me a gift of a $30 contribution in my name to Starbuck's Campaign of World Domination , so I was able to trick myself into going for a run to redeem my Victory Coffee rations.

I felt much better when I got back so I'm trying to capitalize by doing some laundry.  In lieu of today's lesson, here's the Vimeo of the Week, Blue Season, which is a short documentary about the Vegas hip hop scene by Las Vegas independent filmmaker Katrina Christensen.