light bulb is getting dim
I am two-thirds of the way through Kobo Abe's Secret Rendezvous. He's a Japanese author (famous for Woman in the Dunes and four-time collaborator with one of my recent favorite filmmakers, Hiroshi Teshigahara) and this book is great. Medical, conspiratorial, paranoid, labyrinthine, surreal, clinical-erotic, and a detective story of sorts to boot.
I just read Volume 1 of the Garth Ennis/Darrick Robertson comic/graphic novel series The Boys last night. The protagonist is modeled on Simon Pegg (famous to you as Shaun from Shaun of the Dead) and it's surreal. Like if Watchmen or Powers were told by Warren Ellis or, well, Garth Ennis--which it is. Now I want to read Volume 2. In the back of my mind, I have already bought it the day we shoot the comic book store scene.
I have been watching spaghetti westerns, a little. Django and then A Fistful of Dollars. Mental note to self, I want to rent the rest of Sergio Leone's films (the Dollars trilogy and maybe the other trilogy, with A Fistful of Dynamite and Once Upon A Time In America in it). I also want to see the two unofficial "Man with No Name" films by Clint Eastwood, Pale Rider and High Plains Drifter. I want also to remember to email Alan and Erin (who might see this post and save me the bother) and tell them I'd like to help on Alan's western film. I love working with them and I think I'd like to be on the set of a low-budget western shoot before I ever tried writing one myself. I am developing an opinion on the western as a genre, a highly film-academic one which is no doubt old news to other cineastes.
I'm also currently eleven minutes into F.W. Pabst's adaptation of The Threepenny Opera, which I've always been a fan of but haven't seen the film. I paused it to read the Criterion essay on the subject and then impulsively chose to post this before I sat down to finish it.
I am just getting over what might be a cold or, in fact, might have been (or led to a case of) allergies. I think I am past the worst of it, only a dry-feeling film of phlegm won't let go of the back of my throat and it makes swallowing uncomfortable and my throat gets dry when I start to speak. I do not like it, but it is far better than the chills and aches and coughs (which made me think cold) or the crazy wet-eyed, snot-nosed sneeze frenzy (which made me think allergies) I just endured over the last four days or so.
There are two albums I can't get enough of right now. The first is Saturnalia by the Gutter Twins. I love love love anything by Greg Dulli but this might be the most exciting thing he's done, which might not mean "the best," since the Afghan Whigs released Black Love. It might be timing of when it came out or it might be the mix of Dulli and Mark Lanegan, but something about it just really gets me. I can't stop listening to every beat, note and lick of every track. The second is the new Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks album, Real Emotional Trash. The truth is, I'm not nearly as passionate about it but it's a damn good album and I've never once wanted to turn it off. Months earlier I was all about Bluefinger by Black Francis and Spirit If... by Kevin Drew; now it's Saturnalia and Real Emotional Trash.
I'm one or two drafts from being finished with a short film script called The World of Missing Persons (even though Cassie hates the title). It's a very promising story, I think, that would make an excellent and presentable short film about an older man who lives alone, talks to his mattress, and believes he has stumbled onto a secret code in the city he must translate. Also it's about a waitress who knows him peripherally and has a strong voyeuristic hang-up on her young, oversexed neighbor. In the story, taking action undermines each character's fantasies, bursting the bubble so to speak. It is sad, and I am happy with it. It is almost at a shootable point.
I'm one-third of the way through a draft of an untitled feature script. I feel good about it, as a first feature script. It's not there yet but it has the potential to have appeal as a film, I think. A crimey kind of plot, sexy charming characters, unusual things happening, plus doppelgangers, conmen, blackmailers and shadowy gangsters. It was inspired by a slew of movies I watched back to back some time ago, including among others the films of Teshigahara, Hong Sang-Soo, Bogart movies, The Grifters, Youth of the Beast, and Vengeance Is Mine. I look forward to finishing it, and to making the jump into feature filmmaking.
I'm also one or two drafts into another short film script, this one called Minus but I hate that title myself. It's about a girl who is (right now, subject to change) a busker, and her complicated relationship with a gay hustler neighbor. It also involves longing, serious voyeurism, and dashed hopes. This together with The World of Missing Persons and Open form a sort of voyeurism trilogy which was not planned or deliberate. They are all studies of the same emotional space, which I have found voyeurism and exhibitionism to be an interesting and poignant analogy for. I am not, myself, any more than anyone else I know, a voyeur. At least not in a fetishist kind of way.
And speaking of Open: I am six and a half hours from driving out to the beach to begin the five-day shoot for my seventh independent short film, also my certificate/thesis film for the Northwest Film Center. This is a big deal in a lot of ways. It's my return to 16mm film, and with two full years and four short films worth of directing experience under my belt. It's my formal end to education at the Film Center, ending a five-year chapter in my life that's pretty much redefined me as a person and definitely as an artist, not to mention built the circle of friends and cohorts without which I'd be nowhere. (It's not like I'm leaving and never coming back, but after this and one technicality documentary class, I'll be alumna but no longer a student; in fact I'll be strictly an employee and educator there.) It's also my specific, conscious, deliberate attempt to make something short and pretty and intelligent enough to get me into festivals, to open doors for future filmmaking opportunities (a slow process taking a step forward here, not exactly "this will make me a superstar"). And lastly, it's nothing to do with literally, but it's my expression of a certain feeling I was lost in at the end of my three-plus-year on/off/on love affair with Olivia Jou, whose name I almost never use anymore because it makes me feel so sad and guilty and wretched. This film is not---at all---about her or us, but it came from there, and I can't really ignore that. Open is also my first scripted film in almost three years, believe it or not. That's almost sad to admit, but it's true. Six months and twenty-seven drafts went into this film. It originated in Writing Group (and will, I think?, hold the prestigious honor of being the first Writing Group script to be actually produced). Production begins tomorrow at 4:00am.
I am moving out of my place at the end of this month. Three different dear friends have offered me the potential possibility of moving in with them, though none of the three are anything but maybes.
And I am heavier than I've ever been. Especially in this last week of preproduction, I've just been eating larger portions I think, and moving my body less. I'm a little worried about it, and frankly glad I don't own a scale, and as soon as production wraps I am going to actually do something about it and not just bitch.
Lastly, and most holistically, I really feel on the precipice of major change in my life. I feel like, post-Open, "things will be different." I'll be moving out, God knows where, I'll be finishing school, I'll be looking for a (real regular) job, I'll be joining a gym and dieting, I'll be past the last visible peak in the Procrastination Mountain Range of 2008. Everything else, from cleaning to car maintenance to doing my taxes to visiting old and much-missed friends, I have told myself, "I'll take care of that after we shoot. That will have to wait." I'm not unaware of the fact that I've said this sort of thing before (the most recent time I believe was just around the holidays), but the number of definite changes coming up (home, school, job) give me hope that the others (diet, lifestyle, finances) can follow. As ever: fingers crossed (and as ever: another livejournal post about how much I plan on things changing, as though putting it all in print has any effect on its outcome).
So I could probably continue this slice-of-my-life-this-very-moment post indefinitely. I have no idea what possessed me that made me want to get all this down. But I guess if I die trying to direct Open, someone can find this, know where I left off, and hopefully use that information to impersonate me for years to come.
So there you have it.
I just read Volume 1 of the Garth Ennis/Darrick Robertson comic/graphic novel series The Boys last night. The protagonist is modeled on Simon Pegg (famous to you as Shaun from Shaun of the Dead) and it's surreal. Like if Watchmen or Powers were told by Warren Ellis or, well, Garth Ennis--which it is. Now I want to read Volume 2. In the back of my mind, I have already bought it the day we shoot the comic book store scene.
I have been watching spaghetti westerns, a little. Django and then A Fistful of Dollars. Mental note to self, I want to rent the rest of Sergio Leone's films (the Dollars trilogy and maybe the other trilogy, with A Fistful of Dynamite and Once Upon A Time In America in it). I also want to see the two unofficial "Man with No Name" films by Clint Eastwood, Pale Rider and High Plains Drifter. I want also to remember to email Alan and Erin (who might see this post and save me the bother) and tell them I'd like to help on Alan's western film. I love working with them and I think I'd like to be on the set of a low-budget western shoot before I ever tried writing one myself. I am developing an opinion on the western as a genre, a highly film-academic one which is no doubt old news to other cineastes.
I'm also currently eleven minutes into F.W. Pabst's adaptation of The Threepenny Opera, which I've always been a fan of but haven't seen the film. I paused it to read the Criterion essay on the subject and then impulsively chose to post this before I sat down to finish it.
I am just getting over what might be a cold or, in fact, might have been (or led to a case of) allergies. I think I am past the worst of it, only a dry-feeling film of phlegm won't let go of the back of my throat and it makes swallowing uncomfortable and my throat gets dry when I start to speak. I do not like it, but it is far better than the chills and aches and coughs (which made me think cold) or the crazy wet-eyed, snot-nosed sneeze frenzy (which made me think allergies) I just endured over the last four days or so.
There are two albums I can't get enough of right now. The first is Saturnalia by the Gutter Twins. I love love love anything by Greg Dulli but this might be the most exciting thing he's done, which might not mean "the best," since the Afghan Whigs released Black Love. It might be timing of when it came out or it might be the mix of Dulli and Mark Lanegan, but something about it just really gets me. I can't stop listening to every beat, note and lick of every track. The second is the new Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks album, Real Emotional Trash. The truth is, I'm not nearly as passionate about it but it's a damn good album and I've never once wanted to turn it off. Months earlier I was all about Bluefinger by Black Francis and Spirit If... by Kevin Drew; now it's Saturnalia and Real Emotional Trash.
I'm one or two drafts from being finished with a short film script called The World of Missing Persons (even though Cassie hates the title). It's a very promising story, I think, that would make an excellent and presentable short film about an older man who lives alone, talks to his mattress, and believes he has stumbled onto a secret code in the city he must translate. Also it's about a waitress who knows him peripherally and has a strong voyeuristic hang-up on her young, oversexed neighbor. In the story, taking action undermines each character's fantasies, bursting the bubble so to speak. It is sad, and I am happy with it. It is almost at a shootable point.
I'm one-third of the way through a draft of an untitled feature script. I feel good about it, as a first feature script. It's not there yet but it has the potential to have appeal as a film, I think. A crimey kind of plot, sexy charming characters, unusual things happening, plus doppelgangers, conmen, blackmailers and shadowy gangsters. It was inspired by a slew of movies I watched back to back some time ago, including among others the films of Teshigahara, Hong Sang-Soo, Bogart movies, The Grifters, Youth of the Beast, and Vengeance Is Mine. I look forward to finishing it, and to making the jump into feature filmmaking.
I'm also one or two drafts into another short film script, this one called Minus but I hate that title myself. It's about a girl who is (right now, subject to change) a busker, and her complicated relationship with a gay hustler neighbor. It also involves longing, serious voyeurism, and dashed hopes. This together with The World of Missing Persons and Open form a sort of voyeurism trilogy which was not planned or deliberate. They are all studies of the same emotional space, which I have found voyeurism and exhibitionism to be an interesting and poignant analogy for. I am not, myself, any more than anyone else I know, a voyeur. At least not in a fetishist kind of way.
And speaking of Open: I am six and a half hours from driving out to the beach to begin the five-day shoot for my seventh independent short film, also my certificate/thesis film for the Northwest Film Center. This is a big deal in a lot of ways. It's my return to 16mm film, and with two full years and four short films worth of directing experience under my belt. It's my formal end to education at the Film Center, ending a five-year chapter in my life that's pretty much redefined me as a person and definitely as an artist, not to mention built the circle of friends and cohorts without which I'd be nowhere. (It's not like I'm leaving and never coming back, but after this and one technicality documentary class, I'll be alumna but no longer a student; in fact I'll be strictly an employee and educator there.) It's also my specific, conscious, deliberate attempt to make something short and pretty and intelligent enough to get me into festivals, to open doors for future filmmaking opportunities (a slow process taking a step forward here, not exactly "this will make me a superstar"). And lastly, it's nothing to do with literally, but it's my expression of a certain feeling I was lost in at the end of my three-plus-year on/off/on love affair with Olivia Jou, whose name I almost never use anymore because it makes me feel so sad and guilty and wretched. This film is not---at all---about her or us, but it came from there, and I can't really ignore that. Open is also my first scripted film in almost three years, believe it or not. That's almost sad to admit, but it's true. Six months and twenty-seven drafts went into this film. It originated in Writing Group (and will, I think?, hold the prestigious honor of being the first Writing Group script to be actually produced). Production begins tomorrow at 4:00am.
I am moving out of my place at the end of this month. Three different dear friends have offered me the potential possibility of moving in with them, though none of the three are anything but maybes.
And I am heavier than I've ever been. Especially in this last week of preproduction, I've just been eating larger portions I think, and moving my body less. I'm a little worried about it, and frankly glad I don't own a scale, and as soon as production wraps I am going to actually do something about it and not just bitch.
Lastly, and most holistically, I really feel on the precipice of major change in my life. I feel like, post-Open, "things will be different." I'll be moving out, God knows where, I'll be finishing school, I'll be looking for a (real regular) job, I'll be joining a gym and dieting, I'll be past the last visible peak in the Procrastination Mountain Range of 2008. Everything else, from cleaning to car maintenance to doing my taxes to visiting old and much-missed friends, I have told myself, "I'll take care of that after we shoot. That will have to wait." I'm not unaware of the fact that I've said this sort of thing before (the most recent time I believe was just around the holidays), but the number of definite changes coming up (home, school, job) give me hope that the others (diet, lifestyle, finances) can follow. As ever: fingers crossed (and as ever: another livejournal post about how much I plan on things changing, as though putting it all in print has any effect on its outcome).
So I could probably continue this slice-of-my-life-this-very-moment post indefinitely. I have no idea what possessed me that made me want to get all this down. But I guess if I die trying to direct Open, someone can find this, know where I left off, and hopefully use that information to impersonate me for years to come.
So there you have it.