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30 Years a "Director"

2014 marked 30 years since directing the first video short I had aired back in 1984. I may be repeating myself, but since it is unlikely that the reader has combed through all my blogs, this won't likely seem redundant. It cycles around in my head anyway, so it all remains current. Ten years in, it was 1994 when I graduated the Humber College three-year program in Film and Television Production. Ten Years after that was kid of a pivotal year, 2004. By then I had started over somewhat and I had a Bravo!Fact short Klepto the Clown and an Ontario Arts Council Emerging Artists grant for my 22-minute short musical satire Big Babies. I had joined the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT) in 2003 and had taken over that year as instructor for LIFT's Directing Actors For the Camera course, which was an interesting experience I embraced; I ended up calling some of the students back for a free additional class once the camera actually became available. Would have been handy in the actual two-day class. 2004 also involved some fallout from taking someone at her word and not yet understanding the pitfalls of collaboration that may be unique to one unfortunate case. I took a workshop in Legal and Business Affairs for Filmmakers and Producers, but it would have been more handy a year previous. Everything must be in writing in terms of what is expected and what volunteers are agreeing to. It's not enough to say here is the square peg of a movie I plan to make and here is the round hole of money I plan to spend. I can pat myself on the head for being right in the abstract, but I would have preferred to anticipate and protect myself better. Sometimes people avoid bidding on a job offering to volunteer for work that a production can't afford to properly reward anyway. I also that year spoke out and let myself be the lightning rod for criticism when I questioned the founders of a film troop raising money ostensibly for the group and then deciding to spend it all on one of their own personal projects without subjecting it to vote. Money can be a real monster. Those funds were earmarked for at least four unspecified shorts to be voted on by the collective. Time has healed most of those wounds, but I'm sure at least one ally of my adversaries then went on to actively badmouth me and continues to be a dreadful person. 2004 is also the most recent date for a directing credit I have on imdb.com. I finished out that year with a barium enema and colonoscopy, appropriately enough, the results of which were apparently mishandled and lost -- which I did not discover until a year of inquiries passed and 2006 began. 2006 brought the passing of my dad from cancer and a loss of interest in a screenwriter's circle at LIFT and also the drowning death of Roberto Arigenello at LIFT who had been such a community-binding figure there. A couple of years passed where I continued renewing my membership, but I was not as active with the group. It also changed locations, which seemed to mark the new era even more firmly. Flashback to 2005 which contained one dialogue-heavy script that I let someone else direct, which turned out okay once the chore of editing finally fell to me, and a mind-reading adventure feature that I tried a few times to shoot with Super 8mm film and which I recast and re-started at least 3 times. Having our own cameras and editing software can be the difference between one or two years. 2005 also brought my diagnosis of type-two diabetes, which explained bouts of sleepiness. I continued to get short films and videos accomplished over the next few years and used some night shifts to evolve my screenplays and other writing and storyboard sketches. Without that. I might have been in limbo. 2014 has meant some progress and closure to writing projects and a sense of new energy and focus. An aneurism from late 2011 did not put me down for good; instead, it might have goosed me into improving projects that had stalled. It put off some work that might have gone into improving a 2010 short The Fashion of the Christ, which is currently still having its audio replaced due to my mistake of using the built-in mic of my Canon XH-A1. At this point, I need to get momentum and a sense of mission again. Movie writing and directing are not a "hobby" for me. They are my vocation. I still have a job insecurity, but if that erodes my identity then I'll be dead in the most significant sense. Life in 2015 as I enter the forth decade of my relationship with movie-making it has to be more than an unrequited obsession. In October of 2013, a directing workshop I paid to attend frankly stated that "people get hired to direct if they are the sort of person the producer wants to have a beer with after a shoot." That seems evident by much of the TV we see, and by the apparent new normal where storyboarding is rare and the cinematographer may be coming up with the shots (or calling them). If this is the case, I'll continue to be the odd man out. I like and respect storyboarding and I say it's okay that the "cut" is implied or forced by it. The frame and the cut are critical tools of the director, and merely to "cover" a scene in "real time" is just not interesting or cinematic. Hypocritically, I will end up doing a feature this year -- which will indulge in what Hitchcock called, "Pictures of people talking." But even that will contain a few careful cuts or moves that might make it more than the close-ups, overs, and establishing shot that will carry the bulk of it. I've transferred some updated copies of my footage from Klepto the Clown, Big Babies, and a film short from 1994 this past year for the internet and posterity in general. There was a 2014 20-year reunion of some of my Humber classmates. They seem to be doing well and most of them still keeping a foot or more in the movie industry. I feel like I have a toe in it. Another issues that caused reflection was that a screenplay I wrote for during my time at Humber for an independent filmmaker (around 1991-1993) was produced in 2011 and released in 2014 without giving me proper credit for co-writing nor any money. I still have to sit down and air my grievances about that, which I should have done during Festivus. Meanwhile, I have tried stand-up comedy for the first time, and though I don't know if it will be a lifestyle or craft that I cultivate, I can if it helps position me or goose me with my movie-making. But even visiting home for the holidays I am reminded how it can be an effort to even coral family members to co-operate with a short. Even reaching back to original resources can be a stretch. It is just so easy to put things off that maybe there is nothing wrong with being a nag and beig willing to inconvenience people. There are qualities I took for granted in my youth which can be replaced all to easy with neurotic second-guessing and self-negating faux etiquette. There will be people who accommodate an idea or a prank or a project. The point is to keep looking and maybe cast the net wide.

What might Jaws: The Indianapolis be like?

Below is a scene from the original Jaws, a speech Robert Shaw edited down from a monologue mostly John Milius contributed. The story of the USS Indianapolis has been dramatized a couple of times, but there has been speculation over the years of whether Universal might dare make another Jaws movie with this as a core story, serving as a prequel to the original. The first concern might be poor taste - an intense movie giving us what we THINK we want, actually showing what the character Quint is talking about in the scene. They do, after all, tell screenwriters "show, don't tell," despite this monologue being an excellent example of telling that has been earned in the context of an otherwise very visual movie. As a moviegoer, I might welcome this prequel flick. (And by the way, no, I would have zero interest in seeing a %100 historical film about the subject as a substitute.) What I expect is that it will all hinge on the casting of a 19 year old actor who evokes Robert Shaw to a shocking extent, modulated for youth and minus minus much of the edge the story will create in his life. He would be the lynch pin, and our involvement would largely be about tracking his arc from a practical joking but team-player and believer patriot all the way to grizzled atheist where I expect he will see a very decent young father or someone else worthy of survival get killed right behind him as he waits for his turn to be lifted from the water. I expect the poster will have multiple versions of the Jaws logo (for which I have an aversion) ascending toward little soldiers floating above. I expect the Jaws theme would be used. I expect that these days digital technology can manipulate shots of real sharks and integrate them. I would also like them to be bold enough to include a shark that looks just like the original Bruce, with jowls where the hinges were kept, and perhaps insinuate that this is the same shark that will sink the Orca years later. That would be a Hollywood wink that a purist might not like, but that is the kind of flick I think would be appreciated by Jaws fans. One temptation I'm on the fence about is whether they should have the Captain receive information that the Russians have made progress into Japan and that it is not necessary to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which has been recently publicized as hidden history by Oliver Stone. They didn't have to use the bomb, but the White House decided it should be a demonstration of strength because now they wanted to keep Russia in line. But even if the movie sticks to the most dramatic structure, with Quint in each scene (he could of course overhead a cable being read), it would be worth doing. The issue of truncating a long ordeal of weeks of survival in the ocean into two hours or less might be a directorial challenge, but also an opportunity. Personally, I would use the old Passion of the Christ structure and punctuate the horror with flashbacks of better times and perhaps what kind of life Quint had up to that point, maybe living in Amity. Then he can try to impart something or motivate a fellow sailor to keep awake or to not be afraid.