investing and wasting time on this earth

When I feel a pinch inside my head somewhere I am reminded of the coil procedure that has filled one of my aneurysms and left one with a few leads and the fact that blood pressure is the main thing to worry about. I think okay this pinch might be a bit like when it happened in November 2011. That was the time when I felt a sense of surrender and looking at life as very unfinished and was just happy that my family and some of my friends came to visit me. Then I was outraged that either a paramedic or someone at one of the hospitals had walked off with my cash and TTC pass from my wallet. Not to take anything away from the excellent medical staff who looked after me. ____________________________ The other day a guard I had worked with two days ended with a diss. It is easy to say he is yet another flake who shares the same job, which is a crackerjack box of prizes when it comes to the people it attracts. Great people and functional sociopaths. And I'm mindful that I could swing to either side of that spectrum without knowing it. We share war stories, we compare notes on experiences at various places we have worked and certain bosses and how things are handled. And yet, officially, there is discretion. I am not anchored my my job and would rather not be. I am anchored in a daydream of unfinished business in my vocation. My next few blogs may be more detailed and I may swing for the fences. I may alienate people with some of the themes I want to pick through. Some people choose a side and damn all who dare challenge it. I think that if I am close to getting to the bottom of some controversies it is worth annoying people who chance upon it. Who am I to say what's what? But who is anybody? The experts are their own kinds of crackpots. Journalists are taking their lead from internet blogs and gossip sites - the bottom of the barrel. ____________________________ I m taking a course Thursday nights in directing, mainly to either re-charge my identity as a director or to make myself angry enough to defiantly take on a major project again. I have several on the backburner. I need the youthful full-of-beans insanity as the wind in my sails. No doubt about it. Instead of being angry about mediocrity I should put my non-existent money where my mouth is. Hey, I did do a Bravo!Fact short. On 35mm. Wrote and directed it. I did have an Ontario Arts Council Emerging Artists Grant and used it toward a 20 minute musical satire on super 16mm film. And so much has changed in the 10 years since that having shot on film might not be an advantage. It will look old. And I will sound old. But a lot of the stuff I want to do is going to seem out of step. I see what the trends are, and I don't know if it's my turn to remake Endless Love or Carrie or anything else on the approved-remake list. I argued a bit with my teacher about coverage and recklessly used a term like "coverage hacks" even though that isn't quite what I meant. I think it creates bad blood. I'll cover a scene, but nothing I write would or should be just covered for dialogue. I know where most of the cuts are before shooting. That isn't hip, and may not be professional. But it IS what is necessary to convince ME that a movie is worth doing. There are some great deal-makers and improv geniuses who can just cover the actors and do a documentary on their improvisations and be satisfied with that. I like the way the frame is used and a new world can be created. I am told "a storyboard implies a cut" and now I bite back my thought and keep it to myself (The director might very well know where the cut should occur. It's not just to be found in editing.) I like the idea of collaboration and that everyone contributes, but I may never be political or detached enough to get hired as a director and paid in whatever time I have left. I am going to know what the frame looks like before there is a camera to set up. I am going to know what lines and moments will be seen from what angle. Fucking period. And the angels and excellent people on my team will be eager to see how amusing it all turns out. I'll keep my head down and agree that master, close-up single for each character and over/dirty of each are the necessary shots. But it is also part of the real world that sometimes an actor can't make it through a full take and that sometimes only one or two lines or reactions need the close-up, as was the way with Hitchcock, or only a certain moment needs the perspective of the wide shot. __________________ My first video that got aired somewhere was in December of 1984. I was 16. I have directed countless shorts and videos since then. I graduated Humber in 1994 - after ten years of placing cameras and dragging portapaks around. 2004 I did the additional shoot for Big Babies and its final longer cut, but then also joined a co-op and made a kind of ill-conceived short ironically about a support group. At least it had some good visual gimmicks in it, and it may be remade in some form in the future. I tried to make a feature 3 times in 2005. I did get 3 shorts made, but the unrelated feature intended to be done on Super 8 ended up being recast and re-started three times and losing momentum or having just one important person be a problem I failed to get around. I also discovered I had type 2 diabetes that year, which explained sleepiness and loss of energy. 2006 I made a tribute video for my family when my dad passed away. That event kind of sharpened my view of a few people. I was in a screenwriting circle run by a character that was politely reprehensible. It turned me off of screenwriting discussion with random strangers and certainly cultivated a jaundiced eye toward leadership that seeks to perpetuate itself in a cloak of helpfulness and faux community. In 2007 I realized that a weird character Porno the Clown was right under my nose and wrote the first of several short videos around that satirical and whimsical idea. I've done other things since, but I think when I joined Raindance it was just a month after my aneurysm and my left eye had not yet opened. I am feeling a bit more energy and fight in me lately. I got started with Herbalife shakes and I'm trying to lose weight and keep it off. But the white whale for me is still to get my scripts made into movies, regardless of anything else I might accomplish. Family is important and it might be nice to have a girlfriend but the axiom is, "to thine own self be true" and for me that means get up off your ass and stop addling yourself with random internet bickering and get your movies shot. I can't control anything to do with acquiring money. That's another world. But what I can control is what I write and what I storyboard and prepare. The actors will be important but the movie itself will be the star. Celebrity culture is toxic, and I understand even tax credits for Canadian films are drying up largely thanks to PM Stephen Harper and his cronies. At least the rest of us can keep minding what little sand castles we shape together. ______ I'll rant more on that kind of thing in other blogs. I have a constant grinding of psychological gears, like the grain of sand necessary to create a pearl. Or maybe that is mumbo jumbo. I have lots to prove, and waste far too much time being distracted by the internet and so many must-see shows to keep up on. Dialing that back. Too many transitory debates. :)

November, December, January limbo

A lot has happened since September when I apparently made my last post in this blog.

Now the suspence can end for everyone hanging on to my every word here.

October I had a skim read of the Porno the Clown feature script with the actor Jay Ould. I thought it went fine. I'd say I agreed with five out of six comments.

But the script would later improve as I made one of the bigger changes I had put off.
By February I was putting in a replay of the ending from the original Porno the Clown short. This led to a stronger intro.

But November 4 as I was almost at work I had an aneurysm. So I ended up getting a coil operation in the old gulliver and then intensive care. After two weeks in hospital I went home and my mom was staying with me. Got my apartment more in order. At hospital I got visits from my sisters and my niece, as well as friends Morgonn, Peter, Simon and Jason. When I'm not in the hospital I often forget being connected to the world. Excessive time on Facebook notwithstanding. It was good to have visitors. Much of the time I felt kind of resigned and I was wrong about what actually went on with my aneurysm. It was Christmas when I visited North Bay and my mom showed me a youtube animation of a coil procedure.

At the same time I was asking work when I could go back and it was decided that my MRI on January 4 and doctor appointment on the 11th would decide with a note giving permission to return. I have been getting scattered shifts and have been frustrated that I have not resumed my sites and hours I had before the aneurysm. I had been getting at least 4 hours of overtime back then each week. Not getting as much now, but I am told I might get a post at a CTV site and I understand (but have yet confirmed) that it would be more money. Still security guard money, but more than I had been getting. Of course the reason to keep going in Toronto is that I want/plan to make movies. I've started converting my scripts to short stories so that they will exist as a product on their own without being something that demands visualization and money. It also is more fun to read than a script, and there may be more of an outlet for it, contests and so on.

This reminds me to get back to that work. The writing work. There is a contest submission deadline.

Meanwhile, I'd like to hijack everyone's focus on my PTC feature, now sporting a cleaner title I won't mention here. I'm not confident I could think of another marketable title that doesn't scare people like "The Adventures of Porno the Clown."
Debating about going back to the producer who abandoned the project a few years back. Maybe I have to connect more with a new group of people, having joined Raindance Toronto. They seem pretty positive, although most of us creative types are essentially interested in our own burden of projects.

I'm not sure if I'm still a member of LIFT. Very odd signals over their LIFT Out Loud group and the call for volunteers. I was right on the cusp of letting my yearly membership expire and there was no nudge in the mail or on-line to renew.
I know I want to use my own Canon HX-A1 HDV camera and I can't justify the expense of film or being on the clock with rental.

I've thought about getting someone else to direct the Porno the Clown feature.
But that doesn't mean I would produce. It would mean non-involvement. I have only produced by default and what the project really needs is a producer who is actually a producer. I'm only a writer and a director. The project will be handicapped in ters of resources if I produce by default. And I'm not just sayint that because Producing is more work and more thankless. People who have a knack for sales or producing and get results like to think ANYONE can do it if they aren't lazy, but knowing how to run a marathon is different than doing it and for a left-brain person to do right-brain work or vice versa can happen but it takes more time and it not slotting the right person for the job.