Word Press Blogs

http://cinematruth.blog/2020/09/05/mission-statement/ Here are a few links to my own blogs elsewhere, for what it's worth. http://cinematruth.blog/2020/09/04/leverage-and-support/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/10/13/friday-the-13th-2009-or-12th-movie/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/10/13/raise-a-little-hell/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/10/10/some-halloween-viewing/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/10/09/crawl/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/10/09/the-it-girl-and-her-grown-up-self/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/10/06/john-carpenters-the-ward/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/10/06/the-third-black-christmas-2019/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/10/03/generations-and-rick-moranis/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/09/26/in-praise-of-the-eighties/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/09/06/look-at-these-damn-shorts/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/08/29/perceptions-of-screenwriters-or-directors/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/08/21/audio-the-fault-in-their-star-wars/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/07/31/an-old-youtube-channel-is-back-up/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/07/17/letting-a-screenplay-go/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/06/09/internalized-or-imposed-knowledge/ http://cinematruth.blog/2020/06/07/twitchy-twitter-tribes-and-fans/

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.

story pitching

Taxi Driver Audio Commentary (Director & Writer)

waiting and patience

7 months of restraint before even suggesting that there is a shark in the water and keeping the beaches open.

That's not enough for some people. You don't even have to name the shark. You don't have to threaten to close beaches. The shark swims right up and asks if you have a problem with him.

Amity Island politics make a lot of sense. More true to life than it gets credit.

"You're the mayor of shark city. People think you want the beaches open."
- Chief Brody, 1975

"Smile you son of a *bang* " is another good line, strangely also applicable to politics.

But I've decided my written self is the real me. It's less nice and more sarcastic.
There is an instinctive low key mode I got from security work, very suppressed, face to face. But facts and afterthoughts and revisions are as true as the mess that we speak or the politeness that and physical limitations and environmental constraints that stifle us face to face or over a phone. Verbal and visual cues only tell you maybe how strong a person is at a given moment, as superficial as choosing who to dance with in a dark, noisy club.

I have had some pretty nice people play dumb to my face. Then there are those who don't get back to you at all. If I'm strung along enough and an opportunity finally opens up, I think I have to be honest that my bitterness exists and the window of opportunity is closed. Years of waiting pass, patience may be a polite word for resignation. It's like how many years you can think about a woman out of reach as "the one" before she finally comes around and she resembles neither the mental picture nor a photographic one you've carried around. That's just life. But for most of the things we look forward to and identify as a goal have a shelf life. There is a time when we are most ready and fertile to act, when energy and whimsy and
willingness to take risks are a natural part of the voice.

You know something, if a slogan on the cover of a book says "uncompromising security" and you are supposed to turn a blind eye to an abusive authority figure who skulks around committing a felony unpunished there is going to be bitterness.

If I - in my vocation of film making - insist on writing a script and then hear a lot of blather about the merits of improvisation or stealing jokes, it tends to render the exercise useless. If I psychologically carry the baby of a movie script for several years and then someone with arbitrary and unknowing judgment says that I can't direct my own script, I'll be honest with you I'll risk flushing the whole project down the toilet.

If a producer asks me for a sample or a submission of something - you know what? I want to know that they received it and maybe even what they thought or when a judgment will be made. And if they can't do that I think: how will they approach the day-to-day grind of producing and providing for the film?

Waiting may be my whole life. You wonder why a movie or any action taken on anything takes months or years? It has nothing to do with the actual doing of anything. If I had the money and the right set-ups for distribution and the proper paperwork so a project is "in the loop" and expected to be made, I'd start right into it immediately. While I still have a bit of youth left in me and I can still walk, I don't hear the words "Hakuna matatta" or "don't worry be happy" the same way as others. I am not celebrating. I'll celebrate when I'm on some sort of track.

I just want to give people a shake. I LOVE rejection letters, because they are closure and they can be filed in case someone claims that I owe them some sort of acknowledgment. I'd love to have someone quit early so it's their decision and I'm not acting on whims. Frankly if I don't hear back from a girl or a job or a collaborator, I write them off and move on. Their judgment or priorities aren't a good sign. If I know someone is hanging by a thread for my response, I give it as soon as possible. But even in Toronto which is supposed to be an ambitious town with people on the go I hear a hell of a lot about lazy, boring, crap. Maybe I'd look at that stuff differently if I was DONE something important or the huge backlog of little somethings.

This after three beers tonight and some cashews.

Lemons and Lemonade

Have you ever sat down and kept record of the daily progress on a project? I've done that. As a matter of therapy than posterity to log what went wrong or what I did right when working on someone else' project. I even came up with a checklist or two that could at least bring to the surface any potential conflicts earlier rather than later, since at the start of any venture - a film for example - people are likely to let fights go until it would be a disaster to dissolve the partnership. That said, I'm not sure many people would have it together enough to be so deliberate as to provoke each other early on. It would seem like an insult, a lack of good faith (or bad faith) and they say a liar won't believe anyone else. It's like a Catholic pre-marriage course designed to raise the tough questions. And some people aren't into that. You are looking a gift horse in the mouth, which is a term I've never understood. I mean if you look into the mouth of a Trojan horse before dragging it into your gates, you may see the soldiers hiding inside and burn it instead. So looking a gift horse in the mouth should be a wise routine.

I can think of one producer I worked with back in 2003 who I'm sure is the one who makes up a new Youtube account every once in a while and does a blitz leaving demoralizing and insulting messages on the videos I've posted under the one ID of mine she knows about. When you really don't have many enemies, at least that narrows down the suspects. But what good can I extract from a bad experience? What can I pass along so that it wasn't just a case of poorly spent trust costing me thousands? Well, even if you know better it won't be applied in time. I know I had seen The Spanish Prisoner by David Mamet a few years before. I should know the role politeness plays in preventing people to ask the right questions or refuse the wrong help. Faith in people and lack of imagination make us all marks.

There are some people who hear the word "money" when you say "movie." They may believe "why you and not me?" when it comes to the leadership or "why this idea and not mine?" They may feel I MUST BE PAID as the only measure of worth and value. But they will look at the limited resources for a volunteer-driven film and somehow try to be paid. If they don't sign off their services for a specific amount (even a dollar) they may try to bill you later. You may expect that it makes sense for every contender to bid for a job or a role, but it is not unusual for someone to join under implicitly volunteer conditions and shun signed documents and then consider themselves welcome to a blank check onc work is done. I don't know any filmmaker that can agree to blank checks. I know the movie is a square peg and the round hole is the amount of money available to pay for it.

Years later I still end up paying for the honor of directing my own scripts. Getting excited about the next project can happen immediately and be sustained, but most often now the state of drive to create comes and goes.

One thing I can take from the worst experiences and own and control to an extent is the question of readiness. Am I in a state of readiness? At present, no.

Emotions and thought play catch-up with physical health. I can walk along with a fully developed negative philosophy, then force myself to eat some celery and it's all gone. Or I force myself to get some tedious cardio or go for a swim and a writing problem has worked its way from vague sense of something wrong to problem-solving idea. I plan to swim more in the new year. I don't watch Jaws before swimming nor before sleeping, and I miss the film but I've been sleeping too much and so it's tricky to fit that in. I'd have to start my day watching Jaws while eating apples. Lately I've had no excuse not to swim. The habit I still have from my childhood may have nothing to do with fearing shark visions in a swimming pool. I would stand on the diving board or on the deck ready to jump in but not ready enough. I don't like surrendering to the adaptation of the water, and there is no plan around it. It is all about accomodating the water. Same with a woman. As long as I stay on the deck everything will be fine. Dip my toe into the surface and it will seem a lot colder.

I have to lose weight, and read more often and stick to books rather than what passes for news and concentrate rather than addle myself with even the best movies or TV streamed on-line. As much as I have to catch up on Californication, I also have a backlog of scripts and outlines to complete, prepare and shoot. I'm not sure I care to attend a film festival and schmoose and promote something I've done. But that's another blog.