Chapter Twelve - I Hate Film Production
Without the safety net of a Space & Electronics paycheck, I set out to be a “filmmaker”. I scaled back my spending, lived off credit cards (which I’m sure I’m still paying off), got a paid-on-commission-only messengering job, and wrote scripts. I was now making less in two weeks than I did per day video editing.
I previously had free access to cameras and edit bays, and would crank out an indie short here and there on a shoe string budget.
The problem with my filmmaking skills was that while I was technically accomplished, especially in post, I watched so much TV that all my shots were well designed for television (straight on, no low/high angles, lots of walk and talks). Also, I still had no idea how to direct actors, and Sarah wasn’t with me on every project.
I was a director for hire on an indie feature by an actor friend who wanted to cast her acting classmates. I cannot blame the exceptionally poor production on their lack of ability, but rather on my lack of training in communication with the cast. The actors I independently brought in were great, but they were terrific on their own, without any direction from me. The others, not so much.
Immediately following this debacle, I went to acting class. Not to act, but to learn how to work with actors. To understand how to listen for truth. To find techniques to guide performances.
I think it’s always important to improve yourself. Don’t stop learning as an adult.
It was here I met one of my closest friends and one dang talented actor, Kimberly Dove. Kim calls me her “brother from another mother”. I would call her my sister from another father, but it doesn’t rhyme, and I sound dumb. (Yes, I know it's "mister". Just trying to be funny.)
Besides being an amazing actor, Kim has a work ethic and determination that very much gelled with mine. She studied and honed her craft religiously, although she could simply have taught the seminars. She went with me to midnight pancakes at the NoHo Diner and Coral Café in Burbank all the time, talked through projects, checked me when things were going off the deep end, listened to me read passages from every script on the phone (and told me what an terrible actor I was and when my dialogue sucked), and was so prepared on every project we did together, she actually made me feel far less anal retentive than I truly am.
Kim has a pet peeve when I am writing. She hates it when I cast people in my head to help with the voicing. I will forever believe she is 100% wrong, because you do need to hear different people talk to help you while you are sitting alone in front of your laptop writing in your swim trunks because you ran out of clean underwear.
From “Love and a Tango”:
Violet (Kim) consoles her best friend, Allyson, after discovering boyfriend Adam is married. Violet smokes a cigarette in the back alley when Allyson plows out the back door, starting to hyperventilate. She lets out a blood curling scream.
VIOLET: God, it’s bad.
ALLYSON: No.
VIOLET: Really bad.
ALLYSON, No. Give me a light.
VIOLET: Yeah, no.
ALLYSON: Violet, I swear, if you don’t give me a cigarette right now, I will rip open your chest and inhale the smoke accumulating in your charcoal, blackening-by-the second lungs.
VIOLET: I’d like to see you try, Woman. I’m only looking out for your health. Emotional smoking is how you get addicted. Now if you want me to light him on fire in twelve different places and cackle as the flames sear his scummy, lying, cowardly body, that would be a different story.
ALLYSON: You’d do that for me?
VIOLET: Fifty bucks.
Kim got married, had a beautiful daughter, moved to Florida, got divorced, and remains one of my creative sounding boards. I have lost an extreme amount of weight since she left. Less midnight pancakes.
I started specing scripts. “Love and a Tango”, a dance script; a “Shield” spec; a cop script that was supposed to be shot in all one take; and a “West Wing” episode. Somewhere in there, that “West Wing” became a feature length script about corporate politics.
Kendall (Kim) enters as Jack stresses behind his desk.
KENDALL: What???!! I have opera tickets, Jack. Placido Domingo tickets, fifth row center.
JACK: I would think we were doing you a favor.
KENDALL: I’m leaving.
JACK: You can if you’re heading to the Hill.
KENDALL: No.
JACK: We want Easley to propose an amendment to six-seventy-one.
KENDALL: The health care initiative?
JACK: Yes.
KENDALL: The bipartisan health care initiative?
JACK: Yes.
KENDALL: The bipartisan health care initiative flying through Congress which our company has nothing to do with? That health care initiative?
JACK: Kendall –
KENDALL: You pulled me away from celebrating my anniversary with my husband to lobby for an unattachable amendment?
JACK: Yes. Some of us put a lot of weight behind the Congressman before. Impress upon him the contributions which may not be available in his upcoming campaign.
KENDALL: This isn’t something you want to do yourself?
JACK: An amendment for Alzheimer’s research funding is a good thing.
KENDALL: I agree. And proposing it should only alienate the entire majority party and some of our own. And then you’re looking awfully good as a replacement to run.
JACK: You’re reading too deeply into this.
KENDALL: No, I’m not. If we’re going to challenge him for his seat, challenge him. I won’t be voting for you though.
It is very easy to crank scenes out with Kim cast in your head as you are writing. And I found a funder for this production. A five-million-dollar funder!!!
On his word and direction, we flew into pre-production. Opened the LLC, scheduled, budgeted, hired, all with the assurances of money in the bank.
The day money was supposed to hit was also the election of 2004. The Democrats lost. The day after the election we got word that no funding was coming through. You know, tell me the day before, the day of, not the day after. This same funder was open to a lower budget project a year later. I jumped through all of the same hoops and got the same result. He also had defined the word “insanity” for me several times. Should have listened.
It was during this time, I met Jaclyn, one of the leads in the art department. I was younger then, and she was even younger than me. She had a theatre background, a strong mind for story and staging, and became a great person to bounce ideas off while prepping for the film. Everything was amazing.
Then I lost the project. Lost the girl. Lost the production bug. Was just lost.
What I learned from this? Failure is one of the most important parts of creativity. You have to allow for it. You have to learn from it. And you have to recover from it.
During the UCLA Extension film scoring program, each and every composer had a complete bomb one week, and it would always be followed by one of the best pieces we’d written the next go ‘round.
Movies tank at the box office. Plays are bad. Original music sometimes sounds like a dissonant mess. If you create one of those things, what are you going to do about it?
Failure is everything in the moment. And more importantly, a stepping stone toward your next success.
As for the girl, she went on to be a leader of a nonprofit in Missouri helping fight teen suicide prevention. And when the Inception concept rolled around, she went through every line of our proposal, and helped us put our best foot forward to have a successful funding campaign. She even put her son in the program.
Great things came from that movie that never got made.
And where was Kim when all this happened? She simply asked me, "What are we doing next?"
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