bad day/good day

You're 13 minutes into a 7.5 mile run (on your way home after a half-day at the day job b/c you have to pick the kids up from 1st grade and preschool b/c MM is away at a retreat for a few days to be present as teacher for a local writing/publishing institution), needing to cross the street. You look left over your shoulder and see a biker approaching making your immediate crossing not possible. God fucking dammit motherfucking asshole you think. 

The biker slows, is talking to you. What the fuck you think as you pull your earbuds out. 

Hey man, he starts, some woman stopped me and made me find you. She said you dropped a bunch of stuff from your backpack, a ways back. You nod and say thanks. This isn't news b/c about half a mile back, as you were crossing the train tracks at the W end of the Tillikum Crossing bridge you noticed that your backpack had come slightly unzipped so you threw it off quickly, noting that your pants and work shirt were about to fall out and speedily threw them back in and zipped up before continuing down the path. This biker must be working on behalf of someone who saw that and is now showing unnecessary concern. Biker moves on. You stop your running app. You've been running 13 min and 30 sec for a total of 1.2 miles. Just as a precaution you take your backpack off to take an inventory. 

It's been one of those days already. Lack of sleep b/c daughter up a couple times in the night, up again at 5:45 AM. Groggy cognition. A heavy pot in the drying rack falling into the sink and breaking a wineglass, spraying glass shards everywhere kind of morning. You considered not even doing the run but you're training for a 1/2 marathon next month and you need to stay consistent w/ the training. Open the backpack: pants, shirt, undershirt, work ID badge, keys. All seems good. Wait. Wait. Where's the wallet? You check all the pockets. Can't remember exactly where you put it when you were changing in the locker room at work. It was in with the pants and shirt. Fuck. You double check. you triple check. 

A pregnant woman dressed in black approaches. She's the woman who stopped the biker. She said she saw a shirt and some headphones on the ground back there. The headphones, fuck. These are the heavy, cover-your-whole-head headphones you listen to on the bus to work. They're not in the backpack. The woman is apologetic for not having more details. She motions to her six or seven month belly and says she is running late for an appointment. You are so grateful and say so. 

Moments later you are walking back the way you ran. You can picture everything laying there. You must have been too hasty re-packing the backpack when it opened accidentally. You must have been embarrassed about your exposure to check thoroughly. You feel the gentle stirrings of panic in your belly. All the shit you'll have to cancel, all the dominos, forms, more forms, reapplications.

You attempt to still your mind. More than likely nobody did a thing and all your shit is laying there. This is Portland after all.  As you approach the intersection you can see something laying in the middle, just south of the train tracks. It's...your underwear and socks. Fantastic. No wallet, no headphones.

After walking the promenade back and forth, looking everywhere to the side you call MM and check at a nearby Starbucks. MM calls the credit union to put alert on cards. Starbucks says nope. You inventory to MM all the cards you had in that wallet: our shared cc, your filmmaking cc, 2 cc's particular to The Black Sea (long maxed out), your DL, your SSN card.

You find yourself in a nearby Cha Cha Cha asking the slightly gruff server about a wallet. He says nope. You find yourself noting the hillside littered with tents and makeshift canvas domiciles, skeevy and sketchy. You find yourself walking into a parking lot, pretending to be in the middle of a heated conversation on your phone so you can get eyes on the 3 homeless individuals huddled by a transformer next to their canvas-tethered shopping cart, to see if your headphones are around their neck, or if your emptied wallet is on the ground.

You call MM and decide to abort the run. Take the Orange line back home. You are starting to feel your stomach pulse with self-loathing. Why didn't you take more time to check your backpack you dumb fuck? You check your phone repeatedly. Nothing. You google yourself in aim to see if someone reasonable could track you down online. They could. But no one is calling, no one is emailing. You realize that a reasonable person would probably have just picked up the wallet and called you. A person with sketchy intent would have grabbed the headphones and wallet. You lost it at a heavily trafficked area, filled with Max, Bus, Street Car, Tram, nearby freeways. Anyone with ill intent could be long gone. That SSN card and DL together have merit. Lots a person could do. You google what to do if you lose your SSN card and the result is not reassuring. There is mention of someone using your SSN to buy property, to file false tax reports, to create fiscal accounts. You begin to panic. MM tells you to calm the fuck down. Get off at the Woodstock iteration of your credit union. Go in there and tell them what happened. Tell them you are home alone for 3 days w/ the kids and you need them to issue a debit card. There are pix on the wall of the credit union showing the business that existed in this same space in 1974. There are 2 people laughing on a bicycle in black and white. Their ghost/s must be here right now watching me. 

After credit union you talk to MM waiting for the 75 bus line to take you all the way home. Fraud alerts are filed. SSN alerts are filed. It's been 90 minutes now since you lost the wallet. You curse the dirty, skeevy homeless people who no doubt found your wallet and claimed it for themselves

On bus home you have moment of brief relief, thinking of non-attachment and identity. What could be more tethered to manufactured identity than a wallet, filled with signifiers, both accepted and invented. Maybe this is a good thing you think. There will be a pain in the ass ahead but maybe a good thing. Moments later you realized your day job business card was in your wallet. You call your colleague and ask her to check your voicemail. She calls back saying there is a sticky on your computer screen, left by the reception team: a woman found your wallet and has been calling non-stop. There is a phone number. The woman has the same name as your sister. You laugh in the driveway as you walk up to the front door of your house. 

You call the number. The woman says she is a runner too, was running and found the wallet and headphones, didn't know what to do. She grabbed them and took them back to work. She shares that her wallet was stolen some months ago on a business trip to Chicago - endless hassle trying to fly home and cancel cards - and she felt like this was karma, an opportunity to erase the negativity of her experience by one good deed. You agree to meet up to retrieve the wallet.

You call MM and laugh. You apologize for blaming your problem on dirty skeevy homeless people.  Your problem was your own. Your problem is your own. Your problem is part of you. 

Moments later you are in the basement, quality checking the DVD for your first feature film. You watch reluctantly having seen it a billion times in a billion forms. Your plan is just to watch a few minutes and then jump ahead but you get pulled in. It looks great, sounds great. Can it be that part of you is actually proud of this film, proud of what you made? These are strange sensations. Who are you? Having the DVD be almost done is amazing feeling. A long long road for a multiplicity of reasons. Shot 5 years ago, written across 10 yrs, intersecting with a person you used to be, the ghost of your intentions. 

You pick the kids up from elementary school and preschool. Lose your temper b/c they aren't listening. Later you will accidentally spill an entire bag of frozen blackberries in the freezer. Later you will attempt to get a peach out of a bottle for your kids and inadvertently tilt the bottle and pour sticky peach nectar across the floor. You will laugh about this. All part of a shitty day.

But then:

Later your father will tell you the oncologist has given the all clear. 

Later your sister will share some amazing, shimmering soul-stirring news. 

So, later you will decide to write it all down before you forget it. 

Before you forget about context and proportion.
Before you forget that two sentences of good outweigh paragraphs of bad. 

Before you forget about everything being an ephemeral puff of smoke. 

Here and then gone. Gone and then here.  A train arriving, a train departing. 

Your own ghost stands over your shoulder in 100 yrs, looking back/forward at you and laughs so fucking hard you can just about hear him. 

screening 5/6/17 "The Black Sea" and "Ekimmu/The Dead Lust"

I arrived at Clinton Street Theater (via car2go) at 6:30 or so. Had some of the familiar pre-flight nervousness associated with all screenings and was really eager for the lights to go down and for the films to begin. THE BLACK SEA was playing as the 2nd of a double feature with Ekimmu/The Dead Lust. This had great personal significance for me because Ekimmu's filmmaker is Andy Koontz, a fellow brain tumor survivor. Andy and I connected on line some time back and communicated frequently via social media but we had never met in real life. There is an ease and shorthand to survivor communication (particular to trauma in general I presume, not just medical/brain trauma) - where since so much is understood without being voiced. Andy understands things that no one else really can by virtue of his journey and his battle (sidebar: Andy had medullablastoma, I had chondrosarcoma). A few minutes before 7 Andy and his wife Chrissy arrived. We took a couple pix out front and then headed into the theater.

Andy Koontz, me (photo by Kelsey Grace Soriano)

The lights dimmed and Ekimmu/The Dead Lust began. Now, I'd seen it a couple times at home but as with all cinema: see it in the theater, the best and truest way to experience it. Ekimmu in particular benefits from the biggest possible screen and the most dynamic sound system. The film - in part about a young couple who find a bloody woman on the side of a rural road at night - has a raw energy to it and is most impressive considering it was made on the slimmest of shoestring budgets. Andy not only wrote, acted, shot, directed and edited, he also did the sound design and composed and performed the original score. A true labor of love. I can't wait to see how it does on the film festival circuit (I suspect quite well) and even more what Andy does next. Seek his movie out and lend him your support. (sidebar: both movies looked and sounded great at Clinton Theater)

When Ekimmu ended, I wasn't certain if Andy was going to do a Q & A before for my movie or not, we hadn't really discussed it - but it didn't matter b/c the lights stayed down and THE BLACK SEA began. I hadn't seen the film or actively contemplated it all in over a year (last shown in Feb 2016 at the SoCal Film fest) which was truly a liberating experience. Letting go. I watched solely (okay mostly) as random viewer and allowed things to just happen before me, void of judgement. Letting go. Things I'd previously disliked seemed to work. The movie has a dark flow and dream logic to it that I've always felt like I have to defend or rather that I have to be on guard about but this time to put it in crude terms I didn't give a shit. The cast is awesome, score, camera, sound design all top notch. I am very proud of it and eager for it to be seen. (there is rumor of upcoming NW Film Center screening this summer, will confirm - and some possible upcoming West Coast dates/venues that I can't discuss just yet but TBA).

Q & A, me & Andy (pic by Kelsey Grace Soriano)

After Andy and I both went on stage for Q & A. We discussed our influences, how the projects came together, how our brain experiences affected the final product (Andy had already shot and been in post when he was diagnosed - I was at screenplay stage when I was diagnosed). I had a private moment on stage, remembering that a decade prior on 5/6/07 I ran the Vancouver BC marathon to raise $ for the National Brain Tumor Foundation and now here I was with a finished feature, standing next to another brain tumor survivor talking about his feature. I can't fully express with words the power and gravity of this feeling but I'll reduce it to this: gratitude. Andy and I are hoping/planning to replicate our double feature again in the fall at another Portland venue. Stay tuned.


Later, across the street at Dots with Scott (who shot and co-produced THE BLACK SEA) and Erin (who plays Charlotte),  Michael (who plays the gallery employee), filmmaker Ryan Graves  and some other friends a robust discussion about certain scenes arose. What did this scene mean? Why did character X do Y? I didn't answer as much as observe. It was a reminder of the power of cinema and how this movie that I made, that I hadn't seen/contemplated in awhile, that's been in the rearview mirror for me for quite a duration still has a pulse, is still here, is still alive.

SoCal Film Fest - notes/recap

Feb 11, 2016 - Thursday, Portland

woke up at 5. took shower and got dressed and walked outside just as my ride (ie my dad) was pulling up. There and back in one day so I just had a backpack with my ipad, a magazine, a hard drive containing the movie. Easy breezy through security and to the gate. My eyes fell on mom w/ stroller, 2 kids and all acoutrements and I both knew exactly how she felt and was so glad I wasn't her. Flight landed in Long Beach at 9 ish. Film playing at festival at 12:30 pm. Charged my phone for a bit. bought a sandwich for later and then took cab to Huntington Beach. Cab drive had no idea where I was sending him and I had to enter the address on his phone app. 

view from library desk

50 bucks later at the Huntington Beach Public Library. Saw fest signage which was encouraging to me that I was in correct spot. Had 2 or so hours to kill so I headed into the depths of the library to work on latest screenplay. (note: here "work" means alternately writing, checking social media, texting w/ family, battling the rising burn of nerves that joins me every screening and so forth.) 

went over to the fountain and ate my sandwich, then headed downstairs to the theater, sort of uncertain about what to expect. As I walked down into the lobby a surreal moment arose when I could hear the tech check in the auditorium, the score (by Jessee Jones) of THE BLACK SEA pouring out of the speakers. In addition to being dark and brooding it happened to line up exactly with my mood, matching my own internal soundtrack. 

program

I found festival director Guy Davis and talked shop for a bit, noting the excellent weather, the vagaries of running a festival, and our career paths in the past two decades since we both worked for Barbara Turner and attended AFI as Screenwriting Fellows.  As we talked people began streaming in waves for the screening (note: here "waves" means there were 3 people I knew in the audience and oh, less than 10, I did not. Despite the fact that I have many friends in LA and that some cast/crew are in LA I was reminded that OC is not LA so to speak. Also, a weekday early afternoon screen time at a fest can be kiss of death provided your valued metric is number of eyeballs). Most exciting arrival to me was Fred and Rita Sipes b/c they could at last see their son Matt's work in the film. 

The film began. I hadn't seen it with an audience since Boise Film Fest in September. Since then the film has left (or slowly dissipated away from) my daily conciousness. This allowed me to watch the film from a more objective vantage, noting sucessful moments and less successful ones with equal alacrity. At the same time aspects of the film's narrative ribbon through my own personal history (speaking more so of  my life than the writing/production of the film though that's in there too) so said objectivity quickly was overwhelmed by rising surreal sensations, best described like watching a long-contemplated hall of mirrors in a dream that's been put in a blender and then looked at through the back end of a telescope while really drunk and/or high. You know the feeling. There is a scene toward the end of the film (SPOILER) in an MRI machine and I pondered that in two days I would be tucked inside one myself.

The movie ended and Guy Davis did Q & A. The questions from the crowd were about as robust as the attendees, which is to say sort of minimally engaged. (This kind of thing used to bother me but I always recall seeing Lionel Shriver at Annie Blooms many years ago and no one was there except M and myself and she  was alert and gracious anyway. This repeated a couple yrs later when me and M went to see our friend Cheryl read to at a downtown independent bookstore, now a vitamin warehouse i think - to promote her book.) Afterward I did have someone come up to me and ask if my friends were as terrible as the people in the movie. This was funny but made me a little melancholy as there is much more to the film than the surface read, including the sometimes terrible behavior of the people in it. But whatever. This either reflects on the subjective nature of watching movies or my failing as a director or most probable, some parts of each.

I stayed for the next screening Cesium and a Tokyo Girl, which was kind of awesome in an inscrutable way and caught a ride back to the Long Beach airport w/ my friend Clay, who I met at the Stowe Story Lab retreat in May and who has since relocated to Los Angeles. We talked briefly about the peculiarites of Southern California - one of us drawing on living there over a decade ago and the other of recent weeks - and the pursuit of screeenwriting as an enterprise. I went into the airport. Had burrito and beer. Flew home. Met my ride (ie my mom & dad) and went home.

with Rita & Fred Sipes/heading home

Saturday AM I was tucked inside an MRI contemplating watching the film's MRI scene. and so on.

report from Boise Film Festival - the black sea screening

Got in late Friday to Boise due to long-delayed plane in Seattle so I missed the opening night screening as well as the meet-greet-alcohol function afterwards. This was a bummer but nothing I could do about it. Ate microwave pad thai from the downstairs snack bar - a grand lapse of judgement but one fueled of limited options and energy - and went to bed.

Woke up. cleaned up, hit the Marriott Breakfast Bar (c) and departed. I had roughly 90 minutes until THE BLACK SEA screened at Ming Studios which was walkable, according to the map. Leaving the hotel parking lot and walking to the main road I discerned yelling and clapping on nearby Capitol Blvd, the main artery in town, a half-marathon/10K/5K in progress. I crossed the Boise River and headed into town and found Ming Studios. Still had time to burn so walked closer in to town and watched the runners.

Arrived back at Ming Studios around 10, w/ 30 minutes before screen time. Just me and 3 staffers inside. I tried to relax and stay present and let all those (by now familiar) pre-screening jitters exist without me paying too much attention to them. Acknowledge and step aside. This was a successful enterprise until I witnessed the tech check - they spot checked the short film playing before me, which looked and sounded fine, and then my film which was stuttering and staggering. Heart thumping I went to talk to them about it. They were aware of it already and a new blu-ray player was being shuttled across town to us. I said worst-case we can stream it from a private link. They concurred and I sat down w/ my interior voice unkindly reminding me to no matter what always bring back up blu-ray and/or hard drive to future film fests and screenings. 

After some time elapsed more people wandered in. We held the screening back a little to let the new blu-ray show up but the dude was delayed by the road race. We decided to trudge forth and the short film (an Austrailian thing about death called The Sheriff) played without consequence. We decided to show my film off dvd not blu-ray and it began to play fine for 5 min but then it stuttered and stopped. Panic. We elected to stream it but the wifi was sluggish and slow and after 20 min or so the browser still had 2/3rds of the movie to load so when we attempted to play it it stuttered and lagged. Dread rising, I considered just cancelling the whole affair then and there when the door creaked open and in walked the dude w/ the new unit. Hooked up and film played fine. I stood at the back of the room and watched the entire thing. Finally relaxed into it. 

As with all prior screenings, the movie felt different to me than previously, conforming to the context and environment of the moment. There was light bleed from the nearby windowed door, occasional screeching traffic from outside but if I was able to widen my perspective away from my immediate arguably selfish (or at least self-serving) vantage. It was all in a word perfect. I thought it all through the screening, all through the awesome Q & A afterward, I thought to myself I am the luckiest man alive. 

report from Portland Film Festival - the black sea screening

Had been waiting for 9/4 with equal parts of excitement and dread. On the one hand absolutely thrilled to finally premiere the black sea to a home audience and on the other that internal FRAUD voice was sure to be at its most pointed at home. I equate my pre-screening sensations to one of pre-flight nervousness. Will there be turbulence? Will the plane crash?  Once I'm airborne those feelings dissipate but leading up to that moment I'm not the best company. (note to self: get some therapy.)

First up was the Directors' Coffee Chat at the Filmmakers' Lounge. I showed up at roughly 9:30 and waited outside along w/ a few others - a journalist and 2 directors - in the unseasonable cold. Once we all got inside things moved at a quick clip. Lots of directors had screenings that day so there were several panels. Each director fielded a few questions about their film's process or narrative and then it was done. My big takeaway: there were a ton of awesome-sounding films at the festival. Most  I would not be able to see due to my own schedule but it was thrilling to be included among them.

other panels were more diverse, for real (note: not my pic, I got it from twitter)

Afterward I headed over to Living Room Theaters. It was about 11:30 AM. My plan was to make that home base for the day and watch multiple films prior to my screening at 7:45 pm that night. By my calculations I could see 3 movies. Met some (very cool) PFF staffers who told me I'd be in Theater 1 for my screening that night as well as for the movie at noon I was about to see. It helped diminish my anxiety to be inside the same theater, to see the actual chairs/walls/screen etc. It didn't help diminish my anxiety when there was audio for a couple minutes and no video. I walked out to the lobby and informed staff. Luckily it was just the trailers for a couple other PFF films. They corrected the issue and I laughed to myself that it was probably just a function of 1st screening of the day and would certainly not happen during my screening. At last the film played without incident and was absolutely amazing despite me being one of four attendees. I had some time before the next film started so I headed off for a quick slice of pizza. As I was eating someone tweeted a new review of the film, which included the phrase "it's a chore to watch". This filled me with relief. I have long conducted my life from the default position of lowered expectations so for a second I was going to promote the poor review everywhere at full volume, recalling D. Lynch's similar tack with Siskel/Ebert and Lost Highway but then decided to just allow people to have their own opinion of the film w/o my interceding in any form (note to self: again dude, get some therapy.)

I returned to Living Room and watched 2 more films and was able mostly to keep my mind off the approaching screening. Eventually I found myself sitting at the counter drinking a beer, about to get cozy and read my book for an hour or so to kill time when who should arrive but Matt S (who plays Eli in the film) and his beloved. Perfect timing. Had dinner with them and shot the breeze and the minutes ticked by and people began arriving for the screening which was, happily, at capacity.

A short time later I'm inside Theater 1 introducing the film. The lights go down. A minute passes. Another minute passes. No sound, no image, just darkness. Something is wrong. I can feel that tight constriction in my heart and gut. A repeat of this AM. I walk to the lobby to inform staff that nothing has happened and we're all sitting in darkness. A minute or two later there is at last picture but no sound. I return to the lobby to tell them. At last the trailers for the PFF films play (though they were certainly not selected with any relation to the feature to screen, no narrative or thematic connection) and then finally, after interminable duration (which Margaret informs me was more like a few seconds) my film begins. This is the fourth time I've seen it finished with audience. The film is not always easy to watch and seems to polarize audiences into either the really liked it camp or the slightly befuddled what the hell was that camp (note: this is not verifiable just my gut reaction after several screenings. in point of fact there are many waystations between those polarities and reactions could really be falling at any one of them) and I could tell right from the get-go, from the energy in the room, and the lack of laughter at a couple early moments/lines that this screening would primarily be the latter camp. That said, I've had several people contact me a day or two after screenings, stating that the film stayed with them. Meaning, it's tricky to base the merit of a film (read: anything) on the immediate high/low of kneejerk reaction.

A short time later Matt and I are at the front of the room conducting the Q & A. I'm asked about time frame, about shooting on film, about the ending, about shoot days etc. All goes swimmingly. Afterward Margaret and I stay out in the lobby for a bit catching up with friends and talking about the movie before heading home.

The next morning I feel profound relief. No one threw tomatoes and the film looked/sounded amazing in the venue. And no matter anyone's reaction, the performances in the film are empirically amazing (well, I'm biased but they are).

All my dread/anxiety gets vented via this 1st screening so I'm in good shape for the next screening, at 5 pm later that day, Saturday 9/5. Not sure if it's per se sold out this time (b/c some enter w/ filmmaker passes) but every seat is filled. The energy in the room is 10 times better (or is it just me?) and there are laughs at all the right spots. It is awesome and validating. The Q & A goes great too. I get some of the same questions (why film? where'd you shoot? how long was production?) With each successive screening I've become more facile at discussing my brain tumor and how it intersects with the development of the film across the last decade. This is no small thing. (Also, at the back of my mind is the awareness that a decade ago Margaret and I were prepping our trip to Boston, where I'd live in a hotel for 2 months while I rec'd proton beam radiation at MGH and that there was still then a pulsing, fearful, black uncertainty about whether I'd be around for awhile or not, much less worrying about something as meaningless as a bad film review some time later.)

during Q & A after screening #2

I come away from the entire festival feeling enervated and re-energized, eager to support this film to the fullest as well as get my next thing/s going. Just a question of how to finance them. (as always!) In addition to my screenings I saw 5 other features and a couple shorts and met some awesome individuals and filmmakers. Sorry to see the fest reach its inevitable end but feel exceedingly grateful for and joyous about the black sea's inclusion.

On to Boise Film Fest!

Report from Manzanita - the black sea screening

Got invited to screen the black sea at the Hoffman Arts Center in Manzanita Beach, Ore on 8/28/15 (as part of the Manzanita Film Series.) Took the day off work on Friday. Still had to take N on the bus to day care to the very building I work in but just for a half day. Back home I did copious straightening and arranging (read: tossing swarms of toys back in the playroom) and packing (read: tossing tshirt into a backpack), went for a run, took the dog for a walk and then it was time to hit the road. M and F and I went to pick up N and we took the 26 out to the coast.

Multiple sensations just doing this drive, charged as it is with the inception/development of the film as well as my recovery after surgery 1 in 2005, as well as production, as well as family trips to Arch Cape etc etc. Funny to drive past house where we shot in AC and head on to Manzanita, also passing tunnel and running trail that appear in the film.

We checked into hotel. I met David. D at the center and we did a quick tech run through. Being in the room I felt a sudden low surge of panic swell up (as I do prior to each screening), my imminent exposure as talentless fraud about to be made public. This feeling dissipated soon after, spending time on the beach with my wife and kids, then roared back at dinner with them and my parents. An all-consuming, shrieking red-alert klaxon, volume rising each minute, FRAUD, FRAUD FRAUD. This makes me a poor conversationalist at dinner.

Later walked to center with my folks. Stood outside with David D for a few minutes prior to screen time. Then lo and behold I was on stage introducing the film, trying to recall M's urging that I shouldn't ever deviate from planned remarks b/c it ends poorly. I said what I planned to say and then deviated and it ended poorly.

At last the lights were down and the film played. The room skewed older than previous screenings which led me to presume it would be off-putting out of the gate but got many more laughs than last screening so my presumption was wrong (which led my dad to later chide me for being ageist.) A woman entered 15 min or so in with a small child in tow which I felt strongly was a bad call given the harsh language and adult scenes (note: not adult like porn adult but adult like some violence and existential dread) but she stayed put.

Q&A afterward was more uncomfortable for me than CGIFF where I had the luxury of a cavernous auditorium and a microphone to hide behind. Here I was on the dais in front of a mixed reception. I don't mind making a film that splits reception but that doesn't mean I want to stand in front of pointed what-the-hell-did-i-just-watch glares. I made some quip about how the ending of the film intrigues half of the viewers and annoys the other half. Instantly half of the room started laughing, the annoyed half one presumes.

The woman with the kid said she and her friend had a complex theory about the film which involved a lot of intuition and filling-in-the-blanks and happened to be not far from the mark, all the more amazing that she arrived at it w/ juggling her kid and missing the first 15 min of the movie. She replied she had a background in criminalogy.

The BT reared its head again (BT = brain tumor) which added to my discomfort. Granted I brought it up but to exclude it when discussing the origin/development of the film seems disengenuous. I can't be objective about film and strip that part of my narrative away for the sake of ease. This is an area to work on for upcoming screenings and Q & A's

Afterward, beers w/ David D and M at the San Dune Pub sitting out back while a surf rock band played inside. A lightning strike and a rumble of thunder signalled time to go and the impending storm due the next AM. It dogged us all the way home.

report from Columbia Gorge Int'l Film Festival

Drove to Washougal Friday night solo, meant that MM had to put kids down herself something I've done for her many times recently so she can attend readings. Living the dream. Got to Washburn Auditorium and checked in. Felt terrible to have not been to any other screenings at the fest but was out of town last wknd to be backup for M while she tended to her ma (hip replacment surgery if you must know) and just generally consumed with daily operations otherwise (day job, 2 kids etc) that made attending untenable. Got a great vibe right out of the gate from the people, the space, the whole deal. I was in my really-nervous-but-trying-too-hard-to-not-appear-so thing which meant as I tried to appear casual shaking someone's hand I also caused 5 laminated filmmaker passes to slide off the table in the process. such it is with me.

Got into Auditorium and got to see the end of a feature and a Q&A and found my seat at the very back, where I most prefer to be. A few minutes to reset the auditorium and then two short films first by NW Filmmakers. First was "In Search of the Miraculous" by Sam Kuhn, which I mostly enjoyed,  and then "Hiding Blame" which was written/produced by Lori Morgan and directed by Scott Ballard who was my co-producer & DP on "the black sea". (Hiding Blame shares some other DNA w/ us: Jordan Eusebio as prod sound/design, Kevin Forrest, Josh Smith et al). There was a Q&A with Lori after the screening - Scott was held up on a shoot somewhere - and then the lights went down and it was time for "the black sea".

Paul bloodied in the bathtub, Charlottle watches

This marks the 3rd time I've seen it with an audience (2nd if you count only the final color-graded version) and - no surprise - it changes with each viewing, conforming to the contours of the venue, the audience, the atmosphere on a given night. At STIFF there were a few laughs here and there and this time nothing. Silence. Since I've seen it around a gazillion times I find parts difficult to sit through (alternate word choice: endure), a common enough thing for filmmakers who after repeated viewings no longer focus on the narrative and can see only their shortcomings lit up on screen. Despite that, after a time I felt myself slowly drawn in, thinking the same thing I thought at the STIFF screeening: holy moly, we cast the hell out of this movie! I also felt the sensation surge through me that despite the easy accessibility of streaming/VOD the true standard (only?) way to watch a film is in a darkened auditorium with strangers, heads tilted reverently up at an image greater than them in size. (I say this as viewer and filmmaker alike.) By the end of the screening I was able to let my focus lay on the film's strengths instead of my filmmaking weakenesses and felt a pulse of pride about it, that lasted through the weekend.

During the Q&A I felt myself get fumbly and self-conscious when my brain tumor arose. I mean, I brought it up but I had to when talking about the intent of the film and the history of how it fell into place. Not mentioning it would be disengenuous. Hard to get a read entirely on how the film was received but this movie is kind of like that. A couple people said very nice things. 

Afterward I got to spend a few minutes talking with a filmmaker Kathleen Davison, who had a short and a feature at the festival this year. I knew her via social media - I reached out to her a couple years ago after seeing an article about how her brain tumor treament was interfering w/ finishing her feature as she got it ready to submit to Sundance - but this was the first time we met in real life. We traded stories about our features and our respective brain experiences. Her feature Primrose Lane is currently been all over the place and when I asked her about that she said touring around in support of her film was amazing but more amazing was that it represented her ability to draw breath and do so. I knew exactly what she meant. 

Kathleen Davison & I (sorry I got you blinking Kathleen)

I drove home from Washougal to Portland which allowed me to listen to adult music for an hour or so - which was like a mini-vacation - and when I got home I drank a couple beers.

On Sunday Kathleen texted me and said "the black sea" had won an award. Scott called me shortly later to say we'd won BEST LOCAL NARRATIVE FEATURE. Pretty gd awesome.

whirlwind May, ie hall-of-mirrors

My film the black sea had the grand good fortune to be accepted to the Seattle Transmedia & Independent Film Festival (nee Seattle True Independent FF). At once a vindication and a validation for me as a filmmaker (my first festival acceptance ever! which while yes, probably shouldn't be the metric by which artistic pursuits are gauged, felt resoundingly assuaging to my wounded pride/s), the true joy for me was sitting in a darkened theater with friends, cast and crew watching the film unfold.

filmmaker pass, STIFF 2015

we drove up from Portland the day before, checked into our airb-and-b (sp?) in the tangletown hood abutting green lake which we skirted prior to meeting the woman who graciously would babysit the kids the next night so M could accompany me to the screening. After we went to the T's house for dinner. In a sort of mythic bookending to the film's existence (which I am prone to seek out due in small measure to my insistent non-self-effacing) the first time I ever entered the beach house in Arch Cape that inspired the film was with M and the T's (M and ST were colleagues at the time and the house belonged/belongs to their boss). In fact, it is their very likeness in the 'the black sea' postcards that were created during the fundraising stage of the film (see below).  It is fair to say then in a general sense that they helped to inspire the film. We had a quick dinner and then I dropped M and the kids at home and headed off to the festival, quite uncertain what to expect.

ST & AT look out the Arch Cape windows

At the grand illusion cinema I met Jason K, the filmmaker whose feature showed that night (SEAHORSES, see it!) and tried to remain as calm as possible. I still had this nagging sensation that some mistake had been made and would be corrected momentarily by flushed-face staff escorting me out the back door. But no one came for me and I was allowed to sit in the cinema and watch the film.

check out #4

Next AM was an exercise in patience as I awaited my screening at 8 pm. Kids help keep you grounded  though and so busy that you can barely register anything beyond getting to the next muffin, the next playground, the next nap. (A highlight, we managed to go paddle-boating - a sentiment I never thought I'd find myself expressing -  on Green Lake.) The weather was pristine and the day was glorious. And before long it was time to go to the screening. M and I went and had a necessary (for me) beer. I could feel myself tail-spinning, nerves overwhelming my excitment. She ran through some steps for me to remain calm and talked me down. I owe her everything.

the great Erin McGarry (Charlotte) and  Bill Sebastian (Paul) bookend 'the black sea' director (ie me) and fellow filmmaker (in hat) Rick Walters

Before long we were there outside the theater as friends, cast, crew, other filmmakers began to arrive. I felt my body relax into it and was sustained by all the love.

Before long we were inside and 'the black sea' started. A variety of sensations watching this thing with others, in public forum, after much passage of time, primary among them: films take a long time to make and shit, my cast is amazing. Afterward I did a Q &A and went for beers w/ some black sea crew, DP and co-producer Scott Ballard, gaffer Kevin Forrest, fellow pdx filmmaker Ted Davee and the rad Bill Sebastian. (who plays Paul in the film and who flew up from LA to see it (!)).

I made it to bed late and drunkenly, fumbling quietly in the air-b-and-b (sp?) to not wake anyone up, riding huge waves of satisfaction. 10 years prior I had had 2 brain surgeries and faced an uncertain future, convinced I would be dead within months. Now I had succeeded in not only making a feature film but in showing it. So much work and life - a decade's worth - in an eye-blink. And the older you get you become increasingly aware the eye-blinks are finite.

children at dawn

5 days later I am back in Arch Cape, staying with my family at the very house we used to board/feed the crew while we shot 'the black sea'. It's 2 spots away from the house in the film (ie the one in the postcard, ie the one that inspired the movie, the one where we shot the movie). From the right spot on the deck or the beach we can see into this house, we can see that it's inhabited by a celebratory cluster of people on vacation. Shared meals, beach walks, fires in the fireplace. What milestones occur for some that go unnoted for others? Which rolling wave is the one with meaning and which is the one that is only memory? What film/s will I have summoned a decade from now? These thoughts churned in my head for awhile one morning as the grey sun rose, finding no solution or resting place. And then my son woke and we moved to a muffin, a playground, a nap.

rejection

Another day, another rejection. This iteration from a film festival rejecting my feature film the black sea. So empty and meaningless on the one hand and so impossibly hard to take on the other. Backstory: I've been directing in earnest for about 5 years. Made several shorts and a feature and received exclusively rejection from festivals. This followed 7 years in Los Angeles during and after film school, peddling spec screenplays that never found takers so there is a history here, a pattern of NO. My natural internal response is to build a narrative made of equations, if this then thats, something to the order of my screenplay rejected = my screenplay sucks; my short film rejected = my short film must be terrible; my feature film rejected = my feature film was ill-advised and I should have hung it up years ago and now I'll just be left w/ the crushing financial debt of making the film as an endless reminder of my talentlessness. The longer I continue, the more calcified this narrative becomes, the more definitive, a self-serving poisonous loop reinforcing its own existence. The problem with these equations are the factors they omit - the particulars of the spec screenplay marketplace, the variables and machinery of film festivals, the artistic aim/intent of my projects fitting into some digestible, commercial construct - and the reduction of these complex omissions into a yes/no couplet that ties directly to my infantile need for approbation (which should not factor in to artmaking but which invariably is a drive for some, okay, for me.)

Let me re-iterate some basic points I've made before, primarily for my benefit:

1) I did not make 'the black sea' to find commercial success, I made it because I had to tell/expell the film. (note: I am not rejecting commercial success here b/c I'd love some)
2) Acceptance in a film festival is not the same as making a good film.
3) Rejection is a vital component of any artistic enterprise
4) Remember this lojong in perpetual, eternal white flashing loops:
Don't Expect Applause.
5) On to the next one.
6) when in doubt see 4 and 5
7) Film history is rife with films that were scorned/ignored at release but that time has been kind to. Is the value diminished? Better yet should the value be tethered to audience response/interaction at all?
8) the artist is fed her/his own equation across a lifetime, both in and out of artistic pursuit: hard work = reward. if this then that. if you pour yourself into your work, if you slave and scrimp and sacrifice and sweat then it will all be worth it. If you just write one more spec then that will be the one. If you make short films then that will lead to great things. If you just make a feature then you will be in a different place. If you work hard then it will pay off. I submit that this is still true (perhaps evidence of my mania) but the definition of 'pay off' has morphed and mutated over the years, into something like #9
9) the work is the reward is the work is the reward is the work is the reward is the work is the reward is the work is the reward is the work is the reward is the work is the reward is the reward is the reward is the work
10) Don't Expect Applause.

podcast

Honored to be here ! RT @needmore: Now #OnTheJob, @brian_padian of @TheBlackSeaFilm fame. http://t.co/LY5rDfREb3 pic.twitter.com/kmhmagRdvM
— the black sea movie (@TheBlackSeaFilm) August 1, 2014

I appeared on the great podcast The Job recently, talking about the black sea movie and a bit of my life in Portland and Los Angeles and here and there. I am not a fan of listening to myself talk (despite my wife's contrary opinion) so I have trouble hearing it but I know I am not alone in issues of self-regard. Check it out and let me know what you think

day job merits

I am not lucky enough to have a trust fund or a pool of cash. I am not fortunate enough to laze around all day musing about films I'm going to see, ponder, make. There are bills. There are kids. Sometimes one hears that the pursuit of lofty creative goals requires diving full in, leaving behind the constraints of daily life, and rising seemingly automatically to the station of fully-formed artist by virtue of doing so. But I've met people without day jobs or kids who aren't necessarily any more productive. (And yes some who are.) A day job gives me money and health insurance - vital w/ my backstory -  but also a structure, a rock to push off from, and at times to rally against, to urge me forward creatively. Its merit lays in its implicit artlessness.

My day job has zero to do with my creative pursuits. I have an MFA in Screenwriting but I don't want to pursue teaching*. For me a day job that is related even partially to filmmaking is a trap, just close enough to what I want to do to get me stuck, to trick myself into thinking I'm doing the thing I want to do or that it somehow feeds/serves the thing I want to do but ignoring the massive time/energy demands of doing so. I don't want to teach. I don't want to make videos or commercials. I don't want to read other people's screenplays and/or guide them through a series of screenplay principles that won't necessarily impact their ability to find marketplace success. I only want to write and direct feature films. Thus far I've managed one, the black sea.

Has day job impacted my ability to put projects together? Possibly but I need it. Or at least I have up til now. It gives a rudder to propel me away from listless ocean dead zone where nothing at all would get done. Given the opportunity to do it over I would probably do the same thing.

As such I am very interested in reading how others navigate these waters. I mean, I have always been drawn to the mundane elements of the artist's daily life - negotiating bad relationships, buying groceries, paying bills, standing in line - all the seemingly meaningless tasks and endeavors that one presumes don't concern the artist. [Undergirding this is a question I haven't been able to confirm: is it possible to be a good person in life and in art or is it either/or?]

related:
this piece from Filmmaker magazine
this interview with w/ actor and filmmaker Rebecca De Ornelas

*Note: this is only for me. Plenty of people are able to teach and do their creative work with no repercussion.

brewing

the next thing is humming on the periphery, eager to announce itself. This is an exciting thing for me because for an extended duration - years and years - there has been nothing but the black sea. I am have always been an all or nothing person, project wise, often to my detriment. I have to put my full focus into one thing. This extends far beyond production, which has a slow decompression period as the details and hustle ebb away. Then comes the long desert of post. (note: this has all been amplified/exacerbated by a family and a day job and no budget all of which multiply durations by a factor of 10.) It's only now, on the edge of putting this movie to bed, that the space for other things starts to show itself. A muffled pulse beat, louder by the hour. Music to my ears. 

screenplay versus direction

There is a world of difference from screenplay to production to finished film. (This is not a new thought and has been expressed/covered in multiple forums most cogently in the maxim: a film is made 3 times - screenplay, production, and in editing).  This is not to discount the primacy of screenplay because I, in part due to my background as a once aspirant screenwriter, think it's vital. But I used to think the script was at the top of hierarchy, the tree the other limbs sprang from instead of how I see it now: the embryo that grows the complex organism. Essential but not ultimate.

The screenplay for the black sea went through multiple iterations and drafts across many years until it finally was nailed down. It's a complicated, slightly dense thing - amusing since i set out to write/direct something straightforward and easily digestible for my feature debut - but after a lot of work I got it to a place where every word of prose and every bit of dialogue was to my liking as we moved across pre-production and into shooting. Overall, it worked. 

On set there were minor adjustments here and there, growing pains, adjustments and reconfigurations particular to production. A line altered here. A line ad libbed there. Bigger: A plate of chocolate (seen in the dinner table shot below), and one character's animated refusal to take any was meant to happen in the background, under the dialogue, to be a foreshadowing for later things. It's tiny and small but important to the world of the film. Further, it worked on the page. But in directing this (to me) complicated scene the plate of chocolate was subsumed by the on-set machinations of multiple eyelines and 2-shots and 3-shots and covering 5 plus pages of dialogue shooting a 4:1 ratio (on Super 16). The plate of chocolate and its import became diminished so the animated refusal was not even shot. A perfect example of how production can overwhelm/alter the screenplay. The writer in me might have fought for the plate of chocolate but the director in me cut it loose to better get through the day. Perhaps this is a case of directorial inexperience.

A bigger example of screenplay v. film came in a another scene that worked on the page. We see character 1 sitting by the window, looking at the ocean and then cut to a flashback where he meets character 2 at a bar. However the scene ended w/ jump cut to later in the night, at same location w/ Character 2 on phone w/ Character 3, Character 1 long gone. Then we cut back to Character 1 sitting by the window. Believe it or not it worked on the page in a sort of lyric poetic way, the words and prose guiding the reader's POV so that it made sense in terms of text. It had a flow and the reader could understand what the screenwriter was attempting to do. So I directed it and we shot it. But once we were in post-production, we could not make it work. All the lyric prose in the world can't shoe-horn two opposing POVs across the cut. Perhaps directorial inexperience again but I also like to think it is a remnant of my dependence on the written form instead of the filmic one.

A screenplay is made of words so it's easy to confuse with literary forms.  But the image and what it says/does-not-say is more enduring and vital than any well-turned phrase in the prose of the screenplay. It's taken me a long time to realize/admit this.

 cross-posted at northern flicker films production blog

"It's not my role to give explanations"

amazing and brief interview w/ Alain Resnais (which i discovered via film school rejects)
which touches at the start on the ambiguous inscrutability of "Last Year at Marienbad" in particular and filmmaking in general. A very good reminder for me b/c I suspect that some who see 'the black sea' will find puzzlement and want/need explication. By design a movie that starts and ends in different ways, the black sea, features a disappearance and multiple protagonists and dips in and out of several POVs and is not exactly sewn up tidily by the end. 

I need to commit this to memory start saying it to everyone*. My new mantra:

"It's not my role to give explanations..each spectator can find his/her own solution and it will in all likelihood be a good one. But what's certain is that the solution won't be the same for everyone meaning that my solution is of no more interest than that of any other viewer."

*or rather to anyone who asks about the movie. I don't want to literally say it to everyone unprompted lest I resemble that man on the bus a couple weeks ago who was sharing his concerns about socialism as relates to city hall road-paving. or something.