MM on Residency - Days 2 and 3

Monday woke at 5 am, or rather N woke at 5 am, still adjusting to daylight savings. I was fried from waking up to be w/ F no less than 10 times, one for no water, one for bathroom, the rest for either coughing or coughing-related issues. N was excited to go finish his legos but it was 5 so I said no and split the difference (usually he's up at 6) saying if he stayed in bed for 30 min to read he could go and do the legos at 530. oy. so he did. Both kids and me fully up around 610. I had to make judgement call of whether or not to send F to preschool. part of me thought she was ok enough, but the other part thought it would be ill-advised. asked my mom to come over to watch F and she said sure. now it's 6:15 meaning there were about 2.25 hours to fill/kill b/f grandma came over. endless negotiations about every possible bit of minutae about everything. exhausting and deflating. somehow we make it through breakfast (was today the day N at 3 hard-boiled eggs? or was that yesterday?) Somehow N gets dressed. Grandma comes over at 820 or so. N and I and the dog walk up to Lewis Elementary. He goes in to class. check. Go home with dog. say goodbye to mom and F. drive down to bybee max station but naturally there's nowhere to park except on a street a million miles away. whatever. get on max, go to work.

the accoutrement of kid-care

at work. all well there except endless chaos of work-related items. around 2:30 I get call from person afiliated w/ bigger-deal film related thing (even though we said 3). he tells me the details and I ask questions. I hang up and email my producer Dave M. all looking good but figuring path forward on how to make Sister/Brother. We will need some $.

Home, excited to put kids to bed and go downstairs to watch rest of Remains of the Day. I let them watch show while I make dinner (frozen pizza!). we eat. F is in bed by 6:22. I leave N's room by 8 p. But then F starts coughing. And coughing, and coughing. I get downstairs w/ glass of wine ready to watch movie but she's crying and half-asleep and uncomfortable. I'm starting to lose control of my steadiness, starting to feel a little edgy b/c I just want to be off-duty for like an hour or so but that's not looking possible. I start/stop the movie no less than 4 times to go lay w/ her, remedicate her, readjust her pillows, readjust the humidifier etc. Over it. Watch end of movie and it's so GD spectacular.  How has it been so long since I've seen? Perfect mix of craft and memory and time and regret, right in my wheelhouse. To bed.  F wakes me up multiple times. Middle of night her fever is back, over 100 now.

N wakes up at 5:50, progress. I decide to let him get up. I decide to call in to work so I can stay home w/ F b/c Grandma did it mon and she's going to be w/ N all day on Wed (no school November PPS!) plus what harm can come from me staying home? I tell Grandma/Grandpa they are off the hook today but they offer/insist on taking N to school anyway.  We do FaceTime w/ MM around 8. She shows us her badass lodgings and the particulars of what's going on out there in WY. Grandma shows at 8:15 and 20 min later she and N walk up to school. She agrees to stay w/ F when she gets back so I can walk dog (ie LB). A few moments later my dad stops in. says he saw grandma and N walking to school. He agrees to stay w/ F so I can walk LB. I run into my mom on the walk. We talk about these kids and reminisce about when she called me on the phone (this is at SE 80th a million yrs ago) and she said "Are you EVER going to have kids?" ha ha. She tells me my dad while out of woods re lymphoma and re cancerous growth on his scalp is contending w/ carcinoma on nose. Life this never-ending BS of dealing w/ these mortal bodies. Over it. Back home and they leave and me and F are together all day.

We play and read and do play-doh and then a car pulls in our driveway. it's the project manager for the bathroom remodel we're ensnared in. He's just coming to check on some stuff in advance of tomorrow's elec inspection. whatever I say and mention how we haven't had power in the garage since the demo about 2 mos back. He says he can ask electrician to look at it as if I'm asking him for some favor or something. I say, no this is from the demo and also the electrician might want to know in case the circuit is tied in to the bathroom that's being remodeled and he says "oh yeah". He leaves and me and F go watch SING in the basement but 1/2 way she gets sleepy. we have lunch and I put her down for nap. about 75 min.

She wakes up sad that momma is gone so we do facetime again. F does some playdoh and I take some pix. N and grandpa come in around 310. N has lost his brandnew blue jacket. Somewhere on the playground at AM recess. Grandpa said they went to the office to look thru lost and found but it wasnt there. Problem since N is off school for the next 3 school days plus the wknd and it might get cold. Oh well. I make kids do quiet time and then let them watch a show while I fold laundry. I also change their sheets and put their laundry away. I make dinner while N nobly lets F play legos in his room. I am braced for shit to go south any second but he is in the zone and ably navigates her somewhat annoying interplay and demeanor. We eat dinner (burritos, quesadillas) and brush teeth. I put N down first and then F. I pour a healthy amount of wine into a glass and sit at the computer documenting this. I plan what movie to watch tonight, stuck b/t Tati, Cassavettes, Bergman or just watching dumb shows. TBD,  will advise.

MM on Residency - Day 1

 documenting this just as element of living the artistic dream. will try to add every day

Sunday, MM woke around 4 a and left. I caught her just as taxi was pulling up, ready to take her to airport for 3 flights (13 days in WY, part of her being finalist for Pen/Hemingway for People Like You).  I went back to bed but F had cough and fever and so she was waking up every few moments and then on top of that it was daylight savings so the kids internal clocks woke them at 5 a instead of 6 a. fun!

we got through the morning slowly. since it was grey and cloudy and cold i let the kids climb into bed w/ me and watch shows on the ipad so I could doze mindlessly beside them. By the time all that was done it was 8 am and the day stretched before me like a long road.  breakfast and then walked the dog. then got them into the car and went to Tryon Creek, a frequent haunt. walking in the woods is harder w/ 2 kids, both of whom wanted to be carried at same time. made it home for lunch and then they both napped. i watched e1 of mindhunter.

after naps gave them presents from MM (lego and butterfly costume) and then went to grandma and grandpa P's. then back home for dinner and bed. F's cough/fever persists so gonna keep her home on Monday and grandma P will help.

at night, I am working on fundraising trailer for my next feature film Sister/Brother. version 1 is edited just needs color correction and final sound mix. re-watched Remains of the Day and freaked out at how great it is, though i only got in an hour b/f starting to get drowsy. Headed to bed and F woke me up every 30 min or so.

shooting trailer 10.8.17

me walking, SB pointing (pic by Phil G)

first time directing per se since January 2013, holy moly. plenty of writing and editing and cinema in between but being on set again was a balm for the weary. today's undertaking a trailer for upcoming feature called Sister/Brother (production starts March 2018). shooting on Alexa. 7 static shots, no dialog, plus 1 shot w/ dialog, so I make mistake of thinking things will go at fast clip. always budget extra time. guerilla style but 6 locations. DP Scott Ballard, AC, Asia B. , Sound Phil G, plus 2 actors and myself. 8 am call for all minus 1 actor. Loc 1 is my house. simple shot down hallway but we didn't wrap 1st loc till 9:20. loc 2, easy shot but rain. I ask DP to add tilt down even though I designed the whole thing static. just felt right. I text actor 2 and say push back an hour b/c we're running late already. loc 3 has 3 separate setups. stop back by my house for another camera battery and bathroom breaks. loc 4 easy peasy though i add another tilt down, which also felt right. Actor 2 arrives. go to small street near stop sign and both actors in car. several shots, several considerations. airplanes overhead bad for sound. neighbor comes out, asks what we're shooting. she's nice though. AC leaves as we're finishing this location. All remaining pile into Phil's van. we head downtown for last shot. Traffic horrendous. construction plus portland marathon earlier that day plus apparent protest nearby. we park, head to top of building. get shot. I design another quick shot, no dialog  w/ both actors b/c location is good but it ends up looking like an album cover photo so i don't know what purpose it can serve, possible title card/poster down the road. we wrap but Phil has to take off. He drops us at my house. that leaves me, Scott and 2 actors. We go have some lunch and beers around 3 pm. we all toast the movie. directing again at last is different sensation. i feel strange sense of confidence about the project, in part to being older, in part to project, in part to having made feature before. the day is me planting a flag along w/ cast and crew. ready to continue, ready to begin.

memorial day trip

driving down the winding road alongside the Smith River on the 199, tiny towns subject to change and decay, unlike the rising landscape

maybe aging means existing alongside your former selves, not transcending them. the complication is in keeping the timelines in order, the thread of the narrative bloats with each year, bleeding into the watery present.

there's the theater in eureka where I was a projectionist 20 plus yrs ago, moving heavy film canisters to the projectionist table, threading films into projectors, watching the ends of movies over and over, checking focus and frame out the small window that overlooked each auditorium, aching as I looked forward to life in LA, toward becoming a filmmaker. all that aspiration and ambition pulsing with the knowledge that it was going to happen. no matter what.

there's the theater in Arcata where I watched rivers of double features starting 25 years ago, where I worked for a time, where M did too, where one early morning she and I sat out front on the raised corner of the loggia and she looked at me and said we both know last night didn't mean anything and a possible door closed before re-opening a short time later, arguably beyond my agency or hers.

In Ferndale (where I was an extra in a film 23 yrs ago and where another film was shot 16 yrs ago produced by the company I worked in the mailroom at in LA) here's a house where we stay with old friends - some not seen in decades - all of us older, greyer. All fundamentally the same and unmistakably altered.

and there's the trees, standing for ages before my great-grandparents were conceived laughing at my insights (oooh 20 years, come back and see us in 500 bud), standing through fog and wet, through sun and ache. still t/here.

my filmic trajectory has not lined up with what that projectionist anticipated but that is not a unique story I suppose. still my next film project stirs, slowly gathering form and heft.

and this is a thing borne of many unconnected things, of where I find myself, of reading some D Lynch interviews, of recalling M Haneke directed The Last Continent at 47, of rewatching Man on Wire, of my 45th birthday just days away, of the trip to past corridors where my old iterations stand on every corner : I have always found myself waiting for things - mentors, money, approval - needing those things to grant me the power to move forward. This new film is the embodiment of that, which is to say a character wrestles with all these competing strands of history and desire of time and oblivion - and by the simple act of continuing to step forward, she transcends it. And so for me the act of making this next film is the renunciation of that need, that reliance on approval. I'm tired of wanting to be liked, this grade-school ache to fit in that I've toted around for decades like a fat cement albatross. Time to cut that loose and to finally get busy.

And 100 years from now when this next movie and the next and the next have been born and lived and been long forgotten this tree in the fog will still stand, not really giving a crap about anyone's aches or iterations.

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.

Barbara Turner

Barbara Turner died in April. I've been in deep denial, dreading/avoiding writing anything at all about it, as if the act of writing will be a horrible homework assignment which will end with me facing the cold fact that she is not here any longer. Alternately kind and caustic, hilarious and serious she was a formative presence in my life.

I had just been accepted to AFI in Screenwriting and needed a summer job before the semester began (and student loan $ rolled in). I went up to AFI and looked on the job board (this is in 1997, internet just a baby) and saw an announcement for screenwriter Barbara Turner needing a research assistant. I knew just who she was from seeing Georgia (and from reading her corresponding interview in Scenario magazine.) My heart pounded when I called the number. A real screenwriter. I was given an address and told to come by to meet Barbara the next day.

"The pay is shit". These are among the first words Barbara said to me as I sat at her kitchen table. Though early afternoon she was drinking prosecco. By good fortune she had two scripts back-to-back that had to be written & researched in short order, one based on a historical account of 2 possessed girls in early 19th century Illinois, and the other an adaptation of a novel set on Majorca in the 1500's. Each would require a high volume of research.  She had already hired another AFI Screenwriting student named Guy Davis and would I like to join them? I muttered "sounds good" and tried to play cool but inside my heart was doing flips. I could see a framed award from the NY Film Critics Circle on a nearby shelf. This is inner circle shit. I've made it! I didn't mention that I hated doing research or talking to people lest that sway her decision to hire me.

Guy and I started in earnest the next day. First up was the Illinois project. Barbara as writer had the same degree of commitment as a hardcore method actor. Which is to say, it wasn't enough to know the names of artifacts and customs and principles of 19th century Illinois, she had to fully comprehend them at the molecular level. Each day found her sitting at her desk or in a chair in her office reading for 7, 8, 9 hours while myself and Guy were sent out into the corners of Los Angeles tracking down books, maps, folios, daguerreotypes, poems, farmer's almanacs. I spent a week chasing a period song down, finally finding sheet music at the UCLA Music Library. We got it to a pianist and had him record himself playing/singing on cassette tape so she could hear it. (The net result in the screenplay was a line of description: They enter the house and  hear "Period Song" being played on a piano in the next room). After 6 weeks or so of dedicated research Barbara begin writing.

screenplay drafts on legal pads

The process in short: She sat in her chair next to her sharpened pencils and wrote the script out in longhand on legal pads, starting at page 1 and going page by page to the end. Guy and I (and her research coordinator Chris) were all a room or two away in case we were needed.
"Brian?" I'd be summoned suddenly after an hour of silence.
"Yes?"
"Which book had the picture of the dray-wright reattaching the wheel?"
"I'll look"
"Thank you. And I need all the notes on that parade.  And the spiritualists"
Moments later I'd return with a stack of things. She'd check what she needed and return to writing.

At the end of each day she'd phone her friend and former assistant Pam in NYC and read what she'd written over the phone, Pam would type along and then fax the pages back to Barbara (again, pre-internet really). The next day would repeat until the script was finished. And by finished I don't mean a draft was finished, I mean the script was complete after one pass owing to the depth of Barbara's commitment and research and her deep talent. The screenplay was invariably also awesome and lyrical and pitch-perfect. (note: get your hands on her work.)

a million yrs ago in nyc

Barbara was always a real-world counter-point to the screenwriting dogma I was absorbing at AFI. You should not do X in a screenplay or Award-winning scripts do this by page X. Her screenplays transcended these. They talked about how the camera was moving, about if it was a medium or tight shot; they had expository paragraphs just for the reader; they talked about the rhythm of the cutting. All standarized verboten in a million screenplay seminars and a million hastily-assembled how-to screenwriting books. Years later Barbara learned that her one of her screenplays was used in a film school class as an example of WHAT TO NEVER DO IN A SCREENPLAY and she, true to her nature, took this as great honor, as proof positive that her work was landing correctly in the world.

One of the most vital things to Barbara was how a screenplay sounded. When I would nervously pass her my specs a frequent note after she read it was: I think you need to hear it. (Another common note: You should direct this.) How the words flowed on the page and in the reader's eye and ear was the aim, how the writer's voice presented itself and landed, in lilt and command.

My tenure working directly for Barbara ended in the fall with the start of film school but since Barbara still needed help (and Margaret - my girlfriend at the time, now wife - needed a job,) Barbara hired Margaret as research assistant.  They worked together for several years and across time Barbara became a dear friend and ally.

To put it cleanly: I learned more about being a writer watching Barbara work than from any book, any class, any interaction in Hollywood. She was a true artist (an overused phrase to be sure, but one that contains how commitment to art/form can yield returns, sometimes at a cost). A true sui generis writer in a town bloated with self-announced unique snowflakes, one whose slender but respectable body of produced work betrays the volume and scope of her true abilities and genius. Many of the best things she wrote are as yet unproduced.

Barbara's desk

There is so much else that can be said but it will just veer into uncollected ramble. The ache of loss and love I feel for Barbara, along with my unwillingness to accept that she is dead are intertwined. Mostly I miss talking with her, getting her opinion on my screenplays, seeing movies with her, deconstructing the latest celebrated indie film, drinking prosecco with her at her kitchen table in the early afternoon, watching shadows slowly extend across the backyard.  I miss the feeling of sitting down to read her latest screenplay and marveling at the movie to be made from the words on the page, the feel of those words - her words - and the lilt and command of her voice.

Barbara is amazing. I say it in the present tense because I feel her in the present tense. Here and not here at once.  I imagine her now, sitting next to me in a dark theater watching current cinema and whispering "I can't believe what I'm seeing" at terrible acting or dialogue. More than anything I have memories of her in tiny moments like this.

from the thank you page of  Margaret's book People Like You

Inquiry & Observation in 4 Parts

1) A couple weeks ago I had to go to the dentist to get my chipped front tooth finally addressed. I'd been putting it off and putting it off despite the cosmetic considerations, in part due to my laziness and in part due to my deep primal dentistry fears. There was a lag of a few weeks between making the appointment and the appointment itself so for reasons unremembered by me I scheduled it at 7 AM. God why? Probably thinking that I could pop in early and then head off to work. Exhausted and one-quarter awake I pulled into the parking lot, thinking of how I'd be the first or among the first appointments of the day and - as I am prone to do reflexively (maybe b/c I'm weird or maybe b/c I'm a writer and filmmaker or maybe due to some mixture) - started thinking about the people who worked there and the building turning on for the day and other operational considerations. What time did they have to arrive, 6:45 AM? What personal situations and emotions trailed them in at the crack of dawn before the dental apparatus began humming and demanded their focus? Did any of them regard their job negatively or at the same pitch and register as I regarded my day job? And so on. It was at this moment I noticed a young black woman at the back corner lot, yawning as she beeped her car key. Barely beating the receptionist in I thought.  Why so GD early? Across the lot another poor soul walked from his car to the front door. Inside, I overheard him at check-in: Wisdom tooth surgery. Fuck. Mine can't be that unpleasant, can it?

Moments later I was in the hallway being led to the back by the dental technician. She made small talk as she led me to her station, put me in the chair. I responded in a rudimentary way to her as I was seized by pools of panic, thinking about all the ways this could go wrong, all the problems with tooth and gum they'd find, all the steps and iterations required to fix a chipped tooth, what are they all? what if this is complex as fuck? what if this takes 3 visits? And so on. It was at this moment the young black woman I saw in the parking lot entered. "Ah" said the tech, "Here's the dentist"

A burn began to rise in my belly.

"What do we have on tap this morning" the dentist said
"Chipped front tooth" the tech responded
"Oh, those are fun" the dentist said. Then she looked at me and said "Why are you here so early?"
"Good question" I responded.

40 minutes later I was in the car headed home with a new tooth and a feeling I couldn't shake. Like I was outside myself, watching an innocent movie character suddenly realize his implication in something dire and malignant.

I pulled into the driveway at home.

2) This weekend at Washington Park playground with M and the kids. We'd just been on walk at Hoyt Arboretum and the playground was promised fun after they agreed to the non-fun of the walk. Set free, N began running around like an insane 4.5 year old and F headed straight to the swings, her natural preference. On the swing next to us was a small black boy being pushed by his white mother. My mind went instantly to the vagaries and details of adoption. I recalled the years of trouble M and I had conceiving, the moments we thought/knew it wouldn't happen and begin exploring the actual facts of adoption, the bureaucracy, the classes, the money, the plane flights. Was that this woman's journey? Was it joyous and free of entanglement, this path to her adoptive son? Or did it eat at her, did it consume her, was she still harboring resentment at the process not happening naturally? And so on. It was at this moment her black husband walked up to her, touched her shoulder and whispered something to her the easy, mundane way of a long-together couple.

A familiar burning feeling rose again in my belly, that sleeping man in the movie again, given sudden window to deep, multi-generational corrosion and his unwitting but malignant participation.

The young boy and F were both cute as hell, swinging side by side but out of rhythm. One forward, one back. Then reversed. Then reversed again.  I kept focus on their faces, their unconstrained joy, wondering how soon until they drifted into parallel movement.

3) Alton Sterling

4) Philando Castile