omorrow, the fall semester for the Stark program begins with a day-long orientation. I am told that I may not come up for air until several weeks later. This is a fine thing; everybody I’ve met associated with the program is awesome, and I’m psyched to kick ass with my classmates. A few items before I’m sucked in:
Brian Perry did a fun little “exit interview” with Sarah and I for New York comedy blog The Apiary. You can read it here.
I am already craving my favorite fall beer, Southern Tier’s Imperial Pumking. If you see this bottle, you’d be a fool not to buy it:
In between trips to Ikea, a grueling series of DMV visits, and some light city exploration, I managed to finish another draft of “His Tainted Legacy,” the spec pilot I’ve been writing for a while. It’s out to some of my trusty readers, and if you’d like to read it as well, let me know—I’m always eager for feedback and impressions.
ello, LA. We’ve been in town for 3.5 days and we’ve secured an apartment steps away from Los Feliz village, for about $350/mo less than we were paying in Cambridge (and roughly the same space). The search was accomplished with a combination of craigslist and westsiderentals.com. Although this feels like our primary accomplishment, the cross-country road trip that came before was equally awesome. Tough adventure to summarize. America is a beautiful, lonely country.
If you’re ever doing what we just did, some practical advice:
1) Don’t mess with UHauls. Get a roof rack & storage pod for the top of your vehicle, from REI. When you arrive at your destination, return it all to the nearest REI and get all your money back, no questions asked. REI is the best company ever.
2) Check your car before you go, full inspection. You don’t want any doubts about your brakes, engine, or the like. Even when you pass inspection, there’s a chance you’ll end up stranded on a hill in some endless canyon in Wyoming, terrified that those lurches in your engine were more than the car getting spooked by altitude. (We called AAA. It was just altitude.)
3) Pee everywhere. That next rest stop in 79 miles may be closed, or filled with scorpions.
4) National parks! Find them.
We’re temporarily caught up in the exciting particulars of furnishing our new home, but soon our attention will return to the reasons we’re out here—film, music, and comedy. Thanks to all our east coast friends, family, and readers who are sticking with us through the journey. We miss you, but all is well.
or the last four years I’ve participated in the 48 Hour Film Project, an international filmmaking competition wherein teams compete within their city to make a short film in 48 hours, after drawing their film genre out of a hat and being given specific parameters that must be included in the final product. This year, the team I formed, ALBATROSS!, drew a particularly tricky genre: “Musical or Western.” We chose Western.
For a Few Flowers More: As the internet becomes our new frontier, a man from a simpler time must defend his virtual property the old-fashioned way.
In addition to the genre, we had to include a character named Wilma or Winston Weatherby (a gardner), a scale, and the line of dialog “You win some, you lose some.”
To say that I am immensely proud of my team and what we accomplished in such a short time frame would be an understatement of epic understatedness. Whether or not this film is recognized in the competition, it represents a momentous leap forward in the quality of our shooting, editing, scoring, and storytelling. Congratulations to all the 48Hour filmmakers—every year I’m blown away by the creativity that panic inspires.
arch has been an overwhelming month. I spent most of February obsessing over the particulars of my graduate/film school applications, which I finished back in October and then forced out of my mind. But not for long, of course—as snow melted and winter receded, notification-deadlines began to loom, and by late February every day felt like waiting for the results of an MRI. I remained cautiously optimistic, but only just.
Earlier this month I was offered a place in the Peter Stark Producing Program at USC. I accepted on the spot; it was and is my first choice program, an intensive immersion in the art and business of the film industry that seems to implicitly reject the notion that “artistic” and “commercial” projects exist in different spheres. Unfortunately I can’t talk too intelligently about the curriculum, beyond what I’ve read, which is half-fact, half-pitch.
I don’t begrudge any program its bragging rights—stellar reputation is what drew me there in the first place. The little legends are awesome, too—I love the anecdote about a Starkie throwing a chair in a passion-fueled dispute. (“There’s your Felliniesque!” I imagine him screaming.) Still more impressive is whatever the other guy said to provoke the chair-tossing. Apparently I have four months to hone my dodging skills.
THIS IS HOW MOVIES ARE MADE!
Anyway, back to March. It’s about to end, you know. And then it will be April, and then it will be May, and then, in June, Sarah and I will be enjoying our final days as Boston-Cambridge residents. For me, it will have been just under seven years—for Sarah, closer to ten. A friendly reminder that time flies, which is itself a friendly way of saying, life is too fucking short. Our relocation is no trivial thing—in addition to the logistical and financial burdens, we’ll be leaving behind our community of friends, family, and artistic collaborators, just trusting that in LA we’ll find new opportunities and awesome people, and that eventually we’ll find the money to visit old friends. Anxiety? We have it in spades. But we’re not complaining. It’s exciting, it’s a priviledge, it’s a challenge, it’s the next chapter in the great adventure we promised each other when we married.
Onward, friends! Come, collaborators! Adventure awaits us all.
omorrow, the fall semester for the Stark program begins with a day-long orientation. I am told that I may not come up for air until several weeks later. This is a fine thing; everybody I’ve met associated with the program is awesome, and I’m psyched to kick ass with my classmates. A few items before I’m sucked in:
ello, LA. We’ve been in town for 3.5 days and we’ve secured an apartment steps away from Los Feliz village, for about $350/mo less than we were paying in Cambridge (and roughly the same space). The search was accomplished with a combination of craigslist and westsiderentals.com. Although this feels like our primary accomplishment, the cross-country road trip that came before was equally awesome. Tough adventure to summarize. America is a beautiful, lonely country.
or the last four years I’ve participated in the 48 Hour Film Project, an international filmmaking competition wherein teams compete within their city to make a short film in 48 hours, after drawing their film genre out of a hat and being given specific parameters that must be included in the final product. This year, the team I formed, ALBATROSS!, drew a particularly tricky genre: “Musical or Western.” We chose Western.
arch has been an overwhelming month. I spent most of February obsessing over the particulars of my graduate/film school applications, which I finished back in October and then forced out of my mind. But not for long, of course—as snow melted and winter receded, notification-deadlines began to loom, and by late February every day felt like waiting for the results of an MRI. I remained cautiously optimistic, but only just.
hen I was a kid, this short-lived cartoon was one of my fleeting addictions:
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