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March 23, 2004 I ended up not cutting out that minute of dialogue after I realized that it only lasted about thirty seconds. I made lots of trims, snipped a line or two, swapped some shots and tightened things up, but made no major excisions. I was surprised at how sloppy some of the cuts were, but I guess when we were in New Mexico I was under pressure to get through my segments so I could work with the other fellows on theirs. Good news: the new Jarmusch film looks like it's finally going to be released.
March 22, 2004 For any other parttime etymologists who may be interested: the non-obvious of the two root words of pornography is porne, which is Greek for prostitute. Another minor mystery laid to rest, another crease in the brain. Far more preferable is the word erotic, which of course stems from eros or erotikos, which may have sexual connotations but which doesn't exclude love from their definition.
March 22, 2004 Things that worry me that aren't directly related to my filmmaking career: I feel like my weight is ballooning, even though I've gone back to running every morning. I think I've been spending too much time in front of this computer screen. I haven't done my Pilates workout in quite some time, so I guess I'll start that up again. I don't want people to think I'm silly for really liking The Girl Next Door. When I say I love it, it's not in the same way I loved Eternal Sunshine. (related: Michel Gondry said he's been 12 forever; I think I've stalled out somewhere around eighteen). Being the oldest of nine kids, I'm plagued with concern that the combined brilliance of all my siblings will render me inconsequential. I don't have anyone whose mistakes I can learn from.
March 21, 2004 I had a dream last night that I was putting the score into the movie and discovered that realigning a certain segment of music contrary to our initial plan made the film exponentially better. It was sort of disappointing to wake up (as it so often is) and realize that I hadn't even heard the score yet, but the entire reason I had the dream in the first place is probably because we were going to meet tonight to listen to it, which we did. There were points where we were just sort of all avoiding eye contact but grinning the same excited grin (at least that's how it seemed to me). The score, aside from a few tweaks that will be made, is great; there's such an amazing difference between synth strings and the real thing, so that even though we'd heard the tracks in temp arrangements last week, they sounded completely new. There's this one section that treads along, somberly, repetitively...and then, suddenly, soars to this unexpecetedly moving place. The cumulative effect of the climax reminded me of the Libestod from Wagner's 'Tristan And Isolde.' Beautiful stuff. Maybe we can sneak an MP3 up on the official site in the near future. Daniel is going to be doing some more work on the tracks this week, and then he'll deliver them to us, we'll place them in the film, and then deliver OMF files of the entire soundtrack to Brad, another MA vet who will be doing our final mix. But before that, I guess we have to finalize the cut -- or at least, get really close to finalizing it (it's never really final, in my opinon, until it's been released on DVD). There's about a minute or two of dialogue I think I'll be cutting out of one of my segments. It's tough, because it contains one of the biggest laughs in the film -- but it also sort of contributes to the leaden nature of the first half hour. I'll sleep on it. I just finished watching Bergman's 'Fanny And Alexander,' which is the only film of his I haven't instantly been able to relate to. I have his book on his own work, Images, and it's always helpful to read his own perspectives on a film after viewing it myself. On this particular work, he wrote about the writing of it in a passage that I enjoyed particularly:
Update to the last post: Paul Taylor got the part, whatever part that may be. If you want to indoctrinate yourself into 'Sin City,' you should start at the source and then move on to later volumes, including the one that just might be my favorite.
March 20, 2004 So you may have heard about how Rodriguez's 'Sin City' adaptation is going to star Leonardo DiCaprio, Bruce Willis, Elijah Wood, Mickey Rourke (the most perfect Marv imaginable), Brittany Murphy, Kate Bosworth, Jaime King, Josh Hartnett, Marley Shelton, Maria Bello and Benicio Del Toro, and possibly Johnny Depp, Steve Buscemi, Christopher Walken, Michael Douglas and 'Deadroom's' own Paul Taylor (who is up for a small role). The movie starts shooting this coming week. Rodriguez resigned from the DGA so that Frank Miller and Tarantino could help him direct it. Pause now to consider how extremely cool this might be. Things like this make me wonder, why am I living three hours away from this epicenter of Texas filmmaking? If not New York or LA, why not Austin? I'm still far more comfortable than I should be at this point.
March 20, 2004 I went to see the first show of 'Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind' yesterday, and was...elevated by it. Meaning: I loved it. Every problem I had with the script was fixed in the finished film. I was pleased to learn in the numerous interviews that have popped up this past week that Gondry and Kaufman came up with the idea of the film together; they're doing all their press together as well, which makes me think of the film more as a collaborative effort. I've loved Kaufman films before, but I've never loved them, and this one changes that. There was a trailer before it for 'Garden State,' a film that caused a big stir at Sundance. Regardless of how the film is, it's one of the most beautiful trailers I've seen in ages. It made me excited and inspired, and I'm not just saying that because Natalie Portman is in it. I'll link to it whenever it ends up online. I'm almost finished with Graham Greene's The Heart Of The Matter, but I found it imperative that I put it down briefly in order to pick up one of his short stories entitled The Blue Film,, after seeing it mentioned in Raphale's book on Kubrick. The story is about a husband and wife in a passionless marriage who go to see an adult movie, with unexpected results; by pick up I mean stand in the aisle of Barnes & Nobles and read, which is what I did, and it was a joy to get so lost in the story that the less than desirable surroundings just faded away (shades of 'Eternal Sunshine' may be coloring this description). I'm struck, and slightly reassured, by how deftly Greene explores the same themes over and over again: namely, men and women, usually husbands and wives, who are often unfaithful to one anotherm, with a bit of religious conflict mixed in. To be fair, I've only read four of his novels (and one of those wasn't about marriage at all but a priest on the run in Mexico), so I'm really in no position to play the pundit on his work. But he gives me hope for what I often feel is a lack of originality.
March 18, 2004 I've found myself back at MPS Studios a few times these past few days, and seeing our soundstage occupied by some other, inherently lesser production was somewhat bittersweet. It was also nice to take an up-close gander at that classic 'Squezze Play' poster again. I've been working all week on a music video for a band called The New Year (formerly Bedhead, an album of whose I actually have); pre-production Monday through yesterday, and shooting today. My official title is Production Manager, but once we got to the set I mainly stuck to doing audio playback, and the song is stuck in my head like you wouldn't believe (at least it's a good -- I can't imagine how awful it must be to do a video for some horrible top 40 single). The video is being produced by Ghost Robot Films, which has produced some fairly notable documentaries; the DP is Lee Daniel, who's shot a lot of Richard Linklater's stuff, including the upcoming and highly anticipated (by me and people like me) 'Before Sunset,' the sequel to 'Before Sunrise.' He's a real swell DP. I got word that Linklater is indeed gearing up to shoot Phillip K. Dick's 'A Scanner Darkly' in Austin and that it will be animated in a style that, as I interpreted it, sounds like 'Waking Life' meets 'Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow.' I've got to try to get a job on that one. Hopefully this video will yield one or two decent connections.
March 16, 2004 Yesterday, spurred on by the realization that 'Eyes Wide Shut' is probably my favorite movie of all time, I picked up 'Eyes Wide Open,' the book by the film's screenwriter, Frederick Raphael, which details the two wonderfully frustrating years he spend working on the script. Although its subtitle is A Memoir Of Stanley Kubrick, I think it is more about its author than the director: Raphael seems at least somewhat instigated by a bit of artistic pride, a need to let people know that there's some of him in there, too, and that the problems one might find in the finished product aren't necessarily his fault (he refrains from commenting on the movie). He writes, after Kubrick asks him to rewrite a scene he's particularly proud of: I did it again, and again. The fourth or fifth version was, of course, blanched of nearly all the duplicity which had made it alive for me. I was back compiling a color-it-yourself book to which Stanley would add his own characteristic tones. He wanted the spaces to have seductive outlines, but not to carry instructions. He was not about to direct by numbers. Other directors may ask, "How do we do it, how do we do it?" Not Stanley; if he didn't know how to do it, it would not be done; it would not be him. I could sympathize with him -- there have been plenty of times when I've been editing someoene else's work, when my artistic sensibilities scream out "No!" but they're telling me "yes, and of course I have to listen to them -- but I think I sympathized with Kubrick, in all his elusiveness and indecisiveness, even more. I'm glad I write my own material so that I don't ever have to put a talented writer through the nightmare of deciphering what I want without me being able to explain what that actually is (it's bad enough talking to our composer); I agonize enough over getting those seductive spaces just right all by myself. The best part about the book is that, as much as he takes steps to demythicize Kubrick, Raphael ultimately fails, and knows it. The frustration of working for a genius is outweighed by the fact that he worked for him at all, and managed to make a small but significant connection with him. Me, I would have been overjoyed to just visit his set (more reasons to be jealous of PTA, and Chris Cunningham too), or just to know that he knew I existed. I'm not completely above hero worship. Also recommended: this volume, which contains the screenplay and the original, highly fascinating novella that inspired it, Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle.
March 16, 2004 This section of my website, you may have noticed, is not in Flash. There is a reason for this: Flash based blogs are annoying. Yen has realized this. Also, I hate petitions as much as you do, or maybe even more, but this one is for something that I really feel strongly for, so I'll just do my part and link to it.
March 15, 2004 At this very moment (11:38 am), our score is being recorded by the string section of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. Well, it might not be our final score -- this is what will be in place for the cut we send to Toronto -- but based on the moody, Kronos Quartet-esque rough tracks we heard last night, chances are it'll end up in the final cut. The composer, Daniel Huffman, who worked with James on the music for MA, is really going the distance on what was intially just a temporary score -- his rough compositions and enthusisasm over the past few weeks were so impressive that we told him to go ahead and start writing and recording with the final product in mind. He only has a few hours with the orchestra today; basically, he's up against the same problems we had while we were shooting. So it should end up great! More on the score later -- I've got to mail off some press kits. But before I forget, I've been meaning to link to this great NY Times article on Kerry Conran, (the director of 'Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow') which pretty much answered most of the burning questions I had about how such an awesome movie could ever be greenlit.
March 12, 2004 I'm intermittently experiencing the Rufus Wainwright concert in Austin via cell phone right now. Yen's down there, and it's his birthday today so a big happy birthday is in order; when taking that and the name of his last feature into consideration, innumerous possible puns present themselves, but I'm just not that lame.
March 11, 2004 Perhaps subconsciously inspired by the spoilerific Episode III photos of a charred Anakin Skywalker (which I didn't want to see, but accidentally stumbled upon), I've been playing George Lucas today. My 'Deadroom' segment originally started out with a wide angle CU of Layton, adjusting his tie; however, I think it's turned out to be a less-that-dynamic opening shot. Everyone else starts out with a wide shot of the room, but all the wide shots I had from the beginning of my segment also had Kelly in them, since I wasn't planning on using that shot until she had already entered. Sooo.... I took the first fifteen seconds of the shot, with Kelly in it, and layered it in After Effects under an excerpt from later in the same shot, where Kelly's moved to the middle of the room, leaving the corner from the first shot completely empty.
Then I used the top layer as a mask and effectively erased Kelly from both shots...   Most people are probably scoffing right now at the simplicity of that effect, but I'm not necessarily done yet. I've decided it would be nice if this first shot was a dolly shot, where the camera dollies in horizontally from complete darkness. After discussing it with my brother, I realized a simple motion track wouldn't work because of the perspective of the shot. So Ben's going to see if he can remodel the footage on a 3D plane in Maya, which will allow me to do pretty much any shot I want. However, I doubt that he'll be able to do it successfully enough to integrate with the original footage, so I'll probably just open with that static wide shot. But at least it's better than it was before. I'd also like to point out that these low resolution, uncorrected screen grabs do NOT represent the quality of the actual footage. March 10, 2004 I've been averaging about three pages of the screenplay a day, and 250 words of the story/novella/whatever it is that I'm also writing, not counting the copious amounts of deleted words/pages that are erased as quickly as they are written -- I may write a great deal more than usual on any given day, but the amount that's of decent quality remains pretty much the same. This week, I've been getting a bit done in the morning and afternoon, but I usually won't get started in full until late in the evening, when I'll spend an enormous quantity of time surfing the net, until I finally get so fed up with the fact that none of my bookmarked websites are being updated every five minutes that I disconnect from the internet and finally get down to business. Likewise, I might stumble upon something like this interview with David Mamet that inspires me to get myself in gear. I saw Mamet's 'Spartan' this evening; his writing is as sharp as ever (sharper, since his last film was the comfortably unimpressive 'Heist' over two years ago) and, just as reading his writing makes you feel feel smarter, listening to his excellent cast recite his words is just nourishing. I've got a few of his plays on my shelves that I feel like re-reading now; I went through my big Mamet phase back in 98 or so, where I watched all his films up to that point ('Oleanna' is still my favorite) and studied his plays, and, in the interest of developing my own style of dialogue, wrote a 70 page script that contained nothing but. There were maybe one or two or maybe three worthwhile lines in the whole thing, but as practice, it was a resounding success. I think.
March 10, 2004 I just realized that the obvious solution to the dilemma suggested in the last paragraph of the last post is to let neither myself, nor Yen, nor Nick publicize the movie; all promotional aggrandizing should be left up to James, whose suggestion for a tagline was something to the effect of "Deadroom: If You Don't Like It, You're Fucking Stupid."
March 9, 2004 I had quite a fright this morning when Final Cut Pro 4 wouldn't open; had my infrequent, covert usage of 'borrowed' software finally come back to haunt me? Yen and I were both scouring the web for the lowest price on a legit copy, convinced that we'd have to break down and buy it -- but then the problem pretty much fixed itself, so we're okay for now. I feel like I should mention that I love Apple products and will buy them en masse at full price, whenever I can afford them. The Hollywood Reporter printed something about Van Sant's new film, which sounds only loosely based on the Seattle grunge scene, leaving my eventual avant garde biopic safe and original once more(as long as Todd Hayne's impressionist Dylan film doesn't steal the thunder). Also, the blurb mentioned that Michael Pitt developed it with Van Sant and is going to star in it when it starts shooting this spring. Michael Pitt is awesome. Inspired by The Dreamers, I've been listening to my collection of The Doors records; I also let Oliver Stone's (brilliant) film about them unwind in the background as I was working the other night, and I realized how much my nihilistic edge has faded since the days when I fashioned myself after Jim Morrisson. No more open courting of death; no more poetry; still morose and self destructive, but without as much naivete. I'm worried that I'm getting boring. Speaking of...I showed the 'Deadroom' teasers at the Indieclub meeting tonight. Response was positive, but I really need to stop telling people that the film is 'artsy and potentially very boring.' I mean, it is, but people don't need to know that until they've paid for it and it's too late!
March 5, 2004 Thanks to a link at Greg.org, my mind has been blown by this work of structural ingenuity, and this one -- a potential place of residence in NYC, if I can make a ton of money before its completed -- both by the architect who will soon be taking on the Dallas skyline, Santiago Calatrava. On the subject of New York, it's one month now until the failed April 4, 2004 move-to-NY deadline James and I set for ourselves some time ago. At least our reason for missing it isn't because we've been sitting around doing nothing.
March 4, 2004 I put on 'Moulin Rouge' while I worked on some After Effects stuff; when it was over I started to write, and the emotional content of the film mixed with what I was writing about (an actress trying to cry for a scene) was almost overwhelming. Later I turned to my script (still 'Rocketman') and further attempts to find the perfect middle ground between the elegaic, the bucolic and the tedious. I thought I'd put on 'The Last Picture Show' to pick up some good vibes, and ended up watching the whole thing. I haven't maintained a list of my ten favorite movies for a while, but I'm pretty sure this one would be on it. I love how it bridges the gap between youth and middle age -- the kids and the grownups are all stuck in the same rut or on the same precipice, and/or dealing with the same problems. One of the things I've noticed since graduating from high school is that people will refer to certain things (arguments, crushes, etc) as 'high school shit' but I think high school shit is something you deal with all your life (I may be proved wrong, but I doubt it, even though I'll admit I'm angstier than some); it's just that high school is generally the first time you experience that drama, and you so you always associate the two together. I tend to write about people a lot older than myself, and I usually feel I do so reasonably well, and I guess I base most of my assumptions about getting older off this notion. I could be way off target; I guess I'll find out later. I'm now listening to vintage Smashing Pumpkins, inspired by the recent discover of Billy Corgan's new website. Now that's some high school shit.
March 3, 2004 In the interest of driving more traffic to myself, I signed up for this new website service called FilmJumper. It's a pretty unique and cool promotional concept, still in its early stages; I love grass roots filmmaking efforts like this, and thus I endorse it. Yen and I fixed up little odds and ends on the current cut of the film today, and now I'm re-encoding the MPEG for future DVD burning. Until we begin the final sound mix and start recording the score, the movie's locked. And, from what I can tell, it's still fantastic. A few modifications were made to the temp score and the titles, and they made a huge difference. I finished 'Easy Riders, Raging Bulls' a few minutes ago and am suddenly not as anxious to read 'Down And Dirty Pictures.' I will, but I thought Biskind's writing was just too damn sloppy to be as enjoyable as it should have been. As it is, it feels like a lot of firsthand gossip -- fascinating, but not as rich as I would have imagined, given the acclaim the book's received. As far as the subject matter goes, though, reading about all these auteurs has really inspired me to stick to my guns and tell the stories I want to tell, and to tell them well. And to not get cocky (except that I already kinda am, although in a schizophrenically self deprecating way). And to never do coke. I'm more of a downer person anyway. My screenwriting is currently a labrorious process, and so I've taken to switching back to writing fiction, for my own personal betterment, when the going gets tough. The piece I'm working on right now, which takes place on a movie set, has been such an enjoyable experience that I almost don't want to turn back to the screenplay. I'm falling in love with my characters again.
March 3, 2004 I'm currently burning the first DVD of the current version of 'Deadroom' (for scoring and festival use only). It, and several others like it, will be in the mail by the end of the week. I full expect them to end up on eBay at some point in the next few years (the sooner the better). I'm also listening to Greg Pak on Fresh Air, answering my oft-wondered question about whether filmmakers from Dallas who make miniDV features comprised of multiple vignettes are good interview fodder for Terry Gross. That must be one of the things that falls under the category "you know you've made it when..."
March 1, 2004 I've spent all morning and afternoon working on two incredibly simple FX shots; I hate looking at the clock and seeing how much time I've spent doing such a relatively small amount of work. In this case, I'm making an artificial lens flare blow out the entire frame from Harry's ring in the final shot of my segment (followed by some nice abstract visual cacophony). I also turned a static shot into a slow dolly shot, to match the opposite shot in the scene, which is an actual dolly. Doing an optical push degrades the image, but it's a short shot and the increase is only ten percent, and I think the loss of quality is less noticeable than the lack of movement that was previously there.
There's a great documentary about him on the disc -- I get the impression that he's constantly just coming up with ideas and shooting them, often with no purpose but to physcially visualize his imagination. That's something I wish I had more of a drive to do, and would like to think I would do if I didn't spend most of my time getting to a point where I had the freedom to do it. The other night, though, I had a dream about an awesome scene from Cremaster 5, and then I woke up and realized that it wasn't actually in Cremaster 5, or anything else, and I decided I better make it myself before anyone else dreams it up. So far, all I can afford to do is illustrate it, which I've done, but I really should try and shoot it (when my XL-1 gets back from LA), if for nothing else than to practice a.) compositing and b.) making women look beautiful on film. I also had a dream last night that I was hanging out with Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore after the Oscars, only they ended up not being The Oscars but high school graduation, and Julianne Moore wanted me to play an R. Kelly song on the piano. I'm not going to be making a movie of that one. Related: I can't decided if I'm more excited about 'Eternal Sunshine Of A Spotless Mind' because I want to see how Gondy interprets the script, or because the score is by Jon Brion. Also, I wonder if Nick Cave likes Kylie Minogue's newer CDs.
February 28, 2004 Yen's been hard at work putting a temp score on the movie, and we all gathered tonight to watch it, and once again, we all left feeling very pleased with ourselves, for the most part. And since, to some extent, we're all fairly self-loathing when it comes to our own own work, the positive consensus was a great morale booster. Yen's partner Jerry watched it -- he's the only person who's seen it so far who hasn't been involved in the film at all, and he seemed to be quite impressed (and he has good taste, even though he's seen 'Calendar Girls' three times, so his opinion counts). The only other people to have seen it are our potential composers and James's partner, Amy, who catered the movie, and they all like it too, and they all agree that Harry is pretty damn awesome. Which makes me feel much better about the abysmal technical direction in my first two segments (it gets better and better as it goes along, and the fact that I can admit that is a great thing). The first thing James said to me tonight was that I better not be turning Christian, which makes me want to clarify my feelings on 'The Passion,' in case they were unclear. I'm not at all contemplating a sudden outburst of religious fervor, but simply realizing that my Catholic upbringing is an integral factor of who I am (a la Martin Scorsese) and I can't reject it completely. But it's not like the movie made me want to hightail it to a church or anything or go buy any of that disgusting 'Passion' merchandise.
February 27, 2004 Wrote six 'Rocketman' pages today and they're goooood. At least I think so right now. Granted, it's on a rewrite, but it's a good rewrite. I'm pacing holes in the floor and agonizing over every line, but hopefully it's for a good cause. To clarify that Gus Van Sant post below: I've long dreamed of making a Kurt Cobain movie. I even had the opening all planned out. It was going to have an early-eighties Cure song in it, but I wasn't sure which one yet. I watched Hiroshi Teshigahara's 'Woman In The Dunes' today, which, aside from being absolutely breathtaking, had one of the most intensely erotic love scenes I've ever seen. And by intensely erotic, I mean arousing. I might even rank it higher than the sex scene in 'Dont Look Now,' which is more notable for the way it juxtaposes union and separation than for its passion.
February 26, 2004 My brother is studying up on the principals of visual storytelling (something I, who was so quick to exclaim on the set that I didn't need any more wide shots, should probably brush up on too). Silent movies being ideal examples of said principals, we rented a handful of Buster Keaton movies from the intelligent person's video store, the public library. I'd seen 'The General' and 'Steamboat Bill, Jr.' years ago, but all I remembered were the gags and stunts (which are impssible to forget); I'd forgotten how strong the narratives were. Today we watched his short film, 'The Playhouse,' and it was one of the most astonishing things I've ever seen. As far as I know, no one is completely sure how he pulled of the things he did; regardless, I don't ever want to know. You can't top that kind of thing. Thus, another box set for the wishlist. I was told I was confused today, and it confused me. Also, I took steps to overcome my writers' block. On Fresh Air this morning, journalist Steven Johnson spoke about the experiments he did to determine that good ideas come when the brain is more sedate (and therfore focused); the proverbial saying about how we only use 10% of our brains is actually a good thing. I decided to test this, but unfortunately ended up falling asleep in the process.
February 26, 2004 More reasons to be jealous of Robert Rodriguez can be found here. Even if you're not a fan of the project, the way he got it off the ground is, um, slightly cool. New reason to be jealous of Gus Van Sant: he's doing a new film that sounds suspiciously like the impressionist sort of biopic I've long been hoping I'd have the chance to make someday. Great minds think alike, but famous people always get first dibs on the ideas. As long as I'm reporting cool movie news -- Variety says 'The Fountain' is back on, minus Brad Pitt and approximately thirty million of its original budget. I hope the eventual DVD of the eventual move has a good 'Hearts Of Darkness' style documentary about the aborted version. February 25, 2004 I've just now finished my review of 'The Passion Of The Christ,' (subtitle: how Mel Gibson managed to undermine my critical judgement and inspire some re-evaluation of personal faith). I missed the press screening last week, and so I paid to see the first show this morning (skipping out on Ash Wendenday mass) at one of the few DFW theaters that was only mostly sold out. I wondered if it would be the 'Irreversible' of religious films, but no one walked out. I don't see how anyone could have. Now I'm watching 'The Last Temptation Of Christ,' which is the only thing I've done today that's felt appropriate. Some movies, whether you like them or not, require a stronger degree of contemplation.
February 25, 2004 Added more to my plate today by starting Democracy In America by Alexis de Tocqueville, which within the first thirty pages stunned me with its timeliness-by-way-of-prescience; and Understanding Frank Lloyd Wright Architecture, by Donald Hoffman, which I chose because he's the one architect I'm somewhat familiar with, visually, and thus might prove good starting ground for understanding some basic concepts. 'Easy Riders, Raging Bulls,' as insightful and all-inclusive as it is, is a bit too breezy to feel like much more than entertainment. However, in reading it, I've come to the realization that James and myself embody just about every ideal and characteristic of the Coppola / Lucas team of yore. Seriously, it's like history repeating itself, except that we're in Texas, we have no money and we don't have access to the studios. Yet. As if in consideration of a possibility I joked about in my essay on the 'Deadroom' site, I watched Bergman's Scenes From A Marriage this evening. It was a revelation -- and so similar in thematic material to my DR segment (and other scripts of mine) that I had deja vu while watching it. It also bears similarities to 'Eyes Wide Shut,' to the extent that I'll bet Kubrick was a fan of it. It's sort of the polar opposite of 'Cries And Whispers,' probing painful and intimate ground but leaving viewers at the end with a sense of optimism and comfort (and interjected throughout with a pale blue, rather than blood red). There's a Criterion edition being released next month (and then in April there's the Bergman box set -- including 'Persona,' which I've been waiting ot see). I guess it's a good time to bring up that my fake birthday is next month, too. Enough for now -- time to listen to pretty girls sing (switching back and forth between Emmylou Harris and Eisley) and try to write. I'll talk about 'The Passion Of The Christ' later.
February 23, 2004 Just finished assembling the color corrected version that we're sending to Cannes; running time, minus closing credits, is one hour and thirty six minutes. In 'Still' news (hah, bet you didn't see that one coming), I sold another copy of the DVD...over a month ago. But it took me forever to get some new discs made, so I didn't get to send it out until the other day, which was coincidentally the same day that I went by the lab (at their behest) and picked up the original negative, which has been sitting in their storage vault for the past two years. It's weird to look at it, frame by frame. It's so tiny. Once again, I wonder if it was worth all that money. Then I realize that I can't answer that question because, try as I might, I really can't bring myself to care about money, especially once it's spent.
February 23, 2004 Speaking of watershed seventies films, I've never seen any work from Cassavetes, but that didn't prevent me from greatly enjoying this terrific -- at times, nearly heartstopping -- article over at The Guardian. Maybe I should just break down and get Netflix.
February 22, 2004 To shoot myself down from my FCP4 high, I watched the special features on 'Once Upon A Time In Mexio' over at Matt Zeske's house yesterday. Robert Rodriguez's house made me want to vomit with jealousy. I mean, I don't ever have much desire to be as entirely hands on as he is with his movies, since I think they suffer for it, but I could definitely live with doing all the post production for my films at my own house (not that I don't already, but doing it with all the equipment he has would just be...well, nice, to put it mildly). Seriously, if you think you have a cool setup, don't watch that DVD because you'll just feel entirely inadequate afterwards. The only thing Rodriguez is way behind on is his website. How am I supposed to contact him to show him my movie, as he invited all aspiring filmmakers to do in his seminal volume, 'Rebel Without A Crew?' I'm just about finished with Frank O'Connor's collection 'My Oedipus Complex,' I just started Graham Green's 'The Heart Of The Matter,' but I think they'll end up on the backburner for the next week, since I began reading 'Easy Riders, Raging Bulls' last night and it's just too entertaining not to tear through (it's especially great for reading while you're waiting for footage to render). Since I'm a few years behind in reading it, though, I won't talk about its literary pluses and minuses, and lament only briefly that I still have so many watershed seventies movies to catch up on.
February 21, 2004
On Wednesday morning, I managed to make it to my first press screening since 'Return Of The King;' the movie was 'Jersey Girl'. Then, last night, Yen and I did some good old fashioned theater hopping and caught 'In My Skin'(funny) and 'Japanese Story' (great if a little unsubtle) with about thirty five minutes of 'Calendar Girls' (what?) acting as filler so that we could stay out of the watchful eyes of theater employees (who I know for a fact don't get paid enough to care). I haven't gone theater hopping in years, and it was a welcome return to the days when I'd see two or three or four movies in a row. If you click the two linked titles above, you'll see that I've also made a welcome, if slightly rusty, return to writing reviews (at least occasionally).
February 19, 2004 Whenever I send my resume off for a film related job, I always make reference to my incredible demo reel. I guess it's a sign of my own confidence in my employment potential that I've never actually put a demo reel together, but lo and behold I got a call on Wednesday for an interview on Friday (for a job I don't want but could probably use) and so I've spent the last two days largely ignoring 'Deadroom' and scrambling to put something really impressive together. I just now burned the final product to DVD, and I think it's pretty good. It's definitely the most complex thing I've ever done, effects wise -- I made Final Cut Pro crash for the first time the other night as I added my thirtieth layer of video to one thirty five second sequence. So now I've got that done and I'm absolutely sick of looking at this computer screen. And yet I persist. I've got to update the Deadroom site with a few new things (see, a reason to visit it again!). And print out some copies of the Deadroom trailers to send to Glasgow. I wonder what the postage for that will be like. A well-known indepedent filmmaker named Sarah Jacobson died the other day. For whatever reason, I'd never heard of of her before, but she sounds like she was a pretty swell person. This is the story I read about her. I wish the Dallas Video Organization would arrange a screening of her films.
I just checked out the stats on the 'Deadroom' site. We're averaging between 30 and 70 unique hits a day. That's not enough. Take another look! In the meantime, we need to start promoting this movie more. Who cares if it's not finished yet -- this is the 'Episode III' of indie films from Dallas (I wonder if the Cannes jury will take into account that we're from Texas -- and is that a good or a bad thing? We should say that the film is an allegory for America under the Bush administration).
February 18, 2004 Added to my already precarious columns of CDs are hours and hours of potential classical temp score music, courtesy of my fellow directors, for me to sift through; Yen is putting together his own temp track, but I'm going to look for other pieces that might work as well. There's just so much of it...so I'm doing the only logical thing and listening to the new Air CD instead (also courtesy of Yen). I'm also rendering lots of footage...
  Both of the above are a frame from early in the film; obviously, the one on the left is the 'before' version. Depending on your monitor's luminence, the corrected version may look black and white, but it's not. The finished segment will look a lot like 'Northfork' (and, according to Yen, who is testing filmlook alghorithms at the moment, '21 Grams' as well). Room 3 will also have degrees of this contrasty, desaturated look, while 2 and 4 will be more vibrant and technicolor-ish. It takes about a total of two hours rendering time for each room, and then I have to go back and make adjustments as needed and re-render those. Which last night left me enough time to finally finish 'Angels In America.' I don't think it was a completely successful film, but I think the script is brilliant, the performances equally so, and the ending beautiful and magical in a way that only a film can be. Someday I'll make something grand like that; it'll slip out before I know it's even there. And now back to rendering.
February 17, 2004 The four 'Deadroom' teaser trailers are now online! Technically, at least -- you may or may not be able to access them. It really sucks working with online video (and Flash, for that matter) when you only have a dial-up connection. It takes forever to upload things, and then forever to test them (I'd like to state that I don't have dial-up by choice, but only because DSL isn't available in my neighborhood for some stupid reason). I always end up just calling Yen or James and having them check the stuff on their high bandwidth lines. They're both asleep at the moment, I imagine, but from what I myself can determine at this point, there may be a problem with the Room 1 trailer; but the rest of them should work fine. If you want to save a trip, here are links to the individual trailers: Room 1, Room 2, Room 3, and Room 4. If all else fails, you can right click on the links to download them directly to your hard drive. I know that works. Now I need to figure out how to make these things smaller. 5 MB is way too big for a 40 second trailer. Of all of them, Nick's was the hardest to cut -- his story is so complex that figuring out just what to convey in the limited time slot we gave ourselves was almost an impossibility. As these things usually go, his ended up being my favorite. But they're all really good in their own thirty second ways. An excellent first glimpse of the film...I think.
February 16, 2004 More about Primer can be found in this week's Observer cover story, in which director Shane Carruth explains the pains of putting a price on his firstborn. It's an interesting article, and brings up a few things I hadn't considered, among them that fear of letting your first film go. Also delved into is the political nature of the film's Sundance award; the instigator of the surprise win may have been Peter Biskind's 'Down And Dirty Pictures,' (which I haven't read yet but will as soon as I finish 'Easy Riders, Raging Bulls' once my order arrives from Amazon later this week). It seems about as obvious as Miramax's lack of Oscar nominations this year. I spent awhile talking about this with Jim McMahon last night and discussing the sheer importance of getting your work seen by the right people (which is how Carruth got into Sundance in the first place). Jim just finished his directorial debut, Bloodshed, which from what I've seen looks like a pretty awesome slasher movie. I'm sorta jealous that he has a film that's of infintely higher resale value than ours. I mean, we don't even have any blood in 'Deadroom,' much less any nudity.
February 14, 2004 I forgot that it was Valentine's Day. Too busy to be lonely or to even pay attention to the snow, which is very pretty but very underwhelming after last week's mountain storm. I've been taking a little bit of time to catch up on movies (and hopefully I'll catch up on some reviews soon). I saw My Architect last night, the documentary about architect Louis Kahn, who designed (among others) the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. The film featured a really amazing montage of that landmark, which I guess I'd never really appreciated much before, set to the sounds of the glorious 5th by Ludvig Van; the audience murmured in approval. DFW has the Kimbell, The Modern (Tadao Ando), the Dallas Theater Center (Frank Lloyd Wright), The Meyerson (I.M. Pei, also featured in the film); and it looks like a bridge by Santiago Calatrava will soon be gracing the metroplex as well. This leads me to my newfound desire to learn more about architecture. Actually, I have a longstanding newfound desire to learn more about quite a few things, which leads me to this quote from Stanley Kubrick that I recently read and appreciated: I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker. That's for sure. Anyway, My Architect is fantastic. I've seen all but one of the Best Documentary nominations prior to the actual awards, which is a first for me, but there have been so many great ones this year that it'd be a crime not to have seen them. More 'Deadroom' stuff tomorrow.
February 12, 2004 Radiohead. The Cure. The Pixies. Air. Belle & Sebastien. Wilco. Desert Sessions. Trail Of The Dead. Bright Eyes. Mogwai. Cursive. Go read the rest of the lineup yourself and then weep when you realize that, even if you could afford a ticket, you couldn't afford the airfare. Unless you can afford it, in which case you can go to hell (after the concert -- I' m considerate in my damnation). Hmmm. I just noticed one other band included on the list that I may have reason to mention by name in the future.
February 12, 2004 Coolest fanboy news in a long time: the one and only Tom Stoppard co-wrote the script to Star Wars: Episode III. At least according to AICN. My prognosis? Genius move, George. Brian Satterwhite sent me some short films that he recently scored today. One of them was called 'Comfort,' from an Austin filmmaker named James Webb. It was quite good, vaguely along the lines of 'Still,' tonally, and shot with that DVX100 24p miniDV camera. The outdoor vistas were breathtaking. I want one of those cameras. Anyway, I've been talking to Brian about the music for 'Deadroom,' because we might decide to go with a classical score and he could help us find appropriate pieces. We don't know what we want yet, but we know we need it and we know we need it fast. Sean French of The Theater Fire might also pitch in some solo stuff. Yen's putting together a bunch of temp tracks at the moment to give us an idea of what we're looking for. I watched the full cut of the film again tonight, and after taking a break from it for a few days, I was even more impressed than I was the first time I saw it. It's really great -- by our standards (ooooh! cut down!). Incidentally, there's no way any 'Magnolia' style intercutting would work -- I tried it and it's just not right for this movie. The segments are all complimentary to each other (especially in the new order we put them in), but chopping them up beyond their natural cutting points just sucks any sense of structure and flow from them. As it is now, it may be a little slow, but it's on it's way to where it needs to be.
February 11, 2004 I'm entering my third day without any food, relying instead on a strange liquid mixture of sugar and citrus and water for sustenance. The purpose is to clean my body of toxins, but I think I'm counteracting that by continuing to drink coffee. But that's a habit I don't want to be cleansed of, so I don't think it's much of a problem. Not like running and smoking cigarettes (which I used to do way back in the day). I'm down to 140 pounds (yes, I do realize that's not the point) and I'm not too hungry anymore, but I'm feeling weak and thinking I should have picked some time when I'm not really busy to do this. You're supposed to do it for 3-10 days, but I'm thinking I might pull out after the fourth. I've got too much to do and am barely scrounging up the energy to do it; I used to do this all the time in high school, but when all you have to do is go to school, you can afford to be exhausted (or so I thought then). My whole family is becoming infected with Rufus Wainwright's heartsick crooning. His voice and shining armor have popped up on desktops across the house. Speaking of the whole fmaily, my dad revealed that he's planning on taking everyone to New York for Christmas and New Year's next winter. If all were to go extremely accordingly to the best possible plans, that'd be the second time I'd be in Manhattan this year. Things I'm keeping busy with include the Deadroom website, which is still officially under construction but shouldn't be for much longer. As far as trailers go, we've decided to cut a 30 second teaser for each room. I've finished mine and James' so far. All should be up some time this year. I resynced all of Nick's missing dialogue (only took four hours) and I guess I'm going to start fine tuning the whole thing over the next week. Has to be in France by the 8th or else it'll miss out on its chance to be rejected. I've also been rewatching all of PTA's movies while I work (a nice substitute for food). One of the problems with the rough cut of 'Deadroom' is the length of time it takes to cut back to each segment, especially towards the end; with that in mind, I intendended to watch 'Magnolia' to get ideas for pacing, but wound up getting way too caught up in the movie.
February 10, 2004 I don't think I need to worry about being family-friendly on this site, but just in case, I'll only provide the link to the cover of the official motion picture soundtrack to Vincent Gallo's 'The Brown Bunny.' I'd order a copy if I could read Japanese. And wasn't mostly broke.
February 8, 2004 We're back and the rough cut is done and here are some things that happened. We began cutting it late the night we arrived, after having set up our suite right by the bay window, just as the first snowfall began; and finished it late on Thursday, a day after the blizzard; and then tweaked all the way up until last night, when the snow on the pines had all melted away and the drifts on the ground were thinning. It was a hell of a lot of fun and it went by way too fast. Ten days without cell phones or internet access was, surprisingly, a breath of fresh air. I didn't even miss watching movies. The last segment we cut was my final one -- we proceeded in order of the script until Tuesday, when we plunged into Nick's in full in order to finish it before he flew out the following morning, and then followed a haphazard order until only my last segment, three pages in the script, were left. Prior to finishing them, I was bouncing off the walls with excitement and feeling a little sad that the whole thing was sort of over once again. When I had finished, if you could call those fits and starts of miscalculated cuts leading up to the fourth take of my last shot finished, I had to force myself to go to bed and not stay up tweaking it until all hours of the night. To assuage myself, I did stay up and wrote about it, about what went wrong and why it happened and how I wasn't necessarily a bad director and how, most likely, it would all be fine in the morning. Which, of course, it was. My semi-conscicous calculations of the cost reshoots were unecessary. We watched the entire movie in one sitting that morning and it was very good, and I think a little bit great here and there too. Everyone feels that their own segment is the worst, which is a good sign, I think, since we all also feel that everyone else's is great. My notebook is full of pages of notes like 'recapture 21:22 A3,' 'longer beat (maybe fade in?) transitioning from R4 to R1 1st time' and 'dropout in "write what you know bullshit."' We discovered that the audio post house had transferred the first DAT tape for Nick's room to some digital format that I couldn't import, so we had to use the terrible camera sound for all the shots of Bill Sebastian (necessitating another note to myself to get it retransferred and resynced this week). I think my editing skills have increased substantially over the past week. I've learned to look at things more closely, more patiently, and to use the software more efficiently. I also now know that cutting other people's films is vastly preferable to cutting my own, because the subjectivity that is inherent when I approach my own work is a major creative block. Much hiliarity was found in the gradual discovery of certain actors' tics or character traits. There are certain parts of the movie where we'll always start laughing and people won't know why. Much awe was also found in the discovery that, as we exepected, our entire cast gave really amazing performances. Yen brought a stack of magazines to read when we weren't editing; old New Yorkers, Interview (which I've since subscribed to), Harpers, etc. There was a great New York Times Magazine article from last month on teen blogging that really summed up the whole online confessional journal phenomenon. He also brough his laptop, so that we could keep our own journal like we did while we were shooting -- but because I knew everyone there would read whatever I might write within close proximity to myself and the time in which I wrote it, I didn't write much in it. Online posting still lets you pretend you're writing these things purely for yourself and that if other people read them they won't know you were the author. He and James also took lots of photos. I'm sure they'll wind up online pretty soon, to the chagrin of everyone who couldn't care less about other people's vacation photos. Listening to Sea Change (particularly track one) as we drove out of the desert and into the mountains for the first time, while the sun set around us, reminded me how great is is (particularly track one). The Magnolia and Requiem For A Dream scores are some of the best film music ever composed and are great to edit to, depending on what mood you want to be in. I wish I could have stayed longer. Everyone else seemed a little anxious to leave the last two days, especially in the morning hours, probably because they were awaking yet again without their significant others under the covers beside them. This is the first film I've made that really feels like a real movie. Which contradicts (thankfully) statements I made up to six months ago. Also, Nick and James and Yen all rule. We're due to begin shooting our next film in three months, we joked to ourselves as we threw ideas around the dinner table last night (James and Yen are excellent cooks, by the way). The ideas centered around sex (I still need to finish rewriting 'Rocketman,' lest I forget). I thought I was through with collaborations, but maybe I'm not after all. Running in the mountains is hard. Finding a herd of deer on your front lawn in the morning is cool. Last night, I had that precipitate, end-of-an-era feeling, just like I did when we pulled out of MPS Studios the last night of production, and I couldn't sleep at all. I stayed up all night reading - the first ten pages of Cold Mountain and the last, with the movie filling in everything in between for now, and a droll, recently discovered piece by Tennessee Williams in Harpers about maturing with success, and a beautiful short story that I don't remember the name of or the author of or even what magazine it was published in (it was close to 5 by then, and we would be leaving shortly, and all those magazines were left behind). Earlier in the evening, I sketched a picture of Nicole Kidman, from a photo in her Interview interview, in which I realized again how much I admired her. She said this:
I could swear I've said the same thing verbatim a million times, or at least thought about it, like I was when I finally fell asleep.
January 30, 2004  Leaving for the one week madcap editing session tomorrow. The agenda is: leave at 8:30am, arrive at our house in the mountains of New Mexico at around 6:00pm, unwind, and then from Sunday through the following Saturday, edit. Nick will fly back to Dallas on Wednesday for work related reasons, and the rest of us will continue editing until we leave on Sunday morning. Which means that for the three or four people who actually read this, there will most likely be no updates until the following Monday. I may establish an internet connection, but I'm going to try not to because then I'll never get any editing done. Potential monkewrenches in our plans: computer malfunction resulting in loss of logged footage (honestly, would you take the original footage?), death by way of skidding off icy mountainous embankments, procrastination due to natural beauty (see photo, or watch Twin Peaks, which the nearby town looks almost exactly the same as), or any combination of the above. I'm going to veto any skiing, due to the inevitable time consumption, but I think sledding has to be permitted. Next time I post here, we should have a whole movie on our hands -- or at least the visual part of it. However, I hope the time between this post and the next goes by very, very slowly.
January 30, 2004 Not sure which presedential candidate is best for you? Try this handy poll. My affinations were exactly as I predicted, placing Kucinich at the top of the list at 73%, with Dean only five percentage points behind. Kucinich, of course, hasn't a chance (he needs some help from the Queer Eye guys), but here's hoping that either Dean gets his momentum back or the 'none of the above' option on the ballots gets approved, because I don't really want to vote for Kerry. Oh, and I'll actually be registered to vote this time.
January 29, 2004 From this page, dated March 13, 2002: I had dinner with James and Yen the other night and we're going to put together a feature that's basically about communicating with the dead. Real emotional stuff, no script or anything, just four short stories that we'll each work out with actors. A relaxing sort of project for us, all coming off of these really techincally challenging projects. We're thinking about who we should bring on as the fourth director...possibly Nick Prendergast...
January 29, 2004 I just picked up the DAT transfers of all the audio this morning and listened to a little bit of the first tape. The dialogue sounds like dialogue and nothing else, which is great, which is why we recorded to DAT in the first place. Why, you ask, why did you record to DAT if you're shooting digitally, which allows you to record synchronized sound and picture to a single medium? If you heard the difference between the on-camera mic sound (which we did record, for reference) and the DAT tapes of the same scene, you'd know the answer and be pretty amazed. Or totally nonchalant, if you don't care about that kind of thing. The first shot in the movie, though, will have XL-1 sound, since Ian, our sound guy, was in LA that very first day when we filmed it and so Curtis Heath stepped in to take up his old hat. Ian, our official, professional sound guy, is as good at audio related issues as he is at making off-color jokes, so I'm pretty sure he'll be able to clean it up and get it to match everything else -- that's one scene we don't want to have to ADR. We did record to a DAT on 'Still,' and the sound on that wasn't too great, but it was partially because of the location and partially because we used a tiny pocket sized DAT recorder that only had RCA and mini-jack outputs, making it tough to hook up our boom mic. No offense to the DAT, of course, since it's legacy includes a large number of local motion pictures from filmmakers like Barak Epstein, Ramzi Abed and Clay Liford, who actually owns it. And that concludes this sound discussion.
January 28, 2004 My initial cut of the trailer is done, and is actually online, but before I reveal the URL to the public, I need to fine tune it, color correct it, review it with my co-directors, re-encode it and re-upload it. It looks great, but since this will be the public's first glimpse at footage from the movie, I think we all agree that it needs to be perfect. For this reason, I may -- or to be more exact, will -- miss my Friday release date. I've got so much to do before we leave on Saturday morning that editing may get sidetracked, and having to render almost the whole thing every time I make a change to one of the twenty some odd layers of video really eats away the hours. So unless you're a member of the cast of crew or feel like hacking into our website, the trailer is still forthcoming. Oh, and the 7000 dollar question from below is semi-answered here. I'm trying to create a preloader for the Deadroom site, but for some reason I'm having immense difficulty getting it to work. I got so tired of working on it this evening that I made a brief foray into the public to join a few of the crew members (Tammy, Yen, Aimee, Kara, Nick, Kalisa and Mark, who served the drinks) at a bar where a band called Van Waylon was playing, their staple being covers of Van Halen and Waylon Jennings. They were too loud to speak over and too terrible to listen to, so the fun of seeing everyone again was short lived. I need to get more exercise, but running with facial hair just seems wrong somehow.
January 26, 2004 I noticed while signing and dating my 1040A tax form this evening that I haven't made the mental switch to 2004. A high concept 16mm Dallas film I'd never heard of called Primer just won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. It's the director's first film, and it supposedly cost him either seven thousand or twenty, depending on what source you read; just judging by the trailer on the website, I'd buy the latter but probably not the former (but I know, I shouldn't judge by the trailer). Considering the twelve or so total hours of footage we shot, I calculate that if we shot 'Deadroom' on super16mm, it would have cost us an extra twenty thousand dollars or so (just for the processing and telecine), give or take a grand, maybe more if we got a really good deal. Anyway, I'm a little jealous, sure. But in a good way. I planned on having a teaser trailer up by today, but I've got a bad case of editor's block. I've been working on it nonstop, yesterday and today, and only just now came up with a concept that I think will work. But even if I get it done tonight, it's going to take a hell of a long time to render. Look for it sometime after tomorrow but before Friday.
January 24, 2003 All the footage has been digitized (and it only took up 200 gigs), and I was up until 6am last night trying out color corrections, testing transitory edits, and cutting together some footage to a choice Mogwai track to serve as a showcase for James and Nick and Yen during our first post-production meeting (best news: we didn't go over budget too badly at all). They were duly impressed. I've been on a movie-watching hiatus for the past two weeks (except for watching 'Dead Alive' one night during production), so now I have to play catch-up. I finally saw 'Monster' this evening, and it was much better than I thought it would be, thanks entirely to Ms. Theron. I really want to see Nick Broomfield's two documentaries on Aileen Wuornos now. However, the use of 'Crimson And Clover' really upset me; I love that song, and had always planned on using that song in a movie, and now it's been stolen from me. I could still use it, but it won't feel as original. Anyway, I' m also finally making some headway in the stack of stuff I have to watch at home, including the second half of the second part of 'Angels In America,' 'Blue Car,' 'The Barbarian Invasions,' 'Mon Oncle' (shout out to Criterion for re-releasing that one) and some Asian films that Yen dubbed for me. Every time I feel like watching a movie at home, though, I inevitably find something else to do. Like writing, editing, or listening to Rufus Wainwright's 'Want One' for the gazillionth time and still loving it; it took me two or three listens to get into it, but now I can't stop. I was constantly humming the first track the entire time we were shooting the movie. I hung out with Matt Zeske(2nd AD) the other night and we talked about how much we missed being on set with the rest of the kickass crew. Mentioning this is merely my segue into this picture of said crew. 
January 22, 2003 I'm about halfway through logging all the footage (which means I'm halfway through Nick's segment, with only James's left). I've never actually logged footage before, but then, I've never had good script logs before to pull timecode from before (in the past, I've simply made good use of the 'Capture Now' button). I initially planned on logging each take separately, but since I was capturing everything anyway, I decided to save time and skimp on organization and just get large chunks of footage, one at a time, and jog through them later. I hope I don't kick myself when we start editing next week. Our goal for getting a nearly final cut done was in April, but in an effort to prevent us from falling into post-principal photography doldrums, Yen decided to feed some fuel to the fire and submitted the movie to CANNES today. They need to have a copy of it by March 20. This is insane -- both the time crunch and the notion that we have a chance of getting into Cannes (which, frankly, we don't, but here's hoping anyway). We've barely even discussed what we're going to do for a score yet. In the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, Fiona Apple says that her new album is going to sound like a mix between Tom Waits and Outkast. I can't wait, although I haven't been able to wait since it was announced that the record was coming out last September, and then February, and now an unspecified date this summer. I also can't wait until I have fans of my own to torture with my perfectionist streak (which I need to work on developing).
January 22, 2003 This is the greatest movie ever made.  I actually haven't seen it, but the poster was hanging by the bathroom doors at the studio, and in passing it so many times, I gradually came to understand the genius that it represented. I don't know about you, but backing down is definitely not my style.
January 21, 2003 As much as it chagrins me, I need to find a job by February 8th. Related to that fact is the late breaking and sobering news story of a young Dallas man who stabbed his wife and son yesterday. Interestingly, until about four or five weeks ago, he was a co-worker of mine. He was fired because he creeped everyone out, including yours truly; I guess those vibes were correct ('Fight Club' was pretty accurate in its implication that the projectionist field attracts odd folks). When I heard the news, I thought of Paul Auster's interview on Fresh Air this morning, where he was talking about his new novel and a sad true story about a crack baby that was found in a bathroom where, he felt, the end of mankind began.
January 21, 2003 Man, this footage looks great. I am on cloud nine for the moment. I've logged one hour so far, or one of the sixteen miniDV tapes we used (less than half of what we bought). I want to try and have an initial teaser trailer cut and online by the end of this coming weekend. By the way, the News section of this site will soon be folded into this page...something that's been inevitable for a long time.
January 20, 2003 I fell into bed last night, right on top of the box containing all the raw footage and DAT tapes. Chris Simpson turned them over to me before we left the set, and I put them in a box and sealed it with an unncessary amount of tape, and now I'm afraid to open it. It's on my floor now, a few feet from me, like the box in 'Barton Fink' or the package in 'Seven' or any other Pandora-esqe encasing in which something both terrible and inevitable is contained. I'm actually just afraid something will happen to the footage, but you know what I mean. I'm going to start logging it to my new hard drive later today. Jim Jarmusch said this somewhere, at some point, and I just read it today:
Musicians have it so easy, they can just pick up a guitar or whatever and create. We filmmakers need so many different things to create. Film doesn't lend itself to spontaneity. It takes years to do what they can do in a heartbeat...but when you think about it nothing can compete with the feeling of telling a story you really care about. That is something a musician can't do. There are a few erroneous points in there (from a musician's point of view) but it's very much the truth too.
January 19, 2003 It's still the 18th as far as I'm concerned, but I'll be crashing soon. I hate the notion of going back to off-set life, but hey. Anyway. Here are some more statistics:
1.Number of hours it took to wrap up all the lights and tear down the set completely: 2
I'll be updating the Deadroom log soon enough (by the end of the week, in other words). I'll also be making another movie soon, because if I don't, I'll die. I'd also like to say thanks to James, Yen, Nick, Jim, Chris, Kara and Aimee, with whom I've been involved with this project from early on and who I am forever indebted to for making me feel like a real person. Likewise, thanks to Kelly and Harry for helping me learn how to direct better. I think I've kinda got the hang of it now. I'm going to fall asleep listening to The Polyphonic Spree, I think. Maybe later I'll explain the off kilter six-degrees style relationship between 'Deadroom' and that band. Althought it's really only two degrees.
January 18, 2003 I'm about to walk out the door for the last day of shooting. We're taking a sledgehammer to the set tonight, and that'll be that.
January 15, 2003 What's better than coming home from a great day on set and finding that your Amazon.com order full of DVDs and a big art book has arrived? I can think of a few things, such as not having to acknowledge that your shooting is halfway over already. At least there's always post production. And then, as Aimee reminded me today, the inevitable post partum depression. I ain't thinking about that now, though. Too much good stuff.
January 13, 2003
January 10, 20023 Fell asleep at one AM. Woke up ready to go an hour later and had to force myself to drift off for a few more hours. The day proceeded to be great and exciting in a very roundabout manner. We accomplished everything we set out to do while dealing with a problem about as bizarre and abstract as a UFO landing on the roof of the studio that prevented us from shooting anything for the first ten hours of the day. When we finally did shoot what we were scheduled to shoot though...well, you'll see it. Man, I love doing this, and I love knowing we have eight more days of it ahead of us. Tomorrow I begin to shoot my segment. Until then, I am officially asleep.
January 10, 2003 Still awake, but only long enough to upload the new production log page on the Deadroom site. In case you're tired of hearing everything from me, go there while we're shooting to get a fresh vantage point.
January 9, 2003 I made a major decision today: I saved a few people's numbers in my cell phone. I've had a phobia of doing that for about a year now, and have found relying on my memory/call list sufficient -- until now, when I've been making and receiving so many calls a day that I can't keep track of which set of digits belongs to whom. So they've been assigned proper names, and this all goes to show how dedicated I am to filmmaking, that I would change something so concrete in my life. So technically, the shoot starts tomorrow morning. We're assembling the set on the soundstage (which will be vastly more difficult than building the sides), while simultaneously shooting two vignettes that will bookend the movie on a separate stage that our gracious hosts have provided us with. It's sort of a litmus test of a shooting day; we'll get an idea of what the rest of the shoot will be like, and how the crew, many of whom we didn't meet in person until the full meeting last night, will function. I've got to force myself to try to get five or so hours of sleep, which means I need to be in bed in an hour. I haven't made it earlier than 4 for most of the week, but there'll be coffee on the set (or at least there better be), and adrenaline will kick in promptly upon waking (based on past experience). So all's good. It's also very cold. Every film I've ever directed has been done in January/February; I couldn't argue if that never changed.
January 7, 2003 Thinking ahead a few weeks (two to be exact) to post production, I purchased an additional 320 gig external hard drive. I also upgraded to OS X Panther. Now I just need to upgrade to FCP v.4 and editing this movie will be just like editing 'Cold Mountain.' I've already started planning how I'll arrange all the footage for optimal accesibility. I can't wait to start on cutting this thing; hopefully, almost certainly, it'll be snowing outside when I do. Jim arrived from LA last night, and today we went to do the camera tests at the studio. For a brief period, we actually decided to shoot using the Mini35 adaptors, and had those gorgeous primes attached to our two XL-1s...but the amount of precision they required was something we don't have time for on this shoot. I guess that's the only thing working against us on this movie...not getting everything done is the only worry I have, and it's not even really that big of a worry. Anyway, we'll be happy with the selection of manual Canon lenses we originally planned on using. Everything will still look great. It also became clear that we needed to extend our set by a few feet...so at 8am tomorrow morning, we're building more sides. I spent a while going over my shots with Jim this evening. I have this notion that I want to break something at the end of my story. I want one of the characters to tear a big diagonal swatch of wallpaper from the stark white wall to reveal some lush color underneath. No practical reason for it -- just one of those things. This has not been rehearsed, and probably will be impossible for Kara to implement into the set by Sunday, but something about it feels like such a good idea. Jim was concerned that there was no motivation, or perhaps even antagonistic motivation, to the symbolism; I'll admit that I have trouble putting my finger on what it means, but it's one of those gut instincts that I think would work. Like the frogs in 'Mangolia,' was how I explained it, although on an obviously smaller scale. Anyway, it's all a moot point because we won't be able to actually do it, but the lighting effects we discussed should work to a similar (if more subtle) effect.
January 6, 2003 Is the other shoe EVER going to drop? I feel like I should be in suspense or something. I saved a lot of money on production insurance yesterday, but who cares about that. What was really exciting was driving to the insurance office; if you're in the mood for some modern art and you live in Dallas, drive down 635 to the Central intersection, where the most insane mixmaster I've ever seen is being constructed. It's worth getting stuck in traffic just to marvel at the Giger-esque engineering behind it all.
January 4, 2003 Words from Zen master Jim McMahon: Everything is always better after the first take of the day.
And Now For A Few Statistics
January 3, 2004 Last year has officially hit the archives. Yesterday, James, Nick, Kara, Yen and that charming gentleman named Curtis Heath and I all joined forces to fabricate the set from the previously cut lumber. None of us being carpenters, we were extremely proud when all sixteen 4x8 flats came together so well. We're all in pain today, though, for some reason -- I guess nine hours of hammering and screwing isn't something our bodies are used to. We're all going to have our names in the credits of this movie entirely too many times, but screw it.
And we don't have to worry about money too much either. The last time I calculated the budget last week, we had a contingency fund of over fifteen percent (that being the standard). Granted, we've already allotted some of that to a handful of things, but the fact that we had a contingency fund at all is completely unprecedented. I had wardrobe fittings this morning with the cast. I can't believe I found costumes that are so perfect. Now I'm Photoshopping the digital stills we took to see what sort of color correction possibilities I might have. I actually should be finishing my storyboards right now, though. Mentioning Curtis Heath a few lines ago reminded me that his band, The Theater Fire (which Nick also is a member of), made the Dallas Observer's top ten albums list. That's got to count for something.
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I'm writing this while one of my color corrected segments (stopped on this particular frame) renders at lightning fast speeds (comparatively) on the desktop behind me, which means one thing -- I've finally upgraded to Final Cut 4! No more switching back to OS 9! No more losing all operative functions while footage is rendering! No more not having real time previews prior to the aforementioned (comparatively) lightning fast rendering speeds! The new bells and whistles on this thing are astounding -- I don't know how much of an improvement it is over v3, since I've jumped up directly from v2, which is almost rudimentary in many aspects in comparison. The new color correcting tools are just so exciting, and I take particular glee in the fact that I get to learn them on my segment, while everyone else had to sit through the old stone age process I was employing until last night.
I finished my segment yesterday, and I feel like a real director. Quitting smoking has helped me exponentially, because if I get frustrated now (which surprisingly I never really did, even though I finished four hours behind schedule amd had to cut a handful of shots), I don't need to have a nicotine fix; I just stay on set and figure things out with everyone else. Also, the rehearsals made this movie. Kelly and Harry nailed each take the first time, for the most part, and their performances were top notch. Furthermore, having a DP I can trust so that I can sit next to the camera right there on the set feels -- at least to me -- like it made a big, positive difference. Also, razor scooters are a good thing to have on a soundstage. Also, this is the most fun I've ever had, ever. I think.
Now we have to rent a truck and take all these flats to the soundstage on Saturday morning, where they will be assembled into the 16x16 room. And then I start shooting the next day -- I'm going first, which means everyone will learn from my mistakes. I'm not really worried about it at all, though -- I have some concern over whether I'll have to start rushing to get done in time, since our schedule is so tight (more on that later), but I'm mainly just really looking forward to it. I'll be back in my element, finally. There's no reason to stress about that.