August 23, 2004
Also just out is the very elegant trailer for Jonathan Glazer's Birth, the one I saw a year ago. Rumors of post-production difficulty and swirling controversies haven't deterred my anticipation; it's such a wonderfully odd premise for a film, and the trailer gives me the impression that Glazer made quite a few great choices in his execution of it (not the least of which is the casting of Danny Huston). I predict that if it has any faults, they'll be in the third act, which is where good films with odd premises always seem to falter.
I went to the grand opening of Spiral Diner (congratulations again, you guys) on Saturday and ended up staying out until late Sunday night, running through my orbit of close friends and creative collaborators who I'd forgotten I hadn't seen in months (or at least since I shot that video). Well, not forgotten really -- I just get set in my solitary ways, and am generally happy with that, but it's always wonderful to spend time with everyone again and talk about things. I almost never miss people until I'm actually around them and realize that it'll probably be another few months until I see them again. Which is kind of silly, since we only live thirty minutes away from each other, and I imagine these are people I will know for most of the rest of my life, more or less (getting a sense of that foresight is an odd but somewhat comforting thing).
The longest I've ever maintained a friendship is eight years (as of this week).
I received some feedback from two close confidantes on Henry Lee; one very positive endorsement, and another that was more...unsure, I guess, although I think it was a mostly good kind of unsure. The script relies now and then on the intuition of the reader, just like the eventual movie will require that of the audience, but I might have made some things a little too vague. I read through it again myself, though, and I'm very happy with it; the last act goes by far too quickly and there are lines here and there that could be cut, and I'm not sure which of the two epilogues I've written will end up being used (probably a combination of both of them), but overall I have a good feeling about it.
I talked to Jim quite a bit this weekend about future projects; he told me about his and asked to read mine, and I started making plans and hatching ideas about how to bring things to fruition. Little things that won't work, most likely, because they all involve making phone calls. For now I'll just finish up Rocketman. The thing that was troubling me, I realized, was not the ending but the beginning. I've unstopped that dam, and it all seems to be working now, narratively speaking, although I'm still retyping the whole thing from page one. I watched Garden State again over the weekend, and wondered if anyone would ever call me out on the few minor similarities between that film and Rocketman. I hope they do, actually, because that'll at least mean the movie got made.
I've been watching on average two movies a day for the past three weeks, one in theaters and one on DVD. It was great at first, but now it's starting to feel like an excuse to get out of something.
Posted by David Lowery at August 23, 2004 1:16 PM