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February 5, 2010
A Decade Old Lullaby
Ten years ago today I began to shoot Lullaby, my first attempt at feature filmmaking. I was recently nineteen and had hair reaching far past my shoulders.
I'd spun in my head a dozen more Proustian onsets to this entry, but then thought better of sentimentalizing something I've long since retired. One critic, noting last year that St. Nick was being billed as my first feature film, surmised that I'd apparently distanced myself from it. This is true, in a sense; in private, I'm very proud of it, but there's no need for it to exist in the public eye. I've got other work that I'm happy to be represented by; this one can fade away. The same can be said for much of my output between then and now, which I've pared down to the one or two offerings I feel actively contribute to my body of work, excising the many whose value was in teaching me what not to do.
I do my best to regret nothing in life, but were I to allow myself some celebratory leeway in this regard, I'd wish that version of me who was nervously directing coverage in a kitchen for the very first time ten years ago this morning had learned a little more quickly how to throw that coverage away and get to the heart of the matter. With any luck, he'd outpace this current, clean-palated me, who often - but not tonight! - thinks that that he has indeed learned just that.
I came out of that film with a many memories, mostly faded, and a few dear friends with whom I'm still making movies. Yesterday, I met up with James M. Johnston to sign off the last few contracts for St. Nick's distribution. You can find him in the picture below, taken on the last day of our first collaboration. Also in there is Adam Donaghey, who has three new films he produced playing at SXSW this year. I look forward to making many more films with them both.
Everyone else in the photo has more or less vanished.
Posted by David Lowery at February 5, 2010 1:46 AM