Project Updates

Three Women and a Possible Fire Next Door - Short Film - Festival Run

Is it news that you didn’t get into a festival (or festivals)? Definitely don’t mean this spitefully by any means. Getting rejection notices is a right of passage and part of the process obviously. In any case, I have received several very kind rejection notices recently, which- while not ideal- is still very nice!

A-Frame - Short Film - Preproduction

More less-than-ideal news: We decided to pull the plug on this project when it started to look like financing wasn’t going to come through for us. I’m bummed, obviously, but I think we made the right call. Maybe someday everyone can enjoy the glory of the time I shit my pants at bible camp, but unfortunately, that day is not today.

Untitled Coffee Shop Film- Feature - Writing

I’ve never really written or talked about my writing process end-to-end before, so it’s weirdly exciting to include this here.

I’m at the earliest of the earliest of stages with this one. I’ve started organizing the little notes and emails and scraps of ideas I’ve been mulling over the past few months into a semi-coherent “Freewriting document”. It doesn’t quite look like the scrawling of a mad man, but it’s not that long of a walk. In recent years, as I’m developing my (loose) outline, I tend to keep an outline page and a freewriting page in separate Google docs. I keep them both open when I’m outlining as it helps give me the separation needed to put together a semi-functional outline alongside ideas of all makes and values.

My first drafts tend to be short- more like scriptments than actual scripts. Usually 30-40ish pages. I used to be far more involved with my outlining, but now I just try to write story/characters I find interesting and do everything in my power to shut out the voice in my head telling me that it’s bad (all first drafts are) and I should quit. I also used to shame myself for my first drafts being so short because I thought I had to write 150+ page first drafts until I realized that’s really not how I like to work at all. I like to write a thing, see how it feels, see what it needs, then add on to it and adjust it and shape it as needed.

My standard practice has become to write the first two drafts of a project back to back before sending it out for notes and setting it aside for a while. That way I get the vomit draft out and I have at least one draft where I feel like I’ve had a chance to shape it a bit. Usually by the end of the second draft (about 3-4 months of dedicated work in total) I hate the thing so goddamn much that I would kill to work on literally anything else and need to set it aside for a bit. Which sounds harsh! But it’s the process that works for me. My barometer for any project in any phase (outside of one on a deadline) is when I feel like I’ve exhausted every possible avenue to make the project the way I want. That’s when I start reaching out to get feedback.

Anyways, I’m starting to write this project and I’m very excited about it! Talk to me about it in September when I wanna throw my laptop into the ocean.

Watching/Reading/Listening

Watching

Bamboozled (2000) - Feature - Dir. Spike Lee

Few filmmakers are as willing to engage with thorny questions that lack clear answers as Spike Lee. Bamboozled is his Network, and like every Spike joint, it’s the craziest mashup of ideas, tones, and performances ever to bludgeon a screen. Vicious, contemptuous, and bitingly hilarious, the film uses the premise of a flailing TV writer pitching a 21st-century minstrel show as a vessel for exploring what it means to be a black person in an industry that has shown you nothing but contempt for most of its existence. It’s an incredible, singular work, and has maybe the single best use case for the early-digital look.

Bamboozled is available through The Criterion Collection.

Reading

“The Coogler Deal, Lost Libraries, and Studio Economics 101” - Article - Film Crit Hulk

Ryan Coogler’s deal to get the rights back for Sinners in 25 years made headlines when the film came out last month. There’s been no shortage of handwringing about ~what it all means for the industry~ in the interim, certainly from studio mouth pieces like Variety and Deadline. But what that yellow journalism fails to acknowledge is that not only is there significant precedent for such a caveat (hello, Steven Spielberg’s entire career), but that the only reason it’s getting so much attention is because the studio and streaming models are fundamental broken.

I’ve been a fan of Film Crit Hulk’s work for well over a decade now, so I may be a bit biased when I say that his take on the issue is one I’m inclined to agree with. Not only does his piece explore the ways in which the models are broken, it also digs into some of the fun nuts-and-bolts of dealmaking in film.

The whole piece dives head-first into the nexus point of economics, library ownership, and the way both elements play off race and class divides. It also fits neatly into a micro-trend I’ve been seeing lately of people re-considering previous financing and production models for film and television amid the continued collapse of streaming (see also: the discourse around The Pitt.)

The full piece can be read here.

Listening

The Stranger - Album - Billy Joel

I’ve been archiving a trove of old family slides and photos over the past few months. My grandfather, who died before I was born, was a prolific photographer who must have carried his camera with him everywhere. It’s taken me nearly a year to get through the 6 or 7 boxes my partner and I pulled out of my dad’s storage unit. It’s a time consuming process, but also one I’ve really enjoyed. I queue up an artist’s entire discography and set about the meticulous process of pulling, sorting, and scanning each box of slides. I like to take a full day doing it when I can.

My most recent archiving session, I went through all but one of Billy Joel’s albums and I have to say- it’s no surprise The Stranger is the one we all remember. Joel’s work almost exclusively traffics in empty boomer nostalgia. There are multiple songs about how good it is to go to an Italian restaurant, preferably with a woman on your arm. What sets The Stranger apart is that it’s the only Joel record that’s really about something. Not only is Joel’s gift for writing a great hook at it’s peak, it at least makes an attempt to interrogate Joel’s own duality.

I had a lot of fun on my recent relisten thinking not just about Joel, but about what he must’ve been like in his hay day and who would be a good comp for him now. I’m not plugged into music enough to know, really. But it is interesting to me that Joel built an entire career essentially on nostalgia. His tunes are fundamentally airbrushed memories, which feels sadly perfect for a generation that basically fucked everything chasing their own airbrushed memories. It also brings the calamity of “We Didn’t Start the Fire” into sharp relief as that song literally becomes a recitation of boomer-adjacent figures and events (to say nothing of the galling level of dissonance between Turnstiles “Angry Young Man” and The Nylon Curtain’s “Allentown”).

But The Stranger? The Stranger is timeless, good, and worthwhile. It takes the best of Billy and briefly accesses an extra dimension that few musicians are ever able to access. And in the event that it suddenly becomes inaccessible, we’ll always have “New York State of Mind”.

Got a question or comment? Shoot me an email at [email protected].