"If they knew what they liked, they wouldn't live in Pittsburgh!"

I've been thinking lately of Preston Sturges' 1941 comedy, Sullivan's Travels, even though I haven't seen it since I was in college five or six years ago (holy shit, really?). The "message" of the film has remained with me, and as I'm currently in a somewhat fallow period inspirationally speaking (someone give me an assignment fer Christ's sake!), it's cropped up in my mind as a creative beacon.

For those of you who haven't seen it - and though I'm kind of giving away the ending, I'm not really spoiling it for you, and it's not like you were going to watch it anyway - Sullivan's Travels follows a young hotshot film director who wants to make an extremely serious film about the plight of the poor working classes, one with a title you may recognize: O Brother, Where Art Thou? The studios just want him to make more silly comedies, but he says "Fuck that noise" and travels the United States disguised as a homeless wanderer to gain insight for his masterpiece. Zany misadventures involving Veronica Lake ensue. At the end of the film, the director is on a chain gang and living a miserable life. When the prisoners are given a brief respite to watch a Disney cartoon and laugh their asses off, he realizes that silly comedies, by giving the working classes a chance to let loose and be happy, do more good for them than pretentious dramas.

Frankly, I prefer The Lady Eve. Barbara Stanwyck was the shit.

It reminds me of what my college professors told me about Sergei Eisenstein and the invention of montage. He wanted to wield it like a plow, furrowing the brains of viewers so that the seeds of Soviet Communism could take bloom and lead to the true worker's paradise. As it turned out, regular ol' Ivan Ivanov hated that shit, and preferred to be propagandized by Hollywood pastiches. Maybe that's why I Am Cuba never took off as it was supposed to (it is a brilliant fucking movie, by the way).

How does this relate to me? Ideally, I would have oodles of money to make movies about any subject I damn well like - the demolition of the Edwardian Era by World War I, for example, or the colonization of an alien world by rapacious humans (wait...cross that one off). But I don't have oodles of money, so when I write something I want to film, I have to keep in mind what resources I do have - namely, whatever people, props, and locations are available in everyday life, and that's if I'm lucky. And so that leads to ideas of what might be called, for want of a better term, social realism, which have an unfortunate tendency to be not so entertaining.

While I don't agree with Sullivan that all downtrodden people want or need to see are mindless comedies, I do think that if you're going to create a work of art for the general public, it better not bore the fuck out of them. While we cinephiles may be able to endlessly debate and analyze every "Chaos reigns" moment a provocateur throws our way, most folks just want to have a good time. And I want to give them a good time while also telling stories that interest and captivate me, and that hold a certain degree of truth about human life. It's not the type of thing I think about before embarking on a project - "Hold on, what does this torture porn say about our daily existence?" - but if you're being honest with your characters and your story, it will emerge naturally. Star Trek may be sci-fi, but people recognize that all Kirk really wants to do is get his fuck on.

The best compliment I can receive is not an award (sorry, Project Twenty1), but a person coming up to me or a collaborator and saying "I went through something just like that." We get it a lot with Duly Noted - it seems as if everyone has had a roommate who leaves dumb, anal sticky notes as reminders or warnings - and that is probably why it's the film we get complimented on the most. But I've heard stories of former emergency personnel identifying with The Tin God, and a woman once told us that she had dated a guy just like Spencer in TUMBLER: the boom, God help her.

Maybe that's the highest goal of art: letting people know that they're not alone, and that we're all in this together, whatever it is.

After writing all that, I'm no closer to hitting upon a solid story idea than I was at the beginning. This is stuff I think about, but when it comes to brainstorming, I have to put it behind me and search elsewhere. Starting from the point of "I want to write a script that addresses the following modern issues" will result in didacticism. You just have to open your mind and your gut and hope something wanders in. And when it does, you know it instantly. Like the pearl growing in a clam, it starts off as a small grain of sand you latch onto, slowly building it up with additional nuggets and goodies until it's a beautiful curio to place on the shelf.

See what I mean? I wasn't feeling that simile, but I wrote it anyway. And now look at the fine mess we're in.

"I've never been in this position before."

Those were the first words that popped into my mind when I stood before an audience of peers to accept an award, and so I said them. People seemed to laugh in a good way. I rattled off words of thanks to the cast of TUMBLER: the boom, Tony and Shirley Griffin (my most patient, honest, and incisive critics and fans), everyone in the room, and my parents. It wasn't until I was sitting down that I realized I had completely forgotten to thank my co-director and closest collaborator on the project, Chris Kapcia.

Hey, it was my first time.

Chris outside the P21 venue lookin' like a rock star. Sorry, Chris!

That's right, folks, we have returned from Philadelphia, where I finally received some form of validation as a screenwriter, because our film won the Best Writing award at Project Twenty1. Technically speaking, it was a tie between us and Keystone Jackal, but a win is a win, and I'll tout it regardless. Of course, it wasn't all me; if we hadn't received great feedback from our cast and friends, and if they hadn't improvised so well to fill in the bits between the voiceover and the written lines, the film would not be as good as it is. The award is truly a recognition of their talent as well.

Our sister film, TUMBLER: the echo, won for Best Music, which means that the competition's organizers will be shopping our creations to other festivals together, hopefully leading to further attention and accolades.

The remains of a cheesesteak dinner at Abner's.

Duly Noted also scored a win at Shorts and Shots, the Saturday night event held at the Marathon Grill. It was an informal event where filmmakers brought short films to screen while everyone drank and mingled, with the best film decided by audience applause. Chris and I received the honor, thanks in no small part to Tony's boisterous yelling and entreaties to the crowd.

We spent all weekend in Philadelphia and had a great time watching movies, hanging out, and meeting our colleagues. The theme music for Project Twenty1 is still firmly embedded in my mind, and I don't expect to shake it anytime soon. We're sorry to see it end, but we don't intend to rest on our laurels. Bring on the next challenge!

A brief time for reflection.

"Can we talk about something other than Hollywood for a change?"

We've gone and done it again.

Back in March, Chris Kapcia and I created the short film Duly Noted. You may have seen it. If you have not, here it is:




I am proud to announce that our follow up is on its way to your computer screen. It's called The Last Time We Met, and to answer your first question, no, I do not appear nude. I don't do those kinds of scenes to my knowledge. But it is a bleak drama stuffed into a three minute package featuring a great performance by Chris. Fun!

It came about because a local bar in our neighborhood, The Sparrow, is hosting an inaugural film competition it hopes to turn into a regular event. Despite our complete lack of a camera, I went and registered us for it. The rules are simple: each team contributes a film title written on a slip of paper. There's a blind drawing, and whichever title you end up with serves as the one for your film. You then have three weeks to create a three minute masterpiece.

Simple as pie, I thought. I've twice participated in another three week competition, Project Twenty1, except for all of those shooting/acting/editing parts of filmmaking. A three minute film shouldn't pose too much of a problem. And frankly, it didn't (in comparison to, I don't know, Apocalypse Now). The hardest part turned out to be getting our hands on an actual camera.

Other complications occurred later

Once we had the title, we spent a couple of days mulling it over, pitching ideas back and forth. We didn't want to go with our first instincts, so we let it digest for a bit until we hit on something we liked. The script came quickly, and was designed to be shot quickly with an economy of characters and locations - two guys, one apartment. Of course, that was the same economy we shot Duly Noted with, so we wanted a different apartment and at least one different guy to take my place in front of the camera.

We eventually got our hands on a camera owned by an actor friend of Chris', one who we wanted to act in the film as well. Unfortunately, our schedules never intertwined, and we had to get the damn thing shot - deadlines are a great motivation - which resulted in, once again, the Kapcia-Muschong dynamic contained within the same standard issue Outer Borough-class apartment. We apologize for the repetition, but we did try to switch things up visually, so hopefully you won't notice.

Last weekend, at about 1:30 Saturday morning, we started shooting. Our complete lack of technical prowess gives us the ability to shoot fast. We know fuck-all about lighting and sound, so we don't worry about it too much. If it looks nice enough in the camera, it's good to go. We make up for this with the thing that more filmmakers should prize much more highly than fancy equipment and CGI: story and character.

At least, we hope we do.

We got what we needed done that night within a couple of hours, and the next afternoon we went shopping for props, returned to the apartment, cleaned the living hell out of it, and shot the rest. While Chris, who's the one who actually knows how to use editing software, uploaded the footage to his computer, I spent a Lost Weekend wandering around Studio 54 and buying drinks for Reggie Jackson and Sophia Loren. When I returned, I forced Chris off the computer and clubbed him to sleep so that we could look upon our work with fresh eyes for the next day's editing.

Cutting together Duly Noted only took us a few hours because it had been so simply shot, and there was no sound to worry about (the music, on the other hand, took a while, and I am happy to say that I did nothing to contribute to it). The Last Time We Met was similar, so we assumed the visuals would take us a couple hours to snip together. So of course it took us around ten hours. Two of those were spent trying to figure out how to move all of our footage to the beginning of the editing software's timeline to replace what we had cut, and then another forty-five minutes were spent accepting our failure, and putting back in what we had previously taken out.

The next night: sound! This went a bit faster, and after a few hours of work, we were able to make a .WMV file and share it with the venerable AEG for his feedback. He gave it a good response, and had some suggestions, then later suggested not implementing his suggestions, so...we don't know. We're happy with it as it is, but we may end up tinkering with it a little tomorrow night. Either way, if this is the version we submit, we won't worry about it any.

This is me worrying

The official version, however, will have credits. We asked the competition's organizer about those while we were editing - would the three minute run time include credits, or could an exception be made to give a shout out to everyone involved? - and we were first told that a twenty-second surplus past three minutes would be acceptable, but the next day we got a new message explaining that after conferring with the panel, it was decided that any credits had to fit into the three minutes.

I assume we're going to be seeing a lot of creditless films.

For our part, we had enough space (approximately one and a half seconds) to throw in the title and a Hard Boiled Productions copyright. We'll extend them for our final final cut.

The submission deadline is Sunday, so we'll probably drop our DVD copy off on Saturday, depending on any last minute adjustments. All the films will be going online here on Monday, May 18th, so keep your eyes open. Prize and award winners will be announced on May 28th.

We shall see...