A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens–second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives, from the small accounts of our day’s events to the vast incommunicable constructs of psychopaths.
Reynolds Price

I began my day today with a blank sheet of paper. Having recently been inspired by the incredibly creative book What It Is by Lynda Barry, I wanted to try and explore my ideas of story using words and images. I knew it wouldn’t be elevated to the level of Art that Barry reaches, but it was my inspiration for the exercise. I worked hard to keep from thinking too much about any one thing,  I wanted this to be more of a stream of consciousness exercise, just letting words, phrases and images come without digging into the detail.

I stared at the page for a moment, then wrote, “What is ‘story’?” Since I had been thinking about “story” for a few days, there were already a few ideas of what it was floating around in my head; however, I wanted something fresh and more instinctive to come out on the page. To do this, I ignored my initial responses and traveled back in my mind to the youngest version of myself that I have access to– nine year old Paul. Nine year old Paul loved Star Wars, Micronauts, Legos and Speed Racer; he also loved to climb trees and to lay in the grass and watch the clouds float by  as they morphed constantly into fish, pirate ships and funny faces. If I was to ask nine year old Paul the same question about story that I ask myself today, his answer would be different… was different.

The younger version of myself responded to story in a much less technical way. He related to story by thinking about how he had experienced stories in his life. I wrote down the the first ideas that came to mind: a children’s book, a tall tale and an ancient adventure. When I paused for a moment to think about children’s books, I found that I didn’t imagine a specific book, I thought about the image of a parent sitting beside a child’s bed reading a book. I tried to remember my parents reading books as a child, It may have happened, but I had no memory of it. The image that I had , was a manufactured one, based on some ideal. So, I poked around in the dusty attic of my memory, trying to remember bedtime stories. An image of my dad at my bedside appeared, then suddenly, I remembered.

There was a little cat stuck in the gutter and it was scared and meowing… actually, its meows were words… “help me, help me,” it cried in a little cat voice. I know for a fact that the cat had a name, I don’t remember what it was, perhaps it changed over the years. Really, I don’t remember much about what happened in the story. I am pretty sure the story involved a young boy rescuing the cat, having to over come some obstacles, and I’m pretty sure that young boy had the same name as me. This is the first story I remember being told as a kid. Sure, I may have heard some Bible stories about Jesus, Moses or David and Goliath, but this is the first story I actually remember feeling something about. There was a little cat stuck in the gutter, there was a rain storm, the cat feared for its life and so did I.

What is 'story'?

My little exercise triggered a lot of thoughts and a bunch of memories. I followed along as they popped into my mind, recording those thoughts on the paper. Sometimes, it resulted in a little sketch, mostly as words, phases and questions. I remembered how some stories played a significant role in my life and others were just emotional memories, mostly feelings with a handful of details attached. Things came slowly at first, but soon the trickle became a steady stream. I raced to record them before they flowed away.

As my thoughts moved and I followed those distant memories, they progressed through the years following narratives that opened doors in my life, inspired me or ignited my imagination. One of the most curious discoveries of this exercise was that every thought and memory I have of ‘story’ is a positive one. Not that all the stories I’ve encountered in my life have been positive, but all the memories I have are tagged with positive labels. I don’t know what that means, but I think the contents of this legal pad are going to reveal something more significant as I explore this further.

I am aware of my deep personal need for stories. Perhaps they are tools I use to see something within myself that isn’t readily apparent, or maybe they help me process a complicated world in a way that I can relate to. I know that it is complicated, but it is something I have craved since my earliest memories as a child. What is it about about the little cat in the gutter that still resonates with me to this day? So many questions to ask– I look forward to discovering some answers.

So, what is the earliest story that you remember? What do you remember about it? And even more interestingly, why do you remember it?

The Storyteller

I have been a storyteller my whole life. I may not have been a good one, but I have always love to tell a story. Problem is, my stories tend to be heavy on details and longer than the average attention span. I think that is because I see things with rich detail and when I talk about something, I like to include the detail. My dad had the same problem. Once, I heard it said of my father, that if someone asked him the time of day, he would tell them how to build a watch.

I have started this post three time and abandoned it twice because I started drifting off in some direction that I keep feeling needs more and more explanation. I hoping that the third time is the charm. I began this 30 day “story” challenge because I started peeling back the layers of my highly chaotic life and I started asking myself that one basic question, “what do I want to do for a living?” I have given myself permission to ask that question. I think I have plenty of skills and experience to maintain a profitable career in software development, but I left that five years ago because it was killing me.

When I worked as a programmer, I knew in my heart of hearts that what I was doing with my life was absolutely the wrong thing. I was certain the God had created me to do something specific and sitting in a cubical cranking out lines of C Sharp code wasn’t it… and it wasn’t even remotely close. However, when I quit my amazing job, that paid me way too much money, I wanted to do something that made me come alive– something creative. For some reason the thing that was screaming the loudest within me was filmmaking. I didn’t know much about filmmaking, I mean, I knew a lot about filmmaking; I had read a bunch of books, watched a lot of movies, even watched many of them a second time with the director’s commentary. I had learned a lot about filmmaking, but I didn’t know squat.

I know that sounds contradictory, but that is the best way I can describe it. For the last three years, I have loosely chased a dream of being a filmmaker only to reach a point where I wonder if I should continue. I know I need to be doing something creative with my life. I was born with many creative abilities, but I am really unsatisfied with my direction in life. For some reason, I have reached a place where I don’t really have a clear vision of where I want to go.

A few months ago, I started  looking deep within myself and asking some crucial questions. I really want to know what is written in my DNA, what it is that am I uniquely created for. Having turned 40 in May, I thought it was a good a time as any to figure out what I want to do with my life. I didn’t feel as though my current direction was drawing enough on my creativity and I needed more answers. When I began to examine my life, when I ran back the years and looked at a younger version of myself, I started asking what was the common theme in my life that seemed to play out in my memories. What were those things that I remembered, what made me feel alive.

I wandered around for a while until I started seeing something play out repeatedly in my memory, something that come back to me time and time again. Having a vivid imagination and a keen sense of observation, I began early in life to be a storyteller. As it turns out, stories have been a central theme in my life. I have come back to it over and over again the past few months, but I constantly hear the same answer when I ask myself what I want to do for the rest of my life… not doubt about it, I want to tell stories.

The problem is, I have no idea what that means. So, I am starting a 30 day journey to look at “story”, what it is, and how it plays a role in my life. I know I want to be a story teller, but I don’t know if that will be as a filmmaker, a writer, a painter, a lawyer or a professional liar. I have absolutely no idea. I do know that stories flow out of me and they energize me. So, here I go. I’ve got 29 more days to go and I hope I discover something interesting along the way.

What is "story"?

A frequent theme on this blog is how long it has been since I have written anything. It seems that I can go a year without writing anything then I’ll post something about intending to do better, followed by the creation of five or ten different unfinished blogs– then I just lose interest. So, to spice things up a bit, I have done what oh, so many other bloggers have done– created a 30 day writing challenge.

I have chosen to take a different path here, mostly since I am writing to for the enjoyment of a non-audience. I am not fooling myself, no one is sitting around waiting to hear what I have to say. Ultimately, the next 30 days is about me. Lately, I have been stuck in a bit of a miry place and I am in great need of stoking some internal fires in hopes of getting a handle on what direction my life should be taking.

I have quieted my mind and sought deeply for what it is that makes, me, uniquely me. I needed to find out what it is, that is deep within me, which I can burn for soul-fuel, something that is naturally produced inside me. When I reached the deepest part of myself and could see no further, I spoke to the darkness.  Straining to hear something, I heard the fainest echo– like the gentle rustling of a brittle leaf as it falls from its home among the branches to find its final resting place upon the ground. A little crackle that spoke a single word– “story”.

So, 30 days this September will be dedicated to “story”. What that means, I have absolutely no idea– I guess I am about to find out.

I have many, many unfinished posts that I’ve started writing and never finished. I am going to go through many of them and just flush them out into the wild. I have tried to do this before, on several occasions, but started reading a post and began feeling like it really needed to be finished before publishing it. Well, it was deja vous all over again. I started writing again on the posts and failed to finish it– again, keeping it stranded. Many of these posts have some good stuff in them even though they are not finished.

This post was to be about “crooked paths” and how it seems that God often leads people down paths that don’t seem straight. This is often contrary to our religious concept of a “straight and narrow” path that we expect to be the correct one. I wanted to look at that religious concept and compare it to many of the paths that God’s has lead his people down throughout the Bible and see if our concept matches those examples. Well, I only got to the introduction of that concept (after much rambling about my life) and never had time to do all of the verse research for my examples. Maybe one day I will get back to this, but until then, consider this my first “flush” — an unfinished post that I am publishing anyway.

Originally written February, 24 2009:

I haven’t written anything in a long time. For the past several months something deep inside me has wanted to explode out in words, but something has been repressing it. Every time I have sat down to write, something has distracted me. It’s not because I have nothing to write about, so much has been happening in my life since my last post– I just seem stuck.

Recently, I have been turning over and over in my head my direction in life. Over two years ago, I left a great paying software development job to pursue an interest in filmmaking. While I can’t consider my pursuit a failure, it has not taken the direction I expected. I had hoped to be writing and making films that spoke from the eternity in my heart, but that is not what has happened. For many different reasons, I have found myself looking to others for inspiration and motivation– something that I have not found, at least not in the way that I wanted.

Despite the last two years having taken I path that I did not expect, I do not feel that it was the wrong path for me to take. I have met many wonderful people and forged several great friendships, something, that I feel, is always worth the cost. But somehow I have a deep sense that I am off target and steering in a direction without purpose or vision. Every time I try to circle the wagons and regroup, I end up heading off again with no resolution or sense of direction.

Is filmmaking something that I need to be pursuing? The downturn in the economy makes me want to run back to the more profitable world of software, something more stable and significantly more lucrative. But each time I begin to look at software development jobs, I get a sick feeling in my stomach and a deep foreboding begins to creep into my psyche. I don’t understand that reaction, I am looking at jobs that pay 70-90k per year, how could something like that create this dark of a reaction?

I think that the answer is hidden somewhere along my current path. I have a concern about my current direction, but I have no real desire to return to path the was easy and comfortable for me. Why? I think it all has to do with the reason I took a different path in the first place. Creativity. I fear going back to a place where there is no need for that part of me that makes me feel alive. I imagined that filmmaking would put me on a path that would help me tap the deep rivers of life that run within me, helping me to plumb the depths of creativity that God placed in me, one of those important things that make me uniquely– me.

The real problem is that despite working around the industry that I had felt drawn toward, I have yet to parlet that into a deliberate exercise in creativity. For the last two years I have worked on projects that didn’t require much from me creatively. Deep down, I still want to create, I want to make art, but something more sinister is at work preventing me from doing that very thing. I don’t know if it is just pure laziness or if it is some covert fear of failure that is bridling me and holding me back from doing those things that I need to be doing.

For many years I was afraid, because I was under a dogmatic assumption that God doesn’t want his children working in the film industry– something that I later came to believe was simply imagined and not actually based in who God is and what He does in and with his people. Not something I simply conjured to make me okay with something, but based on prayer and the doors that seemed to open at just the right time, when I simply rested in God’s sovereignty and stopped living a life driven by a misguided religious fear.

I don’t say this to suggest that there are jobs that are “okayed” by God and others that aren’t– I don’t believe that God operates that way. Sometimes, based on my life experience, God will allow you to take a certain path, only to lead you to another one. There have been a number of times in my life that I have taken paths that I couldn’t have imagined that God would be okay with, but discovered that something wonderful in my life would not have been possible without it.

I don’t understand the ways of God. In the book of Isaiah there is a verse that becomes more and more true the older I get:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

—Isaiah 55:8-9

I know more now than at any other time in my life, that God doesn’t do things the way that I expect Him to. Almost all of my religious fears are based on assumptions and conclusions that I have made about God, but the more I become acquainted with the people that God used in the Bible, the more I realize that God almost always does what is unexpected and uses that people who are often the wrong type of person or someone who is on what seems to be the wrong path.

While I worry about not being creative and not living up to what God has created me for, God is simply taking me down a road that exposes my fears and doubts and constantly compels me to put off my anxieties and simply rest in Him. The more I rest in what God has already done for me, the less I worry about what I am doing wrong and simply look for the doors that are opening to me and taking that paths that appear before me. The more I trust in Him, the more I cant’ help but realize that exact path is not issue, it is the walk that matters.

There are many verses in the Bible about “paths.” Those who want condemn a certain path will pull out Matthew 7:13+14 which declares that “wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction” with the compelling that one should only take the “narrow road that leads to life.” The problem with such a misplaced criticism is that it is usually imposed on by someone who has the “narrow road” pre-defined without any understanding or experience of being “led to life”… or even more importantly, the experience of having God actually lead them down a crooked road.

Would God lead someone down a crooked road? I think that the answer is best know through experience, but certainly if He would, then there should be evidence in the Bible. I think that the first solid example of such a path would be Abraham…

Sorry that I never got around to finishing this one, certainly such a study would be one worth doing. How about digging into this and posing some of our own insights and experiences?

It’s been more than six months since I’ve posted anything online. It is difficult to believe that, in the swirling changes happening over the last few months, I haven’t found at least a few moments to do a brain dump. I think I began a few blogs, but they were mostly based in some deep, theological wrestling and tended to be something that I couldn’t just bang out in 20 minutes.

At the moment, I am sitting in a room at the end of a long hallway of a large Hotel, keeping an eye on the cast of this next season of Nashville Star. They are all asleep, and I am killing time listening to a preview copy of my brother’s new record, Swallow the Sea, and feeling a need to create something. Over the last few years, my creative energy seems to direct out of writing, and what easier way to write than to dump something into the blogosphere.

The last six months have seen many changes in my life… like my attempt at a serious relationship, running out of money, learning to trust in God for my living, working in television production, making new friends, becoming an uncle again, witnessing suffering, attempting to experience and build community with my neighbors, watching God work in other’s lives around me, abandoning old personal issues and concepts… did I already mention learning to trust God, yeah, that has been a big one.

For someone who wants to know the details, learning to live life one day at a time has been a real challenge. But luckily, I haven’t had to do it on my own. Having my girlfriend, Kim, in my life has helped me take a new perspective on many things that I thought had been set in stone. In a way, she has helped me tap into the Paul of my youth, the one with dreams and a spirit of adventure… the one that loved laughing and found energy by being with other people. Helping me also to rediscover a God who is living and operative… who loves me and desires good things for me– a concept that experientially died in me long ago, when I chose to embrace theology and doctrine over a life of faith in love.

Right now, I am sitting in a chair, staring down a long hallway, waiting for signs of life. A housekeeper is making her rounds, and the cast is beginning to stir. I don’t know what the day holds for me, perhaps some adventure, perhaps just some rest. I need to return to my job, so I’ll close my brain dump for now. Hopefully, I have arced the last six months and future bloggings will come with more regularity.

Here’s to hoping

Well, today is the day… it’s been one year. I can’t believe that I left the life of a well-paid software developer to step out and chase a dream. A year ago, I had the plan to take a three month hiatus from work, write some screenplays and make my first short film. Over those months I had many false starts and complete failures which helped teach me what it really takes to make films professionally and it has been one heck of a journey… lasting nine months longer than planned.

I still haven’t made my first film and have have a trail of unfinished scripts and undeveloped stories that litter the path I have traveled over the last year, but I am so much closer to my dream than I have ever been at any time in my life. “Hurry up and wait,” is what that they said in the Army– a motto frequently relived on nearly every set I’ve been on over the last year. If you want to pursue a life in visual storytelling, it is something you have to be in for the long-haul, something I am having to consider as I recognize the first anniversary of my “creative hiatus,” and look forward at the future.

I have been living mostly on savings I set aside for my hiatus, but that money is now on it’s last leg and soon I will join the ranks of starving artist… now I am forced to ask myself if I am in it for the long haul. I can go back to software development and get paid lots of money for something that sucks the life and joy out of me, or I can take a risk and chase my dream into the dark places. At the moment, my mind is not made up, and the coming days will be filled with weighty considerations.

While I stew on my future, I am preparing to spend Thanksgiving with a bunch of friends that I have known less than a year, they irony is they all have some filmmaking connection to me. As I begin to consider the possibility of stepping, even temporarily, out of my pursuit of a film career, I am saddened. In nearly fifteen years I have not had such a sense of community and the indications of genuine friendship than I do now with the small circle of friends that I have developed over the last year.

I guess this only makes sense, as I have come to believe sincerely that that greatest asset in filmmaking is not what you have, but who you know. Developing friendships and building relationships are somethings that are at the core of this form of art. By it’s nature, it is collaborative and requires the participation of many people that you have to trust in.

I don’t have any idea what the next year holds for me, whether I will chase my dream or abandon it– I don’t think that really matters to me. What has been the greatest pleasure over the last year, has been meeting so many wonderful people, all with their own dreams and ambitions. While I would love to dive deeper into filmmaking I look forward more to the collaborations and relationship-building that are such an important part of the process.

However, I still struggle with my faith and how is meshes with a career in an industry that is filled with Godlessness and self-glory. Regardless of what I “think” about it all, I keep being led by circumstances an opportunities back into the film path. This has caused me to consider how such a career can permit me to “do all to the glory of God,” and I am continually brought back to the focus on relationships in this industry and how little the final film product has to do with it.

At the moment, I simply look to the Lord to open or close doors according to His will. My part in the whole thing is to be a person within whom God is working and speaking. There are many people who believe that the best way to proclaim the gospel is with words and teachings, I personally think that the best way (for me) to preach the gospel, is by living. If we segregate the world into believers and unbelievers we prevent the world from meeting God… God-by-proxy, as I recently described it to a friend.

What better way is there to “do all to the glory of God,” then to represent Him in every corner of life. Why confine the gospel to certain places, methods and situations? I don’t want to compromise who and what I am; I think this is one reason that I want to make my own films and tell my own stories. But until I am doing that, I need to be God-by-proxy while carrying lights, hauling equipment, running the camera and building relationships by genuinely caring about people.

No one can tell me what this next year holds for me, but I look forward to it, partially due to the uncertainty. This thought causes me to remember a quote from Watchman Nee:

If God leads you to walk a way that you know, it will not benefit you as much as if He would lead you to take the way that you do not know. This forces you to have hundreds and thousands of conversations with Him, resulting in a journey that is an everlasting memorial between you and Him.

I look forward to the conversations while on this journey.

Tonight, I had one of those experiences that probably everyone has had at one time or another, where you are sitting in your car wanting to go inside, but there is something on the radio that has your attention fully in its grip. This often happens when I listen to NPR–some interesting story that I just need to hear the conclusion to. This time, it was NPR, but it wasn’t some journalistic story or a interesting interview, this time it was an essay. The story was interesting, about a young man who shirked a normal life to care for his mentally challenged brother. As the author narrated his story, and I was quickly caught up into his tale of personal sacrifice and of smelly adventures with a pet armadillo.

The plot thickened when the brother met a good woman, one who was able to overlook, and even appreciate, the arrangement in a chaotic appartment. Eventually romance blossomed and a marriage separated the brothers, while surrogates were hired to look in on and clean up after the less able brother. This arrangement seemed to work, until the arrest of that brother. After the arrest, doctors suggested that the limited oversight was not adequate and that it was in everyone’s best interest to have him placed in a home.

I cannot convey to you adequately the emotional resonance the essay evoked as it dealt with such a difficult personal decision. I was not only gripped by the story, I was being emotionally moved. I could feel the pain and sense of betrayal that hung in the air as a man with a busy life explained to his rather-simple brother what the doctors suggested. I felt a brother’s sense of responsibility as he rationalized away the desire to take his brother in to his own home as he provoked anguish from his sibling. “I’d rather die, than to be cooped up in some home with a bunch of mumbling half-wits,” he would explain. The greatest pain, to be forced to separate from his beloved pet armadillo.

As all good stories do, this reached a fever pitch at the end of the second act, when a call in the middle of the night brought news of his the sudden death of a needy brother. Running naked through traffic with his armadillo, the brother is hit and partially impaled, bleeding to death before the ambulance could arrive.

Listening, I wiped streams of salty tears from my cheeks–my heart sank. Tears continued to fall as the brother told of having to identify the body at the hospital before racing off to the scene of his brother’s death. I anticipated what was next, as the brother searched the area franticly until he uncovered, beneath a sheet of discarded plywood, his brother’s badly injured armadillo. He raced to the only vet in town, in the middle of the night, in attempts to save the life of his dead brother’s best friend. He prodded the man from his bed with aggressive pounding at his door. He may have failed his brother, but he was certainly going to do everything he could in that moment to save armored rodent’s life, a living tangible link his brother.

I thought to myself, this is heart breaking, how could someone live with such a tragedy, under the condemnation of abandonment? As I subjectively processed the story, the announcer read the title and the author, and then said something that really affected me, “this was a work of fiction.” I almost felt cheated, how could I allow myself to feel so personally for a fictional story? How could I feel such empathy for an invented character. Man, I felt like a wuss.

All of this happened while I was returning home after watching the new Wes Anderson film, the Darjeeling Limited. Before I left the house, I read an LA Times review of the movie, which seemed to pretty much explain the reviewers disdain for Wes Anderson’s movies. But the reviewer said something that returned to me as I contemplated my emotional reaction to the story of a mentally retarded man and his pet armadillo. The reviewer pondered the possibility that Anderson simply used his films as a way to work out his own issues. I think he meant that as a dig, but in the midst of contemplating art, it seemed extremely relevant.

Maybe a good part of the storyteller’s art is working through personal demons. I certainly think that is my draw to filmmaking–an attempt to tell stories the express my personal issues. Maybe that isn’t the heart of movie making in general, a great deal is to simply entertain. Perhaps that is why I like Wes Anderson’s movies; while they certainly entertain, they also explore deep personal issues of relationships and personal longing.

Over the last year, I have focused my energies in the direction of becoming a filmmaker. As I approach my one year anniversary, I look back on the last year and see a tremendous amount of progress. I still don’t have a personal project to show for my time and energy, but I have learned that actually filming the project is only part of the process. I have worked on a number of sets this year, some were enjoyable and others miserable, but every single one helped me see something–that I need to be making movies that tell my stories. I have yet to work on a film that I thought was worth making from a personal perspective. While simply working on projects offers me some excellent experience and knowledge, I also have discovered that my personal desire as a filmmaker is to tell real stories.

The stories that I want to tell are about humanity and struggle, about adventure and sacrifice. Ultimately I want to tell stories about redemption or man’s need or longing for it. I don’t want to tell redneck comedies or urban crime dramas. I don’t want to do horror or gore flicks. I have absolutely no interest in a film that fails to explore issues or has no themes. Maybe that means that I will never be a filmmaker who has films seen by millions, but I think that I am OK with that. Movies are works of fiction, a storyteller’s device to explore something and take others on an visual emotional journey with it, sometimes that journey is fun and at other times, dark and dangerous.

Maybe the stories aren’t true, but they often allow you to connect and explore emotions and ideas that are not only true, but relevant to life. I don’t know if Wes Anderson’s films are his personal therapy sessions, I suspect they probably are on some level, but that can’t possibly be a bad thing. Perhaps by realizing the therapeutic aspects, it will help me to spend more time writing and less time talking about writing. Certainly, that would be a good thing.

I have spent the last few months trying to crack the nut of filmmaking. One thing I’ve learned about making movies over the last year, is that it takes connections and lots of favors–unless you happen to have wheelbarrows full of money. My focus over the last six months or so, was to expand my network of contacts in the Nashville area to include a large number of people who work in film and video production. At first, the going was slow. I joined groups and organizations, explored web groups and even tried networking on Myspace–all of which yielded very little.

When I left my full time job in November, I planned to spend three months working on personal film projects, none of which ever got off the ground–I just didn’t know enough people in town. Instead, I just bought more equipment and looked for opportunities to use it. With the exception of shooting a few local music shows, nothing was happening. Several false starts occurred but each project fell flat.

Enter the 48 hour film project. I had wanted to do a 48 hour film since last year but, once again, didn’t know enough people to build my own team. I posted on line and asked around trying to find a team to join. I even inspired a friend to put together a team and failed to join her team, instead waiting to join a group who had experience. At the last minute I received an email looking for someone with a camera and sound equipment. I joined the team and made my first film in Nashville.

My team had a writer/director who was an absolute nightmare– she quit the project three times within 14 hours. Our movie wasn’t all the great, but I worked with some great people, all of whom were passionate about making films… finally, the network was growing. After the 48 hour film project, I finally realized that my network was larger than I thought. Many filmmaking conversations were had in a short period of time, and some project plans set in motion.

On the heels of 48HFP, I joined the crew of a indie film shooting in Nashville. All of my time over the last week of shooting was night shoots, to which I dove in feet first. I was able to exploit previous experience on other sets to help out as a Lighting Tech (also known as an Electrician in film circles). I really enjoyed working with lighting and actually felt as though I did a good job. It helped that I was working with at least one experienced Gaffer who I gleaned even more knowledge from. I felt I was on a roll.

I started thinking about filmmaking seriously. I started meeting with other filmmakers, producers and actors. Projects began to bloom and plans started being made; then I found an ad on Craigslist looking for some PAs for a feature length indie production in town. Feeling confident that I could add more value than just a PA, I asked if they needed any grips or even a gaffer. As it turned out, they most certainly needed a gaffer and they budgeted a deferred salary for me on the film.

I got very excited and started digging in more technically to the position of a gaffer. Up until then, I thought of a gaffer as a “lighting guy,” but what I discovered, is that in Hollywood circles, a Gaffer is a pretty key guy… and is usually expected to provide the lights for the shoot. He would also be expected to make the light do whatever the DP (director of photography) wanted; like make the set look like early dawn or change the mood of the scene with colors and shadows… it is actually a pretty complicated office to hold.

Concerned that they might be expecting me to have more knowledge and equipment then I actually did, I emailed them letting them know, that I am more qualified as a Lighting Technician than a Gaffer per se. They immediately placed an ad on Craigslist looking for a Gaffer and I felt sort of slighted. Eventually they found a new gaffer and I was to become his assistant.

The shoot was going to be 18 to 20 days and it was looking to be my first complete feature length production that I was to work from beginning to end. I was excited, until I started getting the vibe that things weren’t all that put together. I asked the producer about any pre-production work that was going to be done, and I clearly got the impression that no location was going to be reviewed for lighting before shooting. This was complicated even further when it began to look like they had done no work at securing a grip truck or a lighting package before the shoot.

Even before we started shooting, I started worrying that I was joining a half-assed production. Later when I found out that they were shooting the movie on film and not digitally, I forced myself to think more positively–certainly no one would try to shoot a movie on film if they didn’t have the equipment they needed. I started worrying when I had to call the producer the night before to get a location and call time for the first day of shooting (the next morning).

When I reached the producer, I was told that crew call was an hour before talent so, I took the opportunity to ask if a grip truck and lighting would be there when I arrived–I desperately wanted to survey the equipment. The reaction began to frighten me. She said that she knew that we had a camera and film stock, but wasn’t sure about lights. She asked if she could look into it and get back with me.

My return call confirmed my fears, they had not rented a grip truck or lighting package and they were depending on some lights that the DP had to shoot with. Now if there is one thing that I have learned about movie making–to make a professional production, lighting is essential. Despite my fears, I drove an hour and a half outside of Nashville to get to the set. We waited for over an hour before the Director arrived. Shortly after, the DP an First AC (assistant cameraman) arrived and began unloading gear.

While it wasn’t my worst nightmare, I began to worry when I discovered that our lighting consisted of three 1K lights and a single PAR (which is a glorified floodlight). He did have some professional C-stands and a few flags, but he also arrived with some of the trappings of a Home Depot movie gear… stuff that works, but doesn’t stand up to the abuse that professional equipment takes every day.

I quickly learned that outside of the actors and the Director’s desire to shoot on film, everything else was a second thought. Our first location was pitiful, it looked nothing like it should have and no art direction was in place to even make the location look authentic. The actors were great, but the limited lighting kit meant tons of fiddling and having to settle with inferiorly lit scenes. There might have been enough light to get things exposed on film, but the required position of the lights caused some horrible shadows, something that I hope is hidden or out of focus in the final product.

Things seemed really bad at the end of the first day. We were already two scenes behind, but there was a promise that things would be sorted out by the second day. Day two came and things got worse. More struggles to get enough light, slow setups and people were starting to get grumpy on the set. I desperately wanted to get things done, but everything moved at a snails pace, and the Director seemed acutely absent most of the time. By mid day, there was a sense among most of the cast and crew that we were on a ship without a captain.

To make things worse, the Director began to tell some of the crew that he wanted to wrap early so he could catch the Tennessee football season opener at 7:00PM. I don’t think anyone had a problem with that until a rumor began circulating that he wanted to make that time up by having an insanely early call time the next morning…no one was fine with that. The situation degraded further when under the pressure of getting all of the scenes done early he began to rush the actors and the shots.

The cast and crew began to feel uncomfortable. We were racing to get a bedroom lit for the next five scenes on the schedule, but as fate would have it, the sky turned dark and all of the lighting equipment outside needed to be pulled because of rain. 7:00 was closing in and no one knew what we were going to do. Then, dinner was called early while we waited for the rain to stop. Sometime during the chaos, our Director disappeared, and everyone began speculating that he had returned home to watch the Tennessee game.

Grumbling turned into outright complaining. The Assistant Director was having secret meetings with the Producer and the everyone was wondering aloud where our Director was. Eventually, the Producer walked in and took the rooms temperature about wrapping early. She explained that we would now be five scenes behind on our third shooting day if we wrapped. She walked away without making a decision.

The complaining erupted into bitching and now the lead actress was complaining that she thought she was going to be on a professional shoot, and that she had worked on student projects that had more leadership than our film. We all agreed with her. Eventually, she made the decision that we were waiting for. She said that she was done for the day and was going home. Well, without our lead, there was no more shooting for the day–it was a wrap.

I drove home with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. This film was in the toilet and I didn’t expect it to get past the week. The following day was Sunday and I had the desire to go to church since the schedule was going to prevent me from going for the next few weeks. I told the producer and the DP that I was going to be in after noon. I stayed for the Lord’s Table and took off after I took the bread and cup.

I called around looking for the location and started my one and a half hour drive to Mt. Pleasant, TN for the third day of shooting. I arrived on set as they were finishing up the last shot for that location. I wasn’t there long before I received some shocking news.–our lead actress had quit the film. Our first two days of shooting were now wasted. They had a replacement for her, but the character was no longer blond, she now had raven black hair… which wouldn’t seem like a big issue, except we were now on our way to a school to shoot some montage scenes from the character’s childhood… and all the young actresses were blond.

Everyone seemed to be completely un-shaken by the casting change. They were rolling ahead with the schedule as planned. This sparked much discussion among the crew. Let the bleeding commence. I arrived at the school ahead of the rest of the technical crew. I ended up following the wrong car to the wrong location. At the school it became crystal clear that no one was piloting the ship. There was absolutely no art direction for the scenes, no props and no forethought what-so-ever.

If it wasn’t my frustration with the way the shoot was being run that put me over the edge, it was the lack of appreciation for the kids and parents that showed up at the school and provided their own costumes for the shoot. The director never once publicly thanked anyone. Lack of planning continued as the sun set on an outdoor shoot for a playground scene. Complicating things was that the main character hadn’t had her makeup from the previous scene removed which provided just one more continuity error for the film.

I think at that point I was done. Three days of filming had sucked just about all of the life out of me. Idle time was spent complaining with the crew and second-guessing the director… something that should never happen on a set. I told the DP that night that Day four would be my last day.

Day four was just as bad, if not worse than any of the other days. The sound guys were quitting and half of the rest of crew was considering quiting. I really hope that they get it all sorted out. I feel bad for those folks who came from out of town, those who believed in the film enough to risk deferred compensation. I had planned to stick it out, but in the end, it was just requiring to much from me. It was hard for me to imagine that the film could get finished let alone make some money. It wasn’t worth the $20 per day it was costing me to drive to the set.

By the first day of shooting they were already out of money. They were shooting on film and were already out of money! In a way, it was a gift that the lead actress left. If they can get some money back from her, they might have some additional budget to get essentials like film development and props.

In the end, it reinforces my belief that you can’t get movies done without using people. If the movie gets made, I hope it sells and make a boat load of cash, not for my sake, but for all of the people who were used in the making of it. I hope that when I do my first feature, I can get half the number of people to believe in it and give me their time and energy, but I hope with this experience, I wouldn’t make the same freshmen mistakes.

In respect for the cast and crew, I am not naming the production and I still wish them all the best. I met and got to work with a lot of great people. Heck, the Director was a nice guy, just not much of a leader. I figure the worst that can come of it, is that someone’s uncle and grandma’ loose some money and a lot of other people gain some great movie making experiences… those that can’t be taught in a book and can best be learned by personally making the mistake itself. Hopefully, at the end of all of this, everyone is much better for it.

Well, some of you might have heard that this past weekend, Micheal Moore’s new movie, Sicko, was leaked and found its way to YouTube. By yesterday, it had saturated the online world when it found its way to BitTorrent. For a movie that hasn’t been released, having a high quality version get out can be devastating… but I think the leak was intentional.

Anyone that knows my politics, knows that I can’t stand Michael Moore. While I don’t agree with him politically (for the most part) I have always respected him as a filmmaker and a social provocateur. One of the things that I have disliked about Michael Moore’s approach to politics, it his usage of disinformation. Often, Moore will misconstrue or misrepresent the context of information to underline a point. One of the things I most admire about his skills, is his ability to make people believe that he said something that he didn’t. He is a very skilled manipulator.

I really enjoyed Roger and Me when it came out, but couldn’t stand Bowling for Columbine or Fahrenheit 911. My dislike for Moore was clear to me when I got wind of the film leak. I immediately thought this was to the detriment of the film, and I sort of rejoiced inwardly. Yeah, that will teach him, I thought. But then I saw the film.

I have always been on the receiving side of the good part of American health care. But I was never a sickly person and with the exception of an ankle twist and mono in high school, I didn’t go to the doctor. Later in my life when stuff seemed to be going wrong with me, I had mack daddy health insurance that let me do whatever I wanted and go to whomever I wanted. I visited a psychologist regularly for panic and depression problems, had EKGs and emergency room visits because of panic attacks. Had MRI scans of the brain and did two sleep studies for sleep apnea, none of which strained me financially because my insurance paid for everything.

Just a week ago, I got into an argument (aka discussion, aka monologue) with a friend about health care in America. I went quickly to bat declaring that we live in a country where people that need health care, get it. Somewhere down deep I believe that even though I have watched my mom as she struggles to pay the mounting costs for her and my terminally ill father’s health care. I have frequent conversations with her about the pending switch to Medicaid for my dad and how that with pretty much deplete any money they have and probably take the equity in their home away, leaving my mom with nothing to pass on. Despite this, I still seem to think that everything is OK.

But everything is not OK, and there are places in America where sick people are loaded into cabs by hospitals and dropped off in front of public clinics in hospital gowns, dazed and confused, simply because they can’t pay the outrageous costs of health care in America. Why is it that I think this stuff doesn’t happen?

Moore’s movie isn’t exactly an objective unbiased look at health care, it is a campaign for socialized medicine. And if you believe the picture of socialized medicine he paints, who wouldn’t want that? But I don’t buy what he is selling. You see, his movie is about American horror stories, it is about worse case scenarios. When he goes to the countries with socialized medicine, you don’t get a single horror story–you see, he didn’t take out an ad to find the people who hate socialized medicine there like he did here.

Actually, the most misleading thing in his film, is the lack of sick people in the socialized systems. He didn’t talk to a single cancer patient who was dieing and get their opinion of the system (like he did with Americans). He talked to people who had broken limbs and stomach aches, people who had babies and people sitting in waiting rooms. At no point in the film did he talk to a foreigner who’s life was eminently in the hands of a socialized system.

He did talk to people who had recovered from a major illness–those that left America to seek treatment in a socialized system, but when he spoke to them, they were well. People who are well, have a much better view of everything… which is one subtle point of the film.

The film is rife with leftist propaganda that props up Hilary Clinton as a sexy intelligent woman who is full of moxie while at the same time portrays a host of Republicans as automatons for big business and idiots with their hands out. Everywhere you turn there is some political slant that colors what is presented. While it might not make you run out and get a Vote Hillary ’08 bumper sticker for your car, it might make you wonder just who is piloting this ship.

While I can’t say that Moore’s latest film is a masterpiece of filmmaking, I can probably pay it the comment that Moore might find most pleasing of all… it made me think. Actually, it actually made me reconsider what I really believe about our current health care system and truthfully, it actually made me think about the possible value of socialized medicine. But it made me think about a lot more than just that.

This film made me question my disdain for France as well as reinvigorate my desire to see Cuba opened up to America again. I think that this is all part of Moore’s brilliance as a social provocateur, he shifted my view. This is obvious because I woke up this morning thinking about it. It made me think enough about it to look at John McCain’s site to see if health care was an issue–enough for me to write him a note inquiring about his thoughts and plans for making heath care affordable.

I don’t think that Moore could be offered a higher complement than to know that someone in the opposite political camp was moved to think about an issue. While I am sure that the film is full of misdirection and misinformation, I think there is enough of an issue there to make people start talking again.

So, was the leak of the film some nefarious act by someone seeking to destroy Moore, or was this a planned leak to get people talking? I think it is the latter. It is probably very likely that I would not have seen this film when it was released, but post it on YouTube and guess what…something happens. As a filmmaker who wants to see profit from his work, I am not sure how this leak will effect him, but as someone who wants to stir the pot and get people talking, I think he might have hit a bullseye on this one… at least if I am any indication of what this film can do.