A Name In White

I just finished up cleaning up my website from it’s recent spambomb, and I figured it’s about time I start using this site to it’s fullest. To begin with I’ll start this blog.

Many of you guys have been reading my emails for sometime now, and they have tended to focus more on my travels. My goal with this blog is not to focus on my travels, but to focus on my adventures in filmmaking. This site is (I hate to use the word again, but) focused on filmmaking, then I’ll use this blog as a home for the many stories that accompany the creation of films.

As far as my film life is concerned: I’m glad to be done with the festival, once again I am able to breath. I had tried to get a lot of people to the festival, but I made the mistake of scheduling it on Memorial Day Weekend, naively thinking that people would be around due to the holiday. In the end I did pretty well and got around 50 people to the show, but in the end I have ended up losing a LOT of money. I have zero dollars to my name. I didn’t even have enough money to pay the second half of what I owed to the theater. I work two days a week at my mom’s office filing stuff and whatnot, but that’s not a big money maker or anything. I’m considering getting my old job back with the monkeys, I just need to talk to my boss. Anyway, that’s where things lie now.

I have come to the decision that in January I’ll begin production for my first feature length film. Next year will mark the beginning of a new decade, and frankly I’m not getting any younger, and I have close to 50 different feature film ideas that I want to make before I die, so I figured I better get started. Hopefully one day I’ll get to the point where I can be like Woody Allen and make a film a year, at least that’s my dream, we’ll see how long it’ll take to get there. The film I’m planning to make will be made with no money. And I mean no money at all. I have a friend with an HVX that I’ll try and borrow, I have another friend with lights that I’ll try and borrow as well. And as far as paying people, well that wont happen. The only time I’ll plan on spending money will be the marketing and festivals. I’ll try and get an investor to invest in that end of the deal.

The film is a very empty kind of story, that focuses more on the characters than the story. It’s something that me and a couple of friends will begin writing soon. The film will be like as if John Cassavetes and Jim Jarmusch got together and made a taxi driver-esque comedy. The film will involve much improvisation, and can be compared to the new mumblecore movement. On an aside, I just have to say how much I hate the word mumblecore, it’s probably the stupides word to ever have been created to coin a type of film, and I cringe every time I have to say/type the word. On the other hand I find the films of the said movement very fascinating, and I enjoy watching them, and being that it’s probably the cheapest way to make a film these days, then I’m gonna go do that.

I’ll leave you with a story from the creation of a film. We were working on one of my friend’s films in a restaurant down by Union Square. I was wearing one of my various pairs of old pants that was missing the button. Unfortunately the zipper (which is the only thing left to keep the pants around my waist) was a bit faulty. I tried to zip it a bit to vigorously when I broke it completely. I was outside the set when this happend with a couple of my friends and we laughed about it. I took a clothespin and fastened my fly with that. It was a quick fix, but it was all I could do at the time being. The problem with this fix was that every time I bend over the stupid thing would fly off from my pants and I’d have put it back on. It was at the end of the night and I was in the basement cleaning up some of the equipments when the damn thing flew off. I put my load down and was busy with my pants when one of the other guys on set came downstairs and caught me, as it would seem to him (he didn’t know about my broken pants), finishing off good wank. He went to some of my friends and told them that he had caught me in the act. They knew the truth of my pants, but decided to have a laugh at his expense, and let him continue to think that he had caught me with my pants down for a couple of weeks. My friends told me this story over a couple of beers, and we all had a hearty laugh.

Firstly and most importantly for all of you that will be in the NYC tri-state area my third annual film festival will be happening on Sunday May 24th at a place called Millennium Film Workshop which is located at 66 East 4th street between Bowery and 2nd Avenue. There will be 2 two hours screenings with different films in each. It will be 10 dollars for a tickets. If anyone would like to show a film or two let me know really soon. I’m extremely excited about this festival and I feel like it can be a great success.