Tomorrow night I leave to shoot Toñita Runs Away in Mexico. I have no crew except for a couple of
non-filmmaker helpers aka family. Luckily,
it’s Mexico, so I can just hire people off the street. My entire cast is made up of children, so I’ll
need a good wrangler. Luckily, it’s
Mexico, and there are no child labor laws. (Settle down. It’s not like I’m making them
sell Chiclets at the border.) This is an
international production, yes it is.
This film was born in my head and as soon as I started to
write it down, it started to die. So I stopped writing and just made a list of
all the shots and events I will try to film.
(No wonder Truffaut did it this way.)
A film dies and is reborn many times on its way from the mind to the audience,
and as soon as the filmmaker realizes and accepts this, her anxiety over the
process will be alleviated. Well, to
some extent. There are plenty of other things to agonize about.
This film is a complete mystery to me. I’m shooting film so I will not be able to
see the shot right after I shoot it. I’m
directing non-professional children and I can’t control what they will do in
front of the camera. I’m calling it a
creepy comedy because the genre hasn’t been determined yet. It won’t be until I’ve seen the footage and
have to make editing decisions. And then there’s the sound design. Oy vey.
This is definitely a scary way of working that’s very new
and exciting to me. It’s an experiment
and a gamble that may fail. I’m scared. Luckily I have my heroes to turn to for
comfort. Like Robert Bresson who said, “When
you do not know what you are doing and what you are doing is the best - that is
inspiration.” It’s not like I haven’t
fucked up a film before, so I’m going to go with what he said and see what
happens.
“An old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually
surrounds it.”—Robert Bresson
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