Movies and Rockets

Let’s not fool ourselves. Making movies with no money is the same as trying to build rockets to fly to the moon in your garage. We know it’s pure lunacy and yet we still do it. It’s difficult and costly work that may or not pay off but we still do it. And we constantly ask ourselves why we’re doing it while we’re doing it. If you’ve made one film and want to do it again, you know you’re fucking batshit crazy.

I have a lot of ideas, I want to do a lot of different things and lack focus and organizational skills. (Don’t judge. I’m working on it.) Add a Libra’s indecisiveness and the fear of fucking it up to this equation and you have days, weeks, and sometimes even months and years of eternal farting around without finishing anything. This malady has a name. PARALYSIS.

I don’t remember getting to work this morning. As I drove all I did was think about what project I was going to commit to next and what my approach would be. I wrote and rewrote the screenplays in mind. Some were more along the crowd-pleasing side and others along the Teri-pleasing side. It’s difficult trying to decide between you and me until I remember I know what I like and I don’t have a goddam idea of what you like. This is why I can’t cut it in the Factory of Mainstream Entertainment. I won’t waste one second trying to figure out what people want because it’s phony and stupid. Remember: Nobody knows anything.

A friend recently sent me an excerpt where Louis C.K. talks about what he does and why he does it the way he does.

On being honest:

I like to do standup that's very honest. I don't think it's the only way to be a comedian. Some people the whole point of their act is that they're lying or being fantastic or really silly or absurd. I think Steven Wright is a great comedian. Nobody says, "God he's so honest." He's not one of those guys. He just has a whole different thing that makes him funny and makes him great.


For me, what guides what I decide to say or do onstage or not is, "Is this shit really true? Is this really shit you're thinking?" If it's not, you're gonna feel phony and stupid. I don't like phony. I don't like it for me.


There's times I've been getting huge laughs with a bit and then I look at it and I go, "But it ain't real." I don't really mean it. I just knew where to go to find laughs. So sometimes I throw that kind of material away after I kill with it a few times.


To me, it's not important on an integrity level. It's just that it's so much more fun to say shit that's really inside you, that really gnaws at your brain, and to share those thoughts with other people. And especially if they're thoughts that people aren't used to sharing in a humorous way, things that people aren't even used to saying out loud.


I mean beyond saying "fuck" and talking about sex. The really embarrassing unsaid truths. Those are really fun to tell an audience and have them laugh. It's something that I really enjoy. That's why I'm doing standup this way. It's because I like it.

If you are familiar with Louis’s work, you know the man picked himself over us. He does what he thinks is funny. And by reading the excerpt above you can see that it was a process that took a while to develop and embrace. By stripping away artifice and putting forth his truth, he's coming up with the funniest, most wicked and moving work anywhere.  Louis pretty much restates what I’ve heard over and over again from artists, filmmakers and writers I admire. Be honest, do what you love and you’ll reach the moon. That’s it.

I usually turn to Cassavetes and Tarkovsky when I need some cheerleading, but I’m adding this to my go-to list. I will do my thing with the hope that at least one person gets it. I’d rather be crazy than feel phony or stupid. No way.

Production Journal, Heartbreak in ? Cuts: Lighting the Puppy

Last night I attended the “Indie 101” class at Film Independent. It’s really geared for beginning filmmakers who really have no idea about much. Even though I knew most of the information I learned some cool tips and tricks (which I will share later) to achieve a more cinematic look, got to see the 5D Mark II up close and in action and learned how to operate the sound equipment and LED-Z Brute lighting kit. The LED-Zs are a pretty cool bunch. Best part? They won’t blow my house’s circuits. I still need to remember to find the breaker though.


I wanted to make love to the 5D right then and there. My love is unconditional. I know she’s not going to make things easy for me like a proper video camera would, but the results are worth all the foreplay. Once I figure out how to make her tick, I’m set. I know she can blow my mind and love me back once she gets to know me.

OK, end of not-so-pithy sexual metaphor.

So, I went home really excited about shooting with the 5D that I could not sleep. My mind was filled with ideas for shots, and focal lengths and stylish sequences but—


WAIT…

I need to keep in mind that just because I can get all these beautiful shots doesn’t mean I should. That’s not what the story is about. I need to remember to reign myself in. I’ve worked really hard not to be so self-indulgent when it comes to directing. I’m not shooting a cinematography reel here.

Story before style! Remember what’s important.


(But you can be sure I’ll try to find a way to sneak them in. At least in an early edit just to get it out of my system.)

I guess the only things left to worry about are:

1. The actress showing up. I recently learned that people do, in fact, get appendicitis right before a shoot.
2. Pepa standing still long enough for me to get her shots.
3. Lighting Pepa. I’ve never lit a black dog before and I’m concerned about the details in the black.

I just wish I didn’t have to clean the house and do laundry today.

Oh, and I just realized my whole crew's last name is Ruiz. No relation. Cute.



Production Journal (Heartbreak in ? Cuts*): I am NOT alone.

Ok, so I was making a list of all the stuff I need to do this weekend for my shoot next Saturday and of course I start freaking out. It’s been a while since I shot a film with actors and a crew and I had forgotten what freaking out feels like. I freak out in silence by the way. No one has ever seen me freak out. Well, my dog Pepa saw me four weeks ago when my boyfriend dumped me and it’s funny because what a coincidence that’s what my comedy short is about. *wink*


I’m not freaking out over the stuff I have to do. I just have to do it. But making a list of stuff I have to do makes me think about the unknowns. In this case, they are big fucking unknowns. I’m working with two actors I’ve never worked with before. The female lead is great, funny and quirky and I’m not worried she’ll deliver. Still, I don’t know what it’s going to be like working with her. I don’t want to disappoint her. The other actor is Pepa.

The biggest unknown is working with a brand new camera. I wouldn’t have an issue with a film camera, but I’m using the Canon 5D Mark II DSLR. It’s not a proper video camera and, frankly, the post production issues I’ve heard about are giving me nightmares. (Last night I dreamed I had sex with Morley Safer because he was an expert on the camera. Yup. Whore for film.) I confess that I lack in post production expertise. Start talking about compression rates and smoke starts to come out of my ears.

So while I was beginning to hyperventilate in silence, I check my email and see that my friend Giancarlo Ruiz can come and help me with the shoot next weekend. You cannot imagine the relief I felt. Giancarlo is a filmmaker from Mexico and he does it all; well-rounded artistically and technically savvy as well. You have to be that kind of filmmaker when your resources are limited. Earlier this week I told him about my neuroses about this shoot and he replied to me with long, jargon-filled paragraphs about how to handle the heavy footage from the 5D. I freaked out even more and that’s when I asked him to participate. And now I have the good news that he is and I can relax for a bit.

Now I just basically have to worry about making Tic Tacs look like sleeping pills and Pepa hitting her marks.

Tomorrow it’s off to telecine the super 8 footage for Prequel, the other film.

*Note: The question mark refers to the number of cuts in the edit, which is unknown at this time.

This is why he’s King of the World!

“Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you’re a director. Everything after that you’re just negotiating your budget and your fee.” —James Cameron

I’ve said it and you don’t pay attention to me. Cameron is saying it. Do what he says. Godammit. Make your own goddam film.

“There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.” Ansel Adams

Me holding a light meter and a can of air.  Freddy Gompf and Neil Kendricks also pictured.

I know you're making fun of my hat. No. I'm not a Robert Rodriguez wannabe. I haven't even seen El Mariachi. We were shooting in the desert and I needed it to protect me from the sun. And I wanted to show off the hat I got at Telluride during the film festival. EVERYONE gets this hat. EVERYONE.  It was so sad when I sat on it and I couldn't put it back the way it was. Stop laughing. Shut up.

Making films used to be about photography. I think people have forgotten that.




P.S. In all my rambling and ranting, I forgot to say the name of the book I'm holding. It's the American Cinematographer Manual.

"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well...

...if one has not dined well." - from A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

Part I



Part II



If you're interested I've posted links to my Poly Esther production diary below, where I bitch extensively about the food situation and all the problems with my producer.

I said no pizza.

Not even pizza?

You're the AD, I'm the AC.

All this trouble for a woman who can't cook a chicken.

Email to the crew.

Kentucky Fried Crisis

Tits and Ass

San Diego is on fire.

Post production blues.

A head in a cart.

Here's something you can do right away to help you become a better writer and filmmaker.

Note: There was a glitch and the last 3 minutes of my rambling didn't record. Sorry. And I don't remember what I said.

It's a party.

That's him up there. That's the asshole actor that showed up hungover and ruined the shoot. And that's Freddy (long hair with cap).  Freddy!!! Come back! I need you.

Do something else

Academia is the death of cinema. It is the very opposite of passion. Film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates. — Werner Herzog

How many film students does it take to pretend they know what they're doing?

I figured I would try to dissuade you one more time.  I said you could do it. I didn't say it was going to be easy on you.  But then again, nothing worth doing comes without a price.

No one is going to make your movie.

Me on location of my first film. Yes, that's a film camera. I'm no chickenshit.

You're going to have to do it yourself. That's the way the cookie crumbles my friends.




THEY DRANK THE HATERADE

For fun, below is a promo of the web series I talked about.  You can see a little bit of Home Depot sequence. After one hour of negotiation (lying), two illegal workers agreed to run after her.

I’ve taken the long way to the crossroads.

When I was a little girl, I dreamed of becoming an astronaut and robot builder.  Everything I did academically was towards that goal. I fancied myself a scientist and I excelled academically in every subject.  I don’t recall exactly when my artistic tendencies started to creep out.  I think I first tried to express that need by drawing.  First, I drew Peanuts comics and as I got older I progressed to sketching from fashion magazines.  I’ve always written.  My favorite thing to do academically was to write essays analyzing literature.  I’ve always taken pictures.  My grandpa gave me my first camera and my dad built me a darkroom in the wine cellar when I was in middle school.  I practically lived there and I still crave the feel of fiber paper and smell of Dektol on my fingers.  My grandma had to drag me out to eat dinner and go to bed.  But you see, in my mind, these weren’t worthy pursuits.  Space travel was important; art and writing were just hobbies I loved and was good at.

It’s pretty tough to be at a top university and suddenly realize, one year in, that science is not your calling; that you dread going to physics class where all the much-harder-working Chinese students are getting Cs and that you can’t wait to go to art history and literature classes.  It’s hard to let go of previous dreams and replace them with new ones.  It makes you feel like a failure until you accept the truth.  This is where I am.  I’ve come full circle and, as Domenico screams in Nostalghia, I’ve come back to where I took the wrong turn.

I was living in Puerto Rico studying and making conceptual art when I had a dream.  I dreamed that I was directing a film.  It wasn’t a surreal dream at all; it was clear and concrete and I could touch it.  I had never been on a film set or location, but I saw the equipment, lighting and crew just as they are in real life.  I woke up and since then it has been an obsession.  I never wanted to make films in Hollywood. I didn’t even know what one had to do to break into that business.  Hell, the first screenwriting book I ever read was Alternative Scriptwriting, Writing Beyond the Rules (First Edition, by Jeff Rush and Ken Dancyger).  I wasn’t really sure what kind of films I wanted to make until I saw The Double Life of Veronique.  This was around the time Pulp Fiction came out, when everyone wanted to become the next Quentin Tarantino. I think a lot of filmmakers still do.  Kieslowski showed me what film could be and that I wanted to do THAT. I wanted to make The Decalogue.

My boyfriend cheated on me and, after a difficult time, instead of going to The Art Institute of Chicago to get an MFA as I had planned, I turned down a scholarship and decided to flee Puerto Rico and go back to San Diego to the comfort of family and friends.  I finally read Syd Field.  There was no screenwriting software back then, so I set the tabs manually on my dad’s Mac.  I continued to write ridiculous screenplays and three years later, thanks to the digital revolution, the possibility of making films became a reality.  I enrolled in film school and never looked back. I edited my idiosyncratic first films on Media 100; then on Final Cut Pro.  I became obsessed with shooting on film and a small beauty called the Aaton A-Minima.  I wrote, produced and directed my own films and shot many films for others too.  I never wanted to move to Los Angeles until five years ago when I couldn’t stomach one more day at my day job.  I gave notice, sold my belongings, and spent the summer in Italy.

I don’t why or how I decided I wanted to be a screenwriter for hire. Five years ago, that gradually became my new thing. I continued to write ridiculous screenplays, except that now they were what I thought would have an audience. I didn’t know shit. High concept? What the fuck is that? Action films, I thought. Maybe. It wasn’t until quite recently that I finally grasped what that meant. The fucking hustle. I simply thought that if I continued to improve one day I’d write a screenplay that would get me noticed. Only then, I’d market myself. Whatever that meant. I didn’t want to bother. I believed that I had talent and I just wanted to write. The rest would take care of itself.


I won some comedy contests and I got a taste of what a writing career in Hollywood would be like. I call it “Chucky’s Fiasco.” It was the beginning of the end.





Early last summer, I started to hang around a screenwriter’s board full of mostly pathetic people trying to write something commercial. I wish I had come across that board three years ago. I would have saved all the time I wasted on a delusional pursuit. Now, don’t get insulted. Let me explain. If that is what you want to do, great. Do it. But first, really pay attention to the realities of what you’re pursuing. Talent has little to do with it. You need a lot of luck. And you must do a lot of bullshit stuff that has nothing to do with creating. It’s just so sad that most of aspiring screenwriters are waiting, some proactively and some passively, for a studio, or anyone, to make their film. That is the worst thing you can do with your life. If it doesn’t happen for you, then you’ll have nothing in the end.


It’s so weird to finally have thoughts and feelings that feel real, genuine and that make sense. For five years I’ve been fooling myself. I thought what I wanted was legitimate and real. It wasn’t. Just like going to space wasn’t.


These past few weeks, going to museums and browsing through my journals and sketchbooks fucked me up but eventually brought me back to myself. I stopped making art because I got it in my head that I could and that I actually wanted to make a living as a screenwriter. I was wrong. It’s not because I don’t have the talent, I just don’t want to do the things you have to do to get noticed. I don’t want to send queries, I don’t want to write high concept scripts, I don’t want to pitch. I don’t want to waste my time doing that when I can be doing my work. Also, I don’t like anyone telling me what to do. I never have.


For a while I tried to fool myself into thinking I could pimp myself out and write crap I don’t respect for the money. I can’t because I can’t write a movie that I would not pay to see. When I see a Hollywood movie I never say “I want to do THAT!” When I go to a museum or watch a foreign or experimental film, I always do and I know I can and I should.


I cannot, and I will not, spend one more second thinking about writing for Hollywood or anyone else but me. I’m still going to write, but I’m going to write what I feel like writing without a care in the world. I make films. I don’t write shit waiting for someone to make it. I can greenlight a film whenever I well damn please. And I can help others make their films too.


So, my dear screenwriters, there is one less out there for you to compete against. I leave it to you to write the movies for the masses, the Academy Award winners, and the moneymakers. You can buy the house with the pool and I will continue to rent. And be happy.


I hope you know who you are and where you fit in, and if not, that you’ll discover it and eventually find your place in the world. I think I’m almost there. Maybe.

R

Gus Van Sant has seen my vagina.

I never write down my dreams, let alone blog about them, but this one is film related and I find it worthy of recording for posterity.

I transitioned from one dream to another and I found myself in a desert town that looked very Terry Gilliam-ish. There were a few people around and all of a sudden I spot Gus Van Sant.

I said, “Hey Gus Van Sant, what are you doing here?”

Gus answered, “I want to make a movie with that guy.”

He pointed at an old man that just sat there and was completely uninterested in his surroundings. So Gus asked me to help him make the movie. You can imagine how excited I was. My first impulse was to Tweet about it but I didn’t have a computer. Gus and I walked around the town trying to find cast and crew members.

We came up to a goofy woman and he said, “You! You’re gonna be the AD.”

I said, “Are you sure about that Gus?”

He said, “Any movie I make outside the studio system, I do like this.”

I said “Oh, that explains Gerry.”

I looked down and I noticed I wasn’t wearing a bottom. No pants, no skirt, no underwear. We continued on our search for cast and crew and although they noticed I was al fresco, no one said anything or seemed to care. To make matters worse, I kept on bending over to pick up stuff.

Gus and I then went to the “production office” which was a wooden shack right out of a Western. He had a laptop and I noticed he was already tweeting about the new film. I felt envious. I asked him if I could send a tweet and he said, “No, we’ve got a lot of work to do.” I sat down on the desk, legs dangling and as I look up I see Gus’s horrified face. I looked down and my legs were open.

He said, “Is that what it looks like?!”

I remembered that Gus was gay, so my panic subsided.

I told Gus, “Yes, but they come in all shapes and sizes.”

He said, “Oh.”

And that’s all I remember.

Maybe someone can enlighten me and let me know what all this means.