Mornings before a shoot are exciting. I won't lie. One of the most thrilling moments are the quiet before the storm.
I took it for granted when working on features. Since it was a daily grind. The breakfast burritos from the truck were my favorite. Waiting for that bacon, egg, spinach and cheese thick wad was great. This morning, it's just coffee and soaking in the steam room figuring out my shots. It's going to be a quick shoot. But I've recruited some fantastic people.
Juggling multiple projects is the only way (these days anyway) to not jump from a four story window. This project is exciting because I've actually gotten a writer to do the next installment. I sort of feel like an executive producer. Doling out storylines and waiting for the result. Young brains. I'm reading Mike Medavoy's book now about his time at United Artists to Orion/Warner Bros. and it's great to hear somewhere out there people did value creative power over dollars. Yes, it ended up breaking him, even though he is credited with packaging "Silence Of the Lambs" "Platoon" and "Annie Hall" he is actually forgotten. As our business tends to do. Sad state of things, considering he focused on what was great about movies. It is the dream of what I want to do. Communal filmmaking is the goal for a lot of young people. The corporations have taken over though. I understand, how else are you going to keep afloat. To butcher a phrase...you need business to stay in business. The shame part is that creativity doesn't drive the dollar. The dollar drives the dollar. But I don't care. Call me a hopeless romantic when it comes to movie making. I have no aspirations to make a dime in what I do, or want to do. The money is only to supplement the next project. Which has bankrupted even talents as Francis Ford Coppola. In no way do I compare my aspirations to his, and obviously not his successes. He tasted it beyond anything I even hope to do. I just want to make cool shit. I think a lot of these dudes who set out in the movie business to make a ton of money and gain fame inevitably return to the core of why they got into making movies. To connect with humans.
In my newest project, as I watch a lot of crime stories, I often try to draw a correlation between mental capacity with their actions. Often, the prosecutor will offer no explanation other than...we know what evil is. IF you've ever been in an argument with someone who was so thick headed as to not understand your point of view...this is equivalent (yet not to that extreme). Serial killer movies set out to explain, but ultimately it comes down to...we're animals at the core.
The new series I'm implementing will give my friends (hopefully) to make their own installment in a storyline of a detective whose attempting to understand the darkness that lurks in our society. What's the catch? Simply that we tend to look past the obvious. Which the narrative will ultimately be decided by our perspective. The exciting thing about this, other than shooting it ALL on film, is that I have not a clue where this leads me. A police procedural is beyond my wheelhouse. I have no idea how those things work. As a friend put it about me once, I am style over substance. Oh well. I think the mood of this guides the why. Why does someone hurt others? Because they can? Because they can get away with it? I have no idea.
But it is something worth investigating, whilst I do my other side projects. Or maybe this is the side project. So without further fanfare...today I start my journey called "The Valley: Verse One." The micro-series.
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