NOTE: The date of this post, August 14, 2024 is the 10 year anniversary of my first production day on my first feature narrative film. I am floored to still be out here in the trenches a decade later doing one of the things that I love the most. Onward!
I dream.
I think.
I want.
I work.
Sometimes, it materializes.
It was September 13th, 2022 when I began to write in a brand-new marble notebook. I had been post-expiration of unemployment benefits for some time, and I was still dangerously unemployed. Besides some freelance editing and substitute teacher gigs, the only money coming in was from YouTube and Patreon.
The path ahead was depressingly opaque and left me muddled and discouraged. This is just after coming off the intoxicating validation of finishing a second feature-length narrative film and having its premiere at my all-time favorite movie-going venue, the Alamo Drafthouse as part of the Genreblast Film Festival.
We’d won the festival’s independent spirit award - The Genreblast Forever Award. It was a victory and validation of the blood, sweat, and tears. The summit of this mountain was breathtaking, and now over, it was time to descend into another valley of uncertainty. One with woods both dark and deep, but they did not feel particularly lovely.
I needed a job, the permanent, lifeline kind – that would not only afford me to contribute and support my family but also allow me to replenish my coffers in the continuation of artistic pursuits. Such a strange paradox: It’s the 9-to-5 salaried golden handcuffs with benefits that will allow the freedom sought. I am starting to believe more and more that in this society we live in, money may not buy happiness, but it buys freedom. And a byproduct of freedom is happiness.
Thank God for the YouTube and Patreon money, allowing further wiggle room. And like always, it's too much to stop, and not enough to do it full-time, all the time: The eternal struggle of many of us out there looking to make art. But it's paying (some) bills.
Still…
What now? Where to go from here?
Fall is nipping at the heels of summer, as it gets colder and darker, and I began to dream.
Where do these dreams come from? I do not know, but I want to believe they come from a divine place of creativity. And then, they channel down into my mind and my heart.
The dream was of another world.
It was not terribly original or unique. It was built on top of another, one that I did not create. David Lynch had thought this place up, it is where he set the film, Eraserhead. If his story takes place in the city, mine takes place in its suburbs. Or rather, an approximation of such suburbs.
There was music too.
Sandman, by Trudy and Romance - A contemporary, dream-soaked Doo-Wop album laid a soundtrack to surf on top of. A new coffeehouse in downtown White Plains called The Pamplemousse Project had opened up, where the coffee flowed like water. A cozy, warm (feeling) place with bright energy was the perfect third place to express whatever was percolating in my head. The kernel of the idea wasn’t new. It was Pet Sematary meets Little Shop of Horrors with a bit of Re-Animator thrown in, a familiar Frankensteinian premise was a well-worn tread set in that David Lynchian world I mentioned before.
I needed a canvas, something that I could use to bring the intangible into the physical world, in this case, it was a marbled notebook journal. Whenever I could, I went down to that coffee shop and dreamed all over its blank pages. In the absence of a job, I turned to dreaming and thinking in this notebook into its own job, while I continued to look for a pair of golden handcuffs to shackle to.
There is a beautiful quality to dreams.
They don’t require any sort of responsibility, initially. They represent a different kind of freedom in comparison to the freedom that having money brings. There is a purity to it in the sense that there is no financial prerequisite. One need only have a mind, and be daring enough to imagine.
So, I am filling this notebook up, day by day, page by page. And while there is no definitive goal, the ultimate surmisation is that someday, this could be my third feature narrative film, My Shadow…
How? Or When?
It doesn’t matter. I don’t need to know at the moment. I just need to show up and write.
I couldn’t afford to make this potential movie, nor did I have the energy to, but the notebook was a certain form of that movie to come, dreams in a tangible form - a promise of hope.
The job thing was slowly killing me.
It was not the notion that I needed a 9-to-5, the willingness was there. But it was impossible to find anything that met the threshold of standards that I wanted for myself, as well as my family. I had slaved in restaurants for years before deciding it was time to make a change and transition into desktop office culture. And while I was prepared to return to hospitality if there was absolutely no other option, I was afforded the break fall of a two-income household, which brought time to seek and search along with it. But that time was running out without prospect or lead.
It was treading water in the ocean, and my legs were giving out, with a feeling of impending dread creeping up my spine. Along with dread, there was a stubbornness, that would not allow me to fold and give up. Perhaps it was the Kuyashii, that I have come to know. It all came down to the resounding truth that if I was going to willingly wear a pair of golden handcuffs, for years to come, they had to live up to their name of being golden, and therefore be comfortable as well.
A few weeks passed, along with another demoralizing interview audition.
These grueling interview auditions were carrots dangled at the end of a string and straight into a hoop of fire. They usually involve a great investment of time and energy, where you are (in some cases) doing real work that they could potentially use and benefit from. Sometimes, the review process of these auditions was nothing more than going through the motions, because they had already picked their candidate! And it was easy to tell because the interviewer/recruitment officer-whatever-they-are wasn’t even listening or asked you to SKIP OVER sections of work that you spent HOURS AND HOURS on for some ungiven reason… Those fucking bastards.
I have always loved the movie, Castaway. It's the sort of syrupy Hollywood feel-good picture bred for Oscars, as sentimental as a Hallmark greeting card message for a homogenized America. But the concept still manages to cut deep. Tom Hanks' character, Chunk Noland talks about his failed attempts to end his own life after fourish years on the island:
‘Cos I was never gonna get off that island. I was gonna die there, totally alone. I was gonna get sick or get injured or something. The only choice I had, the only thing I could control was when, and how, and where it was going to happen. So... I made a rope and I went up to the summit, to hang myself. I had to test it, you know? Of course. You know me. And the weight of the log snapped the limb of the tree, so I-I -, I couldn't even k!ll myself the way I wanted to. I had power over *nothing*. And that's when this feeling came over me like a warm blanket. I knew, somehow, that I had to stay alive. Somehow. I had to keep breathing. Even though there was no reason to hope. And all my logic said that I would never see this place again. So that's what I did. I stayed alive. I kept breathing. And one day my logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in and gave me a sail. And now, here I am. I'm back. In Memphis, talking to you. I have ice in my glass... And I've lost her all over again. I'm so sad that I don't have Kelly. But I'm so grateful that she was with me on that island. And I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring? - Chuck Noland, Castaway (2000)
It’s an odd thing to tie into this writing, but I kept checking to see what the tide might bring, all while pouring my dreams into this notebook. From June 2020 to October 2022, I applied to close to 1200 jobs between Indeed and Linkedin, looking for those golden handcuffs. That is not an exaggeration, 1200 jobs… A fraction responded… A fraction of those led to interviews…
And a fraction of those led to demoralizing post-interview audition round carrot dangles, until Friday, October 21, 2022, when my current employer reached out to schedule a 30-minute Zoom prescreening call. It took a few more months, but that call eventually led to the adornment of handcuffs.
I was glad to be re-shackled and looked forward to the challenge of the work I would be doing. It was meaningful work for a meaningful organization that makes the world a better place. It made the process that much easier to stomach.
I am so grateful for this job, and I am even more grateful that I didn’t listen to the various outside voices telling me to go work at Trader Joe’s, UPS, or even go back to the restaurants. Not that there is anything wrong with any of these vocations, but in the same way that none of them are beneath me, so too did I want to reach for something more, because all I have ever done is jobs that weren’t beneath me. I know that I am worthy of picking limp french fries, soggy with ketchup, out of a busbucket shelf, by hand, at 2 am in the Cheesecake Factory.
But is it possible that I can also be worthy of more than that?
Is it ok to try?
Yes, it is ok.
That notebook of dreams didn’t disappear as I onboarded to my shiny new job. In fact, its importance intensified. It was a dire reminder that in this lifeline job, I was playing a part. That work did not define me, the notebook of my cinematic dreams did, and that made it easier to compartmentalize in my new role at this organization. There were benefits, there were perks, and I had money coming in - nearly a third more than my previous salaried desk job, where I was fired via COVID layoffs and PPP loan forgiveness cutoffs.
It was time to save that money, including YouTube and Patreon funds as I figured out my next moves, which turned out to be taking the story I had plotted out and writing a screenplay. It poured out effortlessly. The troubled and turbulent births of my previous films became the impetus to do an audio play of that first draft via live streaming YouTube stream. In that way, the original vision would be preserved no matter what happened. It was marvelous to watch the dreams in my head, turn into words spoken by others as I listened to the picture they painted as they spoke. The next step would be to shoot the film itself.
The other side of that valley of uncertainty had been reached, with a new purpose to climb another mountain even more ambitious than the previous ones. Despite that former experience, I still didn’t know how to take the first step.
I sat on the fence for over a year before taking the dive.
More projects followed in the interim, all the while My Shadow lingered in the back of my mind. Its logistics were a puzzle waiting to be solved. It had to involve establishing a foundation by shooting approximately 65 pages of the protagonist’s trailer interior. A set location was needed. It was needed for a duration longer than any other I had previously attempted in filmmaking as well as hired camera and sound to go with it. That was a lot of money, perhaps more than all I had managed to save up to that point.
After exploring many options, it was looking like the only solution would be Airbnb, a costly one. And so, I hemmed and hawed, circling the same spot, over and over: I needed to start somehow, and knowing what it took to do it, waiting for another solution to present itself, only to remember that I needed to start somehow…
There were storm clouds of worry, but mild in nature. Perhaps I was merely afraid to plunge in because of the risk factor. The storm clouds began to thunder, and where there is thunder, there too, is lightning. Sometimes, lightning can strike too late. A good thing, this wasn’t one of those times, although it almost was.
Lightning struck.
It brought clarity as I realized there was a resource that was right under my Roman nose the whole time. The resource was only a resource because of a very specific window of time that was approaching far too soon. So soon, that If I hesitated any further, there simply wouldn’t be enough time to prepare for this very essential first shooting block.
I visited the location. I steeped in the available window of time I would have to work in the space. I did the math on the whole situation. I checked it and ran the numbers again, and again. It ticked every box of necessity. But it would have to be furnished. The money I didn’t spend on the Airbnb went to purchasing all matters of set dress. It was pragmatic, and it was available, now.
There is great power in the now.
It can be pregnant with opportunity if you can recognize it, and I felt that I had.
Now was the time. There might not be another. I put in a request to burn the rest of my vacation time for the fiscal year and cobbled together a 10-day production window. Would it be enough to nail down 65 pages in one location?
“Ok, let’s go find out,” I told myself.
Short notice had left me grossly underprepared for the war to come. The math had suggested it wasn’t impossible, but there was much preproduction to occur to be ready for that first shooting day. Certain roles hadn’t been cast that would be needed for various scenes within those 65 pages. The margin for error was slim to none, as I appraised the Amazon Prime delivery time estimates for various items. Money, and lots of it was being spent. This thing was happening.
Magically, everything fell into place, piece by piece. Every overwhelming hurdle put up little to no resistance when met head-on.
Film production is like an exorcism of the mind. In the same way that those intangible dreams were brought into the marble notebook, the writing on those pages was being rehearsed, spoken, and animated before the camera’s eye – All these ideas further solidified into a physical form. Frequently, that physical form varies from the written page, because of time, money, resources, imagination, and ability - all components of execution. It’s never ideal, but that's ok. That is the reality of any no-budget indie.
As production continued I watched in awe as the things I dreamed of, jobless and broke, manifested before my very eyes. I have been blessed with many gifts in my life, and this was one of the greatest.
The days were not nightmarishly long, but they were intense. Every break, every rest was burning precious finite time. But it is also that same rest that allows any sort of stamina in an endurance trial such as this.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time… With a spoon of course.
We stayed focused, worked hard, had fun, and completed those 65 pages in 7 days with 5 actors and next to no crew. The next three days were spent breaking down and cleaning up the set location, happy and satisfied.
However, there is still so much more work to be done. As I slightly alluded to above, I have been here before only to watch everything I prepared and worked for crumble to dust. Anything can happen, nothing is a given. I know that, completely.
It began with dreaming.
So, I must continue to dream while building upon this new foundation, ready to take more risks, until this film is completed.