In 1983 Donatella Baglivo filmed an interview with the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. It was an extensive interview that covered a number of subjects, and fortunately so as Tarkovsky was to die but three years later. About an hour into the piece Baglivo asks Tarkovsky what advice he had for …]]>

In 1983 Donatella Baglivo filmed an interview with the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. It was an extensive interview that covered a number of subjects, and fortunately so as Tarkovsky was to die but three years later. About an hour into the piece Baglivo asks Tarkovsky what advice he had for young people, to which he responded with the following -

“I think I’d like to say only that they should learn to be alone and try to spend as much time as possible by themselves. I think one of the faults of young people today is that they try to come together around events that are noisy, almost aggressive at times. This desire to be together in order to not feel alone is an unfortunate symptom, in my opinion. Every person needs to learn from childhood how to spend time with oneself. That doesn’t mean he should be lonely, but that he shouldn’t grow bored with himself because people who grow bored in their own company seem to me in danger, from a self-esteem point of view.”

What immediately struck me upon hearing Tarkovsky’s words is how they contradicted not just the lyrics of The Beach Boys song I’d had on in the background (Don’t Worry, Baby), but also they seemed at odds with my overall instinctual grasp of the situation. After all, it’s not unfair to state that a recommendation that one spend adequate time alone in order to be comfortable with oneself is unexpected advice. What’s more interesting however is that looking around now, 40 years since Tarkovsky said these words, our culture has made it increasingly difficult to find the solitude he recommends at all. The latest advances in technology have filled even those moments when we are physically distanced from people with the constant sense that we have  a distracting amount of company. It would be no exaggeration to claim that it’s actually difficult to be by ourselves, nor do we feel like we want to, a situation that the psychologist and MIT social studies professor Sherry Turkle has suggested is more symptomatic of our loneliness than a cure for it. So as Tarkovsky suggests, perhaps despite our social pretensions we are all hiding from ourselves in plain sight.

Further exploration of this notion took me down a line of thinking which led me to quite unexpected conclusions both about what technology’s radical rewiring of our social interactions could mean for the future of our society, and the meanings of the words ‘god’ and ‘art’ to us now.

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Nine years before Tarkovsky conducted that interview, the philosopher of communication theory Marshall McLuhan posed the notion that -

“The most human thing about us is our technology.”

The statement certainly would explain the exponential spread of social-based technologies throughout our culture. These days connectivity runs like water from half of the holes in our immediate vicinity. We don’t just feel the urge to constantly update people with our state of being; we are developing an emotional dependency on the response it might glean. In fact research conducted this year by the Psychology Department at the University of Michigan suggested that -

“The more people used Facebook at one time point, the worse they felt the next; the more they used Facebook over two-weeks, the more their life satisfaction levels declined over time. Interacting with other people “directly” did not predict these negative outcomes.”

So could McLuhan in fact mean ‘mortal’, ‘imperfect’, or maybe just simply ‘revealing’ when he uses the word ‘human’?

A year or two back the comic and actress Sarah Silverman pondered aloud (on Twitter) that she felt that the existence of Twitter itself must have prevented many suicides. Joking or not, it’s something worth thinking about. On the one hand, the ability to reach out in the dark for validation when feeling very alone is something the internet has granted us in many new ways. On the other hand, like the Beach Boys’ song, contemporary culture is always reaching back to grab that hand, and might as well be mouthing the words, “if you knew how much I loved you, baby, nothing could go wrong with you.”

To quote Sherry Turkle from her 2012 TED talk Connected, but alone? -

“When I ask people “What’s wrong with having a conversation?” People say, “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with having a conversation. It takes place in real time and you can’t control what you’re going to say.” So that’s the bottom line. Texting, email, posting, all of these things let us present the self as we want to be.

Human relationships are rich and they’re messy and they’re demanding. And we clean them up with technology. And when we do, one of the things that can happen is that we sacrifice conversation for mere connection. We short-change ourselves. And over time, we seem to forget this, or we seem to stop caring.”

Given that a noticeable quantity of seemingly personal relationships are seen as part and parcel of public online engagements, it’s perhaps expected that businesses are now heartily involved in the matter and reward you as much as they can for keeping things that way. In so doing they augment our growing addiction to it. There are now very few websites, apps or social networking tools that one can use for work or pleasure that don’t enticingly suggest that you should share everything you do with your friends. This means that the line between staying in touch with friends and promoting products has also somewhat blurred in our minds, and has added further complexity to the psychology of the matter – an issue I will return to later.

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It’s easy to believe now that every passing decade represents the natural evolution of our greater understanding of the human condition. Thanks in part to the Dark Ages, it has taken us centuries to understand that different sexualities should be encouraged and that perhaps nationalism, religion, traditions, cultures, languages and money are all, whilst certainly instrumental in the growth of our civilization, in fact limiting factors in humankind’s rather precarious journey toward some kind of improbable universal harmony. One possible path to this harmony is via The Singularity that futurist Ray Kurzweil has championed -

“The Singularity is an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today—the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity.”

This is a concept which, as noted by Kurzweil in his 2005 book The Singularity is Near, could present the following conundrum-

“The Singularity will allow us to transcend these limitations of our biological bodies and brains … There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine.”

Like Marshall McLuhan, it’s easy to be awestruck at how technology is evolving in our hands and at the part it is playing in our self-discovery. After two decades of ideological transfusion, the Internet would appear to have become the new blood flowing through our various technological devices, and these all the more lifelike pet machines of ours are proving particularly well behaved in times of war and civic unrest. In the last few years Twitter has brought power to revolutionaries in Iran, Tunisia and Egypt, Julian Assange’s Wikileaks controversially pulled back veils on many levels of government deceit, and the 4chan forums have heralded the birth of Anonymous, an online, arguably peerless, headless political group of doubtless great influence – to name but a few instances.

Online, technology’s increased utility in times of strife and its inherent insistence that we all ‘stay in touch’ further contests Tarkovsky’s dictum. However in his defense again the Professor of Critical Theory at Toronto University, Mari Ruti, alludes to how we commonly and unfortunately mistake our projected ‘personality’ for what she calls our ‘singular self’. Not to be confused with Sigmund Freud’s Id and Ego, this is a point that bears closer scrutiny when thinking about the psychological side effects of social networking. PhD student Daniel Tutt paraphrases her forthcoming paper thusly -

“Your ‘personality’ is thus the most artificial self, constantly undergoing change and flux. It remains the primary zone by which the self-help discourse seeks to repair. What [they miss however is another] dimension to your self, the ‘singular self’.

Your singular self is the self touched by the real, what we might call your character. The singular self expresses something about your desire and its relation to your drives. The singular self is composed of the unsocialized elements of ones life. What makes life unique is our relation to this core of undeadness, which connects us to a sort of innate existential loneliness.

The singular self is the bruised self. That part of the self we are told we should keep at bay in self-help discourse, that part of the self that we mustn’t let out of its cage less we lose our power or it limits our advancement at work, etc.”

It’s amusingly coincidental that on the one hand you have Kurzweil arguing for a ‘singularity’ that is perhaps the ultimate ‘togetherness’ and on the other Ruti is arguing for a greater awareness of the ‘singular self’, which could so easily be buried by The Singularity. I say buried because if machine processors come to equal human brains and it becomes harder to differentiate between either as a result, what is stopping everything from being networked and our singular, bruised, imperfect human identities becoming a thing of the past? This soft, hidden ‘singular self’ is after all what makes us really us, rather than any fabricated personality built to help us hide within the walls of society.

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In June last year, the American blogger David Roberts delivered a TEDx talk, in which he outlined the current state of the planet Earth’s global warming situation in layman’s terms. He illustrated that, at best, we have around 150 more years left to live on this planet. Beyond that, unless the whole world changes its attitude to global warming and we make some severe changes to how we approach our daily consumer lifestyles, our grandchildren will see what some will describe as our judgement day. Not to mention our great grandchildren who, if not dead, will endure summer months consisting of hiding from a Sun that blisters their skin like it would vampires.

This horrifying thought brought my mind back to The Singularity, which Kurzweil’s projected timeline predicts will be upon us just 30 years from now. One thing we know for sure is that this prophesied acceleration of technology will grant us solutions we can’t remotely conceive of at present. However placing one’s hopes in such an unpredictable and potentially disruptive moment seems ludicrous and so we should proceed under the assumption that there will be no deus ex machina to save us. The great irony is that despite everything discussed earlier about the power of our social networks, the fact that we’ve gotten to this fateful moment in history proves that the likelihood of everyone coming to a consensus on the problem swiftly enough to change anything is implausible and likely impossible. Even though we talk to each other every day through one device or another, the fateful paradox is that we are rarely talking about things that could prevent a vast array of inevitable future disasters. Yes, we know from the examples above in Iran and Egypt that we will stop and react when people are dying, but the prevention of such things in the future appears to be impossible due to the inevitability of human greed, and an unfortunate default level of ignorance.

Perhaps this is because the term social-networking is actually a misnomer, when the reality is that it’s self-destruction disguised as self-promotion. The critical word there being ‘self.’ As Sherry Turkle put it, “we slip into thinking that always being connected is going to make us feel less alone. But we’re at risk, because actually it’s the opposite that’s true. If we’re not able to be alone, we’re going to be more lonely.”

We have created a tool to share and achieve common goals and it is turning us inward and preventing us from taking the time to see the bigger picture.

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In April of this year the American pop-star Justin Bieber visited holocaust victim Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam and left a message in the guest-book. The message read -

“Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber.”

As some well know, Beliebers are what Justin Bieber’s devout fans call themselves. The implication was that as much as a kid in his position could possibly relate to Ms. Frank’s strength, stamina and eventual plight in the face of unthinkably grim adversity, Bieber hoped that had they been acquainted that she might be an obsessive fan of his. Not a friend. Not even a ‘friend’ in the Facebook sense of the word. Just a fan. Someone who ‘likes’ him. Another screaming teenager who buys his records and subsidizes his further detachment from from reality. For even at 19 years old, Justin is aware that the best drugs just take you away from it all as painlessly as possible.

This statement is the perfect metaphor for the vicarious, disproportionately entitled world we live in today. Try as some might, you cannot entirely blame Justin Bieber for his behaviour. Those who have elevated him to the position he’s in by buying his products, those who talk about him in the press just to sell their product, and those who care to even bring his name up at a party: we’re all to blame. Just as we were all to blame for what happened to Michael Jackson. To look in awe at the terrible circumstances these idols of ours get themselves into is to look into a mirror. Justin Bieber was discovered on YouTube because enough of us ‘liked’ his videos more than anyone else’s.

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Whether consciously or not, there are some who are fighting this problem. There are some who are using these social environments that we’re all using to hide from reality, in order to achieve quite the opposite result.

On November 8th of last year, the English technologist and artist James Bridle created a new kind of account on the popular mobile application Instagram. Titling the account Dronestagram, he began to post photographs of locations on Google Maps that have recently been hit by military drone strikes. Below each photograph he posts any public data he can find about the strike in terms of location and the number and nature of the casualties. He continues to post these to this day whenever a new strike is made public.

Dronestagram’s bite-size encapsulations of secretive, multinational government warmongering pull people out of a world of cats, meals, sunsets and pretty girls and deliver a dose of global reality not even seen on the front pages of their newspapers. Furthermore it delivers an experience that perversely echoes that of the operators of these drones. Each one boxed away in Creech Air Force Base, north of Las Vegas in Nevada. Each one sitting in front of what amounts to little more than a shitty looking video game. Each one perhaps aware that there’s a bad ‘one armed bandit’ joke in there somewhere.

It makes you wonder at what point during our path towards The Singularity we will lose touch with Ruti’s singular self, and in the end who will be controlling whom. If the machines are simply an extension of us as McLuhan suggests, is The Singularity our only possible destiny? Could Tyler Durden from Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club be more right than he knew, when he stated that, “self-improvement is masturbation?”

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On Wednesday June 12th of this year, the American author David Guterson delivered a commencement speech to the graduates of Roosevelt High School in Seattle that upset a great deal of the students and parents in attendance. At different points they can be heard jeering and at one point a girl even lets out a fearful shriek. In the 20 or so minutes Guterson allows himself to deliver his message he cuts through the many levels of denial and deceit we face when finishing our schooling. He begs us to more deeply consider the choices we might make when trying to live a healthy and peaceful existence out there in the really real world. Here’s an excerpt -

“Our very sophisticated modern economy [...] knows that you are insecure about your appearance and in advertising it does everything it can to make you feel even worse about it, because if you feel worse about it, you will buy expensive clothing or pay a doctor to change your face. So in our society, not only do you have to be unhappy on that existential level that is just part and parcel of being human, you also have to be unhappy in ways designed for you by others [...] Add to this your natural anxiety about the future—your distress about what it means that we are developing smart drones and melting the polar ice cap—and happiness begins to feel, for a lot of us, impossible. So impossible that the rate of mental illness in America, of depression in particular, is higher than it has ever been. The world might seem full of possibility, and it is that way, but it is also a place where you can very quickly find yourself among the living dead—a being without the means for happiness.

Here is something you can do about it—or something you can do to get started. Take whatever handheld device you own out of your pocket or bag and set the alarm for 2 hours from now. When it makes whatever noise you have selected for it to make, ask yourself how often during the last 2 hours you were actually in charge of your thoughts. How often was your mind just rolling along like a pack of drunken monkeys, doing whatever it wants without you having anything to say about it? How often was it busy being bored, dissatisfied, critical of others, self-absorbed, insecure, self-hating, anxious, and/or afraid? How often were you genuinely happy? And exactly at the moment your alarm makes its noise, where was your mind and what was it doing? Because in the end your mind is the one thing you have going for you when it comes to happiness.”

Guterson is again zeroing in on our pocketed machines but additionally highlighting my earlier concern about commerce’s part in all of this. Weave in everybody’s desire to make a buck and you’ve put another brick in the wall of our desire to remain jacked into this technology every waking minute. Sherry Turkle ended her TED speech optimistically by insisting we find some kind of psychological balance: she suggested we compartmentalize our lives and habitats for machine and non-machine use. Guterson’s suggestion, that you use the machines themselves to pull you out of this proverbial Matrix, seems somewhat more devious in comparison. Either way, it would seem that for now the way out of this is certainly through.

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A few months before Guterson had stood at that podium, I had had an argument with two friends here in New York about the Kathryn Bigelow feature film Zero Dark 30. I was incensed by the nature in which I felt this film presented itself as fact, given the immediacy of the subject matter. Based on all we’d learned from the Wikileaks scandal it seemed incredibly unlikely that a film about a top secret US government military operation could be a factual account. Bigelow should have postponed the making of it until many years had passed and more details could be confirmed as truths, or at least considered an approach similar to Gus Van Sant’s treatment of the 1999 Columbine High School killings in his film Elephant.  The conclusion I therefore drew was that she did it very much as a reflection of her own ego as a female filmmaker (championing a story about a strong female lead in a major contemporary military debacle), and also, for the money. The whole argument reminded me of these remarks from the late filmmaker John Cassavetes -

“The cause of motion pictures should not be a dehumanizing one. Major companies are making pictures that are disgusting. They make anti-war movies but exploit it by making money on those anti-war pictures, by publicizing and selling them. People on screen are stripped naked and left there to die. The thinking is supposedly committed to a revolutionary spirit but lacks the depth of intentions necessary for such discussions. Audiences begin to accept this exploitation as part of their lives. They find themselves laughing at what isn’t funny, angered by what they don’t care about, and influenced and contaminated by hours of heartfelt, unmotivated propaganda.”

These sentiments, particularly those of the exploitative suggestion, tie strongly back to both what Tarkovsky and Guterson are saying and linger like a stench around the actions of those like Justin Bieber. A kid so unaware of the world around him, so fueled by his imagined value of people’s interest in him, that he felt superior to even those figures in history who stood for the level of freedom he enjoys how.

Speaking of exploitation, in May of this year Edward Snowden, infrastructure analyst at the US National Security Agency-contracted firm Booz Allen Hamilton, leaked details of several top-secret United States and British government mass surveillance programs to the press. Whilst the revelation was more ‘undeniable proof’ rather than any kind of surprise, it was still unnerving to have many of our darker suspicions confirmed. As constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead wrote just a week ago on the website for his civil liberties organization, The Rutherford Institute -

“Anything and everything you’ve ever said or done, from the trivial to the damning—phone calls, Facebook posts, Twitter tweets, Google searches, emails, bookstore and grocery purchases, bank statements, commuter toll records, etc.—will be tracked, collected, catalogued and analyzed by the UDC’s supercomputers and teams of government agents.

By sifting through the detritus of your once-private life, the government will come to its own conclusions about who you are, where you fit in, and how best to deal with you should the need arise. Indeed, we are all becoming data collected in government files. Whether or not the surveillance is undertaken for ‘innocent’ reasons, surveillance of all citizens, even the innocent sort, gradually poisons the soul of a nation. Surveillance limits personal options—denies freedom of choice—and increases the powers of those who are in a position to enjoy the fruits of this activity.

Whether he intended it or not, it well may be that Obama, moving into the home stretch and looking to establish a lasting “legacy” to characterize his time in office, is remembered as the president who put the final chains in place to imprison us in an electronic concentration camp from which there is no escape.”

This speaks almost entirely to Cassavetes exploitation fears and stands as a powerful omen in the face of our internet addictions. The imbalanced sense of entitlement that different classes of humanity exhibit will likely precipitate an inevitable fight for control; with this in mind, whatever The Singularity heralds, such a battle will deeply shape any eventual union between humans and their machines.

So what’s next? If learning to be comfortable in one’s own company is how to find a satisfactory level of inner peace, and saving our species requires leaping off a precipice of unimaginable  worldwide collaboration, what is our real goal with this thing we call the internet and why do its pretty flowers give us a false sense of happiness? What needs to happen next for us to be able to turn down the volume and hear our own thoughts as Tarkovsky asks, or is self-confidence no longer a tool we’ll need in this one possible future? Shouldn’t we be more comfortable in our own skins so that we can focus on those next to us falling to their knees in pain? Is The Singularity an answer to this or simply a possible fate that we’ve made for ourselves? The presence of such a concept certainly makes you begin to wonder what the universe is trying to tell us about the direction we are headed in.

Towards the end of the HBO television show Six Feet Under the protagonist Nate Fisher turns to his sister Claire and says “Stop listening to the static. Everything in the world is like this transmission, making its way across the dark. But everything – death, life, everything – it’s all completely suffused with static. You know? But if you listen to the static too much, it fucks you up.”

One thing is for sure, we’re all able to control one single thing more than anything else in this world, and that’s our minds – but we’re surrounded by voices telling us that that’s impossible. Before he died the stand-up comedian Bill Hicks used to end his performances with the following speech -

“The world is like a ride at an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it, you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round; it has thrills and chills and it’s very brightly colored and it’s very loud and it’s fun… for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question: “Is this real, or is this just a ride?” And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, and they say, “Hey – don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride.”

And we kill those people – “Shut him up! We have a lot invested in this ride – shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry! Look at my big bank account, and my family! This just has to be real!”

But it’s just a ride. And we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok? Jesus – murdered; Martin Luther King – murdered; Malcolm X – murdered; Gandhi – murdered; John Lennon – murdered; Reagan – wounded …

But it doesn’t matter because: It’s just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It’s only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. Here’s what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride: Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defense each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.”

I’ve listened to Mr. Hicks give that speech a hundred times but writing this essay seems to shed new light on its meaning, particularly when you realize what it could take to explore space together. If we only have 150 years left on this planet, it’s important that we start thinking about this, particularly when doing so may involve a truce with technology that we may never recover from – despite all our concerns for our individual state of mind, the loss of self that The Singularity heralds may actually be our only way off this planet.

To quote Cassavetes again -

“These days, everybody is supposed to be so intelligent: ‘Isn’t it terrible about Nixon getting elected?’ ‘Did you hear about the earthquake in Peru?’ And you’re supposed to have all the answers. But when it gets down to the nitty-gritty, like, ‘What is bugging you, mister? Why can’t you make it with your wife? Why do you lie awake all night staring at the ceiling? Why, why, why do you refuse to recognize you have problems and deal with them?’ The answer is that people have forgotten how to relate or respond. In this day of mass communications and instant communications, there is no communication between people. Instead it’s long-winded stories or hostile bits, or laughter. But nobody’s really laughing. It’s more an hysterical, joyless kind of sound. Translation: ‘I am here and I don’t know why.’”

It’s interesting to think that if we do find out why we are here, given the acceleration in our intelligence, scope and understanding that will likely come with The Singularity, it may well not be a concept we’ll enjoy as individuals. In this way you begin to realize not just that god is our answer to the question of why we are here, but that getting closer to god means we all may have to become one. Consequently you realize that we may evolve beyond the questions art seeks to address: representations and musings on the imperfect beauty of being one of many living individuals, not having all the answers and not knowing what is going to happen next. In this respect art may prove to be a fleeting concept in and of itself: a prelude to finding god.

After attending the Sundance Shorts Lab at BAM this past Sunday, I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of people wanting to write, direct, or produce a short and submit it to the Sundance Film Fest. For 8,000 submissions, there are only 80 films that …]]>

After attending the Sundance Shorts Lab at BAM this past Sunday, I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of people wanting to write, direct, or produce a short and submit it to the Sundance Film Fest. For 8,000 submissions, there are only 80 films that are actually accepted into the program. That’s a slim margin for success, and daunting for any filmmaker angling to elevate themselves to the next level. I was reminded throughout the day that just because you don’t get a short into the Sundance Film Fest, it doesn’t mean you aren’t a good filmmaker. Maybe there was a similar film that edged your film out by a fraction, maybe it was simply the luck of the draw. For whatever reason, I stopped thinking about the day as ‘ways to get into Sundance’ and started thinking about it as ‘unique ways to tell an authentic story really well’. Here are a few observations from the day and lessons I learned from the various panels:

Programming Tips

The programmers had a Q&A on how they select projects for Sundance (and a rough outline of how other festivals select films). Ultimately, it comes down to how they can group films together: theme, genre, etc. They look for similarities that help them assess what type of slate they have overall. From there, they choose films based on how they’re grouped. Even if someone else has made a short film similar to yours, was the story told as “interestingly” as yours? At the end of the day, the programmers themselves always ask the same question: How did the short film affect the viewer? Regardless of production value, concept, plot, theme, or acting, they will always think back to how the film affected them emotionally. I thought this was a valuable lesson for filmmakers, since they should consider their audience pragmatically throughout the writing/production process. Before spending time and money in production, it might be a good idea to think about how an audience would react to your film while it’s still in the early story development stages.

Story Development

Both filmmakers Craig Zobel (Compliance) and Howard Gertler (How to Survive a Plague) had refreshing perspectives on story development that most screenwriting books don’t really offer. Craig explained how he discovered his story for� Compliance and The Great World of Sound. When writing, he taped one crucial question to his keyboard and referred to it constantly to keep himself focused:“What bigger question are you asking with the film?” He said that this was his biggest guiding principle. He said that this question should supersede plot and link more directly to theme, but never be stated outright. Rather, it’s best dramatized throughout the story.

Another interesting nugget Craig shared: while researching for a story, he noticed that he would often have a very specific reaction to something he found. He would then evaluate how he reacted and analyze why he reacted that way. When Craig was researching for Compliance, he noticed he shrugged off the victims of a fast food restaurant for sexual assault as ‘naïve’ and that most people wouldn’t do something like that. After reflecting, he wondered why he responded so defensively and why his initial response was to dismiss these people. He began to think about how any person might get caught up in a situation like that and suddenly he was on his way.

Working with Actors

Craig Zobel explained that actors always need to have a purpose in their scene, otherwise things slow down or the actor loses focus in the scene. This is a bit of a textbook point but still important- always give actors a specific goal to reach in the scene to help them focus and stay in the moment. It gives them a purpose beyond stating the lines.

Also, it’s always helpful to give actors a couple different goals to vary performances. Sure, you could get 8-10 takes of the same performance, but that won’t give you much to work with in the edit room. It’s refreshing for the actors and helpful for you to have different emotional ranges from the actors to color your story.

In the ‘Working with Actors’ panel, Alex Karpovsky shared that as both an actor and director, the most alienating thing a director can do is to just leave the actor hanging after a take, or fail to provide any context for the actor in the headspace of the scene. As a director, Karpovsky always has a conversation at the top of the scene with each actor to ‘dial in’ to the context of the scene: What’s at stake? What are the beats of the scene? Where does the scene fall within the greater story? What does each character know? What do they think they know? What have been the dynamics of each of the characters with respect to one another? The more context you can give an actor, the more they can use in each take.

Collaboration

In a panel with Producer Mike Ryan (Old Joy, Palindromes, The Comedy), DP Jody Lee-Lipes (Wild Combination, Tiny Furniture, Martha Marcy May Marlene) and Editor Melody London (Down By Lawy, Mystery Train, New York I Love You) they all echoed the same sentiment- when working with collaborators it’s important to set up a code or manifesto for the project that gets everyone on the same page right away. It’s essential that you identify what film you’re trying to make, and then establish that all your key collaborators are on board. If your editor is trying to turn your campy horror Zombie film into an ironic statement of post-recession malaise, it might be good to discuss before collaborating with them. Talking to your collaborators about your goals and purposes for the film, even if they are emotional, is a good way to help your collaborators relate to the story.

In the panel with filmmakers Cutter Hodierne (Fishing Without Nets), Rashaad Ernesto Green (Gun Hill Road), and Eliza Hittman (It Felt Like Love), the topic of discussion was ‘navigating the business end of your film from short to feature’. One point that all the filmmakers made was how important it is that you not wait to get your film made. Set a date, and then tell collaborators, investors, distributors, etc that you’re making a movie on this date, and that they should either get on board or get out of the way. They all stated that if they had had discussions with potential investors and said something along the lines of ‘I have a script, but I’m just waiting on financing’, they likely wouldn’t have gotten the same enthusiasm.

If you do end up being one of the lucky ones getting accepted into Sundance, be prepared to have an upcoming project. It’s a total waste if you get to the fest, get meetings with a powerful distributor and have nothing on slate.

Of course, this is a top line digest of some of the points discussed at the Sundance Shorts Lab. Hopefully it proved a little useful information about the day. For a full day event, there’s just too much to fit into one blog post. As always, any workshop or conference is always a fantastic way to learn from filmmakers who have been lucky enough to find their film a place in the world. Sign up for IFP’s newsletter for a weekly digest on upcoming events in the film world and how you can stay connected.

Lena Dunham has been coming up a lot lately in my therapy sessions.

I don’t feel safe in the world now that she’s out and about.  Let me clarify: my work is not safe- my potential career is in jeopardy.  We’re too damn similar and she beat me to …]]>

Lena Dunham has been coming up a lot lately in my therapy sessions.

I don’t feel safe in the world now that she’s out and about.  Let me clarify: my work is not safe- my potential career is in jeopardy.  We’re too damn similar and she beat me to the punch.

It seems inevitable that upon hearing of my upcoming feature film, DISPOSABLE LOVERS, people draw parallels between myself and Dunham. We’re both comedic writer/directors from New York who star in our own work, do not conform to the normal standard of beauty and take pleasure in exposing the humiliating/ non-glamorous elements of being young, impulsive and sexually adventurous.  An old professor summed it best she exclaimed, “You’re the gay, Iranian Lena Dunham!  That’s what you need to say when pitching yourself!”

All along in my pursuit of becoming a filmmaker, I’ve been blindly confident about one thing: the authenticity of my voice.  But does Lena Dunham’s rise to rock-star level fame mean there’s no room for me in the mainstream?  Does her existence automatically turn me into the cheap off-brand Lena Dunham?  Will DISPOSABLE LOVERS end up premiering at the Hoboken Film Festival for Ambiguously Ethnic Women & The Gluten Intolerant and then be banished to the Gay & Lesbian section of Netflix?  What is it about other people’s success that indicates your own failure?

Every season it starts with Sundance, then Berlin, SXSW and now even the Oscars.  I’m watching, hoping more women are featured and given the attention they deserve and then when one shows up that resembles me in the slightest I’m filled with horrifyingly competitive negativity.  The emotional journey starts “Yay!  You go girl!” and drops down to “Yeah, the film was ok, but I could have done it better.”

Oh god, am I the next Toby Jones?  Toby Jones is that actor who played Truman Capote in that 2006 Truman Capote movie. No, not CAPOTE, the one that was nominated for all those Oscars, the other Capote film that came out that year- the one that nobody saw.  He went on play Hitchcock in the Hitchcock film that came out a few months ago.  No, not the one called HITCHCOCK with Helen Mirren- the one that was made for TV and co-starred Sienna Miller.

Here’s the thing: I respect Lena Dunham’s work, when I’m not so busy envying the position she’s in and justifying why she’s there and I’m not.  At first I went through a stage of searching for reasons the show isn’t worthy of the hype.  The biggest complaint people seem to have is that the cast is entirely white and straight.  I milked this for a while, but is it Dunham’s responsibility to make a series that represents the world as it should be? Her work is authentic to life as she experiences it and that includes a lot of white girls with a certain level of entitlement, naiveté and privilege.  It’s true that most stories told on film and television speak to that audience exclusively, but I can’t blame Lena Dunham for that. Do I like the characters on the show? No, I think they’re all asses.  But I see that as the point of the series, the humor of it.  I’m along for the ride, I like how icky it gets and I’m compelled to see what’s going to happen next.

I’ve experienced female filmmakers play a very strange push/pull game with each other.  It goes: “Yay, I’m so happy for you, congrats! (Please die!)”   There’s a passage from Tina Fey’s memoir Bossypants that stuck with me,  “People are going to try to trick you. To make you feel that you are in competition with one another. ‘You’re up for a promotion. If they go for a woman, it’ll be between you and Barbara.’ Don’t be fooled. You’re not in competition with other women. You’re in competition with everyone.”

This competition, is it self-imposed?  There’s no cap on the number narrative films that depict the plight of the slightly overweight, average-looking middle-aged curmudgeon who can’t seem to make it work with the women in his life.  Yet the moment a female-driven project begins to garners major attention there’s a silent understanding that there’s less room for the rest of us.

I can only speak for myself here, I don’t know if other female filmmakers feel this way.  Perhaps I’m insane and this is just my own neurosis, which has flourished under the tutelage of my very competitive family.  This year, during the Oscars memorial montage, my father turned to me with tears in his eyes, “Desi, they died to make room for you!”  This is his way of showing support, but in my mind it’s confirmation that there are a limited number of spaces in successful adult world and others must DIE to enable me to reach the top.

Instead of holding myself up against her, perhaps I need to focus on how inspired I am by her journey.  Lena Dunham is a hard worker.  She made a film (for peanuts) that was compelling and funny enough to garner the right attention, and she did it on her own. Perhaps if we were to put in just a little of the energy spent in this unspoken dick-measuring-contest into being fans of each other’s work and then minding our own fucking business then this feeling of jealousy/competition would dissipate.

Being who I am, I never imagined it would be possible to experience world-wide success.  The fact that someone whose work parallels mine is on the cover of Rolling Stone scares the shit out of me- the fantasy is both so close and so much farther away.  You make the work you do on blind faith that if it’s good enough, you can carve out a space for yourself as a working filmmaker.  If it’s good it really won’t have mattered that Lena Dunham dealt with similar subject matter, because that’s what good work does, it stands apart.

That said, thank god she’s not Iranian or bisexual otherwise I’d have to cut her.

It’s not like when we were kids we dreamed we’d grow-up some day and have our very own web series. Margaret wanted to be Mowgli. Max wanted to be a majorette. (No, really.) But here we are, and you know what? We really like making The 3 Bits.

We …]]>

It’s not like when we were kids we dreamed we’d grow-up some day and have our very own web series. Margaret wanted to be Mowgli. Max wanted to be a majorette. (No, really.) But here we are, and you know what? We really like making The 3 Bits.

We met in Boston a few years ago. Margaret was a young photographer; Max was working on a PhD in literature at Harvard. Before long, Max dropped out of his program and we opened a photo studio together. Our intention was to start a career in film on the side. Like you do. We took a month off and wrote a feature-length movie, sure that someone would want to make it. Because it is bad-ass.

That screenplay has been stuffed under a mattress for two years now. It took us almost that long to realize that, having zero formal training and even less in the way of connections, we were not going to sell the script. We could either go to film school or start making movies ourselves. We chose the latter. We read as much Christine Vachon as we could get our hands on and drank from the fountain of Ted Hope. And then we had an idea for a film that we thought was simple and executable: a story about two young gay guys who try to get their friends to join them for an orgy.

 As we started to move our little script (30 pages) toward production, we decided not to make a short film intended for festivals. Why? Everyone seemed to know that:

• Festivals are size-queens: they only want films about 8 minutes long;
• Taking a short to a festival involves all sorts of prohibitive costs;
• The chances of a short film finding its way from a festival to a large audience, well, they aren’t good.

The last point was the real kicker. We came to understand that making a show for the web would allow us to tell the stories we wanted to tell for as long as we had the resources to tell them, to distribute them at very little cost, and to find an audience for them anywhere in the world.

Once we decided to make our short film script into a web series, we had a little hiccup that turned us on to something really unique. Max likes jokes. Margaret is serious. Well, that’s an oversimplification, but you get the idea. It’s one thing to write a funny short film. It’s quite another to write an entire season, or multiple seasons, of snappy, punched-up comedy. Margaret got nervous. She was like, “I DON’T WANT TO WRITE AN ENDLESS SITCOM.” And Max was like, “WHY ARE YOU YELLING AT ME.”

So we decided to give our main character, Henry, two siblings, Roman and Madison. And instead of writing them all into his story, we gave them their own shows. One is a fast-paced, raunchy gay comedy. Another is a sexy, knife-fighting, lesbian drama. The other is a mommy blog on crack. And this is where we realized that we’d stumbled onto something special.

Way back in the 90s, you could only watch a TV show when it was on the air. Now people can watch shows in whatever order they like. But TV shows still unroll from pilot to finale. We did something unusual: we made a world out of three shows that unroll side by side. Viewers can choose how to experience this world. If someone wants to watch Henry’s episodes and not Madison’s, that’s cool. But if they want a panoramic view of the Bits family, they can watch all three. That freedom is part of the fun, and it’s something the internet does better than TV.

Episode 1 of Henry Bits is available at the3bits.com. A trailer for Roman Bits is on its way next week. Expect more on this blog about the making, funding, and marketing of the show in coming weeks.

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IFP so sweetly asked me to do a few write-ups on “Making Short Films”. I’m certainly not the expert by any …]]>  

IFP so sweetly asked me to do a few write-ups on “Making Short Films”. I’m certainly not the expert by any means, but I can relay my own experiences and what works for me in case it helps anyone else.

Recently, I’ve had two short films play Sundance, Hellion (2012) and Black Metal (2013). And before that I had a children’s short film, Love Bug that played the kids’ festival circuit for several years. I’m a little all over the map with genre, but at the heart of it all, I just believe in a good story and interesting characters.

Writing a short film should take the effort of a feature. I’ll spend 10 drafts on a 6-page script just like I would on a feature script. I’ll use the same principles … three act structure, inciting incident, wants, flaws, character arcs, choices …

But the first thing I ask myself when approaching any project is “What makes this special?” What makes these characters and this story unique? Have we seen it before? If so, how can I flip it or take an interesting approach?” It certainly helps having been a shorts screener at a few festivals. You realize what people are making over and over and over again. Let’s just say zombies, gun toting drug deals gone bad, heavy abuse stories, the apocalypse, grim reapers, the afterlife … you get the point.

With that said, usually the first few ideas you have are the first few ideas everyone has. So go deeper. Make a list. Usually the crazier ideas you have that are further down that list are the more unique and interesting ones.

As far as approaching story structure, I’m a big fan of creating a pretty simple spine or backbone for all of my scripts. It doesn’t matter how insane or crazy or out there your script is, but what are the fundamentals? This is where I start.

Main Character: Which character has the biggest character arc? Who’s POV is this from?

Want: What does your character want? (Love? Acceptance? Fame? The Girl?) What kind of tangible goals do they have?

Flaw: What’s your character’s flaw? I always start with the seven deadly sins. Wrath, Sloth, Lust, Greed, Envy, Pride, Gluttony … and then thinking of things like lack of confidence or loss of faith. What is the internal flaw that my character is going to grow from throughout these five to ten minutes? Are they going from Pride to Humility? Or Lack of Confidence to Confidence? Or Wrath to Peace? What their flaw is and what they’re learning are the most important elements of any story. Basically how does your character change?

Inciting Incident: What is the event that changes this from any other day? What sets your story in motion? Is it discovering an alien? Or getting grounded? Or watching someone’s head explode?

Stakes: What’s at stake? What heightens this situation for us? What’s challenging our character’s flaw and forcing them to grow? What keeps us on the edge of our seat to find out what happens next? Will he tell her that he loves her? Will they get out of the cave alive?

Climax: What is the pinnacle of this story? What kind of situation can you put your character in so that they have to make a huge choice? What is this moment of crisis?

Choice: What’s the choice your character makes? Hopefully they’ve learned something and make a choice away from their flaw.
Learns: What does your character learn in the end? You want your character to change or grow, so usually what they learn is the opposite of their flaw. Confidence, selflessness, humility …

Theme: This is usually one word that I’ll hang my whole story on. On former projects those words have been: Strength, Fear, Monster, Manhood … this is the word I write on a post-it and tack to my computer. It’s a word I’ll come back to when I find myself in a rut with a specific detail … whether it’s what kind of job they go to, to what kind of stuffed animal they cart around. I go back to that one word.

I feel like if you can break your script down into really really simple terms, a word here or there for each of these things, it simplifies and demystifies the writing process. This is what really helps me.

But again, the most important question you should be asking yourself about your story or your film … “What makes this special?”

I mentioned the Biennale Cinema College grounds are a former insane asylum, right?  Because we have all gone entirely bonkers.  The schedule has been one of crushing deadlines on rewrites that have occupied much of our free time, budget analysis and re-analysis and production schedule fine-combing …]]>

I mentioned the Biennale Cinema College grounds are a former insane asylum, right?  Because we have all gone entirely bonkers.  The schedule has been one of crushing deadlines on rewrites that have occupied much of our free time, budget analysis and re-analysis and production schedule fine-combing down to the dollar (and Euro) and minute. Okay, so,

The good:  Our project, Memphis, is looking really strong – the characters now feel like real people and a key scene at the end has gone from an interior to an exterior and, for some magic reason, it makes the entire concept work in a more natural and organic way. The budget and schedule are air tight and, even more important, truly feasible.  And it isn’t just our project – everyone’s film here has gone through transformations and changes and, with the bulk of the work done, each project stands on firmer ground than when they arrived – the lab works.

The bad:  during this process, we have all gone somewhat insane or suffered a flu/fever on this island.  I walked by an Italian producer yesterday and instead of greeting me he simply said, ‘Blah blah blah.’ And it was perfect because I knew exactly what he was saying!  A Thai film project has changed its title and storyline 3 times in 5 days (and it is awesome, btw).  A Spanish producer and I guzzled wine last night as the conversation around us was on a philosophical approach to immersive media.  I thought he might have lost consciousness twice during the conversation.  Maybe I did.

The ugly:  on Thursday, each project presents their work to the head of the Venice Film Festival, the head of the entire Venice Biennale, along with numerous journalists and students coming from as far as Rome to watch us deliver or melt down.  Pressure.  So, say a prayer for Memphis and, as everyone says right before festivals announce:  fingers crossed.

I figured why not start with a couple of masterpieces to get me in the right frame of mind.  So, packing up to head off to the Venice Biennale College Cinema workshop to pitch my second feature, Memphis, I did the math for the long day of travel …]]>

I figured why not start with a couple of masterpieces to get me in the right frame of mind.  So, packing up to head off to the Venice Biennale College Cinema workshop to pitch my second feature, Memphis, I did the math for the long day of travel ahead: book –  Geoff Dyer’s Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi.  Movie -� Joachim Trier’s Oslo, August 31st.  I figured those two daring and beautiful pieces were the right first steps in getting into the mindset to engage in what lies ahead – ten days of collaborative development with fourteen other film projects  to try and carve out which ends up one of the three fully funded microbudget projects to premiere at the 2013 Venice Film Festival.  But it gets even more intense when it turns out we’re staying on an island that is home to an ancient monastery-turned-mental-hospital-turned-university.  The room I am staying in feels like all three.  The seclusion of the campus just across a waterway from San Marco square is both beautiful and well, ghostly.  And the mist that comes in off the lagoon as thick as velvet helps both said beautiful and ghostly achieve even greater depths.

Filmmakers from Israel, Lebanon, Phillipines, Thailand, Brazil, UK, Italy, South Africa…and a sister team from the U.S. along with me and my producer, John Baker (Dragonslayer), so the mix isn’t just providing a diverse community, it is entirely inspiring.  After running my first feature, Pavilion, through the IFP Narrative Lab in 2011-12, I knew there would be some of that inspiration for sure.  However, housed on the watery outskirts of Venice – a city that may have created the term ‘wonder while I wander’ – this lab has an endless sense of creativity and intensity.  Every day, thus far, John heads off to his producer’s grilling – the base of which are the questions ‘can you actually get this film done in time and on budget’ and ‘how do you define the producer’s role’ – while I work with a group leader and four other projects – defining our creative goals, challenges, and directions – in essence, proving our project’s validity.  The afternoons, I engage with story consultants to try and defend and expand the notions of the story I am trying/hoping/praying to make.  Evenings are social and filled with the type of dialogue I missed by not going to film school – theory, references, personal histories – beautiful film nerd stuff – over a glass or two of wine. And then coming back by vaporetta to our little insane asylum in the deepest fog to sleep it off and press restart.  So far, so good.

May 15th, 2011. I am given a book by my favourite poet, Bob Hicok. In it there’s a poem about the 2007 Virginia Polytechnic Institute massacre – to date the deadliest shooting of innocent people by a single gunman in US history. This excerpt from the poem …]]>

May 15th, 2011.
I am given a book by my favourite poet, Bob Hicok. In it there’s a poem about the 2007 Virginia Polytechnic Institute massacre – to date the deadliest shooting of innocent people by a single gunman in US history. This excerpt from the poem speaks for itself -

People wrote, called, mostly e-mailed
because they know I teach at Virginia Tech,
to say, there’s nothing to say. Eventually
I answered these messages: there’s nothing
to say back except of course there’s nothing
to say, thank you for your willingness
to say it. Because this was about nothing.
A boy who felt that he was nothing,
who erased and entered that erasure, and guns
that are good for nothing, and talk of guns
that is good for nothing, and spring
that is good for flowers, and Jesus for some,
and scotch for others.

March 23rd, 2012.
Two kids get in a fight on the platform of an L train stop in Brooklyn, New York. Both fall in front of a train coming into the station. One of them leaps from the tracks just in time and flees the scene. The other is dragged down the platform by the train, right in front of my eyes. His body half under the train, his arms grabbing at the side of the train, his torso spinning like a propeller, his blood smearing down the side of the carriages. I turn away in disbelief, my brain numb as people run past me screaming in tears, vomiting as they run. There’s one girl standing still in front of me as everyone rushes past both of us. She’s looking at me, her face all wet, her eyes pleading at me as if somehow I can provide an answer. The best I can do is not look at her.

The kid is still alive. There’s a woman crouched down by him trying to help him in whatever way she can. Unsure about what I can do I turn and leave. Halfway up the steps I curse at myself, and turn back. A few of us gang together try to push the train away from the body, so we can get him out. It’s a hopeless exercise. Soon the Fire Department arrives and we are all ejected onto the streets.

People are opening their front doors and letting those clearly in shock come in and rest a while. I call my friend, whose apartment I’d just left 15 minutes before, and he talks me through it. He invites me back over to his, but it seems to make more sense to walk home alone.

July 17th, 2012.
A friend posts a photograph on the internet that he’s taken of a poster from the new Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises. Below the photograph he’s excitedly left the comment -

THREE. MOTHER. FUCKING. DAYS.

I type my response beneath it. My words expounding on my similarly outrageous levels of enthusiasm. My friend replies, and our proverbial high-five is over just moments after it began. The occasion and the words we used are swiftly forgotten about.

July 20th, 2012.
In Aurora, Colorado, a 24-year-old man opened fire on his fellow cinema-goers during a screening of the new Batman film. Thanks to our phones, everyone everywhere knows about it moments after it happens.

Soon after New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane, a friend of my father’s, publishes a thoughtful and lengthy article swiftly reminding people of art’s inability to drive people to kill -

Having a mind to kill, at least in any systematic fashion, means that your mind is ready-warped; that the warping may well have started long before, perhaps in childhood; and that you may perhaps seek out, or be drawn to, areas of sensation—notably those entailing sex or violence—which can encourage, inflame, or accelerate the warping. Whatever we learn of the Aurora murderer, whatever he may profess, and whatever the weaponry, body armor, and headgear that he may have sported, and however it seems like a creepy match for what is worn, by heroes and villains alike, in the Batman movies—despite all that, he was not driven by those movies to slaughter.

July 21st, 2012.
Some time in the afternoon I receive an email from a filmmaker friend of mine that simply read -

Dark Knight Rises murders is the most bleak metaphor of art and cinema in American cultural history.

This coming from a man with two children of his own, and a deep-set distaste for exploitative artwork. I wrote back saying that I was inclined to agree. I said that it reminded me of when my father read from a newspaper article in 2001. An article that was suggesting that part of what made the World Trade Center attacks so powerful, was what an artistic gesture they were. 911 being the emergency services number in the US, and the two towers being hit by one commercial airplane each, and both completely collapsing in such a seemingly unlikely way as a result. My father also added that film and television are of course also responsible for making violence appear to be something beautiful.

Back in the present, film critic Roger Ebert weighs in on the continuing debate about the connection between violence and art  -

I’m not sure there is an easy link between movies and gun violence. I think the link is between the violence and the publicity. I don’t know if [the Aurora killer] cared deeply about Batman. I suspect he cared deeply about seeing himself on the news.

LA Times reporter Patrick Goldstein blames advertising -

This, of course, has happened before. In 1981, Taxi Driver became embroiled in controversy when John Hinckley Jr. tried to assassinate then-President Ronald Reagan after becoming obsessed with the film, whose character Travis Bickle attempts to kill a presidential candidate. In Hinckley’s case, he was affected by the movie. With the Colorado gunman, the inspiration may well have come from the pull of a mammoth Hollywood Big Event.

In almost any big city today, it’s nearly impossible to avoid being exposed to the wall-to-wall advertising for a global behemoth such as “Dark Knight.” The result is almost Orwellian — nearly everywhere you look, your gaze meets the stern glare of Batman and his nemesis, their eyes full of menace. On TV, the film’s ads are chock full of thunderous collisions and mass brawls.

Talk about life imitating art. Days before the film’s release, the movie review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes had to suspend user comments on reviews of “Dark Knight” after readers made derogatory and threatening remarks about the critics who wrote them. Incensed fans heaped abuse on one critic, Marshal Fine, saying he should “die in a fire.” Rotten Tomatoes’ editor said it was the first time the site had suspended user comments, explaining that “it just got to be too much hate.”

July 22nd, 2012.
A friend and I race back from a New Jersey beach town to catch an afternoon screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Manhattan. 15 minutes into the film we are aware of a group of four men behind us talking loudly and occasionally walking up and down in the isle next to us, using their phones as flashlights. I turn to tell them to shut up, and so does my friend. The looks we are greeted with from these men leave us speechless, and we quickly turn back to the film. I suddenly feel unsafe and start looking around me in the darkness. It dawns on me that this is the first trip to the cinema since the killings the week before. I start imagining how the same thing could happen to all of us in this room. The words of my filmmaker friend the day before start going around and around in my head. Eventually the film rescues me from these thoughts and I lose myself in its story.

As the film ends and I’m left slightly shaky by its moving denouement, a second wave of fear sweeps over me. I have to quickly pull my hands to my face to hide a wash of quite unexpected tears. I feel in a moment like I’ve lost something very dear to me. I realize that it feels like we have lost the sanctity of the cinema. I realize that until this point I’ve used the cinema as a place I can completely escape from the world, no matter what. It feels right there and then like this is now gone.

I try to relate this to my friend afterwards and he tells me I’m talking nonsense. Coming to my senses in the outside air I realize that I probably am.

July 23rd, 2012.
I mention to a friend and co-worker that I’m thinking about writing about my feelings on the Dark Knight Rises murders. He sits down on the couch opposite my desk and we talk it through. Half-way through the conversation he points out that as far as he was aware the last time there was a killing in a theater in US history, it was when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

Lincoln’s killer, John Wilkes Booth, as noted elsewhere in the Goldstein piece quoted above, perhaps similarly chose a place to commit his crime that would give him the necessary ‘stage’ for his actions. One similarity between the events that did seem to gel with this, was that Wilkes Booth shouted a line from a killing in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar before shooting Lincoln. This seems to tie to the fact that the Aurora killer later told police he was The Joker, a murderous character from the previous Batman film. Wilkes Booth’s Shakespearean line of course being that famously uttered by Brutus before the murder of Julius – “Sic Semper Tyrannis.” This literally translates as “Thus always to tyrants,” and is also the Virginia state motto. Wilkes Booth was from Virginia.

July 24th, 2012.
The documentary film maker and director of Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore, just posted an article on his website asking America to think deeply about their obsession with killing. He points out that it’s likely not the guns. He states in fact that it’s the American people and their apparent inability to care for each other, hinting of course at the country’s precarious healthcare system -

We are an easily frightened people and it is easy to manipulate us with fear. What are we so afraid of that we need to have 300 million guns in our homes? Who do we think is going to hurt us? Why are most of these guns in white suburban and rural homes? Maybe we should fix our race problem and our poverty problem (again, number 1 in the industrialized world) and then maybe there would be fewer frustrated, frightened, angry people reaching for the gun in the drawer. Maybe we would take better care of each other.

Oliver Gettel, the same day, publishes an article for the LA Times in which he pulls together the responses to the killings from 6 of the western world’s more notable film critics. A comment beneath the article reads -

What’s completely lost in all this chatter is that the hero of The Dark Knight Rises saw his parents murdered by a gunman and DOES NOT CARRY A GUN for that reason.  Also during the movie, he knocked Catwoman’s gun out of her hands saying “no killing”.  John Blake, on using his gun in self defense, found the whole thing distasteful and threw his gun away.  If there’s one hero who would be the symbol this is Batman.

July 25th, 2012.
US President Barack Obama is on national television addressing the issue of gun violence in cities, stating that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not criminals. He continues to say -

When there’s an extraordinarily heartbreaking tragedy like the one we saw, there’s always an outcry immediately after for action. There’s talk of new reforms. There’s talk of legislation. And too often those efforts are defeated by politics and by lobbying and eventually by the pull of our collective attention elsewhere. But what I said in the wake of Tucson is we’re going to stay on this persistently. I will continue to work with members of both parties and with religious groups and with civic organizations to arrive at a consensus around violence reduction.

Warner Brothers is pulling trailers of its forthcoming film Gangster Squad, which depict assailants with Tommy-guns shooting cinema goers from behind a cinema screen. The film has also been pulled from the studio’s Fall release schedule.

July 26th, 2012.
I sit down to write this article, and just moments after I’ve written a working title I get a message on my phone. The message tells me that someone has replied to the comment I left on the internet on the 13th. They’re replying to the comment I left beneath my friend’s photograph of a Batman poster, just days before the killings. The reply simply reads -

A week later, your comment doesn’t sound like the best wording, does it?

I’m confused. I quickly scroll back up to my original comment, and read it again -

Better be good. Really good. World crushingly good. So good it actually kills me. So good everyone in my theater dies. Like end of the world good, you know?

I look back at the essay I’m writing. I almost vomit. I close the computer. I reply to the person on my phone apologizing profusely, but my comments feel futile. I know it’s extremely unlikely that I’m responsible in any way, but nevertheless my thoughts are racing. I call two friends and ask them to talk me through it. I then go for a long walk. I need to be out among people.

July 29th, 2012.
Michael Moore is on American national television for the first time in 10 years talking with talk show host, Piers Morgan, about American gun laws. He’s remarking upon President Barack Obama’s comments about his awareness that it could have been his own daughters in that screening that night. Michael Moore, undeniably a fan of Obama, doesn’t hesitate to fire back at the President -

If President Obama is watching right now — and I — and I say this with all due respect — what if it were them? What if it were them last Thursday night? Would you stand at the microphone the next day and say I feel your pain and, you know, we just — we — the — the existing gun laws, that’s what he said — the existing laws are enough. Is that really what you’d say, Mr. President? I don’t think so.

August 1st, 2012.
An anonymous comment has appeared at the bottom of Michael Moore’s July 24th article that reads -

American Pop Culture Quiz

Questions:
How many High School kids were shot in Compton this year? How many of them made the news or got their medical bills paid? Why are kids from Colorado so much more important than the ones in L.A.?

Answers:
Dozens. None. They’re White!

August 8th, 2012.
It’s midnight. I’m sitting down to watch a film with my brother that’s been produced by an old friend of mine. The film is called Boy A, and is based loosely on the aftermath of the killing of the 2-year-old James Bulger in England in 1993. The two kids who committed the killing splashed their victim in blue paint, in imitation of the 1991 film Child’s Play 3.

Boy A is good, and my brother and I end up arguing afterwards about how sympathetic the killers friends would have been ‘in reality’, compared to the film.

August 10th, 2012.
I am sitting at my laptop in my brother’s apartment in London, sun streaming in through the windows. It’s an unusually hot day, after what’s been a very rainy English summer. There have been at least two more widely-publicized shootings in the US since the Aurora killings. Unable to escape the feeling that I should write something, I delete everything I’ve written and start over.

Not every director is suited for low-budget indie filmmaking, and that’s OK if you’re Terrence Malick or David Fincher. But chances are, you’re not…or not yet, anyway. I get a fair number of calls from biggish directors and producers who are having trouble raising money for their …]]>

Video Village, Indie-Style

Not every director is suited for low-budget indie filmmaking, and that’s OK if you’re Terrence Malick or David Fincher. But chances are, you’re not…or not yet, anyway. I get a fair number of calls from biggish directors and producers who are having trouble raising money for their films and want to explore how to make them on the super-cheap. I’ve entertained some of these requests, collecting funny anecdotes along the way, like the director who wanted to fly in stars from another country and rent large trailers for them, but forego unions and production insurance. Or the producer who wanted to cast an actor whose agent demanded $12,000 worth of perks, when our entire costume budget was just $4,000. As much as I want to work with these namey folks, I usually end up politely declining because I know that it will be difficult for them (and for me, especially) to make a movie on a fraction of the budgets to which they’re accustomed.

I’ve now worked with twenty different directors on mostly low-budget indie projects–some of whom I’d like to work with again and again; others, never again. By now, I can tell when a director is lying, even if he or she doesn’t realize it–”it’ll be 70% handheld,” “we can just run and gun it with a skeleton crew,” “all I need is an extra half day for second unit stuff.” Yeah, right. Most of the director foibles I’ve dealt with are due to inexperience and will likely resolve themselves with time. But sometimes, I wonder if some people just weren’t meant to direct–at least not low-budget indies.

So what are the traits that I think make a director “indie-friendly” (and more generally, “producer-friendly”)? Besides the usual traits that all directors should have–passion, confidence, focus, a high E.Q., a collaborative spirit, a sense of humor, the ability to command respect, an openness to feedback balanced with decisiveness–here are the traits that are especially important when working with limited resources:

1. Fast Writer

I’ve worked mostly with writer-directors, which offers an efficiency that’s often missing when the writer and director are different people. So much rewriting is done not just during development and prep, but also during production. Some of my directors have had to rewrite whole scenes minutes before shooting them. There is probably a lot more production-directed rewriting in the indie world since we are constantly trying to figure out how to stretch a budget. Development periods are also a lot shorter for us because they have to be–typically, no one gets paid during development; we only get paid if we’re in production. As such, it’s nice to work with speedy writers who can discuss, digest, and incorporate notes quickly to produce a shoppable draft.

2. Adaptive

Anything can happen in filmmaking, especially if you have limited resources–extras stand you up, location owners change their minds at the last minute, the G&E truck takes a wrong turn and shows up 2 hours late. So it’s critical for a director to be able to adapt to these exigent circumstances and figure out how to make lemonade from lemons. I’ve worked with directors who refused to shoot because a featured extra didn’t show up. Even after I’d come up with workable solutions, the directors still resisted, insisting that the entire film would be ruined without this extra. Really? You have a set, a camera, equipment, and a cast and crew of 50 at your fingertips, and you’re just going to cross your arms and pout? You’re a creative person…create something! If it ends up sucking, then reshoot it. But for now, use what’s right in front of you and try to make something. (By the way, I’ve never had to reshoot any scene that called for an unexpected last-minute fix like this.) Being adaptive and thinking on your feet also helps when there are happy accidents. Filmmaking is organic and unpredictable, and when the right mix of elements strikes on set, a good director will know how to capitalize on it.

3. Editing Experience

It is so valuable for a director to have editing experience because she or he will know on set what’s important and what’s not, what can be sacrificed and what can’t. Indie films are scheduled so tightly that it’s often very tough to make the day. All of my feature productions have been between 19 and 24 days, shooting between 4-7 pages and 15-35 setups per day. Sometimes, shots and even scenes have to be cut on the day of shooting. A director who also edits will have a much better sense of which shots are expendable, and how to make up for losing them.

4. Ability to Visualize

This seems obvious, doesn’t it? But you’d be surprised how many directors can’t do this. Many indie directors I’ve encountered come from writing or theater backgrounds–they can write great dialogue and work well with actors, but they have no idea how to compose a frame. Yes, this is what cinematographers are for, but it’s much more efficient when a director can actually visualize what shots will look like before crew and cast go through the trouble of setting them up.

5. Doesn’t Sweat the Small Stuff

This is probably the most controversial trait on the list. Artists are, by their nature, perfectionists–and they should be!  However, the reality is that perfection is tough to achieve on a small budget. Of course, we should always work very hard to achieve it, but the obsession over minor details–like the way a curtain drapes over a windowsill in the background–should not compromise more important things like the actors’ performances or the entire shooting schedule. Except, of course, if you’re making an art film in which the position of curtains is paramount. But if you’re making a traditional narrative film where the writing, acting, and storytelling are the main events, then those are the things you should focus on. A production’s budget and schedule are a zero-sum game. It’s rare to get everything you want; it’s usually very give-and-take. So it’s important for directors to choose their battles wisely.

6. Highly Prepared

One of my favorite first assistant directors,� Nicolas D. Harvard, has a great motto: “Fix it in prep.” Indie films benefit immensely from directors who are incredibly diligent about doing research, shot lists, storyboards, and the like during prep. Some directors I’ve worked with have refused to do shot lists because they don’t want to be “locked in” to doing those particular shots on the day of shooting. This is silly because a good producer and crew understands the importance of being flexible on set and allowing for the organic nature of filmmaking to take its course, and would not pressure a director to stick strictly to his or her shot list. On the contrary, a shot list is what allows a director the freedom to improvise on the shoot day. Going into production without a shooting plan is very dangerous because it could easily throw the entire schedule (and consequently, the budget) off the rails.

7. Solid Work Ethic & High Stamina

Making a movie is hands down the hardest work I’ve ever done. That’s why I’m so picky with my projects. I cannot imagine working so hard on something I don’t care about. So when I take on a project, I expect to work very hard on it, and I expect no less of my director. Once, during late-stage prep on a film, the director kept checking into bars and restaurants on Foursquare, and tweeting about how much fun he was having hanging out with his friends. I did not like this one bit. If I and your crew are working our asses off on your film, then you should be too. Indie directors must have a very solid work ethic, and a high stamina for long hours spent doing what will likely be the most intellectually, physically, and emotionally challenging work they’ve ever done.

8. Vast Knowledge of Film

It’s important for all directors to know the language of cinema. By knowing what’s been done before and what certain shots have traditionally communicated, a director doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel. He or she can then more easily pay homage to, do variations on, or reject conventions. Being able to refer to certain films, scenes, or shots also makes it much easier and quicker for a director to articulate his vision to the crew and cast.

9. Articulate

In all productions, but especially indie ones, a director often has to defend the creative decisions that conflict with budget or schedule limitations. As such, a director should be able to clearly articulate why he needs 5 picture cars instead of 2, or 21 shoot days instead of 20, or a Steadicam instead of doing it handheld. A good producer will listen and OK the expenditures if the director provides a strong rationale for them. Of course, it’s also beneficial when directors can clearly and efficiently communicate what they want to their actors and crew, and woo financiers with a pitch. Directors should practice untangling the creative jumble in their heads to form coherent thoughts and actionable requests (that, or find a producer who can translate for them).

10. Publicity-Friendly

Being articulate also helps when a director is promoting a film. Communicating your vision to the media and the public can be a difficult thing to do, especially if you can’t afford fancy publicists to guide you. Some directors I’ve worked with are great at making movies, but can’t write loglines or synopses, pitch their own films, or conduct coherent Q&As, so I’ll have to pinch hit. But it’s really nice when they can do these things, because no one cares about the producer! Distributors also expect directors to play an active role in film promotion, especially now that the landscape is so difficult, and so much rides on the cult of personality. Bonus points for the director who is active in social media. There is no substitute for authenticity, and when a director can tweet in his or her own voice, it generates a lot more interest and engagement.

11. Technically Adept

Knowing how to use Twitter and Facebook is part and parcel of the overall technical aptitude that’s important for an indie director to have. Indie directors and producers often have to be jacks of all trades–more so than ever now that so much of marketing and distribution falls on our shoulders. When you can’t pay your Web designer, graphic artist, or assistant editor enough to be on call (or when you can’t afford these folks in the first place), you should be prepared to do the job yourself. So if you have some spare time, learn how to use video editing, photo editing, illustration, and web design programs, and of course, social media tools. You should also try to stay abreast of the latest camera and post-production technologies because in indie land, post supervision often falls to you and your producer.

12. Appreciative

Directors can be spoiled, bratty, entitled people. There is no place for that in the low-budget world, where everyone is working very long hours at very reduced rates. Directors who consistently show appreciation and respect for their cast and crew effectively motivate them, and that motivation is necessary fuel for low-budget productions. The director–not the producers or the actors–is the one who ultimately sets the tone of the production. If he or she is an unappreciative jerk, then everyone is miserable and left to wonder what all the suffering is for. An appreciative director also shares the limelight, and gives credit where it is due. And if/when Hollywood comes a-callin’, an appreciative director will remember the “little people” and “give back” by continuing to work with those who believed in his or her vision before anyone else did.

So there you have it! If you don’t possess most of these traits, please don’t call me–unless you are David Fincher or Terrence Malick. Actually…no, never mind, not even then. I will just enjoy your brilliant films from afar.

The clock reads 4:30 am.  It’s dark outside.  Must drag ass out of bed and try to look somewhat presentable for the 6:30 am crew call.  Must also review scenes for the day and be prepared to answer the barrage of questions from the director and actors: “How do you …]]>

The clock reads 4:30 am.  It’s dark outside.  Must drag ass out of bed and try to look somewhat presentable for the 6:30 am crew call.  Must also review scenes for the day and be prepared to answer the barrage of questions from the director and actors: “How do you pronounce octyl-cyanoacrylate?” “The knife should be sticking out of the body, right?” And “My character sounds a little mean.  Can you soften these lines?”   Ok.  Now we’re awake.  This is the benefit of being a writing team.  Two brains are better than one.  Especially before Starbucks.  But it’s all in a days work when you’re a writer/producer on a TV series.

We know it sounds like a cliché, but if you can get paid for doing something you love, that makes you the luckiest person on the planet.  We consider ourselves to be very lucky people.  But we’ve also worked very hard to get here.  We come from humble beginnings.  Just two friends who started writing together at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada.  We had a professor who believed in us, who helped us believe in ourselves.  He taught us that if we wanted to be TV writers, we should watch TV, a lot of it, and most importantly, write.  A lot.

Once out of college, we both worked part-time, wrote full time.  Movies, sitcoms, one hours.  You name it, we wrote it.  This helped us figure out that our true passion was in one hour drama.  Five years after graduation we landed our first staff job.  We were thrilled.  It was a period show, Little Men, which was executive produced by Carl Binder, one of the nicest, most talented men we’ve ever worked with.  From day one, Carl taught us how to be better writers and how to produce.  One very important lesson he taught us was to always be open to notes, because you never know where a good idea might come from.   TV is all about collaboration.  You’ll probably spend more time with your fellow writers than with your own family.  That’s why it’s important to surround yourself with good people, not just good writers.

If you write one genre for a number of years, people in the industry feel that’s all you can write.  We wanted to move from family shows to crime drama, but we didn’t have any samples to prove that we could write dark and edgy.  We threw ourselves into the genre, writing specs for The Shield and CSI.  But most showrunners want to read original material, really get to know your voice, so we wrote a very dark and twisted pilot, called Hog Heaven.  We pitched it as Twin Peaks meets Dallas on an organic pig farm.  It had lots of sex, violence, and gallows humor.  No one called us soft writers after that.  In fact, our nickname in the industry now is “The Murder Girls.”

Law and Order: Special Victim's Unit

But that script didn’t land us a staff job.  We went two years without being on staff.  And money was getting tight.  We only had enough to keep our houses for six more months.  Our hope was to sell a pilot.  We came up with an idea and pitched it to Universal.  They liked it, but because we’d never run a show before, they paired us with Robert Nathan, an experienced writer/producer from the Law & Order camp.

Our first time meeting Robert was pretty terrifying.  He said he had 32 objections to our idea.  Things that needed to be addressed before we pitched to the network.  One by one, we found solutions for them and Robert became part of our team.  He helped shape our good idea into a great idea and we sold that pilot and got to keep our houses.  We learned a lot from Robert, especially about pitching.   Even if you’re unsure about what you’re saying, say it with conviction and people will listen.  After all, if you don’t believe in your story, why should anyone else?

That pilot helped us land our first job on a crime series, Crossing Jordan.  When that finished, we worked on other shows, The Unusuals, Flashpoint, and CSI.  Every show gave us the opportunity to work with some pretty incredible people, and to grow as writers and producers.

Crossing Jordan

We’ve made our share of mistakes along the way, like telling our boss his joke wasn’t funny.  Sometimes honesty isn’t the best policy.  And we’ve recently learned the importance of being careful of how you speak to people in all areas of production.  From actors to editors, we’re all craftsmen who take pride in our work, and an offhand comment can be taken as a harsh criticism.  When you’re in the editing room, don’t say, “Is there a better take?”  It implies the editor put in the shittiest take he could find. Instead, ask, “Is there an alternate take?  Or a take where he’s less angry?”  Words are powerful.  Be careful how you use them.

If you want to be a writer, write.  Don’t let anything or anyone stand in your way.  Believe in yourself.  Believe in your work.  Eventually, your hard work (and a little luck) will pay off.  We hope we get to work with you one day.

Let me start by saying everything is NOT a TV Show.  Some things just are what they are, and should not be televised.

A Pitch is much more than just an idea you have.  The idea may be the starting point but the pitch is much, much more.  And the pitch …]]>

Let me start by saying everything is NOT a TV Show.  Some things just are what they are, and should not be televised.

A Pitch is much more than just an idea you have.  The idea may be the starting point but the pitch is much, much more.  And the pitch is a different animal than the actual script.  And the script is different than the pilot.  And the pilot is different than the series.

The Pitch I’m talking about today is based on personal experience as opposed to an adaptation.  They are very similar except one you were inspired to create the other you found interesting enough to want to create a pitch.  I will never understand the difference between hi and low concept and premise and non-premise pilots.  Here’s what’s worked for me.  And I have sold 98% of my pilot ideas.

1. Inspiration

Executives love to hear how your idea affects you personally.  Perhaps you were shocked at the billion dollar shoplifting industry the number of cesarean sections each year.  Or maybe you’ve had a very unique personal experience.   Or a character that you really admire or a story that you feel really needs to be told — The first time you fell in love.  Innocently catching your parents sharing private moment together.  Getting fired from a job you loved.  Things that are universal

2. The World

This is very important.  If the person you are pitching to doesn’t understand the world or if it’s a world we’ve seen too often you will be in trouble.   In addition to the popular mash-up of two ideas — Godfather meets Laverne & Shirley.  You want to describe the feel or tone of the world.   Does it feel like a place Cheers that is so comfortable and everyone wants to be your friend:  Or a sterile, cold, corporate culture where no one really gets to know each other.  Can’t trust each other.  Yet need each other.

What are the universal elements?  Everyone has trust issues?  We are a nation run by fear?  Does the media tries to control us through fear?

3. Characters

In a half hour they usually want one character with a very strong point of view. Surrounded by funny, supporting characters — Unless it’s an absolute ensemble.  Then you can tell stories about all of them.   In dramas unless it’s about a particular, unique crime solver, it’s usually an ensemble of some kind like Grey’s Anatomy, or ER or Brother’s and Sisters.

Also, what are the characters relationships to each other?  In half-hour; the execs are obsessed with the character’s knowing each other and how do they know each other?   It’s easiest to make some related in a family way:  brothers, aunts, cousins or best friends from child hood.  In drama’s they usually meet on the job or Med school or the Academy.

4. Pilot story

Broad strokes –and only if they ask for it. And/or other broad stroke story ideas if you have them.

I also like to add multi-platform ideas now that those are such a part of the current television experience.  For example: if you’re pitching a show where someone is a temperamental Chef – maybe one of the web ideas is to have the Chef character giving recipes on the Show’s web site.

I was graciously invited to write this blog for IFP and was told I should focus on my experience of writing for television.  I was actually asked to write about writing.  What a fantastic idea!  So I gladly accepted.   One problem.  I forgot that I’d actually have to sit down …]]>

I was graciously invited to write this blog for IFP and was told I should focus on my experience of writing for television.  I was actually asked to write about writing.  What a fantastic idea!  So I gladly accepted.   One problem.  I forgot that I’d actually have to sit down and write it.

I can only approach this piece on a personal level and bring my own experience to it.  I don’t know how else to do it.  That said:

Writing is brutal.  You may be one of those fortunate few who set your alarm for 3:30 in the morning so you can make sure it’s still dark outside as you hop, skip and jump to the blank page.  I’m not that guy.

I find writing to be hard.   You often hear how writers always start with that blank page and create something from nothing and if everyone thinks it’s so easy, let them do it.  Whoever “these people” are, they’re right.  The blank page staring back at you from your computer screen can be crushing.  And to make the matter even more challenging, you are seldom writing for just yourself.  You are writing for a ton of people.  Network, Studio, Producers, Department Heads, Casting, Crew and Actors.  And if you’re not careful, that can be a trap because you might find yourself second guessing yourself.  “What will he think?”  “What will they think?”  “This one usually hates whenever someone is physically ill, so instead of pneumonia, I’ll have them go water skiing instead.”

My best work has always been when I was writing for myself.  I created a show called Huff and it was on spec.  (Speculative, as in for free.)  I wrote it in Hawaii while on hiatus from another show, and sat on the floor in my boxers having a great time.  I wrote it in three weeks.  There was one scene I remember, which was two thirteen year old boys  having a sleepover in a tent in the back yard.  We cut into the scene to discover these two kids frantically masturbating in their sleeping bags.  And when I finished writing it I literally laughed out loud and said “Like this will ever get shot!”  Thank you Showtime.  It got shot.

Showtime's "Huff"

The point of the story is I wasn’t writing for anybody but myself, because I never expected it to really go forward.  It was just a spec.  And I had to remind myself as I wrote, that I didn’t have to answer to anybody.  To find that balance and freedom as a writer for a television show that’s on the air, takes an odd discipline and creative mind.

And, yes.  The blank page on a laptop can be daunting, especially when there’s a little icon at the bottom of the screen that is a direct connect to the Internet.  I did a lot of writing for that show.  After finishing every scene I’d reward myself by signing onto Ebay and bidding on a piece of glass.  Near the end of the first season, I had an office riddled with over a hundred red glass vases.   I bid high.  There were a lot of scenes.

One of the issues that I was asked to discuss are the day to day realities of working in television.   Let’s get one thing straight from the very beginning.  There is no “reality” in writing for television.   And if I were to give a complete answer addressing the day to day realities of television we’d be here for days.  I would also probably never get hired again.

However, I used this opportunity to click the Internet icon and go to dictionary.com.  There, I hoped, I would find a definition of “reality” that would somehow trigger a response.  Oddly enough I was taken first to drugstore.com/realities which hammered home the message of “free shipping” and then I was taken to freeforclosureslistings.com which boasted listings of properties that “must sell.”

And I realized that this is actually the reality of television.  First, it must sell or you don’t have a job.  And once it sells, it has to ship fast since there are always three scripts in the works all at the same time.  One in prep, one shooting and one in post.  Production devours scripts.

So I guess the first reality of television is you will be working approximately 480 hour weeks.  You arrive at the office, sometimes before dawn, and you go home when it’s dark.  It’s possible to even forget your dog’s name.  So a major reality is you have no time.  If you don’t have scripts, you don’t have a show.  Period.  That’s the major reality of television.  You need scripts.  There are a hundred and fifty people waiting for them every week, and that’s not counting the network and studio.  If you don’t have scripts, someone will die.  And you don’t want it to be you.  So make your deadline.