"Silver Lincoln" Screens in Seattle!

The Silver Lincoln just got accepted to the National Film Festival for Talented Youth (NFFTY)! It will screen at the festival in Seattle, Washington, from April 24-26.

There's a chance I might attend this one. Could be a lot of fun!

"La Nina" Shoot Approaching

I'm trying feverishly to jam all the pieces of the La Nina del Desierto pre-production jigsaw puzzle together before our first day of rolling cameras next Friday. Here's a basic laundry list:

My producer, Matt Sullivan, drove up to LA today to secure location permits, he has to get in touch with a set teacher for Dani-Rose Gonzalez, who plays La Nina, I have rehearsals with all four main actors on Sunday, yesterday we just finished making two dead body double props, I'm weathering prop gloves and a cooler, we have to meet with Chapman University faculty on Monday and Tuesday, I have to schedule the shots with my DP, Boa Simon, we have to rent an equipment truck and a generator, I have to find a place to rent chairs, tables, and sun tents for less than $30 a day, I have to get the prop CB radios to function off a battery, and Boa has to find time to pick up our 35mm camera package and film from Kodak next week. Jesus.

A map of the Palmdale area with our filming locations and photos.

Half the time I'm more excited than I think I've ever been, and the other half I'm scared completely shitless. I guess that's what it means to make a movie!

"Corner Store" Behind-the-Scenes Photos Up

I had long forgotten about the stash of Corner Store pics from the shoot that were lying around on my hard drive, and just now stumbled upon them. Well, now they're up online!

On Tuesday, director of photography Joel Remke and myself will be heading back down to the actual Corner Store corner store to do some reshoots. I don't know if you noticed, but the exterior shots in the Corner Store that's currently online look really terrible in comparison to the rest of the film - that's because the rest of the film is shot on 35mm, night for day, and we had to go back during the day a few months later to shoot the exterior shots. Unfortunately, we only had an HVX digital camera available for use at that time.

Also, though the end credits piece of music is indeed an original by my good friend Tim Sauer, the middle piece is by Miles Davis, and needless to say we don't have the budget for those rights. So Tim is currently working on an original replacement piece.

Soon enough Corner Store will be 100% 35mm, 100% Tim Sauer. Won't that be nice.

"Silver Lincoln" Screens in Michigan!

After facing rejection in a few other festivals, it's nice to announce that The Silver Lincoln will screen as a part of the East Lansing Film Festival in Michigan!


I hope it does well. We'll find out in March!

"La Nina" is Cast; Now on IMDB!

Thanks mostly to the tireless work of my casting director, Cambria Hankin (who I'm plugging not so you'll be impressed with me, but rather with her, and be inspired to hire her), La Nina del Desierto has been completely cast!

Joaquin Garrido as Javier Martinez, and Misha Gonz-Cirkl as Maria

Baxter Smith as Costa, Javier's boss, and Dani-Rose Gonzalez as La Nina

In addition to the above, I've also cast Mitch Yapko ("Thomas" from Variations on the Death of Gerald) and Robert Benny ("Lokesh" from The Silver Lincoln) as two of Costa's goons. I always like working again with friends.

I'm really excited to start going now. I've also been working hard on props recently, gathering all manner of beat-up gravedigging paraphernalia. It's fun.

But in infinitely more awesome news, two of my films, along with most of the crews for those movies, are now up on IMDB! Apparantly being considered for inclusion in NFFTY (National Film Festival for Talented Youth) was good enough for IMDB. So check out The Silver Lincoln and Ragtime Ballad, along with pages for my good friends Boa Simon, Brian Andrews, Daniel McLellan, and myself.

Sundance - Day 6

I spent most of the day today snowboarding. I didn't have a film until 6pm, and with a world-class ski area literally sprouting out of Park City, how could I resist?

At 6pm I had what I thought was a panel discussion with director Steven Soderbergh. He was supposed to talk about his previous films, like sex, lies, and videotape (which put Sundance on the map) and his latest, Che. Instead, he gets up there and says, "we have a movie to show." And then he plays his latest film for the very first time.

It's called The Girlfriend Experience. It was an ultra-cinema-verite film with a fractured narrative and all amateur actors. I liked it. I'm not sure how well it will do if it gets a wide release.

Directly after that I saw my final film at Sundance - Manure. It was a very stylized film about competing manure businesses. It was awful. It was so bad. It was derivative, predictable, nonsensical, embarrassing to watch - I wanted to walk out. Luckily the visuals were interesting enough to keep me. I couldn't believe that a film like that made it into Sundance. It was horrible.

It was so bad that when the directors, the Polish brothers, and the actors, including Billy Bob Thorton and Tea Leoni, came up for a Q&A, there were no questions. It was really, really awkward. Everyone thought it was stupid. Because it was.

Luckily we were out before long. And coincidence upon coincidences - it turns out that one of the actors I cast in my thesis project, La Nina del Desierto, happened to be at Sundance as well. He works for a PR company that throws parties, and he was able to let us in to the Manure after-party. A few of the minor actors were there, but the main ones weren't. Too embarrassed, I imagine.

I was sad that the last film I saw at Sundance was the worst I saw. I was on a roll of good films. But tomorrow I fly back to California and then it's La Nina straight for the next three months!

Sundance - Day 5

Today I had a few hours off in the morning before my first show, so I strolled down Park City's downtown area. About halfway up Main street, I saw about 60 people crowding around a jewel store or a restaurant or something. I saw they all had cameras, and when one of them started saying to the others, "sorry in advance if I push you out of the way," I thought I would stick around to see mob mentality in action.

Well, I sat there for 40 minutes and nothing happened. Supposedly Jim Carrey was inside, and all the paparazzi was waiting for him to emerge. It was nice to sit there and see the people go by (including Paul Giamatti again and Bill Hader), but Jim Carrey just isn't 40+ minutes interesting. I walked up to the top of main street, checked out Sundance's bitter cousin festival Slamdance, and went back - and the paparazzi was still there, waiting impatiently. I'm sure Carrey had slipped out the back hours beforehand.

The first film I saw this day truly changed the way I perceive movies. The movie was Johnny Mad Dog, but I have a hard time referring to it as a "movie." A movie generally has a story, character development, obstacles that the protagonist has to overcome, etc. Johnny Mad Dog featured child soldiers in an unnamed African country (though it was filmed in Liberia) basically yelling and shooting people for two hours. It was very well made, but honestly, the terms "like" and "dislike" don't even apply. It was an experience. It made City of God look like Peter Pan. But even that analogy doesn't apply. It was unlike any other movie that exists.

Afterward, at the Q&A, the director talked about how the kids in the movie were real child militia soldiers during the war. He lived with them for over a year, learning about how they lived and what happened, and taught them to act. I couldn't shake the feeling that it was, at some level, cruelly exploitative. I mean, this guy is asking these kids to re-enact beatings, rapings, murders - all things that they probably did in real life. And that thought disturbs me.

After a film like that, I spent a good amount of time with my brow furrowed, having dark thoughts about filmmaking. I wasn't exactly in the mood for another film, let alone a violent one, but I had Bronson coming up immediately afterward, and I'd heard it was good. So I tried to go in with a completely open mind.

It was great! It wasn't really that violent a film - more a meditation on violence. It was the story of Charlie Bronson (not the American actor), Britain's most violent prisoner. It basically tried to portray his acts of violence as, in his mind, a work of art. I thought it was actually very light-hearted for such a gloomy subject.