movie extra
My mid-life looking backward tour continues and led me to a giant box of correspondence* wherein I found an entire letter I had typed to my family immediately after being an extra for a day on Outbreak, which shot in Ferndale, CA in 1994. I am very thankful for my devoted documentation b/c I remember about 5% of the details. I include it below in its entirety along with a couple of cool documents they issued to me then. Kind of miss the idea of writing letters - to say nothing of typing them - and appreciate revisting my unjaded take on being on a movie set, not to mention me listing prior credits of the cast to my family. (note: I mention Joe Don Baker and saw him on set throughout the day but he was ultimately cut from the film). Funny to think that 7 years later I was working in the mailroom of a production company in Beverly Hills who also shot a movie in Ferndale, hearing reports and seeing dailies from the set of this town where I had been an extra on a movie set, a town adjacent to Arcata where I had lived and incubated all my filmy dreamings. It all felt like some vital profound bookend to me then, past and present intersecting to create a star-lit pathway clearly designed to illuminate and embolden the trajectory of my ascendant cinematic destiny whereas now it just feels like the sheer randomness particular to the yawning indifference of the ice-cold unfeeling universe. (Or maybe it’s me that’s changed?) In any event, I ended up doing two days total on Outbreak but the second was a week or so later and came after what’s documented here. You can’t see me on screen per se but I am located somewhere in the circled mass of humans above.
*I am unable to shed anything like this - letters, trinkets, errata - except for my biannual manic gemini throw-it-all-out-it’s-all-void-of-meaning nights.
grants + labs/craving + aversion
This year I have been attempting to refine my mind’s focus with regard to validation and approval from outside forces. I’ve gotten a lot more patient with grant and lab applications and have been mostly successful in letting that process, the slow refining of each paragraph and sentence in the application, be the satisfaction, not the acceptance of some shadowy dream-making circle in the wings to whom I have previously ascribed mythic powers to grant me everything. Once I hit send, I presume I won’t get it - not in a defeatist way but rather a sort of relaxation of expectation - and get on with my life. Sundance Labs are notoriously selective and competitive, this is not news. But a couple years ago, in 2018, I got in to the 2nd round for one project on an application that I sort of phoned in so using that as a baseline, I busted ass on this years application. I was patient and took my time. Waking at 5:30 am every day and for weeks, polishing it, rearranging, refining, and shaping; getting it to the place where I thought it was good, and instead of hitting send, waiting a week, re-reading, finding the areas to improve and then doing so. This helped me speak with clarity about the project and about myself as filmmaker. I was operating from a position of confidence, not a position of deference; not needing the approval of validation, not striving to impress or dazzle, but only stating with transparency the narrative strengths of the project and how I was going to make it. When I finally hit send, I felt pretty good about my chances to get to the 2nd round, not in an arrogant or unjustly expectant way, just compared to the efforts of the 2018 application. That one I phoned it, this one I honed and refined and nurtured and patiently grew. Suffice to say this degree of confidence, despite its pure nature bred the tiny seed of expectation in me. This seed grew over the several months of waiting for response and eventually became as close to a foregone conclusion as my mind would allow. And so naturally, I did not advance to the 2nd round! It hit me in the gut, what? I had actually read on reddit about how one batch of applicants were emailed the wrong notifications once, denials instead of acceptances, and my mind actually went there for five minutes, thinking that a mistake was made. The proportion of negative reaction learning this lined up exactly with the size of the expectation. A lesson there. Or as Pavement says at the end of Shoot the Singer: don’t expect, don’t expect, don’t expect.
persistence
F wanted to climb a bigger wall. After conquering everything in the kids’ area she and I walked into the main area with N, her brother, and eventually found a straight-forward enough option, albeit about 10 feet straight up. N busied himself on a nearby structure so I stayed with F as she tried the wall and struggled. Up close it was trickier than it looked from far away and a more sophisticated enterprise than what she had attempted previously. She tried again and couldn’t do it. Then again. As a driven 5 year old, her emotions came into play with each passing attempt, frustration rising. She watched a boy about her size do it and her resolve came back. She tried again and didn’t make it, getting no further than before, only about 1/3 of the way up. The successive failures were starting to weigh on her so the three of us went back to the kids’ area. I watched them both do the kid walls again for awhile.
Eventually it was time to leave - we had lunch and a movie to get to later - but N wanted to go back to main area for one last wall. F agreed to come with me to watch him, but she was slightly unsettled about returning to the room, feeling an internal pressure to try the wall again. I explained that she didn’t have to. But moments later I stood with her, watching as she made several new attempts but each time got stuck about 1/3 of the way up, running out of handholds and lacking the wingspan to reach the spots she needed to ascend, and needing me to help her down again. She was extremely frustrated . “We can just go you know” I said. “You don’t need to do this.” Witnessing her continued discontent part of me really hoped she would just throw in the towel. But she shook her head, determined to continue. And the other part of me said “Okay”.
She sat with me on the floor, looking up at the heretofore unscalable surface. Looking from this perspective we were able to isolate the hand and foot moves she’d need to make, an ascending row of 4 small pink hand holds on her right side and some bigger ones on her left. After a few minutes, she wanted to try again. With a mix of reluctance and resolve, she put her hand on the first handhold and shakily pulled herself to the next. I was behind her, bracing her back again on the way up, but this time was different: She moved with a certainty, the path seemingly illuminating itself in front of her. Her confidence manifested as she ascended, each passing moment solidifying the empirical knowledge that she could do it. Suddenly, she was near the top. I worried for a second because she was out of my control and a slip - or worse frozen panic - would not be good. But F had already crossed the threshold; already neutralized the thing that had dogged her. She pulled herself over the top without ceremony and walked down the stairs to exit at the other end. I felt a profound swell of parental pride having watched the whole process unfold. I gave her a hug and a high five and said “Let’s go have lunch”. She looked at me and said. “No, I’m going again” with complete lack of fear and a confidence that belied everything it took to get her to this spot. It was as if she was now a different person, having defeated the thing that seemed impossible moments prior. She climbed the wall several more times entirely on her own, no need for an adult to brace or stand near.
Later she followed N to an adjacent wall, clearly designed for more experienced climbers, and scaled it along side him with no hesitation. They were both at the top now and I was at the bottom looking up at them.
N leaned over the edge and called down for me to come up. I felt a stir of panic in my belly knowing what was coming.
“I’ll go to the stairs and meet you” I said.
“No, climb up!” he said in his most persistent 8 year old register.
“I’ll go up the staircase and meet you at the top” I said.
“No, climb up!” he said.
“No way” I replied. I’m not climbing up that thing. We’re just here for the kids to get some exercise and to kill time before lunch and Frozen II - we’re not here for me.
“Come on, climb up”
“No”
“Dad, do it!”
No.
“Dad, come on”
No way.
“Dad, come on!”
Just then F leaned over and waved at me to come up. Their two heads were now looking down at me, urging me to do what they had just done.
With a mix of reluctance and resolve, I put my hand on the first handhold and shakily pulled myself to the next and - F’s strength and confidence bracing me at each moment - pulled myself up.
“Okay” I said.
november motion
path
71 days until we shoot and I can feel glacial, subterranean things moving around to make space for other things. was home sick monday and cleaned my office, which sounds like the most anodyne non-filmic undertaking possible but in fact it was the most directly related activity to making Sister/Brother that I’ve done of late (minus doing 2 full schedules and script breakdowns and rewriting screenplay that is). Making space by subtracting everything that isn’t necessary. (This has external and internal components of course.) There has been such liberation in stepping into the limitations of this project b/c it means I am turning off the aspirational (read: whining) interior part of me, which doesn’t take action b/c it’s always waiting, reliant on outside forces. This instead is action by virtue of ownership. I don’t have the luxury of aspiration and so certain doors click shut with regard to casting, locations, shooting ratios and so forth. This is the hand you’re dealt, move forward. More to come.