Wrote and Directed a Short Comedy Film
We shot our short comedy film last Wednesday night for the February 2, Iron Mule Festival. The title, Spork Wars, was shouted from the audience. A spork, of course, is a spoon and fork.
Spork Wars is a silly story of a spork salesman, played by Michael Martin, who tries to sell sporks and connect with diner owner, Jay Fortunato, only to discover a familial bond from the old country.
While I had hoped the shoot would take an hour, it took three.
The secrets of my recent filmmaking productivity?
1. a deadline.. there is nothing better than having to finish something by a drop-dead date. A deadline is a line in the sand and I’m pretty good about not crossing.
2. a crew… one of my seven secrets to success is to “Pile on the People.” In filmmaking, you get to work with awesome, funny, creative people. It’s been superfun to make new friends, like Ryan Decker, Ali Mao, Michael Martin, as well as work with old friends, like Pat Bishow and Jay Fortunato!
Don’t you love a good diner? Gee Whiz Diner!
3. a location… The peeps at the Gee Whiz Diner were super-nice. And in exchange for free use of their lovely diner space, I promised to promote them! They are located on 295 Greenwich Street, right near the Chambers Street subway. Try the Greek salad.
4. a sense of humor (and flexibility)… Of course I wanted my actors to speak the lines exactly as I wrote them. But Jay and Michael are improv geniuses. Naturally, they strayed. It was cool. In fact, I was laughing so hard, especially at their improved bit about gyros, that I feared my convulsive laughter would ruin the sound track.
5. a letting go… I really don’t know what the credits should look like or how the background music should sound. I forget to call, “Action!” I don’t know all the filmmaking nomenclature, but I did my best. And done is always better than perfect. And very good is a nice place to start.
Alison sent me the RC (rough cut!) last night. And I have to admit, I found it pretty funny. I showed it to my 15-year old who chuckled, which is a pretty good response from a 15-year old.
Let me know what you think. Come to The Iron Mule Short Comedy Film Festival, 8 pm on Saturday night, February 2.
I won’t be there. I’ll be in in Charlotte, NC, co-leading a memoir writing workshop with Ms. Cynthia Sloan. If you’re nearby, please join us. When she and I get together, there’s always laughter (and tears)! There’s still room for a few more at the story of your life, memoir.
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- Paying It Forward: Octavia Spencer Creates Contest for Aspiring Filmmakers (madamenoire.com)
- Michael Martin’s pie folk blog.
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The Heiress
Washington Square is a character in The Heiress.
In New York, it’s always about the real estate. The dude from Downton Abbey still coveted a spot on Washington Park North.
Even in 1880, when Henry James wrote Washington Square, the story upon which The Heiress is based, the gentleman caller loved Catherine Sloper for her Greenwich Village real estate, 16 Washington Square.
I love the story of The Heiress and oh, all right, I love all girl/women empowerment stories! I took a seminar about Henry James in college. In one of his prefaces, James wrote that it was far better for an artist to never marry so that the artist could focus on his or her art, sublimating sexual urges for creative ones.
I wrote about this in another blog post: Work pays better than marriage.
James never married and was incredibly prolific — coincidence? ….He thought marriage was deadly to artists, particularly writers.
I love the fierce independence, social awkwardness and artistic drive of Catherine Sloper, our hero.
The acting in this production of The Heiress was awesome. When I saw it Tuesday night, I kept thinking, ‘Man, that Jessica Chastain can act! She looks nothing like the CIA agent she played in Zero Dark Thirty,’ which I had just seen the day before. (Zero Dark Thirty was wonderful, too, in terms of fricken’ amazing women who can do so much with tenacity and surveillance, much more effective war-time tools than torture!)
‘Chastain’s a great actress,’ I thought. ‘Great actors can make themselves look so completely different.’ After the show, my husband informed me that the understudy, Mairin Lee, had gone on for Chastain that night. Wow! I’ve got to read the playbill before the show apparently! I did not know that.
In 1995, I saw this show with Cherry Jones and Michael Cumpsty (love them!). What I remember from that performance is how Jones sat alone at the end, completely satisfied and completely alone.
As we left the theater, I told my husband, ‘Even if Catherine had hooked up with the dude from Downtown Abbey and the marriage didn’t work out because he might’ve just loved her only for her apartment, she still might’ve gotten some awesome children out of the marriage. And that would be wonderful. That is wonderful.”
I saw this show with a cool bunch of fashion, mommy and travel bloggers and before the show, we had pizza and schmoozed at John’s Pizza on 44th Street. Yummy. (Disclosure: I wasn’t paid to write this post, but was given the ticket and dinner.)
The real estate on Washington Park is not permanent. You only get to live there a little while on 48th street. (The show runs until February 10th.)
Even briefly, you can join Dan Stevens of Downton Abbey and Jessica Chastain (or her replacement) and live like Catherine Sloper.
Sure, you may be plain and witless, but you get a glorious, delicious home and hot guys itching to marry you.
Just remember James’s word to the wise: marriage may derail your creativity.
For more info, visit www.TheHeiressOnBroadway.com
The Heiress on Twitter: @TheHeiressBway and Facebook
Thanks for the ticket, Mama Drama.
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Mom Trends Review of The Heiress
The culture mom’s review of The Heiress
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the year in photos
december, the event of a thread, art installation by Ann Hamilton
weekly challenge: pick the best pictures from your 2012. have the pics tell everyone about your year.
I shot all of these with my iPhone 4S and a few I tweaked with filters on instagram.
november, manhattan street
november, on my way to a lunch date, but stopped at this 53rd street public space
october, van cortlandt park, the bronx
september, back to school
august, duke university, working with united methodist women
july, adirondacks, cold spring bay in lake champlain
june, school of mission, george fox university, portland, oregon
may, had a get-away trip to the jersey shore, painted a little
april, watched little league in the north meadow, also watched cross country, swim, soccer, basketball, track
april, cherry blossoms in central and riverside parks
march, siesta key, spring break
february, the view from my office
february, times square
january, new year’s day walk with jolain
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the event of a thread
The event of a thread is made up of many crossings of the near at hand and the far away: it is a body crossing space, is a writer’s hand crossing a sheet of paper, is a voice crossing a room in a paper bag… – Ann Hamilton
The exhibit at the Armory on Park Avenue and 66th is hard to explain.
There are pigeons, swings, talking paper bags, a writer, a reader, a listener, more…
The kids did not want to go but were glad they went.
It must be experienced. Laying on your back watching the billowing silk above. Hypnotizing.
I had one insight which is this: it is not work that makes the world go (the curtain lift), it is play.
Play is the engine.
H. discovered that our swing was not pulling the curtain alone. He spotted this when we were looking down from above. Our swing was inextricably, almost invisibly, connected to someone else’s swing who was also making the curtain dance.