xtcian

10/5/02 When you start reading

10/5/02

When you start reading other people's blogs, the natural inclination is to start believing you're doing yours incorrectly, or at least with a lot less fanfare. Folks like the Reverse Cowgirl and Driver 8 all have calendars you can click on, and update their musings whenever they see fit during the course of a day. I only write my blogs in the middle of the night, don't have a calendar, and have very little porn on the site, which makes me look tender and virgin by comparison. I feel like I lack an online community, made immeasurably easier by the "comment" buttons at the bottom of each entry something that connects these bloggers together.

I wish I had one of those buttons here, but my brother Steve (who administrates this thing) says he hates the accompanying code for one reason or another. It is a bit sad, though, me typing this thing at 3am with little or no input from my fellow human phylum.

It's a stark contrast to the heady days on Usenet back in the early 90s, when my entire life was subsumed by the vicissitudes of a particular newsgroup dealing with my Generation I was not only part of an online community, I actually lost my mind somewhere on a modem wire. For a few months in there, I was bereft of social grace, unable to care about the actual world, spending most waking hours chatting, manifesto-ing or cybersexing with as many virtual human beings as possible. There were a few wonderful people on that newsgroup, but the internet's natural magnetism to slightly-deranged kooks – along with my own carelessness – led to an online immolation of my reputation, but them's the breaks, right? Someone online once told me that I was behaving like a 21-year-old instead of a 27-year-old, a comment that gets even more funny as the years drag on.

Those days taught me some important lessons about online relationships, especially the ones you foment whilst still single:

1. Keep all of your discourse with the opposite gender as far away from sex as possible. Even the smallest reference can be construed as flirting, and then you're fucked.

2. Never meet a virtual person of the opposite gender in the real world unless you have both agreed and signed Platonic oaths in blood. Trust me on this one. It's fine to do the nerve.com or match.com thing if you're going into it with that expectation, but believe me: none of you reading this know yourself well enough to look for love online.

3. If you can't see people, don't take their admonitions seriously. You'll get more than you need from your immediate environment.

Speaking of along time ago, we went even further into the past tonight by attending Alec Guettel's party for Ned, a fabulous bash populated by tons of friends made during the heady years of the Reagan administration. Among the women we saw were Julia-Carr Bayler and Mallory May, two of my favorite ladies from the University of North Carolina and strangely enough, I had forgotten that they were both Pink House residents circa 1989. One thinks that at any distribution company would be guaranteed of selling at least 3000 tickets of the movie just by courting the demographic of Past Pink House Residents alone.

the lovely Julia-Carr and Mallory with me, aging fratdork het-boy

10/4/02 Boy, yesterday's blog was

10/4/02

Boy, yesterday's blog was lame, right? Falling asleep in the middle of a diary entry is something I've never done before, but when your body screams, one must listen, I suppose. Strange, though. I always outlast everybody, and that includes my own writing stubbornness. Perhaps it's being in my 30s I have to accept the fact that some people are coming along that can actually stay up later than me (I haven't met any of them, but I'm reasonably sure they exist somewhere).

So: about what I was gonna say yesterday. The IFP Market wrapped things up last night with an awards ceremony and a performance by the band Luna, whom I've always dug, quite. I felt as though we made a pretty big impression on the festival, and not just because we had a bunch of chicks wearing Pink House t-shirts. I may have accidentally changed the event by approaching the director of the Market and telling her that announcing finalists for the narrative section prize especially before the festival began - was really marginalizing to the films that wouldn't be on the list. I told her I'd already been in 3rd grade once and didn't need to feel like it again (I described it better in the blog on Aug. 17). Weirdly enough, they dropped the whole "finalist" thing and gave the award to one film without mentioning any others. Which, I gotta say, was totally cool, whether or not I had anything to do with it.

To critique the Market, let me be deferential first: we got in, and that's no mean feat. They accepted our movie on the basis of an old trailer that looks like shit; they must have had very good imaginations and a lot of faith. We had a great time being immersed in the lives of other filmmakers, and the IFP did their level best to get big names to all the screenings. The parties rocked, and our movie snippet was dug muchly by the likes of United Artists and Lion's Gate, and there's no other place we could have had that kind of exposure.

If I were to reshape the Market, however, I'd take Tessa's advice and put the administration/panels/booths in the Angelica Theater like they used to be, instead of splitting everything up. If it had rained or God forbid, snowed – getting people from the Puck Building over to the theater would have been like herding elk. Also, I'd get a sound engineer into the digital projection booths to figure out why everyone's movie sounded like it was being broadcast through a torn guitar amp. I saw filmmakers die thousands of deaths while their baby was being crucified onscreen by a torrent of feedback and blown speakers. Thank god we'd learned our lesson and erred on the quiet side.

Perhaps also we should have been a little more eager to press flesh and meet every last executive, but like I have always believed, doing that party circuit never leads anywhere. Seriously, I'd rather cuddle up in bed with a Mac G4 and massage the Pink House edit into a fine sexy froth rather than go out and get $4 ginger ales (actual price at Coda!)

at the last IFP 2002 party: hours later, Kim had laryngitis, Liz blew off work, Tessa woke up with a sore throat, and I fell asleep writing this blog

10/3/02 Pure, flawless, impermeable exhaustion.

10/3/02

Pure, flawless, impermeable exhaustion.

10/2/02 Made it in time

10/2/02

Made it in time to see Andy Brown's film Pop Life at the IFP Market they said the Market would be dying down by today, but there seemed to be more people milling about than ever. I wish more of them had come to see Andy's film, which is not only quite funny (a mockumentary about the reunion of a "Real World"-like cast 15 years later) but produced by Kendall Morgan, one of the girls at Carolina who lived in the estrogen-charged 505 N. Greensboro Street house.

From there, we attended four different industry panels where acquisition folks from Miramax, Samuel Goldwyn, IFC and United Artists all gave their advice on getting their films seen by them. I would have titled the panels "You Think You We're Going To Take YOU Seriously? Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!" but thankfully, there were some scraps of hope thrown around. The one mantra we've heard at least 23 times from different sources is this: wait. Wait for the right festival to show yer movie, and for god's sake, don't fucking show it to anybody until every last nanosecond of it is exactly perfect. Not like we were all Johnny and Josephine Show Your Movie, but we're heeding this advice very strictly, and if yesterday's screening interested some of the big fish like we think (and heard) it did, then we're going to be Johnny and Josephine Demure and Coy.

Speaking of our screening, we may not have won that IFP award for Best-Seeming Picture or something, but we were told that more big shots from big places (Miramax, Fine Line, Lion's Gate, United Artists, HBO, Sundance) came to our screening than anyone else in the festival. I credit Liz and Kim for this, as they were relentless in getting buzz worked up through fabulous T-shirts worn by random people, a great postcard, a kick-ass poster, and dogged emails & faxes. Add Tessa's preternatural charm, Gill's one-degree-of-separation from everyone on the planet, my brother Steve's excellent website, and my pink Chuck Taylor All-Stars and you have a recipe for the van to start a-rockin'.

Liz, ever working an angle

Instead of attending another IFP party, we decided to play hooky and went to 24 Hr. Party People instead. I don't recommend it if you're in the mood for a movie that takes the conventional rules of storytelling seriously, but if you're feeling saucy and have a love for New Order, the Happy Mondays and other such early 80s Manchester New Romantic lore like me – it's a blast. I was in London during the inception of their predecessors: the Sex Pistols, the Buzzcocks, Joy Division. But I was ten years old and listening to ABBA! Why didn't someone tell me what I was missing, huh?!?

10/1/02 I should have been

10/1/02

I should have been to bed hours ago, as I've already been drunk once tonight (the fratboy in me can't pass up an open bar it's just too much like a candy store) and then I had to recreate our new website while in that insta-hangover stage. Ah, but I raconteur too fast.

First, the news: The Pink House made its big debut into the world today at the IFP Market, the first time that the "industry" and fellow filmmakers we don't know could see the fruits of our lumbar. Consider that we had the following things against us: it was a comedy narrative at a mostly serious market (lots of death, disease, dismemberment and cleft palette documentaries), the sound was criminally bad (as it was for all films there), the crowd was not warmed up in the least, and we didn't have enough money to transfer one of the scenes to film, making it look like, well, video.

Consider also that I didn't speak loudly enough, which was really stupid, since I'm usually very good at that sort of thing. Also consider that I botched my introduction by saying a bunch of off-topic crap that I barely remember, and didn't spell out the plot nor plug the Heather Matarazzo connection, leaving most folks in a state of mild befuddlement.

If you take all that and consider that there were plenty of places where the laugh lines didn't take and I began to wonder if I should take up TV/VCR and gun repair we ended up late in the day feeling pretty good about it. Truth is, there were lots of good laughs during the screening, even if no boisterous guffaws. It's further proof that this movie is destined to become the kind of flick that grows on you – I mean, we're pretty subtle. Today I heard people laughing at lines many seconds after they were delivered, meaning they had to think about it. My kind of humor, I suppose (although I'm also a big fan of farting).

Anyway, the reps from United Artists, Miramax, Fine Line and Samuel Goldwyn were all there, and Gill said the buzz was good as the day went on. Having those big fish around most likely means little, but even a small meeting with them could net us something special. As long as we learn from these little episodes, i.e., speak clearly, be obvious, don't show scenes that aren't done, etc., we should be getting smarter by the frame.

As I said, four free Finlandia screwdrivers tonight quelled my mood, so I spent a few hours chatting up some film folks from Minneapolis and being so goddamn thankful I don't have to hit on girls anymore. I ended up talking to a few women that I would have spent six or seven moronic weeks "getting' to know ya" time I can now use to finish my other screenplay. Sometimes just the mechanics of being engaged makes life so much easier. That, and you can get away with saying anything you want – Engaged Guy has a Get Out of Creepy Jail Free card!

me and the Pink Ladies: Tessa, Kim, Jessie, Liz. note my cool Chucks, made pink by three hours with a highlighting pen

9/30/02 Day 2 of our

9/30/02

Day 2 of our IFP experience left us exhausted, but happy to be in the company of a lot of other filmmakers. One thing that separates New York from Los Angeles (other than an average IQ differential of about 45) is that people here in the movie business are all about "collectives," other loose partnerships, and the general good will that a high tide raises all ships. In Los Angeles, every success becomes a referendum on the failures of everyone within the successful person's penumbra, as well as a good time to work up your resentments into a fine patina. I probably shouldn't use the word "resentment," which is too fine-tuned for the LA experience; best go with outright naked "jealousy."

Not so in New York, or at least not so obvious. We actually want everyone to do well, and talk up projects that we may not even like. One such narrative we saw today, and the conversations later all started with "I don't want to be mean..." and finished with "...but I really respect what he was trying to do." We also saw some pieces today that needed no qualifications, as they were quite good without any waffling from us. Paul Devlin's documentary "Power Trip" about the electricity outages in Tbilisi, Georgia (former USSR) was cool, as was Jessica Sharzer's short film The Wormhole (word on the street was that she got a 3-picture deal from Universal out of it fuckin' yikes).

My favorite dudes, of course, are the ones who got into the Market through spit and vinegar, and don't mind dorking out while they spin their various yarns. Like this guy, for instance:

I think his documentary is about the venerable urban legend that we didn't actually go to the moon in 1969, and the whole lunar landing was done on a soundstage in Burbank. Which makes you wonder if Apollo 11 was a hoax, why did they keep pretending to go back, even after the TV ratings dipped? They took six more journeys to the moon after the first one, including the botched Apollo 13. I dunno, it just seems like a lot of work to keep the ruse going.

Keeping the conversations purring at these things takes more out of you than you realize, like a lot of sun on a hot beach day. Tomorrow is our big day at the festival; we show our clips at 1:45 at the Angelica, put on a little dog and pony show, and hope for the best. I'm a little concerned about the approachability and conventionality of our project it seems like we're not just the only comedy, we're the only feature with a linear storyline. One of the documentary guys said "you made a comedy? You guys are brave!"

me and Tessa on the subway home, dressed in our pink best

9/29/02 It was at the

9/29/02

It was at the IFP party tonight that it hit me: we really did accomplish something with this movie just by getting it done. If you're going to be emotionally healthy about it and believe that the journey is indeed the destination, then we can claim success right now. In the artistic world a sphere in which I tentatively cling to membership – career successes are few and far-between, and so the fact that a committee of peers invited us to their influential market proves all along that we might not have been working inside the yolk of an egg for the last two years after all.

Tonight's shindig was also the sneak-premiere party for The Man From Elysian Fields, which was quite a nice film saddled with some unthinkable groaners that pretty much give the movie a case of the cancer. Mick Jagger was fabulous in the flick, however, and even more fabulous at the after-party at Metronome (even though neither Tessa nor I got to see him). The music at the party was great (they played "I Can't Wait" by Nu Shooz how rad is that?) but catered to the attention-impaired, as each song lasted about fourteen seconds. They also had great chicken satay, some of which was smuggled to Señor Poopy Pants left alone in the car.

Gill Holland worked the crowd like a master I saw him handing out Pink House postcards fifty feet away, even while chatting up a sexy, gothy blonde. Good to have Gillbo on your side; like Tessa says, he is a natural celebrator.

Gill and me at the 24-hr plays in June