May 24, 2003
5/24/03 Columbia County, NY When
When you choose to be an artist, you are also signing up for a lifelong lesson in delayed gratification. Even stand-up comics hone their craft and sit in despondent sessions of self-loathing before they get the zinging heroin of a live crowd - to say nothing of novelists, sculptors and double-bass players, who, if they get kudos at all, get it heavily filtered through the reflective prisms of newspapers, gossip, and applause meant for someone else.
But not in this blog, where we are going to issue proper credit to an artist who has been creating some of the most beautiful, mostly-unheralded music for fifty years now: my mom. The score she wrote for the Pink House movie is so wonderful, so dead-on and perfect, that I feel a need to broadcast it far and wide, if only to hope the karma reaches back and allows her to quit her current suck-ass day job and do this for real.
If people want to hear some mp3 samples, I'll find a way to post some snippets here, but for now, we just have to make sure the movie is good enough for the score. Or you'll just have to wait for the film itself. Either way, it's amazing to be in the family with an artist like her, especially when her orange sauce for waffles is so damned good as well.
May 23, 2003
5/23/03 Columbia County, NY Rick
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Rick Gradone, Sean, Tessa and me in Depression-era garb
Who knows if this will turn out to be true, but today was supposed to be the last shoot of the seemingly interminable Pink House production - an effort, I might add, that began on July 23, 2001. We've had two reshoots/pickup sessions since the initial production (see here and here) but this was an elusive shot that I've coveted since about Draft 2 of the script.
It goes like this: in the 1930s section of the movie, evil Maddox (Fred Weller) forces his fiance Chloe (played by Natane Boudreau) to come with him to New Orleans. My brother Sean, who plays Oxford, steals her back. This was always just "explained" in the movie, you know, the ultimate crime of telling and not showing. I always wanted a tiny scene where Chloe has obviously escaped the clutches of her betrothed and has traversed road, river and rail to get back to her true love.
Originally, this was meant to be shot at an old dock, somewhere in Brooklyn. Then we looked into shooting at Grand Central, but it just got too involved. Finding the Stockbridge Train Station was a happy accident on the way home from Target one day last month - it was an abandoned depot that had changed little in 75 years, and nobody would see us shooting.
Of course, the usual shit happened when we showed up today: it was squirting down cold rain, there a train there with pissed-off conductors, and the town had spent 3.5 million dollars on a Grand Scenic Railroad Re-Opening due for tomorrow. This is after eight years of laying fallow. The only thing worse was if we'd actually planned the shoot for tomorrow.
Tessa batted her eyes and wooed the hearts of the contractors, and we had a 45-minute window to get everything we needed before the Man would show up to shut us down. Quick as bunnies, we got into places, shot a medium establishing of the station, a close-up of Sean, then sent him back to Queens. Then we shifted over to Natane, who bravely fought the rain and cold to look delighted to see her beloved. We wrapped, threw everything in the car, and all of us bolted onto the freeway just as the Housatonic Train Authority arrived to give us the heave-ho. It was the last shot of our movie, and we made it by about thirty seconds.
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The enchantress Natane Boudreau gets her eyelines straight
Rick and our delightful Assistant Camerawoman named Valentina (from Naples) rushed the film back to Manhattan for processing, while Tessa and I drove Natane to her home in Woodstock. Once there, we gossiped with her mother and stepdad (both way cool) for a few hours while Tessa got hopped-up on French tea. On the way home, we stopped in Kingston to see the new Matrix movie with the sound all the way up, an experience I thoroughly dug.
With my mom Fedexing the score to the film today, we finally have the raw materials to make the movie I have been trying to make for four years. Now it is only up to us.
May 22, 2003
5/22/03 Columbia County, NY Offhanded
Offhanded comment.
Offhanded comment invokes mild criticism masquerading as "societal observation."
Bait taken; criticism deflected back.
Invocation of other family members to validate criticism.
Blustery denial punctuated by bursts of entitlement.
Logic questioned, then elevated decibel level.
Fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight.
Object thrown across room.
Severe indignation at object thrown across room.
Fight about object thrown across room.
--
Argument moved to location where guests can't hear.
Long, heartfelt grievance.
Long, heartfelt grievance in return.
Non-committal concession offered.
Concession refused.
Fight fight fight.
Fight fight.
fight.
Meaningful concession offered.
Mea culpa offered in return.
Tears, exhaustion.
Deep embrace.
Sleep.
May 21, 2003
5/21/03 Columbia County, NY Have
Have any of you, my fair readers, ever tilled 625 square feet of lawn with a reverse push-tiller?
If you have, you know why my body is only permitting me to post a picture on the blog instead of a heartfelt rant about subjects diverse and irrational.
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silhouettes dart up the hill
May 20, 2003
5/20/03 Columbia County, NY no,
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no, my belly isn't actually that big, thank you
In order to truly understand cows, you have to bring yourself down to their level. If you want to feel the most unbelievably ticklish sandpaper tongue on God's green earth, you have to bring yourself beneath their level.
You were asking how the 2003 Milk Cow Sensitivity Training is going? Fine, and yours? As long as we keep living amongst them and nothing bad happens, then they start associating us with fun (even if we do eat their brethren from time to time). This particular batch is more feisty than last year, and in a bizarre reversal of Darwinian selection, they like to chase our border collie around.
What I'd really like to do is jump on the fence, be very patient, and at the last moment, JUMP ON ONE OF THEM AND SEE HOW FAR I CAN RIDE! YEEEEE-HAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!
In other farm-related news, Sean and I played pool with Dad and Uncle Chuck in the barn. That structure just screams brotherhood since the 1940s, Bob and Jim Nelson played basketball and wrestled in those very rooms. Their scoreboard graffiti, from long-fought games, is still on the walls upstairs. It felt gratifying for my Dad and his brother to play me and mine. Stranger still, my middle name is my dad's, and Sean's middle name is my uncle's.
Besides, could two non-twins look any more alike?
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Chuck and Dad milkin', roughly 1948 - - - Chuck and Dad chalkin', roughly last night
May 19, 2003
5/19/03 Columbia County, NY After
After a day that was largely frivolous my uncle, dad and stepmom are with us upstate, and we played tennis, painted the pole out front, and set up trellises – the mood turned a little darker over dinner. My uncle is a fascinating character who was on the lam for much of the late '60s and early '70s due to his anti-war machinations in the Bay Area underground. He had been in the air force, and came home with a virulent opposition to Nixon and Vietman that lasts, refreshingly, to this day.
All conversations about America's future turn vaguely cataclysmic when Chuck is in the room, but he has a warm spirituality that tempers the rough edges and makes him a fascinating dinner guest. While I believe my own father, along with Sean, is at heart an optimist I share a despondency about human nature with my uncle. He really doesn't believe we have proven that we belong on this earth, and that the test of radical fundamentalism and religious dogma is one that we are truly failing.
Everyone has a way of dealing with their darkest thoughts: Sean has multi-valent and conflicting passions; Dad has an adventuresome elasticity; Carole a breezy seriousness; Chuck a vaguely apocalyptic Buddhism, and Tessa an openhearted fatalism. I tend to keep myself calm with two things 40mg of Celexa per day, and a firm belief that things are never as bad as you think they are; they might be worse, but they're always more interesting.
May 18, 2003
5/18/03 Columbia County, NY I
I got semi-scooped by the NY Times today, which is no way to begin the morning. I had an idea percolating in my head, about how much trouble this blog has been to me, how many feathers I've ruffled, how many things I've had to dance around, and how many family members I've pissed off and whether or not it's truly worth it.
I'd actually pitched it to a few places about a month ago, but no action was taken, and well, now the Times pretty much shot that wad for me. Theorists of cognitive resonance proffer the notion that all "epiphanies" never just happen to one person, they happen to several at once. They also believe that the knowledge of one person is something that can be subtly transferred to another without them ever meeting. Studies were done on crossword puzzles from the Times, where people taking the Sunday puzzle on Wednesday finished twice as fast as those who took it on the day it came out, even though it was "new" to both parties. The idea was that the puzzle answers were out there, swimming in the collective spiritus mundi of New Yorkers by Sunday night, and the later puzzle-takers had the advantage of their own unconscious. Similar studies have been done on monkeys living on separate islands. Or I could have just gotten this whole paragraph wrong, and some sociology grad student is looking skyward and sighing in disgust.
But I've been kicking around this taco stand called Media for a few years now, and I can tell you this: if you have a great idea, don't think you're alone. Somebody else has it too, and it's a race from then on. I happened to lose this one.
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my dad barbecues hamburger, while the cows in the field look on with macabre interest
My Uncle Chuck flew in today, making it a nice testosterone fest of Williamsesess: Sean, me, Dad and Chuck. Lindsay and Dana came over for grilled burgers, and we sat around making fun of the freemasons (our grandfather was in the 32nd order, apparently kind of like "vice-grand-dragon" or something). Some good champagne was had by many, and the peanut butter chocolate chip pie was richer than hell. I had bought what I thought was peach pie, but upon further inspection, it was apple, which I find boring as snot. I'm going to find the stockboy at the IGA who mis-labeled my pie and kick his ass!
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