How to Kill Yourself in One Year # 5 "Pre"

the december to remember...

it's coming. i promise it's coming. and in the end I decided to do the thing which terrifies me. the thing that I don't know will work...that probably will end up being a sentimental weeping mess...but in the end, i have to do. because if I don't put these thoughts into a tangible form and put them out there, I'm going to go insane.

so stay tuned for...

P.R.E.

shooting this week...starring...me and the EVENT.

from limbo...

The fact is…I don’t have a clue what I’m going to do. November was excruciating and in the end a horrifying, and then depressing and then wonderful and I can’t quite tell you all about it at this juncture but I can say that Thanksgiving week was one that has probably changed me as a human and, by extension, an artist; how I have now idea. But we’re going onwards and upwards and I don’t have a fucking clue as to what to do.

That is not exactly true.

I know what I should do.

What I want to do.

I want to explain that week. Tell you about that week.

But  I don’t know if I can.

I don’t know if I’m ready.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready or if I’ll even ever be able to read the stuff I wrote during that week.

But if I do, you’ll be the first to know.

And I really better get crackin’ on the contingency…because life don’t stop just because one has an existential hissy fit…

How to Kill Yourself in One Year #4 "Battle Act"

Our fourth film and our first piece of S.H.I.T.

November was one for the record books...we basically ended up having to scrap not one but TWO scripts due to Sandy, a noreaster, Actor emergency and BABIES...lots and lots of babies.

so I ended up having to write something in one day that we could shoot the next day.  in the end we just ran out of time and this is the (unfortunate) result.

So sit back and enjoy Quite's Ishtar... Merry Fucking Christmas...hope you like crap!!!

what, did I say Macbeth or something???

so it would seem that November is going to be the first month that lives up to the whole "kill yourself" part of this experiment.

Our leading lady, whom is an extraordinary talent, has had an emergency and cannot film on Sunday...and since I wrote the scene for her, i'm not going to recast....so look for Uncle.Neice as an entry sometime early next year.

of course that also leaves me in the proverbial pickle (without a tickle) as our shoot day(s) have been locked to this Sat and/or Sun.

so now I have basically a day to come up with the script that I can film in my basement.

to quote Oliver Platt in Diggstown..."i've been that good before...question is, can I be that good now?"

uggggggggg

stay tune....you might just see me fall on my ass this month!

Three days...midnight oil...bloody marys and a new script rises from the rubble of Sandy.

Uncle. Niece.

this is actually going to be expanded into my next feature but I figured I could explore some of the themes of it in a shorter form.

this one is longer than I've tackled in this series...but it's also almost pure dialogue so i'm thinking (uh-oh) it won't be too big of an issue.  I'm thinking...master....two-pop...woody allen and that is all she wrote.

shit does, in fact, happen.

so Sandy came. and then a Nor'easter hit and to make a long sad story--filled with frustration and rage--short, we had to postpone the shooting of Boo until Dec. mostly this was (thankfully) due to power and transportation issues with the cast and crew; nobody was hurt or lost their homes (especially us) so we are definitely thankful for that...still pissed at Sandy...but thankful.   So we just decided to push it until Dec.

which means, I basically have one week to write a new script so we can shoot it next weekend and get it edited before thanksgiving  and then the end of the month.

onward and upward I suppose.

and now to panic and write....

remember remember the film of november. the fourth one...the fourth script

boo

just won third place for the coveted MP  "Where Am I" monthly challenge...

inspired by a true story...my wife ran into a very creepy man at the grocery store who said "you're not exactly hiding it" about her pregnant belly and then proceeded to chat her up for a good five minutes; after which she came up to me and said, "I may have just talked to a serial killer...please make sure he doesn't follow us home".

How to Kill Yourself in One Year #3 "hemingway"

photos from the (wet) Hemingway shoot

Franny seems engrossed in my lengthy game plan

no crew means no photog means sloppy cast/crew pics

a huge chunk of time was spent waiting for it  to stop raining

no really. I got pregnant to play this role...

babies' SECOND crew gig.  now they're talking participation...

yes. that is a sun blocker being used as a bo-bo reflector. what's it to ya?

and then some zany broke out.

and deeeeep thoughts...with hack jandy...

classic directing move...NAILED it.

Grisel laughs. she was the only one NOT rained upon

and then Franny made some kick ass guac.   

my "awesome" shot list...complete with life-like photo realistic story board drawings.

rehearsing...

this chick is so freaking beautiful it makes my heart hurt.

mother nature can oftimes try to produce...

I don't know why y'all are looking at me like that...I don't even HAVE an  umbrella!

trunk cam

the gorgeous and uber talented Franny Civitano as Monica

the results of trying to stage a directing moment

so this is the martini...or would have been if the f**king mic stand wasn't in the shot!

Cast for Hemingway

Jennifer White as the Pregnant Housewife (she actually allowed me to get her pregnant just to make this film...now THAT is dedication to one's craft, folks)

HTKYIOY #1 Veteran, Franny Civitano, as Monica (we can't get enough of her!)

now it's October Country...the third one. the third script.

hemingway

this is an ancient MP script...probably from their first  one pager contest...and one that I've wanted to make for quite (no pun intended) some time.

I've expanded it a wee bit for this incarnation...

How to Kill Yourself in One Year #2 "Lounge Act"

The First Time...

My lovely AND talented wife, Jennifer, comments on her process:

First timer

The idea of me directing one of these short films probably came from the fact that on my husband’s previous films, I can’t keep my ideas of what I think  would be good to myself…so it’s not that I really thought I could direct, but I knew I do have ideas…so my approach to this was not to get overwhelmed with the whole responsibility of the project, but to try my best to execute any ideas I had with the material & see what happens….I also really wanted to be open to anyone else’s ideas tooJ  I had after all directed College Night in undergrad & a few short plays in directing classes in grad school…so for this I wanted to think cinematically….I knew my actors were talented & would bring a lot of choices, no need to worry about the acting for this one…I wanted to see a story in pictures…which led me to the idea that for the first page, maybe my pictures could lead the audience to think …”hmm, what’s happening here?…why is he afraid or sweating it out?”…only to hopefully set up it being funnier once it’s revealed the reason for his fear…I wanted to convey a feeling in the shots that I set up of that of the male character…of feeling trapped in a situation…inappropriate …..I just went through the story and tried to “cover” all of the action with several setups & learned as we shot, that after I think a got the scene covered, that I probably didn’t need OTS & and close ups of 4 lines of dialogue!…next step is editing…another thing I’ve never done before…

we forgot to take pictures during the shoot...so please enjoy these hastily staged ones!

Babies' first directing gig

hmmm how do I tell my husband that his acting is schmaltzy?

Monica, GREAT...Honey, I said LESS schmaltzy

when you have no money, you have no crew, you have no still photographer

Yep. We shot this film in a bathroom. Here, Grisel tries not to choke on the  urine smell whilst setting up a smokin' take

Did I mention the bathroom reeked of urine? did I mention no AC??

hmmmm what this scene needs? 56% MORE SCHMALTZ!

Yes, pee pee goes in there.

On sleeping with one's director...

first I need to say...for the record...that I discovered a lurking six pack of Lienkugel's Summer Shandy (and i know i probably spelled that wrong) behind a gallon of almond milk in the fridge tonight and so I write this a little...shall we say...perfunkilated?

I'm sitting here, in the dark, and my editor is hard at work color correcting Fuck New York downstairs and the camera and sound gear is packed with care by the door and my Lounge Act script is memorized and tomorrow we go to the same office location that we shot FNY's office scene to use the men's room for Lounge Act and at this moment--one film almost in the can and 1/12th finished with this new project--I am bona fide.  I am making films.

I casually look over on the coffee table and see the shot list for tomorrow. 'Tis a fantastic, well thought out and detailed shot list. It is typed. It makes sense. It has a logic just ripe to maximize set ups and also allow for freedom to experiment.  As shot lists go...this is pretty much neat/sweet/petite.

That should have been your first clue that I'm not directing this one.

My wife is.

Because I said that I might like to act again...that I haven't actually acted in a long mother flushing time and was thinking that I was at that point where if I didn't act in one of these soon, I'd probably just never act again and she said, "well why don't I direct the next one and you act in it"  and just like that it was so.

because that, my little chickadees, is how she rolls.  She's a planner and a doer; a rock AND a roller; she doesn't talk about stuff; she makes shit happen.  It was she that, over a plate of eggplant parm, when I causally mentioned "you know if we could just get few things, we could have our own white trash movie studio", said "how much and let's do it".  She's the one who told me I was the "real deal" at a moment when i felt very much the opposite.  she's the one who said to me...SAYS to me every time I am at the point where I want to pull an Old Man Charlie (you'll get it soon enough FNY!!), just keep going...keep working for those Ten Days (Ed Burns Fans understand this).  In short...if any of this ever pans out, it will be because and ONLY because of her.

did I mention she's also carrying not one but TWO of my children?

And now she creates a shot list of this magnitude.

I don't know exactly how to wrap this up since I've lost track of what my original intention of this post was...but I guess I can say that Quite Film is more her than it is me...because, although it was my dream, it was her will that made it so.

Break a Leg tomorrow, Jejo.

now I shall publish this before I get truly disgusting...

September Gurls...the second one. The second script

Lounge Act

Another Movie Poet script...started life as something else and loosely based on a true story that involved me, my friend Rachel and a sweet 16 party...

How to Kill Yourself in One Year #1

How to Kill Yourself in One Year #1

Photos from the shoot

a familiy of raccoons living on location prompted a quick rewrite

Rebecca Kush as Liz!

in a rare moment of directing prowress...side note: I am always at least 45% more handsome when out of focus

a layover from Rebel Without a Crew, I always do a run through recording of the dialogue...just in case

confirming the brilliance that is Grisel

in action...

wish I had a sound person...then I wouldn't have to hold the dead cat

it saddens me that I didn't get proper cast photo...this is the closest I got...

an actor prepares...a director just talks a lot...

Franny Civitano as Julie

Some pre-shoot / actor prep thoughts from Franny Civitano:

To understand acceptance is to understand all the horrifying, painful things that come first. The road to acceptance is never easy, and hardly ever quick, but it is a necessary and almost inevitable part of the grieving process. I’m familiar with grief. I’ve experienced it in a variety of ways, and a variety of circumstances. Some ways were more major than others, but there’s a moment during each period of mourning when you realize, “Oh my god, this isn’t the worst day of my life.”

My most major period of grief came after my father passed away. He was sick (cancer) and it was a slow process. When someone is sick for a long time, there’s always someone who will say, “At least you knew. At least it wasn’t a surprise.” Well, the thing is, it’s always surprising, even when you’ve got a head’s up. Death is never something you can fully prepare for, especially if you’re on the outside of it.

My dad wasn’t a big talk-about-my-feelings type of guy. He made jokes, sure, but he never sat down and said, “I realize I’m dying and this is what I want to say to you.” For a while I regretted that he never had “that conversation” with me, because I wanted closure and I wanted to talk about it. Then someone told me, “The best thing you can do is let them die the way that they lived.” I’m not sure if my father ever really reached a state of “acceptance” about his diagnosis or death, I’m not sure if accepting your own death is truly possible. Or maybe it is. But I’m still sure that he wasn’t “prepared” for it.

When I think about Julie, who has cancer, I think about that part in the grieving process when you mourn the future that you saw for yourself. We’ve all experienced it; we put so much effort (sometimes unintentionally) in building a fictional (hopeful, what-if, possible) future for ourselves that relies on our current circumstances. It takes very little to make that come crashing down. This could be anything--a breakup, a lay-off, a test result--so imagine what a cancer diagnosis could mean. Even if it doesn’t mean sure death, there are hospital bills, energy loss, and a lifetime of check-ups and tests.

The following is an excerpt from an email exchange between Franny and me:

I see this interaction as happening at the precise moment Julie achieves “acceptance” in the 5 stages of grief.  As in….literally…the exact moment where she goes from depression to acceptance and starts to feel better… “as I live and breathe”.    I don’t see this as a particularly dramatic situation for Julie because of this.  Rather, this is the first true moment of Zen she gets to feel—her tears have all been wept, her screams have all evaporated into the atmosphere, her fists have pounded all they need to pound—and at this moment she is truly free.  If Liz didn’t freak out and cut and run, I could easily see Julie  saying “so how are YOU, Liz”…

As a general rule, I don’t like to mutz around too much with your “acting computer” as I believe (as an actor, myself) that an actor’s process is proprietary and personal and honestly a little magic so as a director I don’t monkey too much with the machine as to how you approach your packing (I’m assuming I can use ‘packing’ as  you are a UNCG alum and have therefore been in many a Gulley class!). I want to give you the freedom to make choices and come up with discoveries.

With that in mind, I’m going to answer your questions with my thoughts but please feel free to use what you can and discard anything that doesn’t help.

Do you see Julie as "sick and tired" or does she look relatively normal, just thinner, than usual?  I think it’s important that Julie not look “sick” in the sense that something is obviously wrong.  The reason I want to make this short is to explore our society’s fascination with thinness and how we always…always…perceive that significant weight loss is positive and we often equate sickness with beauty.  So what I’d like (easier said than done, but trust that you are a genius) is to have any to the weariness that Julie feels to be reflected through her eyes and her physicality; her pace and rhythm not her external appearance. Because, to Liz, her external appearance has “never looked better”.  And on a side note, I think something you might think about is the irony that when you and Liz were friends and you were heavier, you probably fantasized about losing weight to the point where she praised you and finally at this moment, she does.  There might be some mileage in that for us to play with.

Is she thinner because she's going through chemo or just changing her diet to be healthier?   The way I see things is that Julie had a period of fatigue and rapid weight loss, which, let’s face it, she probably loved at first—finally the diet is working—and then it just kept going on and she kept feeling terrible so she finally decides to go in and it is one of those situations where it’s too late.  I can let you fill in details or I can extrapolate more but it’s imperative for the truth of this scene that it was the cancer that caused her weight loss. This sickness finally did the thing she struggled to do her whole life and finally at the end, she gets the validation of “you’re beautiful”  when it means the least.  I don’t mind you’re expanding this however you like for your process but the critical thing to the film is that Julie sheds no tears here…she is truly at peace.  In fact, I’m hoping that somewhere in there…she’s gonna find this funny as hell!

 Is she accepting her diagnosis, or is she accepting her death?  I shall leave that choice up to you;  I think you know…



CAST the dutchie pon the left hand side...I said...

Rebecca Kush as Liz

Franny Civitano as Julie

August and everything after... the first one. the first script

little ditty 'bout black and dyin (pronounced "Diane")



based on a true story from a very old (chronologically, not age) ex-girlfriend.  I do find it facinating that our society often equates sickness with beauty and wanted to explore that idea a bit.

this began its life as an entry for Movie Poet for its one page competition.

not really much else I can say about it...oh...it says "peace out" at the end instead of "fade out" because the reviewers at Movie Poet tend to be...hmmmm...shall we say RIGID with regards to format, despite there not actually being a true standard format for screenplays; so I always try to add something gloriously ridiculous for them to tizz over.

life for you is a dashing bold adventure...so SING and rejoice and SING and rejoice!

and just like that, we're off...

12 films in 12 months...

Some will ask, "why?";  most will not give a shit and to them I say "shuttayouface".

As for the why...

the simple reason would be, "because it's there".

a more complex (read: arty) reason would be the following:

So I read some interview with some guy (who? Not important right now) and he said (and I’m paraphrasing) “people ask me how to break into the business and I tell them ‘go make one short film a month for the next year and come back and ask me again’” the idea being, of course, that to break in, one needs to actually get out there and start generating product; something along the lines of the old lottery prayer joke, “Joe, meet me half way, buy a ticket” kinda thing.

So I’ve decided to do just that. Starting now, I’m planning on making one short film a month for a year. Each film will be “premiered” here  and hopefully be accompanied by some behind the scenes stuff.


A few things of note:

--This project is an experiment in QUANTITY, not necessarily Quality (although I hope they are not mutually exclusive). The goal is to make a short film a month for one year, not to churn out mini epics every four weeks. The goal is to see how I am changed by this process. It’s an experiment. Obviously I will be doing my absolute best but don’t you be expecting no Citizen Kane or, the southern equivilant, Smokey and the Bandit, every month.

--nobody will ever get paid. Nothing. Ever. Ever. Ever. Ever. Zero. Nada. Nein. Niltch. Everyone on this project (including me) will be working for free and the finished product will be distributed for free here. They will not make money. If the gods smile and somehow it gets attention and advertisers come and little checks from Blogger start pouring in, I will not retroactively pay anyone.

--If you live in the Jersey area, and want to participate, come one come all…you can direct, act, DP, grip, sound mix, edit, whatever you’d like. Meaning if you have that script but really want to direct it yourself, I will be your huckleberry (read: producer). Like I said, the goal is in the doing of the movies…and a little community building never hurt anyone.

And that is it. 

So let’s get to getting to…