The Nature of the Universe

So.

It’s after 1 in the morning, and I find myself awake, at the keyboard, and struggling with the dual urges to write something and head to bed.  Oddly enough, writing won out, at least for now, so here we are.  The sun has been down for several hours now, there is an odd, autumnal bite to the spring night air, and I find myself chewing on random thoughts as they tumble across my sleep-fogged mind.

1.  There is no blue food.  Not an original thought, this one is from George Carlin.  But it is an interesting thought.  And blueberries aren’t really blue.  They’re purple.  Which brings me to my next thought.

2.  Where the hell did the flavor “Blue Raspberry” come from?  Raspberries are red.  RED, PEOPLE!

3.  What if you meet your soul mate, and decide you don’t like them?

5.  Holy crap, what happened to FOUR?

6.  In retrospect, number 5 is a lot funnier if your really tired.

7.  Has Hollywood really so completely run out of ideas for horror movies that they have to remake horror movies from the 80’s?  Friday the 13th was a bad movie when it was made the first time.  And now they’re remaking A Nightmare on Elm Street and Hell Raiser.  sigh.

8.  Penguins have an organ that filters excess salt from their bodies.  This salt is excreted through their noses.  I have no idea why I know that.

9.  It is possible to love many people.  I believe that perhaps it is possible to be IN long with only one person at a time.  I an deeply thankful that I met the person I can be in love with, and married her.

10.  Monkeys know something.  When we figure it out, it will blow our minds.

11.  When I was in high school, and a couple of kids wanted to fight, they just got together and beat the crap out of each other.  They used their fists.  Nobody pulled a knife, nobody had a gun.  They just beat the snot out of each other.  LEAVE THE DAMN GUNS AT HOME, YOU TWITS!

12.  I consistently confuse the difference between bourbon, scotch, and whiskey.  I use the terms interchangeably.  Which is weird, because I don’t really care for bourbon, but like scotch.

13.  Still haven’t found number 4.

14.  Sometimes, late at night, I really, really miss being a kid.

The Way We Were

I found myself thinking last night. Being new on Facebook and coming across all of these people, people that were friends through high school and than faded away as we moved on, went to college, got married, traveled, got jobs, bills, responsibilities, and the day to day grind of living, has gotten me wondering how it all came to pass.

I was looking through the 1991 and 1992 Alamogordo High School yearbooks last night, just kind of reminiscing, and came across a letter that a dear friend of mine had written. She felt that the simple, pithy sayings that we usually would put in yearbooks would not suffice and had written me a truly touching note that truly defined our friendship. Remembering those days and the depth of our relationship at that time brought upon me a kind of melancholy. Where did it all go?

Our relationship was never even remotely romantic. The love we had for each other was one that is only understood by truly best friends. There was nothing we couldn’t talk about. We shared stories of our relationships with others, our dating trials and tribulations, our heartbreaks and our victories. Hours were spent on the phone together talking, laughing, crying. There was anger and joy, laughter and gried, remorse and spiritual rejuvenation.

It all began to change our senior year. I couldn’t tell you now what happened to precipitate our severance, but the friendship first began to change, and than to fade. I’m not sure either of us truly realized it at first but our relationship began to undergo a metamorphosis. Perhaps it was the pressure of knowing these were the last few months before our lives irrevocably changed. College was in our future, than work, and we were scattering across the country to move on with our own, individual lives. We would soon no longer be bonded by the common interests and experience of high school students. Soon, our individuality would define who we were as we took our first, tentative steps into the larger world on our own.

Our friendship was rocky that entire year, until a brief moment following graduation. Maybe it was the knowledge that this was the last time we could truly be what we were, kids, teenagers, secure in the absolute knowledge that we were, for one, shining moment, invincible. The old, familiar friendship was there, the old comfort.

As quickly as it reformed, it faded and was gone as summer migrated into fall and we all took our first, tentative steps into our new lives.

We did not speak again for 16 years.

In the interim we both got married, moved to new towns, got jobs, became different people from the callow, dream-filled youth we had been. Were we truly as naive as we seemed, ready to conquer the world (or at least our small part of it) and knowing that friendship and first loves would last forever? Or perhaps we were as we were always meant to be, dream-filled, innocent, and touched by just a spark of unquenchable optimism that nothing could extinguish.

We spoke last year on the phone. For some reason she had popped into my head and I got it in my mind to look her up. The conversation last for about 45 minutes. It was mostly small talk. There were no great revelations. After 16 years we had gone from being best friends to being barely comfortable acquaintances. We have not spoken since.

There is a great line from the movie The Big Chill. Sam Weber (Tom Berenger) says to Nick (William Hurt), after a rather tense exchange, “Hey, Nick? You know, we go back a long way, and I’m not gonna piss that away ’cause you’re higher than a kite.”
Nick responds “Wrong, a long time ago we knew each other for a short period of time; you don’t know anything about me. It was easy back then. No one had a cushier berth than we did. It’s not surprising our friendship could survive that. It’s only out there in the real world that it gets tough.”

There is no returning to what we once were, and in a small way that makes me sad. There are many things about high school and childhood that I am glad to have behind me, but the carefree way in which we put absolute trust and friendship in one another, those days are gone and I occasionally wonder if that type of change is inevitable.

I suppose that it is.

Peace out.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

A Plea to the Low-Budget and Independent Movie Maker

I am a connoisseur of the low-budget and/or independent film.

Sure, I’ll always sit down and watch the latest Hollywood blockbuster, with it’s million-dollar effects shots, big name actors, and big name directors. Or a powerhouse drama, epic in scope, that tugs at the emotional strings of my mind.

But you’ve got to love the low-budget, independent film. These directors have a vision, a story to tell, a drive and an ambition to get it told, and very little cash with which to tell it. Somehow, they find a way to get their creative vision on screen. Now it’s out there, ready to be consumed by the masses.

The low-budget, independent director faces some unique challenges that are not a worry for major movies houses. For starters, as implied, these folks have low budgets. Some budgets are really low, in the neighborhood of “How the hell are we going to make a movie with this much cash?” low. Second, because the films are low-budget and tend to lack the overall polish of major studio films (not all, but most), the immediate assumption by most viewers is that the film will be bad. Actors nobody recognizes, unknown directors, usually straight to video, it would seem that this assumption is a safe one. The downside is that the independent director is operating from the hole already before their film is even on screen. The challenge for them is doubled because there are good odds their film will never see the inside of a theater and instead will head straight to DVD on the shelf at your local Blockbuster, vying for your attention among all the new releases.

So, what can an independent film maker do? Really, it’s not any different than what should be done by a high-priced director with millions of dollars in the budget.

MAKE A QUALITY PRODUCT!

It’s really not that hard, but after having been through a rash of particularly bad low-budget films, I toss this plea out to the independent film makers on a budget.

1. Get people that can act

This is rule number one. A bad script can be elevated by a good performance, but even the best script will be killed by an actor that doesn’t know how to act, or is so far over the top that their performance borders on the ridiculous. It probably helps to have actors that are enthusiastic about the project, since on a low budget you may not be paying them very much. Honestly, I don’t expect award-winning performances, but the actor should at least be invested in the role they are playing and in the universe in which that role exists. The worst thing that can happen to your movie is an actor that obviously just doesn’t care.

2. Cheap CGI looks exactly like what it is

The siren call of CGI effects filmakers all the time, the idea that special effects, impossible vistas, and other visuals can be done on the cheap with CGI. That’s not to say that CGI should not be used. It certainly has it’s place in the movies and can be done well inexpensively. There is a general rule that applies to CGI: You can have it fast, good, and cheap; pick 2. To get your computer images done quickly and looking good is expensive. To get them done cheaply and looking good takes a good amount of time (mainly because you’ll be using your own PC to do the rendering). Cheap CGI was done quickly for less and it looks like it. If this is your only option, use it sparingly.

3. For those that wish to make a low budget science fiction film set in a dystopian, over-industrialized future: STOP!
Stop trying to make your future look like Blade Runner. It’s been done, and your copy will probably come off as a poor imitation. Also, please stop trying to copy Mad Max/Road Warrior. Be original.

4. If you want to make a zombie film, see above. The zombie genre has been done. A lot. We have seen our heroes trapped and surrounded by the undead in the following: a house, shopping mall, a walled city, an underground bunker/mining complex, a mortuary, the island of Great Britain (28 Days Later, though not really a zombie film, is close enough). Again, with so many zombie films out there, why should I watch your movie? What makes it different?

5. Please learn how to hold the camera steady. Your camera shaking back and forth, particularly during action sequences, makes everything hard to see and worse, makes your film hard to watch. Buy yourself a tripod, at the very least. (Directors with a big budget, you guys could use a tripod too)

6. Edit your film and than make sure it makes sense.

I swear sometimes I think directors forget to watch their own movie before it gets released. Weird jumps, obviously missing scenes, or scenes that are strung together with know thought to story flow. If your audience is scratching their head by the middle of the show, something is probably wrong with how your film was edited (or it really didn’t make sense to begin with). A subtext of this is remembering the flow of time in your film. Unless your character is a superhero that can teleport it takes time to get places. Occasionally, your characters may need to put on a fresh shirt.

7. Seriously, get yourself some actors.

8. Remember the rules of your universe and than follow them.

Whatever rules you setup for your universe, remain consistent throughout your film. If your character is a hard-bitten, gun-toting assassin that has no trouble killing people, they’re not going to go soft and wimpy just because someone has a gun on them. If your main character has a severe allergy to pungent bulbs, don’t wimp out on this fact when the villain tries to kill them with garlic. As an addendum to this gripe, don’t kill off a major character for effect and than bring them back through time travel, dream sequence/didn’t really happen, or divine intervention. Grow a pair. Kill the character and leave them dead. If that really screws up the story you want to tell…THAN DON’T KILL THE CHARACTER! Also, if you spend the entire movie making us focus on one character, and than surprise us by telling us the real killer/bad guy/chief bottle washer is someone we have never seen before and had no reason to suspect precisely because we have never met them before, that’s not a twist ending. That’s cheating.

9. Finally. The last gripe. Whew, this has been quite a rant. You ready?

END YOUR BLOODY MOVIE!

That’s right. None of this “is the killer really dead” crap, or the cliff-hanger that you’ll resolve in the sequel you’ll never make. Resolve your storyline so we can all go home.

Peace out.