Tuesday 10 July 2007 - Back In The Saddle
You know, the entertainment biz is a funny thing.
(Actually it's not. George Burns was closer to right when he said that show business was a hideous bitch goddess, but go with me here.)
There's a movie I saw by accident once called The BIg Picture. It starred Kevin Bacon, and Teri Hatcher is in it too, playing one of her "ho" roles that she did prior to... okay, she's still doing them, but is now respected for it somehow (toldja that entertainment was funny). It stuck with me because it's basically every filmmaker's fantasy: young, idealistic kid makes something in his great flyover hometown, which gets him out to LA to make films, only to be shit on by the system. Then, when he's disillusioned and sick of it, he quits, makes a music video for a friend, and the next thing he knows, he's back in the saddle once again.
I didn't like this movie when I saw it because it's too ideal. I'm a painful realist, and instinctively distrust anything that feels too good to be true. So I was pretty sure nothing like that would ever happen to me, and yet... here I am.
Well not quite. Lightstorm Entertainment hasn't exactly called me back yet. But I'm now producing my buddy John Siscel's new short, after telling him explicitly that I didn't want to do it, and I'm enjoying it. Who knew?
I guess it's kind of fitting. John wasn't going to make this movie himself, a sequal to his original short film, MMA (http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1288026510), but then a rumor started that he was making a sequal. And whlie we were having dinner one evening, we came up with a sequal, a goof on sequals themselves. It was cute, but not brilliant, so I didn't want to have anything to do with it. Then another mutual friend told John not to do it. So naturally, he went full steam ahead, and kept telling me about it, and the problems he was having procuring a location.
One of my best and worst traits is that I cannot leave problems unsolved. Believe it or not, this can make you very unpopular (you sound like a know-it-all), but the upside is that you can't be stopped. I learned in the hospital that there isn't a problem you cannot solve given time - what kills most people is that they go into panic mode and try to solve their problems too quickly.
Naturally, I came up with a solution to John's problem. And he promised me a producer credit for that. So here I am.
And you know what? I'm glad.
Seriously. The thing I've realized, as I talk about this project and think about the next one, is that for whatever reason, I like physical production. I like vibing off of the other people involved, I like coming up with ideas, I like the feeling of accomplishment you get when you do it. And as I said before, /that/'s the reason to do anything. Not because you think it will make you rich and / or famous ("wars not make one great'), but because it's fun to do. And to me, it really is fun, stress and difficulty and all.
So with this I've got some momentum, my best friend / future director / editor of MMA and MMP is excited about doing his own thing, and it's on once again. I'm the Michael Corleone of entertainment.
And like I said, I'm glad. Nothing beats the rush of this. Nothing.
And that's why I do it.
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