Stanley Kubrick said, Making movies is a pursuit for those who like spending loads of money. Or something along those lines. He was also known to be as tight-fisted with his wallet as they come. I’m at a money juncture. I have these projects lined up for the next few months and hopefully beyond. I want to keep things in-house as much as possible. But there’s not much of a roof over our heads at the moment. Also, at a certain point, one must not be too independent of a filmmaker.
Let me see if I can be more precise and digress a lot while I'm being precise:
London Calling is up at AlphaCine being processed. Should have it back early next week. Then it’s down to Austin to transfer it to video with my friend Joe Malina at Matchframe. I’m looking forward to getting away for a couple of days and I just finished a draft of a screenplay I’m writing for Producer Tommy Palotta. He’s in Austin producing Through a Scanner Darkly, so hopefully I’ll get to hook up with him and Rick Linklater while I’m down there. I met Rick once before through our mutual friend and mutual Knut Hamsun fan, Speed Levitch. Look for Rick to adapt one of Knut’s novels for the screen one day. Maybe he’ll hire me to write it. In the meantime check out Hamsun starring Max von Sydow to find out about one of my favorite authors. Better yet, read Growth of the Soil or Hunger.
So while I’m waiting for picture, sound needs to be digitized. We recorded sound for London Calling dual-system onto a DAT recorder. There’s a USB interface that I borrowed to convert the DATs to aiff files in Final Cut Pro. I’m still running FCP 3.0 And it didn’t like this audio interface, so I got FCP HD 4.5. Problem is my powerbook is still running OS X Jaguar and FCP HD 4.5 requires Panther. I’d buy Panther but Tiger is due out in two weeks. I’ve been waiting for Tiger and I don’t want to buy both in the span of two weeks.
I don’t think Federico Fellini ever considered this kind of trifle.
I posted for Assistant Editors and Interns on Craigslist and got some great responses. One chap lives round the corner and has a better system than I. He’s lacking in the skills department, so we might make a good match. I got mad skills, yo. Another shows promise as a director and is excited to help out and have me as a mentor. So I’ve got these two great guys and several others wanting to digitize my audio. I can’t tell you how dull that’s going to be. I’d rather write that junk about Panther, Jaguar and the other jungle cats over and over than digitize 5 reels of audio.
Some of the replies I got from my CL posting were from full-blown editors. I’ve been employed five years, blah, blah, blah as an editor. Good for you, but this is for an assistant gig: Lunch money, some training and experience, credit and a DVD copy. So this one dude that I see up on the indie producer’s board posting about every last thing, gets me into this email spat about how my compensation is wanting. I asked the dude what he was trolling the free gigs for if he’s a pro. He got all stroppy with me about that and ultimately threatened me with how he knows everybody in town and he supports local filmmakers and more blah. So I told him, hey I’m not trying to generate support, I’m trying to digitize some audio. You’re overqualified for the job and I’m busy, so let’s put this thing behind us. Good vibes, even though I wanted to tell the guy to shove it. He writes back yesterday asking if I’m cutting on Avid and could he come learn about the Avid. Ugh.
Monday, Zach and I went and met some editors for London Calling. A different Zach. Portland Zach. Zach Actor. No clack Zach. I’m a pretty good cutter, but I figured I would meet some folks around town. I think it’s both good and bad to cut your own stuff. In NY I have several pals that would cut this for me, but I’m not into a long-distance relationship with editors.
I meet this guy that supposedly commutes to Hollywood from Portland-- development deals, DGA member, hot-shot editor, etc. I think his CV is legit, but why does he want to cut an indie short if he’s got so much action down south? That’s the first thing I asked him. Cut to the chase, that’s my style. He says some mumbo-jumbo about building relationships, it’s a cool project, etc. I’m like, cool, but I get this 20/20 that he thinks I’m going to lay down some green. Righto. So we have lunch, discuss the project and play name-dropping hotshots for an hour. Then we talk money. I tell them a low but respectable number for cutting an indie short. The guy that owns the Avid was cool, but Hollywood looked like he was stuck in traffic. We won’t hear from them.
Next up was Wayne Paige at Digital Wave. He has a really nice suite in Sellwood and was very positive about working with us within our budget.
Have you noticed that I’m all over the place?
Yeah, me too.
I really want to be clear about my intentions. However, I’m not sure I’m wired that way. I rely on inspiration, I'm a rationalist -- the sum of the parts being more than the parts themselves.
Judah came and digitized Reel 1 of the audio. What a relief.
About the money juncture -- more will be revealed. Patience is not a virtue, at least in my case -- it’s a skill that I lack. I've yet give up entirely on its development, however.
A river dertch,
Sre. Dir.
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