Kismet

Some wonderful kismet was in the air yesterday.

#1 - When showing Polar to a friend and fellow filmmaker he noted that perhaps the visual problem (in an otherwise nice little piece of filmmaking) was a frame rate issue. And therefore solvable. Hurray!
Makes sense as my editing experience went on hiatus in 2003 before 24p DV hit the streets. I was excited to salvage the film as I decided after putting the film in a mailer to meet Monday's deadline for NWFVF that I didn't want to submit it due to the visual strobing and blurring.

#2 - Just after learning the problem was frame rate related, I received an email stating that the submission deadline has been extended two weeks.

#3 - Mike Cassidy called relating that Lit Agent Sandra Lucchese at the Gersh Agency loved Original Glory and will be in contact soon.

#3 was kismet in the sense that I really need to stop sweating the small stuff and stay focused on the bigger picture. Since moving to Portland I've been somewhat obsessed with gaining status within the local scene. I've met some great local folks - Nick Peterson, Greg Schmitt, David Walker, among others. I've also met a lot of insecure, desperate wannabes that bring out all of my own wannabe sludge.
If I want to be a wannabe, I can always ignore where I'm at, no matter what I've acheived. Or I can want to be exactly where I'm at, celebrating the years of hard work that I've invested in getting to this juncture, and focus on the next task at hand, status be damned. Which is getting Original Glory ready for production. I'm sure as producers are attached further rewrites will be asked of me. Until then I'm taking my hands off the typewriter and picking up the megaphone.

It's a scary and exciting transition. I wrote the outline for OG in 1998. A one hundred and fifteen page prose treatment, fifty-four screenplay drafts and countless revisions later I can finally let go of the evolution of the story and begin to think of it in more realizable terms.

Polar as a title isn't working for me after all. Pretty really sums it up. Shari Menard's performance is stunning. She was in that Blazers spot last year playing Jenga with my man Andrew Dickson and ex-Blazer (officially as of this afternoon, functionally since two seasons ago) Derek Anderson. She totally disappeared in that scene. Well, she's not disappearing off the screen now.

Joey Boyd turns in a solid perf (-ormance - reading too much Variety) as well.

I'm thinking of postponing any more acting for the time being in order to concentrate on prepping OG.

ciao,
signore direttore