BlahBlahBlah - HeroZeroZeroHero

I've never been a big sleeper. I know people that can sleep until three in the afternoon given the chance. Not me. Even when I was out and about and up past the sunrise, I was still up before noon. Since I've had kids, it's been even worse. If I pull an all-nighter, I'm still up around seven -- dehydrated and feeling hungover in spite of the fact that I haven't had a drink in years.
I often come to in this dry and semi-lucid state with a somewhat inflated sense of myself. A sort of euphoria that tells me I can conquer the world. Because I ultimately don't believe I will have any success, I exploit my manic perspective to envision grandiose fantasies. It's an optimism I am not accustomed to and try to squash as soon as possible. Whatever I have accomplished, I minimize and shortly thereafter fill myself with shame for having thought I might have come up with something that should even see the light of day.
My fear of success is evident in the many unfinished projects and mountains of insulation piled in and around my edit suite and office. I'm trying to change that dynamic. The solution is pretty simple - I show up for the work, I ask for help and I let go of the results. I don't do any of the former perfectly and I've learned that I don't have to. All I have to do is show up. Being able to do this is a big deal for me. I've encountered mucho resistance to it.
One of the projects I've been working on for the past year is Made Crooked. From the beginning, I was determined that for once I was going to embrace mistakes. I let go of the idea that I would make something even close to perfect. Hence the title, which came to represent so much more than my willingness to make something not perfectly straight. It was made crooked because I didn't tell the actors we were even making a film. It was made crooked because I knew the story I wanted to tell and yet it revealed itself to me through its telling. It was about a family, which brings to mind a leafless tree as well as a graphic diagram of lineage. It was based on a quote from Ecclesiastes, claiming that no man can make straight what the divine has made crooked by design. This brings to mind all the wonderful organic shapes in nature -- none of them rectilinear, all of them perfect. It was made crooked because as much as I wanted to make mistakes, I vainly knew I was onto something bigger than I had ever imagined. I selfishly and irresponsibly took the spoils, finding out just out made crooked I myself am.
When the dust settled, it seemed this magical film had some serious shortcomings. Nonetheless, I tarried on; after all wasn't that the point? When we finally sat down to edit it, It seemed that it was an irredeemable mess. There was no way it was going to cut together in any way close to my vision. So I gave up on it as a film, but was determined to use it as a valuable tool to improve my filmmaking. I really wanted to stamp my feet, point some fingers and indict myself for being a hopeless hack. There was a brief period last fall in which I resolved to give up directing and limit myself to writing. Thankfully I didn't want to cut and run without assembling the footage from our made crooked experiment in order to serve as a coherent record for all that had invested their time and energy in the project.
And special thanks to Cassidy for believing in my work enough to commit to a remake of Made Crooked. With that unexpected turn of events, the motivation to create a record for what we had done was even greater. I would use the original to rewrite the script and to prepare to direct a more experienced cast and crew with a much bigger budget. It would serve as part of our presentation to actors, crew and investors as well.
I've showed it to a number of people over the past few months. Jordan and I have gone round and round, frustrated and angry at each other. We would often lament how close it was -- if only this shot was better, if only we had done it this way, if only, of only, if only ... He thought there was a short in it. I was adamantly opposed to reworking it until I saw the story laid out for better or worse. Where's that scene? It's shit, completely unusable. Okay, forget it. Put a Scene Missing title card in its place. The scene missing card was put off. We were closing in on wrapping it up. We chose a few key scenes to print onto DVD and showed that to people. Positive feedback. Some yeah buts on my part in response. I don't want to make a film I have to qualify or apologize for. Blah, blah, blah. Hero. Zero. Zero ...
Looking at the calendar I realized we were coming up on the year anniversary of filming. I offered Jordan a little cash bonus to try to meet an April 30th deadline. Just finish the damn thing, it doesn't have to be perfect. As we toiled, we found ways to make it work. Suddenly there were no scenes missing. We didn't actually need every last shot to make it fire on all cylinders. We started to trust. And we even had fun coming up with solutions. Some things came together surprisingly quickly. Other things that seemed like they would take but a second became laborious. As the day became night, we chose and fought our battles well. As the night became morning I started to fall in love with the original Made Crooked. It was good enough. I started thinking maybe it could stand on its own, that we didn't need to remake it after all.
Then I came to after a few short hours of sleep and started thinking Made Crooked just might launch my career after all. If I ... and get so and so to ... and finish that ... I'll take a bunch of meetings and ...
Stop. Breathe. Do. The. Next. Right. Thing.
I'm going to take it easy today. A little time with Baby June this morning. Finalize the sound on Klepto with Sean. Henry has a baseball game this evening. I'll see how I feel about Made Crooked after I have had a full night's rest. I didn't go through all of this to revert to an ego-driven approach to filmmaking. All I have to do is show up, ask for help and let of the results.

See you in Hollywood!
Signore Direttore