TNMC

The two or three of you have bothered to read this column in the past have no doubt come to the conclusion that my efforts to become a filmmaker crashed and burned and that's why I didn't write anymore about it. That's half true. I didn't crash, because I never got off the ground. The burning part is entirely accurate though.
I had shot approximately a third of my short film Customers when my house caught fire. The fire started in my bedroom, which is also where I kept all my equipment and did the editing. My computer was mostly destroyed (I rescued the hard drives) and the tapes with most of the footage shot became puddles. Perhaps understandably, my attention was diverted from filmmaking for some time. Rebuilding became the major focus. It's been eleven months and the house is mostly back in order, although rebuilding will probably continue for months yet.

I built a new computer and continued writing on my scripts when I could find the time. My plan has always been to have a batch of completed scripts (at least three) before I actively tried to sell them. Two are now complete and a third is nearing completion. The short film however, is effectively dead. The lead actress is no longer available and my enthusiasm for that particular project has simply never returned after the fire. I keep churning ideas for a new short but so far nothing meaningful has popped out.

The script I'm working on now is called She Hates the Idea. It's a whole lot of dialog in search of an ending at this point. This past weekend I spent pretty much all my time at the FilmColumbia film festival. This little gem of a festival has sprung up a mere two miles from my home and just gets better every year. Included in the program this time around was a screenwriting panel. Moderated by actor Scott Cohen, the panel brings a bunch of actors together to do cold readings of scenes writers bring along. Having never heard my material read aloud, except by myself, I was very excited to try this out. So I picked a scene from She Hates the Idea and submitted it.

Then the waiting began. This was clearly the worst part of the panel. My scene wasn't selected until about the last third of the panel, so I sat nervously waiting. The best part of this was that it gave me a chance to see what all of the collected actors could do, so when my turn came, I knew which ones would be best for my material. It was a pretty damn good collection of actors. Despite never having seen these scenes before, they did a pretty spectacular job of bringing them to life. I have a lot more respect for actors after watching this. And the quality of the writing was a lot better than I expected as well.

Finally my piece came up and it was performed by Victor Villar-Hauser and Jack Carpenter. Most people had brought a scene that introduced characters or developed characters. Not me. I brought a straight dialog scene. I had two very specific questions about it. One, would the actors find the rhythm to the dialog that I heard in my head as I wrote it? And two, was it funny? The answer to both questions thankfully turned out to be yes. For the most part, the actors found the rhythm I was aiming for. A few minor edits could make it flow a hair better. Of course, a bit of rehearsing could too I guess. And the scene did get plenty of laughs, from both the actors and the audience. A few people in the audience seemed to get a bit uncomfortable with the material, but that's to be expected with this stuff, so no worries there.

What I liked best is that the actors brought new things to what I wrote that I never would have expected. For one, Victor has a British accent, which gave the character a much different sound than I had. It might be worth keeping. Jack came at his character with a nervous, halting style somewhat reminiscent of Woody Allen. Again, not what I had imagined but it did work quite well. The problem I have is that my characters tend to all sound like me in my head when I write them. The beauty of bringing actors into the process is that they give new voices to the characters and breathe new life into them. It was wonderful to listen to. The guys did a great job with it.

The whole thing was a much needed ego boost. I am my own worst critic, so I rarely think my stuff is any good. Hearing it read by total strangers and laughed at by other strangers did a lot to give me some confidence that the material actually works and has value.

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