I haven't slept in a long time

Creating a short film for the Reel New Haven Festival has taken its toll on my mind and body. I’ve lost no less than 10 pounds of muscle mass, and my faith in God has been severely shaken. Nonetheless, we do have a film submitted for consideration, and the New York festivals will follow shortly. Top prize at the Vimeo Fest is a $25,000 grant. Does my entirely improvised meditation on urban loneliness, heartbreak, and pop culture have what it takes to bring in that money? Probably not, but at least I learned a great deal in the process, like how hard it will be to finish a feature by the end of August. El Mariachi was a crazier idea, and look how well that turned out.

The internet remains a luxury revoked but not forgotten in this household. With its continued absence, a lurking sort of madness has seeped into the mind of my incredibly attractive housemate. There is a reasonable concern that this mental contagion is spreading. Today my work was interrupted by the braying of the uneducated, a common occurrence in this neighborhood. It would have passed without remark if I hadn’t been situated advantageously by our large living area window, and was therefore able to spot the source of this revelry. Two drunken hipsters made their way past our building with great effort. Their movements a sort of exaggerated slow motion, as if they were literally wading through the summer humidity. Listening to the hateful language of the lower classes sounding forth from the mouths of two jaded trust-fund babies was unsettling. It took the seams of my reality and began to stretch them to an uncomfortable point. Is this a dream? Or has everything up to this point been the dream?

On the subject of dreams, Inception was a passable film. My thoughts leaving the theater are listed here in descending order of intensity:


1)Joseph Gordon Levitt is one spindly little bastard.
2)That movie was not complicated by any sane definition of the word.
3)Really though, he’s so spindly. It’s incredible.




I struggle with thoughts on filmmaking. The Hong Kong action films of yesteryear have lost their divinity somewhere along the road. All that remains of those once holy structures is the architecture, notably perfect, but worn and dusty from neglect as congregations slowly dwindled over the years. Have I simply grown older? More mature? Is film not the medium I believe it to be? Perhaps the power is imagined. These are the kind of questions that will keep me awake at night. They are fruitless, labyrinthine paths of thought that I ought to avoid in the future. As it is said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is shaken by violence, and the violent take it by force.” Let us be violent.