Telling Stories

All I want to do is tell a good story.  At a party, with a post, with a film.  It should come naturally you'd think, but sometimes we miss the mark and lose our audience. Somewhere along the way our storytelling skills get muddied.  My mom can tell a good story- sometimes she'll get lost in the detail of someone or something and it sends her down another road, but usually, somewhat magically she gets back on track and sums it all up.  Molly, at 6, tells wonderful stories- with conviction and expression and unbridled enthusiasm.  She's chomping at the bit just to get it out and you can't help but get swept up in it.

I think it's best to start out and not know how it will come out in the end but have a clear understanding of the heart of the matter- the moment- or the one single picture in your mind that sums up the piece for you.  I found my heart or image today in my film.  A scene we shot late in the game- a big wide of the two characters standing in the midst of a green filled park, face to face, a path running by them on one side and a field on the right.  It's just the shot I thought we'd use to get into the scene and never out.  But then, there it was in the midst of all this other stuff we were looking at and it just revealed itself as a slice, a center, a thread of what the whole business of this story I'm trying to tell is.  And it got me thinking about the center and all of the other details and sequences of events being important but certainly not as important as the core- the reason you want to tell the story in the first place.  Starting here- with that one singular thing somehow gets the rest of it back to it's place and the order of things is restored.  And once that's done we can just take a breath and begin again.

Cutting Teeth

There's a line in the film about 'wanting to transcend'.  That feeling artists have in the early steps where we know somewhere deep down we can achieve greatness and create something that will elevate the experience for those who come into contact with it.  Then we set out to do it and the space between actually achieving this goal and what we first deliver is the hard stuff.  In the beginning there is just you  and your story and the pictures in your head.  Then you have to find the way to get it out into the world and both listen to the critiques that guide you and keep at bay the inner and outer voices that keep you from the truth.  (That sounds like a schizophrenic lady talking, but trust me we all have inner and outer voices telling us what they think).  Trusting that there is something beneath the surface that will indeed transcend if you let it, is the even harder part.
I saw the amazing film TAKE SHELTER this week and went and heard the writer/director Jeff Nichols speak last night.  He was a little cocky- but- well his film won the Grand Prix at Cannes this year and it's quite an extraordinary piece of art.  For me- it transcended.  It took me to another plane and the deeper story beneath the one of the surface is still jumping around in my head.  My favorite moment of the night was when someone asked what the ending meant- was it a dream or real or a message or something else- and very politely he answered that he wouldn't answer- that those were all good questions and he did indeed have his own answer but that he wouldn't share.  The point- he stressed- of making the film independently and not having to answer to a studio was to have an ending like that- one that ignites a conversation and begins an inner inquiry.  I went home thinking about the questions I wanted to have left looming in my work.
Today I discovered Jack's first tooth had made it's appearance- a small white sliver piercing up out of his pink gum.  It's been coming for some time.  There have been hard days and other days where it didn't seem like it bothered him at all.  All that time it was working below the surface and now that it's presented itself it will continue to grow and serve him.  It reminds me of my own journey into this world of filmmaking- for the work to transcend I've got to keep cutting teeth I think.  I've got to trust it's underneath and it too will make an appearance one day soon.

The Beginning

I've avoided the world of well- blogging- because of an admitted aversion to the word blog.  Sounds like an act of something you'd rather not be caught doing.  That being said I've decided to get over myself and consider the importance of documenting the interior thoughts fears hopes short stories adventures of a  filmmaker, mother of two young children, actor, artist, wife to rockstar, New Yorker/Brooklynite come Angeleno woman that I am.  If, for no other reason, than to remember all of it better one day.

So.  Today I am here. See photo ^
Editing LIGHT YEARS with Cindy Thoennessen whose in from NY this week.  We are sitting in the sun room slash play room slash office whittling away the fat and searching for the soul of the movie.  It's taught me patience.  And balance to name just two.  I feel completely confident and entirely at sea.  Today matched this.  Chopin played on the radio while Jack slept in the back and the palm trees looked ominous against the rare gray February LA sky.
Tomorrow will be another pass and another balance and I say to the challenging dichotomy- bring it.