Arbor Presents

Andrew Folsom & Ken Hugo

in “Door to Door.”

Written & Edited by Andrew Folsom

Music by Cesar Sanchez

Directed by Omar Salas Zamora

View in HD: http://vimeo.com/34695806

]]> http://omarsalaszamora.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/new-short-door-to-door-3/feed/ 0 screenshot omarsalaszamora screenshot http://omarsalaszamora.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/entering-the-world-of-festivals-labs/ http://omarsalaszamora.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/entering-the-world-of-festivals-labs/#comments Fri, 06 Jan 2012 05:54:45 +0000 omarsalaszamora http://omarsalaszamora.wordpress.com/?p=174 ]]> After a year and a half, I have finally finished writing “Alexander & The Wolfe.” The script (based on a true story but all evidence of this has been buried under the fiction) about the porn star who came to Los Angeles turned into a behemoth and ended up being 294 pages. The wave of accomplishment was pretty awesome because I had invested so much into this story. This sense of fulfillment was immediately ruined when I started looking to put it in some festivals (Outfest caught my eye, given the content) and learned that no script can be longer than 130 pages. This was obviously a downer. My script is more than twice as long as it’s allowed to be.

Going to Plan B: literally enter everything else.

Teenage Lobotomy, which I finished two months after my 18th birthday, is going to go to Outfest. The script included some love stories, some parties and some car races (my life at the time).  It was set on the last two years of the last millennium in the suburbs of Venice. It included moments of quite realizations of adulthood while the characters stared out to the Pacific ocean. I’ve never done anything with it so I’m pretty excited to enter it and hopefully something comes of it.

Thus Spoke Judas was the horror movie that I wanted to write since I was a child. Two couples rent out a cabin for a weekend in Northern California, they are stalked by “hoods.” At the same time that the kids have sinful fun, we get to know a cult that inhabits the forest who use people as currency and violence as entertainment. In the end the movie was totally influenced by Nietzsche theories (especially Übermensch ) and Australian literature (Joan Lindsay) and I ended up leaving the exploitation horror that I thought the movie would be. The entire script was a cleansing that needed to happen. I am probably most proud of this more than anything. I fucking love this script.

Now the hard part is script number three. The Darkbloom is about a boy who leaves his best friend who has gone blind in search of a legendary flower that can cure his blindness. It’s a comedy. He ends up setting camp at a shanty town inhabited by a dozen or so homeless individuals who have never known a different life. Hilarity ensues when they feel he is God. The hard part about this script is it’s not done. I wrote 50 pages a year ago and I now have three days to write the other 50 pages. Good luck to me.

I don’t expect any of these to win anything but the goal is that if they’re read by at least one person who matters and they want to read anything else by me, I’ll have Alexander & The Wolfe right there waiting. The truth is I don’t want to cut out 164 pages out of my script. That’s asking too much. I know I’m asking a lot too when I ask people to read a five hour movie but hopefully in the future there will be some type of middle ground and hopefully one day you will all see what I worked so hard for.

8. Andrew Haigh’s Weekend. This movie is about people living a life style in which sex is easy: the gay life style. Two characters (Tom Cullen & Chris New) enter their relationship with sex and spend the following 48 hours getting to know each other in the darkness and solitude of an apartment, doing drugs and revealing deep shames about themselves. The movie is unique because they’re not united in romance, they’re united in loneliness.

7. Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia. Never have I seen the end of the world treated so matter-of-factly. There are scenes in this movie that will never leave my mind (the overture/prologue, the horse riding, the moon bath, etc.). The movie seems extremely personal because it was; Lars Von Trier has been known for his depression and mental, erm, idiosyncrasies. The movie about the girl (Justine; Kirstin Dunst) not being afraid that the world is soon coming to an end while chaos surrounds her is something, I think, that Von Trier could relate with.

6. James Wan’s Insidious.  Modern horror is almost always a rehashing of previously explored themes, tricks and jumps. When somebody is in a bathroom, and they look in the empty mirror, don’t you expect the monster there in the next shot? The story is simple. A small family moves into a new home and it turns out to be haunted. Easy enough but what is enthralling is the details that follow. The ghosts aren’t just threats, they have the ability to scar and their intentions are to kill. The couple’s son enters an unexplainable coma early in the movie. This leaves the viewer in an uncomfortable air. These aren’t just ghosts, ghosts can’t hurt you.  The film manages to create something extremely original out of a mountain of clichés. There’s something incredibly unique about the monsters of Insidious: they aren’t afraid of the light.

5. Glen Ficarra & John Requa’s Crazy, Stupid, Love. This movie offers such realistic heartbreak which baffles me because it still manages to be funny and those two things really shouldn’t blend. The story is mostly about Steve Carell’s character and his experience with being recently divorced due to infedility from his wife (Julianne Moore) and trying to understand life as a single man again. He joins forces with Jacob (Ryan Gosling) to invade the nightlife thatLos Angeleshas to offer. There’s another series of storylines which all end up intertwining before the movie is over, offering some true moments of salvaging, destroying and starting loving relationships.

4. J.C. Chandor’s Margin Call. Junior analysts (Zachary Quinto & Penn Badgley) for a unnamed lucrative real estate company learn that the stock market is about to crash. They release this information to their boss (Kevin Spacey) who tries to contact everyone involved for an all night meeting on how to salvage what they can. The  Junior analysts spend the night lamenting what they’ve just found, spending the night at a strip club and simply talking about the future they’re about to face. They’re talking about the stock market crash of 2007. This movie comes at the perfect time when people are ready to face what were the factors in what happened and who’s to blame. The last scenes are tragic as the final employees at the company are given a choice: sell the rest of the worthless stock to their unknowing customers and get a raise. But still, those people had families to feed too and as much as humans try to repress it, we are animals and animals need to feed their own.

3. Gavin O’Connor’s Warrior. I didn’t watch this movie in theatres because I thought it was something dull that was probably capitalizing off the new found popularity towards MMA fighting. On top of that, sports movies aren’t my thing but this transcended that. Paddy (Nick Nolte) is a former alcoholic that left his family when his two sons were just children. The painful history is explained: one son (Brendan; Joel Edgerton) left the family at sixteen and the other son (Tommy; Tom Hardy) was left to care for his dying mother. Years later, their love of MMA has brought them to the ring and end up facing each other in the last fight. I don’t think I can put into words how much I love the final scenes of this movie, so satisfying and heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. My favorite moment of any movie this year is Brendan on top of his brother, Tommy, in the ring, still  punching him but on the verge of tears; he keeps repeating “I love you, I love you,” as the acoustic song plays. He never wanted to hurt him.

2. J.J. Abram’s Super 8. The first scenes shows Joe (Joel Courtney) holding the locket of his recently deceased mother. She’s passed away and his father isn’t ready to be the primary caregiver. Some months pass and it’s summer now. Joe and his friends are making a super 8 zombie movie to enter it into a film contest (set in the 70’s, film existed then). While the kids are shooting a scene, they witness a train derailing in the middle of the night. Government officials come into town and attempt to cover up the derailment and what the train was carrying. The movie ends up being a science fiction story full of twist and turns which are nice and all but this almost seems like a b-story compared to Joe’s drama with his father and continuing to deal with his mother’s death. At one point, Joe is face to face with a monster who has experiences it’s own drama. “Bad things happen, but it’ll be okay,” he whispers, but it feels like he’s talking to himself. There’s people that think this is a moronic alien movie. It’s not even about aliens; it’s about Joe and Joe understanding that bad things happen, but it’ll be okay.

1. Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive. There is no bad moment in Drive. No bad shot, no wrong choice of music and no bad editing. The movie sustains itself in it’s action, it earns it from the substantial amount of suspense built up and that what makes Drive stand out. The Driver is a stunt man by day and a get away driver by night. He gets involved with his neighbor who is the mother to a young son and who’s husband is currently in jail. When he gets out, he has to pay some people back who want to hurt the girl, the boy, and the man. Driver gets himself involved because he wants to protect them. Every scene is beautiful in Drive but there are some scenes that are gorgeous (the fading lights and swelling music of the passionate elevator scene and the controlled movements of the car chase through the hills ofLos Angelesare stand outs). I saw this four times in theatres and on the fourth time, when The Driver (Ryan Gosling) opened his eyes at the end of the film, people started clapping and cheering and I thought to myself, no movie deserves those claps more. 

Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland is probably subconsciously my favorite film of all time. I encounter family friends once in a while that haven’t seen me in years and years. “Hey, Nemo,” they say and it’s because I used to introduce myself as Nemo because I loved this character so much. I even named my dog Icarus (the name of Nemo’s pet squirrel) and I didn’t realize it until much later. I watch it now and the story almost seems like a poem that somebody filmed. A boy has lost his way, he has let nightmares into his life but all he wants to do is make it back to Slumberland.

12. Fight Club, 1999, David Fincher

Chuck Palahnuik said that Fight Club the film is better than the novel that he wrote. To me, this is a daring statement because a novel doesn’t have bad shots, it doesn’t have shitty acting and it doesn’t have overbearing music. A novel merely provides the essential information needed for the reader to create a personalized adaptation in their head. Fight Club only entertained me more when I found out that both Palahnuik and Fincher are homosexuals. I never looked at the film as an attack on faux masculinity but more as a group of men coming up and attack the culture that has been repressing them. Added fact: Jared Leto, like Ryan Gosling, will not put his name on a bad movie.

13. Requiem for a Dream, 2000, Darren Aronofsky

Another example of Jared Leto’s greatness: Requiem for a Dream. This and The Rules of Attraction are the movies I show most to people I just meet because they’re so incredibly engrossing and touching. The last act in Requiem is the most engaging pieces of filmmaking I’ve ever been through. Requiem demands all of your attention and it shakes you violently before letting you go. Added fact: there was a girl I knew in high school who asked to borrow this movie constantly, when I asked her why she responded with “it keep me from doing bad things.”

14. The Virgin Suicides, 1999, Sofia Coppola

Sofia Coppola, like Stanley Kubrick, was a photographer before a filmmaker. Also like Kubrick, Coppola makes visually beautiful movies, so beautiful in fact that the substance of her films are sometimes subdued by their beauty. The Virgin Suicides doesn’t have this problem. The story of five young girls in Massachusetts suburbia in the vague 1970’s and their suicides is discussed and analyzed for three decades by young boys who are now men that have found no greater interest in life but to try to understand the doomed girls. This is the most romantic film I have ever seen.

15. Chasing Amy, 1997, Kevin Smith

I think Alyssa Jones is the best character Kevin Smith has ever written. She’s the lesbian who begins questioning her sexuality when she meets Holden, a comic book writer. I find this interesting because most male writers would be interested in making a heterosexual woman question if she was a lesbian or not. The entire movie has an air of doubt that hangs overhead. Can Holden forgive her scandalous past? Does it matter? Can Alyssa become straight? Or does love really break all boundaries?

16. Rope, 1948, Alfred Hitchcock

Rope is the most impressive technical achievement in Hitchcock’s career because the film gives the impression of it being shot in only five takes. The film is based on a stage play about Brandon and Phillip, two students that have murdered a peer and decide to have a dinner party with several of his friends, instructors and even parents. To only add to their excitement of the possibility of getting caught, they hide the body in the trunk where they are serving food off of. They proceed to flirt with the idea of his whereabouts throughout the night as their guests become more and more suspicious of them. Added fact: James Stewart’s final monologue is the best in his career.

17. The Shining, 1980, Stanley Kubrick

The Shining is an extremely unique movie because you’re never done watching it. When the credits roll, you’re left with unanswered questions and you look within yourself to answer them the best you can because we cannot be left wandering, at least I can’t. Stephen King books suck because he overwrites and his editors are too frightened to tell him he’s wrong, but when those books are made into movies they’re almost always great because they’re great stories. The best of these adaptations is definitely The Shining. The story is about Jack’s descent into madness while caring for the Overlook Hotel for a winter with his young son and wife. The madness is only exacerbated when the spirits of the hotel begin filling Jack’s mind with murderous urges.

18. The Royal Tennenbaums, 2001, Wes Anderson

There’s something about Wes Anderson that oozes cool. This is true of all of his movies but only did The Royal Tennenbaums have the backbone of a great story to support the cool style. Royal and Etheline Tennenbaum birthed three geniuses: Chas (a financer), Margot (a playwright), and Ritchie (a painter and tennis player. Two decades later, the family is in shambles and only comes together when the thought of their father soon dying to cancer enters the mind. Added fact: the “Prologue” opening of this film set to “Hey Jude” is probably my favorite opening to a movie ever.

19. Blue Valentine, 2010, Derek Cianfrance

I didn’t like Blue Valentine when I first saw it. I foolishly took someone on a date to go watch it. When the movie was over I felt as I was drug through shit for two hours. Something odd happened though: I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I couldn’t get it out of my head. Some months later, I gave it another chance and I found it completely enthralling. I realized that there is not a single moment of joy in the film. Even in the falling in love flashbacks, we know what will happen so all we can do is feel sorry for Dean and Cindy. This movie is only improved with every viewing because of the great detail in every single moment of the performances and by the time we reach the wrenching end, just watch it again and realize how much it would have hurt making this movie. Blue Valentine is not meant to entertain. It’s the analysis on the final days of a doomed love, and how it started.

20. The Evil Dead, 1981, Sam Raimi

Every moment of The Evil Dead is outrageous. It’s a genuinely frightening story that would be definitely one of my top five favorite movies if it wasn’t for its sequels. The story: five college students rent a cabin in the woods to get loose, but pretty soon “something in the woods” begins to take over and control them. There are scenes in The Evil Dead that will never leave my mind because I saw them when I was so young. Every horror fan knows “the tree rape scene.” This movie is just required viewing if you want any respect in horror circles.

I have spoken more about Kill Bill than I have any other movie on the face of the planet. Kill Bill isn’t just a movie, it’s a fucking experience. It’s a culmination of 1,000 great films. It’s Quentin Tarantino regurgitating all the beautiful moments of being a cinephile and has created the most beautiful piece of art I’ve seen in 21 years. That’s why Kill Bill isn’t a movie. It’s surpassed that. It’s something greater.

2. Lolita, 1962, Stanley Kubrick

Every time I watch Lolita, I wonder what people were thinking in 1962. Did they understand the humor or were they too busy being revolted at the mere idea of our romantic protagonist being a pedophile? The fourteen year old Sue Lyon seems more and more devious every time I watch the movie while the much older Humbert seems even more sympathetic. In the end, the movie is a heartbreaking romance about people using each other. Each frame should be hung on a wall.

3. The Last House on the Left, 1972, Wes Craven

I don’t know what exactly draws me so much to Wes Craven’s first film, The Last House on the Left. Maybe because I was so young when I watched it or maybe because it’s the first exploitation film I saw which fit the definition so perfectly. This film has some of the most horrifying situations and what makes it hurt – what makes it so goddamn effective is because we knew the girls. We felt the pain and Craven didn’t let us go until we were right there with them.

4. Magnolia, 1999, Paul Thomas Anderson

I read once that Paul Thomas Anderson considers Magnolia his best film and that he feels he could never top it. I agree with him. This movie is made for a fetishist who gets off on great performances. It’s a day in the life of nine Los Angeles residents who are having one a very interesting day. This is the type of epic that isn’t made too often anymore. It’s a study on how people break down.

5. Over the Edge, 1979, Jonathan Kaplan

There’s a moment in Over the Edge where Carl watches his high school burn, his teachers and parents are locked inside in a PTA meeting and he watches his friends ride around wreaking havoc, they’ve turned into animals. This movie is the ultimate teenage rebellion movie but the smartest thing about it is that it does show the consequences. Point of interest: this has the best soundtrack of any other film I know. Jimi Hendrix, The Ramones, Van Halen and Cheap Trick fit so perfectly amongst the chaos.

6. Presque Rien, 2000, Sébastien Lifshitz

Presque Rien is probably the oddest fit in this list. A gay-themed French film with one of the most unique plot structures I’ve ever seen. The movie analyzes the start of the relationship of two 18-year-old boys over a summer on a France coast line, and intercuts with scenes of the same relationship 18 months later, during a winter at the same beach. It juxtaposes their blossoming relationship with scenes showing how much impact they’ve had on each other’s lives and them questioning: was it worth it?

7. The Little Mermaid, 1989, Ron Clements & John Musker

There is no movie that I know better than The Little Mermaid. I remember my older brothers recorded over my videocassette and I cried for months. I was pretty up to date with Disney even at age seven so I knew that since the movie was gone – it was gone. It was in the Disney vault which meant who knew when it was going to be available again? Luckily, it was being re-released the following year in 1998. I counted down the days until Easter because I knew it was going to be in my basket. When I opened it, I realized that I hadn’t forgotten a single word and I started to cry even before King Triton gave away his daughter. As an adult, I even started studying the work of Hans Christian Anderson and he is now one of my favorite authors. Get me drunk and I’ll even sing you “Part of Your World.”

8. The Rules of Attraction, 2002, Roger Avary

Bret Easton Ellis is my favorite author but every film that has been adapted from his work takes only about 10% of the greatness of the source material. The Rules of Attraction is interesting because it didn’t stick to the material, instead it stuck to the themes and created a work of semi-originality. The idea of unreliable narrators isn’t explored too often in film. This takes three unreliable narrators. Each tell a love story from their point of view and, like life, is romanticized. They’re fictional. There’s not much movies that have the balls – or the cruelty to make their characters face their fictional love stories.

9. Tetro, 2009, Francis Ford Coppola

From the very first frame I saw of Tetro, I knew I would love it. Coppola directs with simplicity and a confidence that I haven’t seen in a long long time. What always strikes me about Tetro is that I don’t notice it while I’m watching it. I become mesmerized. Vincent Gallo and Maribel Verdú, two of my favorite actors, are simply enthralling. There’s a scene where Alden Ehrenreich begging his brother for approval and acceptance in a hospital and I knew that he would immediately become one of my favorite actors. It feels like this movie was made for me.

10. Inglourious Basterds, 2009, Quentin Tarantino

It feels like a human being shouldn’t be allowed so much talent and that they should only be allowed to create one masterpiece in their life. Quentin Tarantino has made six masterpieces with his six films. While Kill Bill is Tarantino’s magnum opus, Basterds is his passion project. This film holds the record for movie I’ve seen most in theatres (nine.) This film begs for analysis as you watch it. Every utterance, every blink, every smirk feels like it means something in this overall picture of World War II life and one could argue that it does. By the time the film reaches its final chapter, all you can do is stare. Added fact: David Bowie’s “Putting Out The Fire” along with Shosanna’s readying for war is my favorite marriage of music and film in any of Tarantino’s films.

About three weeks ago, I met Xavier Dolan to record an interview with him about his new film, Heartbeats. Xavier lives and works in Quebec and was in New York for a short time to promote his latest movie. I could tell he'd been spending his whole time here in press coverage, but he seemed in good spirits. His story is riddled with interesting circumstances that have raised much anticipation for Heartbeats. There's three reasons for this, A) Xavie … Read More

via CITYWIDE

I always liked writing and making up stories. I could lie myself out of any situation and the only time I got caught is when they became so elaborate that there’s no way they could have happened. I was raised on Disney and around eight; I started getting into monster movies like Godzilla, King Kong, and all that. Eventually, I started looking through my brother’s DVD collection and found movies like A Clockwork Orange, The Rules of Attraction, The Terminator, Boogie Nights and Requiem for a Dream. I was raised in a home where it was okay to watch what you want but in the living room, it has to be family friendly. So, when I would watch these movies they were alone in my room with a kind of mentality that I’m doing something wrong because I was so young and watching Malcolm McDowell raping a statuesque woman in a red jumpsuit or Mark Wahlberg getting blown by Heather Graham in a nightclub storage room.

In 2003, at the age of twelve I had the thinking that directors aren’t appreciated. I still hold that opinion when it comes to general audiences, most people don’t know or care who directs a movie. I wanted to be a director but I would look at DVD covers and they seemed to un-important to the entire project, getting a tiny credit on the back of the cover, right at the bottom. Quentin Tarantino was the first dude I saw that had a reputation. I never heard of Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs or Jackie Brown because these weren’t DVD’s that my brother owned.  I started getting glimpses of these trailers for this movie called Kill Bill and the excitement that started building on these blogs and movie websites proclaiming “Quentin’s coming back hard!” and I was thinking who’s Quentin?

Quentin Tarantino hadn’t been heard of since 1997 when he released his love letter to black cinema, Jackie Brown. Since I had not gotten interested in non-Disney films until 2000ish, I didn’t have this preconceived notion of what a Tarantino film, but, fuck, this dude was getting some press. This is when I knew directors were important. This was QUENTIN TARANTINO’S KILL BILL. I needed to watch this movie, but the problem was I was twelve and I could never ask my parents to take me to watch this R-Rated film so I did the only thing I could do: I bought an illegal bootleg in Los Angeles. My birthday was on October 8^th, the movie was released October 10^th, and I bought it in an alley the next morning. Driving back with my parents, I gazed at the slim cover and shitty photo shopped art which proudly proclaimed The 4^th Film by Quentin Tarantino. The bootleg was actually awesome. I expected some handycam version recorded the previous night but it was actually a screener copy Mirimax used in-between edits. How do I know this? It told me in the beginning, telling me I would be arrested if I was caught with this. It was a pretty thrilling experience even before it started. I didn’t even mind “PROPERTY OF MIRIMAX FILMS” occasionally popping up every once in a while.

It’s hard for me to figure out where the actual appeal for Kill Bill comes from to me. I never wanted to do martial arts. I never wanted to be a gangster. I wasn’t a huge violent film enthusiast. I didn’t know that much about Hong Kong cinema. I think what it is, is that every movie that Tarantino saw before this, he included. Most men will say they’re original but Tarantino has the deepest respect for everything cinema and he doesn’t mind paying homage and following in the footsteps of his personal heroes. He knows how to make a film, he knows how to create an enthralling story, he doesn’t go for cheap laughs, he takes his time and creates beautifully rounded and equally horrific characters.

I wanted to make movies but it wasn’t until Kill Bill and Quentin Tarantino that I wanted to create pieces of cinema. I became obsessed. You know that girl that played GoGo Yubari? Her name is Chiaki Kuriyama and Quentin discovered her in a film called Battle Royale. I bought this movie then bought that movie’s influences. It branched from there. O-Ren Ishii? She’s inspired by the main character in Lady Snowblood. I own that too. The hospital scenes? That got me into 70’s Brian DePalma. In simpler terms, Kill Bill planted the seed, it grew and each branch led toward a different genre, each leaf was a different film and soon, I needed to see them all.

I knew how to tell stories but I didn’t know how to write a proper script. I printed the leaked Kill Bill script (268 pages aren’t cheap to print) and it was something else. It wasn’t a script, it was beautiful poetry. He writes like a novelist and I took that style and ran with it. I’m always going to get shit for overwriting but I agree with him in that the reader should be as moved with the writing like the audience will be with the images in the end. So, really, Quentin Tarantino taught me that not all directors are dismissed; Kill Bill taught me that movies can be life changing and this script taught me that a script can be fucking art.

“In another age, men who shook the world for their own purposes were called conquerors. In our age, the men who shake the planets for their own power and greed are called corrupters. And of the world’s corruptors, Bill stands alone for while he corrupts the world, inside himself, he is pure.” – Q. Tarantino. Get what I mean?

The obsession didn’t stop like I assumed it would. I thought my eyes were open to amazing cinema but I soon learned that films like this don’t come around too often and this is why I think Kill Bill stands all by itself. Only a film like this can make a thirteen year old sit in front of the computer all day, refreshing the browser because the Kill Bill: Volume 2 trailer is about to premiere. Only a film like this can make 700 seats sell out in twelve minutes at the New Beverly Cinema. This is a game changer in every sense and I can’t help but wonder what if I never saw this movie? It’s frightening because all I could ever want is to walk in the footsteps of Tarantino, Stanley Kubrick and Paul Thomas Anderson like he did with this film. He was just telling the industry that he’s a fan and because he did that, I have never had a second thought of what I want to do with my life.

There is a God. He lives in everybody.

She’s there to challenge him. She’s sin.

- Val.

I’ve been writing a script. It’s a romance, I think. I’m not really sure because it’s not the type of glamorous romance I’m used to seeing. It’s romanticized romance, if that makes any sense. I guess it’s kind of an analysis about three people and their views on romance and how it effects them emotionally, sexually and how it influences their decisions. And I guess it sort of attacks the feelings that my generation has towards love, the apathy, the shallowness and the longing for monogamy but always going in circles with the same partners or the former partners of former partners. I think we take way too much for granted, we’re too confident. We’ve been spoiled by our divorced parents who never had enough time for us and to forgive their guilty conscience, they gave us everything and that developed into a horrible sense of entitlement and narcissism.

We deserve everything but why should we work for it?

And I guess it’s about the painful line between lover and friend and it’s psychological consequences. The imaginary romance that ensues. It’s about a lot of things but it’s really about the same three people: Joanna, Kalen and Val(entin) used to be best friends in high school. Joanna ruined it by dating Kalen, pushing Val to the side. It’s been two years since then. It’s summer and college is out. Everyone’s back home. The original trio still hangs out but there’s many problems now. Joanna is in love with Kalen but her love is adaptable, it’s not exclusive to Kalen and it can move from one boy to another. Kalen knows but ignores, still longing for his ex-girlfriend, even going so far that every girl he dates resembles the former love. Val is obsessed with Joanna but his lust for her brings out his Catholic guilt, his religion and sexual passion for Joanna clash in him violently.  So, there’s the blind lover, the emotionally removed lust, and the guilty obsessive.  At first I thought it was a love triangle but I realized I’m wrong obecause there is no real love in the movie. Everyone is looking for it, but it’s very elusive to their lifestyles.

This is the first time I feel challenged when writing a script because it’s so different from what I usually do. There’s a female protagonist, it’s not a narrative story, more like a series fragmented moments of time that are tied together by these themes of love and follow the same characters. There’s no mental illnesses. There’s no bisexuality. Nobody dies. No impending doom and nobody smokes pot. There’s no influence from any philosophical writers either which kind of baffles me because the characters are all Liberal Art students, it makes most sense for them to reference writers from the past but I can’t control what goes on up there in my ‘ol noggin.

I’m excited for this story. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to tell it for years and I think I finally figured it out. There’s tons and tons of notes, drawings, and illustrated representations of their emotions and nightmares. Added fact: I haven’t listened to any music while working on this script. Additional added fact: it’s the best ending I’ve ever written, and I pride myself in my endings.

There’s some movies I’ve seen lately that have influenced the writing. I didn’t particularly love Blue Valentine but it’s had it’s affect on me because I worked so hard with this story to make it move towards a positive ending and in the context it seemed impossible. Blue Valentine didn’t seem horribly groundbreaking to me but it had the balls to give you a harsh ending. Not only that, but it before the credits roll, it crushes any idea of a hope for the characters once the movie is done. It gave me the confidence to write the ending that makes sense for my movie.

I hope I finish soon. I’m interested in reading it.

This is a very short excerpt on the script.

Oh, well.

I’m kind if glad that Riley has taken some time of Zimbabwe and Noah because that gives me a chance to re-write the ending to be as funny as the rest of the movie. It’s really hard visiting a story that was already pre-visualized and changing only one scene and trying to make it fit the whole without any obvious jump or mood change, it’s actually been the most challenging thing on the movie for sure.  But who doesn’t like a good goddamn challenge, eh?

Also, because of this little re-write exercise I have to do, it got me interested in doing some old projects again. In the summer of my Junior year of high school, I shot a romance called “We Fall.” The movie had a really good script but I was working with a bunch of kids (obviously) that hadn’t acted before and even if they had acted, it was only comedy so the final product wasn’t that good. The only reason I haven’t shunned it completely is that I’m proud of the fact that a fifteen year old kid wrote a romance, cast it, shot it, and edited it. Yeah, I was too embarrassed to show it to anyone other than a few but the point is I tried. The point is that I had the drive to do that, I was willing to make a fool of myself and make a shitty movie because that is what required of somebody to make them an eventual success. One must be willing to fail and accept failure in order to progress. On top of that, how many fucking fifteen year old’s are out there shooting romances based on their own scripts? Yeah, I’m pimp.

I guess I’m saying this because I just recently realized how extremely proud of myself and what I’m doing. I may not have a great body of work yet but I’m twenty years old and when people look back to their summers, their winters and spring breaks and can only remember a drunken haze of parties, I’m going to be able to show a fucking movie I made at that time. These things are history, it doesn’t matter if they’re forgotten or if they’re not liked. They are there. I’ve made my mark, it doesn’t matter how little it is. I can start seeing myself in these movies, I see themes which I obsess over. Framing I like and I keep repeating. I see the form of dialog that I enjoy. And it’s all a representation of me.

I’ve been trying to figure out why it was so easy for me to give up on The Weekend Warriors, why it didn’t even hurt me slightly when I deleted the footage. I think I’ve figured out why: a script allows somebody to create a world in which their own shortcomings can be illustrated and forgiven in that respected world. A writer pours himself into his work, and if he creates something good, leaves a part of himself on those pages. I think that’s what separates good scripts from bad ones. I’ve written things that I can barely remember, things that just aren’t special to me but I wrote because I thought other people would like them. And I’ve written characters that still haunt me because they mirror me. Heroes and villains and victims, i’ve been all of them.

Even in my comedies I can see myself. I’ve been genuinely hurt when somebody decides to throw away a friendship for a relationship. It sucks and I turned that into a comedy and that’s what Zimbabwe and Noah is, if I was put in Zimbabwe’s position and I could save my friendship then I would have acted like that in that world. In a horror movie, if I loved the girl as much as my protagonist did, then, yes, I would sacrifice myself for her. There was nothing of me in The Weekend Warriors, I had no connection towards anybody. It was something I tried to create to hopefully get the attention of others. A comedy without any dramatic backbone, but I just realized that’s not the movie I want to make.

I’ll write my next movie.