update: back to work

I'm so grateful to have mostly kicked the flu by now and to have a little time to work and write. I'm supposed to be leading/participating in the Playwrights Submission Binge this month, but the illness really set me back. Plus, I don't have a lot I need to submit at the moment--but I do need to update my marketing materials (resume, bio, web site), so I'm working on that.

Last night, I spent a few hours getting the Rhombus web site put together, so we'll have some info there for the Six Views, Same Shape festival in April. I'm not done yet, but it's a lot better than what was there yesterday morning.

I actually made some progress on my new play, Constant State of Panic, this morning, which is good, because I have no idea what happens next, every day I pick it up. I do know that I need at least a complete first draft of a first act before the festival on April 26th. I'm grateful to be making some progress writing.

My whole triple-threat notion has been fairly soft lately, because I've done so little film writing. But in a couple weeks, I'll be on a team for the 48Hour Film Project, and I'm psyched about that.

Just the taste of filmmaking again has gotten me revved up. I found myself unable to sleep the other night and worked out a whole plan for turning my play, Pieces of Whitey, into a series of very short films, more like a mini-tv series, really, that I want to produce and then post online.

YouTube is amazing for how it has completely changed the landscape for short film distribution. When I was in college making short films, I could expect to show them to a couple hundred people on campus, and that was about it. A little thought quickly showed that making short films was an expensive source of frustration, if you were looking to reach an audience. I could reach a lot more people, more cheaply, by making theatre.

Changes in the past five years, in both video and computer technology, have changed the argument completely. (My elk video that I shot on my snapshot camera has been seen 700 times on YouTube since September.) For less than the cost of a small theatre production, I could buy the video and computer equipment I need to make a whole bunch of short films. And then I can distribute them, fairly easily, for much less than I could produce an evening of theatre. It's definitely got me thinking. I'm not going to give up theatre, but I'm going to check out making films again, a lot more seriously.

The kind of filmmaking that interests me is a lot like the theatre-making that interests me--I'm interested in low budget art that involves a community of artists and audience. I'm curious to see what happens next. The 48FP weekend will teach me a lot (I'm pretty rusty on my filmmaking skills and knowledge).

What I'm Watching: King Corn

Last weekend, we watched King Corn on video. This is a fun documentary inspired by Michael Pollan's writing. Two young guys out East with family connections back to the same farm town in Iowa want to learn more about the industrial food chain that revolves around corn (and results in cells tests showing that most of the carbon in their bodies came from corn). So they decide to go out to Iowa and grow an acre of corn (using modern industrial methods) and see what happens.

The whole film is very well put together. They don't talk down to the Iowa farmers--instead it's clear that the farmers know a lot about what it takes to grow corn and why the system works the way it does. Sadly, farmers growing industrial corn are caught in a dilemma-- a system that exists that allows them to make money growing a huge amount of corn. However, the methods harm the soil and produce a product (not a food--the corn they grow can't be eaten without first being processed) that isn't particularly healthy for the animals or people who consume it. And, though farmers were once thought of as independent souls at the heart of the progressive movement in America, the only money made by farmers is from payments directly from the government (otherwise the farmers would lose money----or, in a more sensible situation, less people would grow corn, prices would rise, and government payments to farmers could stop).

Though it's a far gentler look at the industrial food process than Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, the film does push gently at the viewer to take a hard look at the lack of logic in our current agriculture system. And it's pretty funny and fun to watch.

Lost a Week (down with the flu)

Just lost a whole week to the flu. Noah came down with it on Sunday night and missed the whole week of school, except for an attempt on Thursday that only lasted half a day. By Monday, my fever was almost as high as his, and we both stayed up there for a quite a few days. Tracy was out from work Thursday and Friday. (Only Kira has managed to avoid it so far...) Luckily it's not a stomach flu, but just one that makes you feverish, tired, and miserable.

It's amazing how your whole family being really sick can wipe out an entire week. We managed to buy a few groceries, though we barely cooked. I somehow put in a few freelance hours when I was lucid (which wasn't often), but the big week I had planned completely evaporated. I even missed my Rhombus playwrights meeting on Monday night, which sucked, because I'd reworked the first 17 pages of my new play, Constant State of Panic, and dearly wanted to hear it. The loss of a week on this play is a little scary, because I've got a public rehearsal/reading of the play coming up on April 25, and I'd like to be farther along than 17 pages, but it's been sort of slow going. This week, I'm not likely to have much writing time (I've got a freelance gig and friends visiting). Pressure is good, right?

We're all on the upswing now, and I think Noah and I will be mostly back to normal by tomorrow. Maybe Tracy by Monday. Infuenza Strain A, we were told by my father-in-law (very likely we all picked it up at his retirement party last weekend--he has it, too). Nice to know it has a name, I guess.

Hope I can be sweded someday (Be Kind Rewind)

Last weekend, Tracy and I got out to see a very fun little movie by Michel Gondry, Be Kind Rewind. I'm a big fan of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (also directed by Gondry), so I had high expectations, and I was satisfied. It's an odd little movie, that at times feels both funny and lame, until you realize that part of the lameness is intentional. What the film ends up saying about art and community is near and dear to my heart. Though the film is nominally about making movies, it could just as easily be talking about what makes a small theatre group finally click with its community and audience.

It also reminded me of why the movies that I made in college were so much fun and so warmly received by the community around me (i.e. my dorm at MIT). I recently received an e-mail from a friend from college imploring me to get those old films transferred to dvd, so we could all revisit those days again. (I'm going to do it, as soon as I save up some cash.) Being reminded of those times has made me work harder to get on a team for the upcoming 48 Hour Film Project--I did find a team and we'll be shooting in early April.

Part of the movie has to do with friends at a video store trying to remake tapes that can no longer be rented. They label this as "sweding" the films. This has already taken off in the "real world" and there are a number of sites offering sweded versions of your favorite films. (It might help to watch Be Kind Rewind first, but you'll get the goofy humor anyway. Or you won't (in which case, don't bother with Be Kind Rewind). ((I guess a semi-official definition of sweding is: a neologism first coined in 'Be Kind Rewind' that describes the practice of re-creating something from scratch using commonly available, everyday materials and technology.)) It's cheap, fun art.

Here are some "sweding" sites:
swededcinema.com
http://sweded.blogspot.com/


I hope that something I write will be sweded by others someday.

Playwright Marketing Binge (#12) starts tomorrow

Twice a year, a bunch of playwrights take up a simple challenge: submit a play day, every day, for 30 days. A supportive online community of playwrights has grown up around the event. Tomorrow we start Binge #12. It's a great way to make your marketing chores a lot more fun. (There are 380 people on the Yahoo group now.)

You can join us at The Binge.

What I'm Reading: Non-Fiction Binge

This past month or so, thanks to lots of doctor's appointments and some compelling text, I read a lot more books than I usually do. I went through a whole fun non-fiction binge of four terrific books.

Spelling Love with an X (A Mother, a Son, and the Gene that Binds Them) by Clare Dunsford. I'd read parts of this before, because Clare is in my writer's group, but I was glad to finally get to read the whole thing. She's a terrific writer and tells about her journey, as a mother of a son with fragile x syndrome, in a way that's both compelling and literary. Not an easy challenge, but she pulls it off. My own son has various special needs, and though they're not the same as Clare's son, JP's, I can relate closely to her experiences with doctors and diagnoses and special education classes. And the shift from an over-educated, middle-class sense of certainty and security about the future of our children, to having to stumble through life one day at a time, being forced to look at this moment and love our children for who they are right this instant. I'm grateful to Clare for writing this book and know I will return to it again in the future.

The Blind Side by Michael Lewis. Yet another book about boys with challenges that made me think about my own son. The boy in this case is a 6'6", 340 pound black teenager, basically abandoned to the streets of inner city Memphis, who ends up basically being adopted by a white, rich, evangelical Christian family with deep ties to college athletics (Ole Miss). (We adopted our son at a young age, unlike the boy in Lewis' book, but our son is black, we are white, and he's on track to be 6'4" and big enough to play football.) Lewis is an astounding writer, blending in details about professional football and the rise of importance of the position of left tackle , with the story of a gifted athlete who becomes highly sought after by college scouts nationwide and a family who takes him into their home and tries to protect and educate him. It's a fast read. I'm definitely going to read Michael Lewis' other books as soon as possible. I've been hearing great things about Moneyball for a long time now.

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. Another book about sons, really. Just as compelling as Blind Side, but Krakauer's style is so different--much more lyrical-- as he tries to puzzle out the mystery of why young Chris McCandless apparently trudged into the wilds of Alaska, poorly equipped, and starved to death. The story ends up being a lot more complex than it seems at first, and it's especially interesting to watch Krakauer pursue it, because he clearly sees himself in McCandless and feels a strong paternal protectiveness for the young man and his choices. I have no idea how they turned this into a movie, because part of what makes the book work is the disjointed narrative of Krakauer trying to pull together all the pieces, and telling us about similar adventurers in the past (and his own escapades). Still, I'll probably watch the movie, and I can't wait to read Into Thin Air.

Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food doesn't really have anything to do with sons (I tried to find a tie-in, but no luck). In a way, it doesn't cover a lot of new ground (I LOVED his Omnivore's Dilemma), but it does hit the high points about some important ways to think about food and eating (it's basically an expansion of his essay in the NY Times Magazine from last year). His main points are simple: Eat Food, Not too Much, Eat Mostly Plants. If you stick with that, you're likely to stay healthy and avoid a huge amount of stress from trying to figure out how to interpret the latest mishmash of dietary studies and fads. Luckily for us, our family has already been eating this way for the past year, so this book serves more as a support and confirmation of our efforts, rather than a challenge. It's a quick, sensible read--if you're concerned about your health and confused about how eating might fit in, this book is the place to start.


Oh, I also read Worms Eat My Garbage by Mary Appelhof. If you want to start a worm bin, this is worth getting from the library.

pinkie update

Good news--I got the pin out of my pinkie today. They knocked me out to put it in, but only used a local to take it out. I was a little nervous about that, with images of the doctor with his knee on my chest and a big pair of pliers. It wasn't quite that dramatic, though it was a lot more involved than I expected--gown, real operating room, bunch of nurses, lots of waiting, the same questions over and over and over again, etc.

A few things I've learned:

--It always takes a little longer to recover than I expect. I figured I'd be able to play soccer on Sunday. The doc nixed that (if I'd known I was getting stitches, I guess I could have figured out that one for myself).

--When the doctor tells you that something is going to hurt, that means it's going to hurt a lot. The two injections into the base of the finger hurt, but not so bad. However, the two injections into the end of the finger--wow. The good news is that once those were over, I didn't feel a thing. And he didn't need to yank very hard to get the pin out. (I'm very grateful to the nurse who listened to me prattle on and on so I didn't have to feel them cutting and yanking.)

--It's hard to type without all your fingers, and it's really hard to type when a few of the others are still numb from whatever the heck they put in there.


I've been reading a bunch of great books lately and will blog about them, once I get all the feeling back in my fingers.