July 9, 2024

A Week of Sharks and Trolls

This is Finish Your Monsters, a weekly blog/newsletter/blogletter about the creative process. I'm sharing adventures in art and life as well as setting CLIFFHANGER goals for myself, so--

--DID I MAKE MY GOAL?

Last week, I committed to doing more work on the feature film I’m producing as well as a new short to keep experimenting. Specifically, I claimed I would make a producer task list for the feature film and a very rough first draft of a short Norwegian horror film.

And I 77% succeeded! I finished the draft of the Norwegian horror short after much googling of the words “viking” and “troll.” More on that process below!

For the producer list, I had wanted to compile a big pre-production guide for myself. And I finished about 3/4s of that. But I did finish a more specific list of producer goals I need to complete before I leave for a family trip this coming Monday the 15th.

Based on the horror short I’m working on, you’ll never guess where we’re going. (It’s Norway. Home of trolls, The Scream, and the long-lost memories of some of my great-grandparents.)

It’s stressful to get all my ducks in a row to keep the film pre-production moving while I’m on the trip, but I’m very lucky to go see one of my ancestral homes and spend time with family.

Stress is simply a reality. It’s a part of striving for a big goal like making an indie feature film. A lil’ stress will just have to be my travel companion. I’ll put a small bottle of it in a ziplock bag and hope the TSA lets me take it on the plane.

ADVENTURES OF THE WEEK--

This week went by in a blur. It was very productive, but also had weird time-dilation with the Fourth of July plopping itself in the middle of the week and disrupting ALL COMMUNICATIONS. Which was a challenge because the main film producing work I need to do right now is communication. Still, I had several great meetings and made progress on various fundraising fronts. And already this week, the communication is flowing again with lots of people getting back to me post-holiday.

I had two good adventures this week. One was the absolute thrill of my wife, myself, and two great friends seeing Jaws at The Egyptian Theater with a sold-out crowd!

I’m sure there have been screenings of Jaws on the Fourth for years. But this year felt different to me. There were about 8 theaters in LA showing the film and, according to my social media, many other cities across the nation, too. People were posting about their annual viewing with a new fervor. It felt like late December when half the posts on my feed are holiday meals or pictures of grandma’s house. A tipping point in Jaws-adoration where it becomes an essential part of the holiday. Fireworks, hot dogs, the shark movie, mattress sales, America.

And I’m all for it! It was great to experience the film with a packed audience. Many people raised their hand when the staff at The Egyptian asked, “Is there anyone here who has never seen the film?”

As a result, I was surrounded by people who screamed when the Shark popped up and at the EMOTIONAL JUMP SCARES of the Mayor’s horrendous decisions.

There’s a great communal power in the film. The characters are real and compelling. The stakes and tension are high. It’s a very well made thriller-action-horror-family drama film.

But it’s also disturbingly relevant and I think it will be for a long time. The shark is an endlessly malleable metaphor for a massive, challenging problem that threatens society on multiple levels. (A pandemic, creeping fascism, climate crisis, tech bros, etc) We then watch multiple figures from various backgrounds with various motivations—greed, ego, trauma, career, family—attempt different approaches to even ACCEPT the crisis and finally deal with it.

It’s a great example of the storytelling concept of finding the universal in the specific. Very specific characters in a very specific place deal with a very specific problem, but that specificity also unlocks the deeply universal. How can fractured individuals with competing needs band together to face an existential crisis to an entire society?

So at the end of the film (WARNING: Spoilers for our national holiday shark movie) when the crisis is dealt with, there was a MASSIVE cheer and applause in the packed Egyptian Theater. And, to me, it felt like so much more than a standard “audience applauds for the heroes winning.” To me, it felt like catharsis. It felt like a reminder that this is possible. Society can address the sharks lurking right under the surface, threatening everything we’ve built. And hopefully with a great John Williams score.

Well, I didn’t mean to write that much about Jaws, but here we are. On to the next adventure.

So on my Norway trip, I’m going to collect footage for a little horror short. It’s going to be a travelogue that goes, uh, wrong. I wanted to get a first draft of the script done so I knew what kind of footage I needed in Norway.

But I’ve got a lot on my plate so I didn’t want to take a long time knocking out this rough draft for a 5 minute short.

I rigidly told myself I could ONLY spend two hours on it. And I wrote a bunch, but then I kept getting distracted doing research for the trip—where can I buy what kind of troll doll? How many steps do I have to climb to see the midnight sun? All-day waffles?

I got frustrated with myself and stuck. I was four hours into my ONLY two hours time slot. I did my normal trick of going for a walk and managed to unlock a key idea for the script.

On the walk, I also decided to JUST LEAVE MYSELF ALONE. Sometimes we need to be rigid and specific and hold ourselves accountable. I think other times we just have to accept that our creative process is our creative process.

I wanted it to be a two hour project, but it needed to be a six hour project. And yelling at myself about my process did not help so I stopped. Did you know there’s a 2022 Norwegian-made movie with a giant mythical kaiju called Troll? I probably did but I had forgot until I let myself wander.

Anyway, I finished the draft, I’m all set for getting my footage in Norway and I got a cocktail and the movie Troll as a reward. Not a bad process, all things considered.

MY GOAL FOR THE WEEK--

My goals this week are a bit nebulous. In general, it’s get everything in order so I can both go to Norway and keep progress moving on the film and also don’t forget your contact solution. But I also want to keep moving forward on my big birthday show on August 16th so for my concrete goal this week I’m committing to finishing a rough draft of my stand-up set I can bring with me on the trip and tinker with.

YOUR GOAL FOR THE WEEK--

I would absolutely LOVE to hear what you're working on this week in the comments below. What's your goal? Is it creative? What are the challenges? What joys are keeping you motivated? How can I help you finish your monsters?

LIGHT PLUGS—

AWOOGA! NOW AVAILABLE FOR LIVESTREAM!

This comedy/variety show celebrating a big birthday is also going to be LIVESTREAMED! It’s called HORROR YEARS OLD and tickets are live here! Friday, August 16th at Lyric-Hyperion or viewable anywhere with an internet connection. I would love a packed house (and friends watching from afar) so if you’re interested, grab the tickets now!

I also wanted to share about Vote Forward—it’s a program where you sign up to write letters to voters. There’s a typed form and you add a personal message about WHY voting matters to you, nothing partisan. The org has done follow up studies and it really works to increase voter turnout. My goal this year is to write 200 letters. I’ve written 40 so far. If you’re interested, you can find out more by visiting Vote Forward!

Our short horror film, THE NIGHTMARE ADORABLE, has now been accepted in 19 film festivals. There’s a screening coming up in the UK (first time a film of mine will play there and I’m thrilled!), Montana, and Houston. Details on my website!

A LITTLE SKETCH--

Well, I drew a very cathartic little picture of a shark researching Norwegian trolls on a laptop, but for some reason it absolutely refuses to upload after 37 minutes of trying. I’ll post the sketch on social media. Thanks again for reading and I hope all your real and metaphorical sketches load quickly this week!