In Search of Balance and Cheese Sticks
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 filming a 5 minute teaser for the feature film I’m working on and be ready to start editing.
And I did complete that goal. As I type this, I’m sitting in the debris of the shoot. My father kindly let me film in his house in my hometown of Minneapolis. So I’ve plastered the walls of one of my childhood bedrooms with set decoration—comic books, action figures, toy dinosaurs, drum sticks, old vinyl records. Frankly, childhood me would be jealous of this room’s set decoration.
It’s also the guest room so I’m sleeping on my own set just like David Lynch did for Eraserhead. Luckily, the character in this short is supposed to be sloppy so I have not had to do any cleaning or tidying.
Until now. I have a plane to catch in a bit so I should probably start typing with one hand and packing with the other.
ADVENTURES OF THE WEEK--
My creative and life adventure this week is seeking balance! I’m here in Minneapolis for about 3 and a half days. My goal was to get this short teaser filmed but I tried to pack in some time for family/friends in and around the whirlwind.
The result has been an embarrassment of riches. I needed a photo of a family at an arcade for the short film. My niece kindly agreed to do the shoot. Since we were at the arcade anyway, my niece, myself, and the lead of the film, great actor and old pal, Sam Landman, decided to smash some buttons. We blew up the Death Star several times and I also got to show my niece how GREAT AT DYING I am while playing Dragon’s Lair.
I was able to catch a great old radio show performed by my brother and old friends, Tim Uren, Shanan Custer, and Eric Webster. You can check out their podcast here. At the show I also got to see several family members, many friends, and a great picture of Frank Sinatra looking like he’s upset about the concept of restrooms.
Also got to see my Dad play drums at a jam session and reconnect with some old pals from high school as we watched my Dad rock out.
Finally, the big shoot day yesterday with Sam and my old friend Natalie Wass was a wonderful, productive, creatively inspiring BLUR OF MADNESS as we raced through a 5 page script in about 5 hours, fighting the charge on my phone battery the whole time.
Throughout all this, I had many great conversations about creative projects. About finding the balance between daily life and how much you give to your creative process. About finding the balance between striving to make your projects exactly what you want them to be and being honest about the parts that aren’t working.
Seeking balance is an elusive concept that our culture loves to throw around, but it was really good to have a very practical crash course on this trip. I didn’t have time to carefully consider every little choice. I felt like I was in one of those game show booths that shoot money in the air and you just grab what you can. The money in this case being time with family/friends, stopping by a favorite store, getting the best shot for the teaser that I could in the time we had. (And going a little over time, too.)
After the shoot, I wanted to visit an old favorite hangout for dinner so my Dad and I went to a place in South Minneapolis called Leaning Tower of Pizza. He was very encouraging and supportive about everything we got done in the film shoot. But I was still in need of balance. I told him the honest truth. I was thrilled with all the stuff that worked perfectly, but I needed to talk through the anxiety of what shots I might have missed.
And it was great. I purged those fear demons and it let me focus more freely on everything that went so well with the shoot.
I found some balance. And also cheese sticks. Mostly, cheese sticks. So many cheese sticks.
MY GOAL FOR THE WEEK--
This week, I need to get to work on editing this teaser, so my goal for next week is a rough assembly edit of the teaser!
YOUR GOAL FOR THE WEEK--
AWOOGA! I'm thrilled to say Buttondown now has a comments function. 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 are the joys? Are you seeking balance and/or cheese sticks? How can I help you finish your monsters?
LIGHT PLUGS--
There are screenings of our film, The Nightmare Adorable, coming up! In particular it's playing in the Pacific Northwest as part of Crypticon Seattle on Saturday, May 4th at 9 pm and I will be in attendance! Full details are on my website here.
Here's the poster for the latest short film! Submissions to film festivals add up extremely quickly. They average about $25 per festival and the more I submit to, the better odds at getting exposure for the film. So any proceeds from buying my comedy albums and short stories on Bandcamp go directly to film submissions! Thank you for the kind support!
A LITTLE SKETCH--
This week's sketch is a little stressful but honest. It’s the image for a story called THEY HAD BATTERY TRACKERS FOR EYES! Thanks and see you in the far-off future land of NEXT TUESDAY!
