April 9, 2024

Minor Traffic Accidents and Other Inspirations

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 a creative goal and a practical one. The creative goal was to pick an idea for a new short film. My practical goal was to figure out a legal issue for producing the feature film I'm working on. And once again because I claimed I was going to do those things on this blog, they parkoured their way to the top of my wobbling tower of To Do lists. Thanks, hubris!

The "figure out a legal issue" filled me with dread. My soul felt like a baby's mouth when they decide they don't want to eat something. Mouth clamped shut, head shaking, eyes shooting daggers. But not only was this task the clear priority, I was also desperate to be done with the misery of fearing it. So I set aside some dedicated time and did the research.

I learned a lot about one specific framework for financing independent film. I don't have all the answers but now I know enough to ask the right questions of actual legal experts. As a reward, I let myself read one chapter of a book I picked up a while back. It's called MY FIRST MOVIE. It's a series of interviews with directors about making their first feature film.

The first chapter happened to be a discussion with The Coen Brothers. I love their work and always feel an additional affinity since we share the same hometown of the Twin Cities Metro Area in Minnesota. I immediately learned that they used the same financial structure I had just researched to finance their first film, Blood Simple. If I had read this interview literally a day earlier, it would have stressed me out to no end because I would not have understood what they were talking about.

The interview is full of wisdom and anecdotes, but one particular story resonated. They were traveling through the suburbs of Minneapolis, going to potential investors' homes with a projector and a portable screen to play their teaser trailer and then ask these people for money, right there in their living room. At one person's home, they accidentally hit his car while parking.

It's a real tragedy + time = comedy story, but reading it was visceral for me. I imagined the shame and terror and hopelessness I would feel if I did that. But, of course, they survived it. They went on to thrive. And from that perspective, it became comforting. Everyone struggles, everyone makes soul-rattling mistakes. What matters is making the active choice to persevere.

We are all underfunded artists getting into fender-benders in St Louis Park, Minnesota and THAT IS OKAY.

ADVENTURES OF THE WEEK--

I had my own artistic adventures, but I was also delighted to share in my wife's exploits. Last weekend, Sara performed in The Palm Springs International Dance Festival. I was thrilled to head to the desert, slather myself in so much sunscreen I looked like a zombie, and watch my wife perform a beautiful flowing modern dance piece.

I had a lot of time to sit around at cocktail bars while Sara rehearsed so I decided I'd use the time to try to complete my creative goal of picking an idea for a new short film.

To recap, I signed up for the accountability group, Just Scare Me, to make a 1 - 6 minute horror film by early June or pay a $100 penalty into the group.

Before I even left for the trip, I had fleshed out a new short film idea. It was a twist on a person recording a desperate "if you're watching this, I'm probably dead" type of video. But then I realized what I really needed to make was a short film that could also function as a teaser/sizzle reel for the feature film I'm working on.

This epiphany was not welcome. My shoulders slumped and my mind raced through all the failure tracks you find on a royalty-free sound effects record: long toilet flush, sad trombone, crowd reaction to missed golf putt. I have precious little creative time and I had wasted it. Or were the cruel sound effects lying to me?

It turns out, yes, yes they were. I went for a walk, grumbling and talking to myself (which one can do as long as you have earbuds in and people think you're on a phone call), trying to brainstorm an idea for the feature film teaser. The feature film script is written but there's no one scene I could just lift out. Then I realized, I already had a great structure for the teaser: The other short film I brainstormed.

The setting, structure, and technical realities of the initial idea all fit perfectly. An ideal vehicle for presenting the main ideas of the feature film in a tense, succinct way that (hopefully) will also stand on its own as a fun little horror short.

It was a nice reminder that often creative time is NOT wasted. Even when we feel like we absolutely threw away our precious time on an idea that didn't work, a project that got rejected, two whole chapters of a novel you're just going to cut down the line, etc. There's a decent chance any number of old ideas, experiences, rejected premises will pop their head out of the trash bin and save you--sometimes years later or, very luckily for me in this instance, two days later.

MY GOAL FOR THE WEEK--

This week, I need to continue with the legal/business adventures for the feature film and pre-production for the sizzle reel, but I also want a firm, practical goal. Luckily, a nice deadline is swooping in to give me focus. By next Tuesday, I need to complete tweaks on my short film, The Demon's Commentary, and submit it to a minimum of five film festivals.

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? Can you do it while walking down the street talking to yourself? What are the challenges? What are the joys? Did you hit a car in St Louis Park, Minnesota? I want to know!

My dream for this blog is that it can help other people carve out time for the projects that are most important. None of this is easy. I'm choosing to share the positives, but there are always hard things (I got rejected by a big film festival this week, one grey eyebrow hair sent me on an existential dread spiral about aging, and I missed the eclipse because I had to record a podcast.) Point is you are not alone and if you'd like to share your adventures in the comments, I would be thrilled.

LIGHT PLUGS--

THE NARRATOR! All members of my Patreon now have exclusive months-early access to my experimental comedy film--THE NARRATOR starring the great Phil LaMarr. If you're interested, you can check out the Patreon here. Thanks for the kind words from those who've watched it!

There are screenings of our film, The Nightmare Adorable, coming up at Scares That Care this weekend in Virginia! Full details are on my website here.

You can also check out Strange Path t-shirts and wall art on Threadless. And, of course, multiple comedy albums and cosmic horror on Bandcamp. Thank you for the kind support!

A LITTLE SKETCH--

This week's sketch was a nice little celebration. While Sara was rehearsing for her dance show, I went to an old supper club in Palm Springs called Melvyn's. I had a martini and watched the lounge singer pound the piano keys. He asked a group of women at the next table what they were celebrating and they screamed in unison, "EVERYTHING!" I was inspired to doodle. Thanks and see you in the far-off future land of NEXT TUESDAY!