TRIUMPH OF TIME
This is Finish Your Monsters, a weekly 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?
Big picture, I’m working away on the post-production of our horror film, Dead Media. I’m editing the film in chronological order. Last week, I committed to the goal of editing up to minute 70 of the film.
And I made it! I’m currently at minute 71 and 22 seconds.
Yesterday, I edited a slow-burn, high-tension horror scene that required lots and lots of scouring through takes for very specific 2 second beats. So I was able to get productive editing work done while listening to Cory Booker’s filibuster in the background.
It was weird and nice to feel a glimmer of hope while editing images of monsters attacking my friends.
I’m over halfway through the film now by all measures—page count, scene count, and runtime.
I’m very excited for the next scene. It was a very fun one to shoot with a mix of action, comedy, horror, and supernatural weirdness. Plus appearances by my old theater/comedy pals, Shanan Custer and Jim Robinson.
So I’m itching to finish the blog and get back to the edit—which is a nice place to be.
ADVENTURES OF THE WEEK--
This week was mostly editing and coping with a nice splash of celebration.
March 31st is the anniversary of my first date with my wife, Sara. A mutual friend—Sara’s boss and an actor in many of my shows—Craig Johnson was in a show called Triumph of Love.
Sara and I emailed back and forth, trying to find a night we could go both go to the show. At the time, we were both performers and between us had roughly 87 part-time jobs so scheduling was difficult. I had named the email chain “Triumph of Scheduling.”
Long story short, we went to the show, had a good time, and mutually decided at the end of the evening that it was, indeed, a date.
For years, we’ve marked the day, jokingly calling it TRIUMPH. “Hey,” we’ll say, “What should we do on TRIUMPH this year?”
This year we had to do something a little special because it was THE TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY of Triumph.
So we made our first visit to the old LA haunt, Dan Tana’s. It’s a very intimate Italian restaurant with great food and a fun, festive, neighborhood vibe. Because the neighborhood is West Hollywood, it was also full of a strange intersection of celebrities. I saw alt comedians, TV showrunners, and famous journalists all slurping up pasta together. Lasagna is the great equalizer.
It was a wonderful night. Sara and I spent the dinner talking about our first date, the past, the future, and the ceaseless forward movement of time. We tried to imagine where we thought we might be 20 years from that first date and conjured several different paths while celebrating the one we’re actually on.
The passage of time is hitting me hard the last couple of weeks. Partially, that’s just age. It’s the various regrets and what ifs piling up. It’s the stress of the moment we’re living through. It’s the anger that we have to live through this attack on democracy. Like the pandemic, it’s a massive blow to all those personal goals—career, travel, emotional focus. Everyone I know is working very, very hard. Constant work and constant stress can make it feel like time is slipping through our fingers even faster.
Anyway, this blogletter is helping me be honest about my challenges and think through how I’m working with them.
I’ve been extremely obsessed with editing Dead Media. There are many reasons for that: It’s fun! I’m on a deadline! The film and its success are the primary goal of my creative life and career at the moment!
But I think I’m also obsessing on it because art always helps. The film is about many things. It’s a horror movie. It’s got some dark comedy. But at its heart, it’s about time. It’s about what we do with it. How we cope with it. Heroes in horror movies fight to survive. But why? To do what with that time?
The same way a pop star might have a song working through a break up, I think this film is me working through my rocky relationship with time. And I’m eager to get back to it because as the famous Carrie Fisher quote says, “Take your broken heart and make it art.”
Now to be very clear, my heart is NOT broken about my twenty year dating anniversary with my wife. I’d just like to have many more 20 year anniversaries with my wife.
Whatever you’re working through, I hope art can help a bit. A doodle, a poem, a new plant in the garden, a pop song about breaking up with a social media site—I encourage you to take a moment for it.
Art always helps.
LIGHT PLUGS—
The Nightmare Adorable!
I wrote and directed this short horror film back in 2023.
AWOOGA: Can you help us get to 1000 views on YouTube? I’d love to get more views on this short film as I look ahead to the promotion of Dead Media.
Speaking of Dead Media, We’ve got a fiscal sponsorship with the great Minnesota organization Film North. They can accept one-time donations that will go directly toward finishing the film: SCORE, VFX, COLOR GRADING, etc. It’s like a Kickstarter where the rewards are A) a tax deduction and B) helping us make the film.
For full info, please check out the page for the upcoming horror film, DEAD MEDIA!
Or if you have any questions about supporting the film, feel free to reach out to me personally!
MY GOAL FOR THE WEEK--
Foot remains on the gas for Dead Media. I need to both edit and do more post-production planning. So I’m going to give myself a double goal this week. My goal for next week is to send three planning emails and edit up to minute 85 of the film.
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? How can I help you literally finish your monsters?
A LITTLE SKETCH--
On our first date, I gave Sara a card for her recent birthday. We both worked at the Minnesota Historical Society at the time and I knew she had a fondness for old things. So I got her a card with a picture of an oldie-time phone on it. For our 20th dating anniversary, I did a new sketch of an old phone. Shared here with permission from Sara. I hope everyone’s week is full of happy memories of old phones.
