On My 8th Cup Of Coffee (Wish It Was Scotch)

I have to begin by stating the title of this post really should be adapted into a country song.

Well, "Love Is Deaf" seems destined to become my next film, and I'm having serious mixed feelings about that for a number of reasons. First off, this will be my first film film directorial experience, and I'm shooting at night on the beach. To add to that, I just get a weird feeling from this script, like it's an interesting idea but poorly executed. I see a lot of films about which I think, "interesting idea but poorly executed," and I hate the thought of doing one of those. On the other hand, I think I'm scratching the surface of something amazingly original (and you know I mean it when I resort to "ly" words). In concept, it could be both visually stunning and thematically revelationary. Instead, as is, I have this creeping feeling that it'll look like crap and at best constitute a cute little flick that doesn't really make all that much sense.

I was really proud of "Naked" as a script. I wrote it and thought to myself, "I kick ass." Feel the same way about "Melissa With A Heart Around It." But with this project, I keep asking myself "why?" The answer of course is, "I have to shoot something, and 'Melissa' is too long."

Watched some of the Sundance shorts online today, three of the 12 highlighted by indieWIRE as the best shorts of the year. To see the Sundance shorts head to WWW.SUNDANCE.ORG. Anyway, I honestly wasn't that impressed. Two of 'em were directed by the actor who played Kip in NAPOLEON DYNAMITE. I don't know who did the other one. The best I can say about all three is "nice production value and camera work." One of them was 18 minutes long which gave me hope for "Melissa With A Heart Around It."

So what makes a great short? That seems to be an issue of much contention among my mentors and peers right now. There's always a lot of competition among the filmmakers in the program and a lot of ego at stake. Sometimes what the "authorities" tell me is a great short strikes me as merely well-done rubbish. And now I'm working with a professor who seems to define a good short film within very narrow parameters.

I've way overused quotation marks in this post. It makes me sound more pretentious than I am. Not that I'm not pretentious. I am, I can admit that. But don't make little quote marks in the air with my fingers on a regular basis, and this post makes it look like I do.

Anyway, it's funny that this whole post is about short films since the reason I'm on my 8th cup of coffee is I'm staying up to work on my new feature script. I'm finding it excruciating getting into this second feature script, which is odd because I'm thrilled with the story and the characters. Just getting into the swing of that kind of writing discipline is a killer when you're out of it. And I think I write better when it's Scotch instead of coffee.

People have actually signed up for my newsletter, which I find almost incomprehensible. As soon as I receive the dates of my first screening for "Naked," I'll have to send one.

I will now run spell check so as not to offend Diego with my misspelling of NAPOLEON DYNAMITE.