I’m having my eureka moment with it – I made a Tumblr happen to myself that’s lasted almost three days.

The truth is that between this site and [...]]]> I was making some turtlecalls when all of a sudden I was like, “ooh let’s try having a Tumblr for like the fourth time”.

I’m having my eureka moment with it – I made a Tumblr happen to myself that’s lasted almost three days.

The truth is that between this site and turtlecalls and Brad Radby’s website and pictures of The Christmas Bridge in fridges, I needed a place to aggregate everything I do.

Also, it seems I like to paraphrase movie quotes over there, like this one.

clash of the titans

avatar is like why is it taking the kraken ten minutes to stand up and the horse is like nay nay get these wings off me this is gross how did this happen nay nay nay

Can you believe I just used aggregate correctly in a sentence.

In that last sentence I spelled it “sentance” first, which is pretty funny if you say it out loud at your graduation speech.

All the teachers are all embarrassed about how you got a diploma without knowing how to speak. Also leave your shoes untied for that, so there’s more embarrassment, but that one will be for your mom and dad.

One of those was to learn how to type proper English again. I also quit energy drinks for good, wrote an entire screenplay, and finished formatting my next book.

People say Twitter, et al can be [...]]]> During my time away from the net at large the past few weeks, I did a few things.

One of those was to learn how to type proper English again. I also quit energy drinks for good, wrote an entire screenplay, and finished formatting my next book.

People say Twitter, et al can be a distraction.

Another thing I did was leave hundreds of Google reviews for various places I’ve been, and a lot more for places I’ve never been at all.

I did one for this high school and it was like a real drug addiction from there.

Great lockers‎‎
By Brian – Aug 5, 2010
For real you can fit a lot in them like books, and kites, and food, and etc.‎
Was this review helpful? Yes – No – Flag as inappropriate

You’ll note some of the other reviews also have things about kites. Maybe you can go leave some kite-based reviews there if you have some time.

The faculty must love kites.

I have more reviews – that should be good for about two years worth of blog content, right?

Missing my silly-talk blog already, and best wishes, your friend,

Brian

Not only can he not play subordinate and never been a winner, but he hasn’t played at all in like forever, and this is gonna give him flashbacks to the Timberwolves years, when he [...]]]> (BOSers – I think you’re fooling yourself if you think Marblebury is gonna be good for the Celts.

Not only can he not play subordinate and never been a winner, but he hasn’t played at all in like forever, and this is gonna give him flashbacks to the Timberwolves years, when he couldn’t handle The Shadow of Garnett.

Suddenly everyone has forgotten he’s insane just because of some bus stop funnery.)

So here’s a list of everything I didn’t understand in that excellent Prelude to a Super Airplane review.

I’ve refrained from looking any of it up until I did this, so included in parentheses are what I currently think these things are/mean/etc.

Susan Sontag (Actress)
Jean-Luc Godard (Star Trek guy)
Neal Pollack (director)
erudite (“of listlessness”)
Swift, Flaubert, Joyce, Pynchon (a random family)
Diderot (a building in France, and it’s on a beach, where it seems out of place)
Jacques the Fatalist and His Master (book)
Martin Amis (poet)
London Fields (duh it’s a field in the LON lol)
George Saunders (Army general)
insufferable (annoying)
Tao Lin (Chinese Army general)
in media res (“excessive usage of the color blue”)
hiccoughs (snooty version of hiccups)
didactic (angular)
penchant (like a magic bracelet for girls)
Javier Marias (poet/director)
Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me (poem about the Army)
ubiquitous (random)
elongated gerunds (like a super hero who can stretch his gerunds has these)
saccharine (tasty in a bad way)
magisterial (like a king in the Army)

I still really don’t feel like looking them up, but if you wanted to point out where I may be off-track, feel free.

(Follow me on Twitter here.)
(Download the first 55 pages of my epic, pretentious, and stupid book, Prelude to a Super Airplane, here.)

I’ve been very deliberate about trying to actually build a base of people who I’m interested in, and vice versa, rather than just blast up as many followers as possible.

(I’ll delve into this in my next Twitter-usage update analysis.)

Obviously, [...]]]> So one of the cool things about Twitter is the meeting of people.

I’ve been very deliberate about trying to actually build a base of people who I’m interested in, and vice versa, rather than just blast up as many followers as possible.

(I’ll delve into this in my next Twitter-usage update analysis.)

Obviously, fellow filmmakers, writers, and people who do actoring have been high on that list of people-types, and one such person is Alejandro Adams, whose new film, Canary, is debuting at Cinequest Film Festival on March 1st, with another screening scheduled for March 7th.

This is the brief synopsis of what Canary is about, from the film’s website:

Canary is an intellectually daring dystopian thriller set in a not-so-alternate universe in which organ harvesting is commonplace. While a mute organ redistribution specialist stalks unsuspecting citizens of every socioeconomic stripe, a rag-tag news crew investigates various conspiracy theories and inches closer to discovering the cause of epidemic organ failure.

That type of world-next-door sci-fi is just the type of thing I’m into, and we got to talking and such, and so I decided I wanted to ask him some questions for here on the site.

This is not a joke-filled, stupid question interview. (Well, not fully.) It’s also quite long – if you’re into this type of film, or filmmaking in general, or just a conversation with a really interesting guy, dive in after the break.

1) The first thing I saw on the Canary site is a quote from a review comparing Canary to Primer, which is a little-known time-travel movie that I absolutely loved. Do you think this is an apt comparison?

That quote is from Richard von Busack, a well-regarded Bay Area critic who championed my first film, Around the Bay, and named it among his top ten of last year–I mean alongside Dark Knight, Milk, Wall-E, A Christmas Tale. He’s often brutal, so it means a lot to have his respect.

Canary is a very small film–it might have cost more than Primer to make, but it certainly doesn’t look like it! I think Primer is a masterpiece of brains and technical ingenuity, so naturally I’m flattered by the comparison, but Primer makes your head spin with its dashing about, and Canary is the opposite, lingering in various places, exploring the textures of this slightly alternate society, kneading tones and moods rather than stoking excitement of any kind.

I’d like to think that certain scenes achieve effective degrees of tension and suspense, but on the most methodical, intellectual level, not in any sensationalistic sense. In a recent exchange with Mr. von Busack, he referred to Canary as an experimental film, which I accept in the sense that popcorn-munching mainstream audiences better stay the hell away, but I prefer the point made by Nick Rombes in a piece he wrote, saying that Canary blurs distinctions between the mainstream and the avant-garde.

There are characters whose plights we grasp, there are pop-culture references, low comedy, high comedy. It may not tell a conventional story, but it’s not on a mission to alienate the audience at all costs–though it’s largely about social alienation, and that plays a big part in its execution.

Brazil and The Man Who Fell to Earth, for very different reasons, are probably good places to start when trying to figure out exactly what kind of film Canary is.

2) My feeling about filmmaking is that I just don’t understand why it’s so hard. I think this even though I’ve experienced it, and know just how hard it is to get something made at all, let alone have it reach completion and come out good.

I mean, it’s HARD. That said, part of me goes into any given shooting day thinking it should be as easy as putting the actors in place, lights/sound, push the button, and having them say the lines. Am I nuts?

This is why I like going on the record with filmmakers as well as critics and journalists – there are so many ways to come at a film and so many ways to come at the filmmaking process.

There’s a syndrome called “mommy brain” or “mom-nesia.” I don’t know where doctors stand on this issue, but I know a lot of mothers, and they all say the same thing. Through some alchemy of hormones, euphoria and stupidity and forgetfulness take a mother over just after childbirth, and the thinking is that this is a biological imperative meant to make women forget how grueling childbirth is so they’ll be willing to do it again later.

Since I can’t speak from firsthand experience, or from the dais of “science,” let’s just chalk this theory up to folklore. Anyway, it’s a great metaphor for the aspects of filmmaking you’re describing. Somehow I wake up thinking everything will magically happen, but it takes hours and hours and hours and hours to do the simplest thing.

Most of the problems you face can’t be solved–what ends up in the can is some kind of workaround that barely fits on the scale of acceptability, and you feel totally defeated at every turn. But you get a decent night’s sleep–or not–and you go back and do it again the next day, somehow forgetting how hard it was the day before. And when you start work on the next feature, the first thing you say to yourself is: “Damn, I forgot it was this hard.” Mom-nesia.

3) You write your own material, and also direct it. Editing, producing, and cinematography are also on the resume. I feel your pain. How often do you find these hats at odds with each other? How does that relationship play out internally?

It’s easy for me, actually, because I’m really only fully engaged at the editing stage. I keep a reserve of energy and focus for that part of the process, which can seem infinite.

Storytelling is a reflexive thing for me, since I’ve been telling elaborate stories in one form or another since grade school. In junior high, there were the standard concrete tables where friends and I would eat lunch, and I’d start some elaborate oral story that would be serialized over the course of a few days or the whole week.

The audience wasn’t very big, which might be why I still like small audiences, or the idea of one person watching my film on a computer. This probably also explains why my first novel had a strong oral quality in terms of the prose. I’ve written more short stories than I can count, and I have dozens of well-fleshed-out script ideas. I don’t give writing a second thought. I’m happy to give ideas away, and I like to borrow other people’s ideas and flesh them out.

“Producing” a project made at this level means handling the auditions, begging for locations and, in this case, shopping for a cargo van. Pretty painless in the big scheme, but I’m getting a little old to waltz into a coffee shop and say, “Can I shoot a movie here?” I’d really like to have a cute twelve-year-old girl on hand to go in and ask that and then have the cast and crew charge in after the business owner agrees.

Shooting is fun. I used to hate my camerawork but now I’d very much like to shoot something by myself, instead of in the circus atmosphere of three, four, five cameras whirling around and covering competing planes of action. Still, I don’t shoot a high enough percentage of my films to consider that a very big-brimmed hat, and the shooters and I have an exposure-by-committee policy, so it would be wrong to posture as a cinematographer.

And directing? I’m in a trance. I can’t handle the stress, so my mind goes into a state of shock from which I can hardly remember anything that transpires on set. I hate everything that comes out of my mouth. I never wanted to be a director and I don’t consider myself a director now. I have horrible social skills–but maybe that’s what makes me a bona fide director, I don’t know.

Let me give you an example. One day on my first feature the lead actress drove into the parking lot where we were all meeting and got out of her car with a smile on her face, ready for whatever we were scheduled to do that day. Total pro, perfectly pleasant. Before any of the cast or crew could greet her, I barked, “Is that gel in your hair?” It spoiled her mood, naturally. I was concerned with continuity. We had talked about her hair ad nauseam, and it was especially important because we had to deal with a salon scene in the middle of the film.

Anyway, as I said, I hate myself, and I imagine most people who work with me hate me, too. It really doesn’t matter because we’re not there to like each other. We’re there to make a film.

But editing. That’s where it happens, isn’t it? I know not everyone agrees. Sidney Lumet said something like, you can only edit what the cameraman shot, what the actor performed. Fine, Mr. Literal. But in the end, editing is what distinguishes cinema from other narrative and dramatic forms. Editing is the part that our brains had to learn to accommodate from scratch–not acting, not images, not stories, which have been with us from time immemorial.

What is it that pediatricians don’t want children under two years of age to see on television? Editing. To paraphrase O’Blivion in Videodrome, we had to grow a special organ to process this new form. I love that organ. I hope no one repossesses it.

4) Canary is premiering at Cinequest on March 1. Your last film, Around the Bay, played there, as well. What are your expectations?

It would be impossible to describe what happened with Around the Bay–so much inexplicable attention for a standard-definition home video shot in a backyard with no money. I ended up being on two TV shows, did a half-hour radio interview, multiple print and online interviews, and the reviews bubbled forth from more media outlets than I knew had a presence at Cinequest.

It was like a massive inside joke: “Let’s have this guy on our TV show! Let’s review this penny-ante film in Variety!” The indieWIRE guy said something like, once you get past the typical Indiewood crap at Cinequest, you’ll find gems like Dear Zachary and Around the Bay. Every review had that kind of cannonball quality to it. One review called out a few people who had walked out of a Tuesday afternoon screening–maybe they’d walked into the wrong movie, you know? The reviews seemed pretty combative as a rule.

I think if they’d called me a genius I would have gotten drunk on the praise, but the general tone of the reviews was a bit surreal from my perspective. But I’m incredibly grateful for that barrage of good press, and even if the film never makes a splash outside of its one festival appearance, I got to experience something that few of us “little” filmmakers get to experience.

As a matter of fact, this distilled success was so generally palpable that fellow filmmakers shunned me and went after the film pretty hard on various blogs. People actually stopped talking and left the filmmaker lounge when I walked in. Had the film been less well-received, I doubt I would have inspired such hostility. So there’s always a price.

This time I’ve been begging for bad reviews. Canary is totally different. It can’t be all things to all people. I want a handful of sensitive, awkward, lonely people to discover this film because that’s who I made it for. I want to stand up in front of the audience before the screenings and say, “At least half of you will walk out. Please walk out now.”

This movie is a tiny, delicate thing. A curiosity. It may very well crumble in a 500-seat auditorium under the pressure of a forty-foot screen. But that’s the great thing about being able to make films with small, inexpensive tools–you don’t have to be accountable to anyone but yourself. People often use the term “self-indulgent” when they encounter a degree of sincerity that this threadbare culture hasn’t trained them to recognize or to reciprocate.

Now you can make incredibly personal films with total, uncompromising sincerity, and you can easily ignore the remonstrations of those critics and viewers who demand chewing gum. Canary is not chewing gum. It’s probably cod liver oil–you hate the taste but if you can gag it down, it will do you some good in the long run.

I’m confident that there are a few people who will get this film. It’s for them. I don’t care what Joe Crowd-Pleaser thinks. And Joe Crowd-Pleaser doesn’t want to know what I think of him, either.

I think Cinequest is brave and noble for programming this film, but they consider themselves a “discovery” festival, which means they’ve built their reputation on risky programming. They deserve a lot of credit for that. I’ve heard people grumble that they’ve seen three or four bad films in a row at Cinequest. Yeah, that happens. But in many cases it’s the other way around.

A couple of years ago I was only able to make it for one night of the festival. I saw a German film and a Belgian film, both heavyish dramas. They were as good as anything I’ve seen at any festival–small, earnest, quiet but deeply challenging films. Hopefully, for someone, Canary will be counted as one of those.

5) What’s your greatest ambition career-wise? Give me the raw and arrogant answer here – don’t sugarcoat anything to make yourself sound deep. What do you see yourself as capable of doing?

Raw and arrogant. Do I have any of that left in the tank? Whew.

If you consider the three genres I’ve tackled so far–domestic drama, dystopian dark comedy, sex trafficking thriller–I think there’s evidence that I’m interested in just about everything. Most filmmakers have some ideal career path along which they hope to do a certain kind of project over and over again and never sell out. I think that’s ridiculous. Doing the same thing over and over again is selling out.

Louis Malle’s whole career was fueled by the notion of never repeating himself–that led to some pretty dramatic failures, but some incomparable masterpieces, too. Bergman’s best stuff is whatever most radically departs from whatever he had done before. The year of Persona and Blow-Up really blew cineastes’ skirts up. Ah, 1966! Bergman and Antonioni reinvented themselves in one stroke.

I see myself embodying a kind of perpetual self-reinvention. I’m not trying to keep people guessing–that suggests one’s motivations are oriented outward rather than inward. I just want to do what excites me, what I’m sincerely interested in, and I think that conviction and sincerity will end up on screen.

That’s what will give my films value. Sustained sincerity sounds like a modest goal, maybe, but if you look around you can see how scarce it is. It’s a commodity.

6) When we connected on Twitter, I was excited, because I thought you would immediately cast me in one of your movies. You see, I’m a writer and producer, who really wants to act. Why hasn’t this “Hey Brian, be the lead in my next film” moment occurred yet? I’m angry.

A lot of people are angry for the same reason. Despite my self-excoriating remarks about my directorial temperament, people do want to be in my films, and they can be very persuasive. I can’t describe the lengths to which some people have gone or the unions would be after me, but I have developed a reputation in the Bay Area as someone who offers his cast members an intensely rewarding experience.

So you have a right to be angry that I haven’t cast you yet. Maybe you can put snarky little parenthetical remarks beside my answers to get back at me. Like “Oh, yeah, you’re the only person who’s heard of Louis Malle, you towering giant of culture and knowledge!”

(I’m still angry.)

7) I just wanted to add that this picture frightens me, because it makes me recall the hard drives that my film is stored within, and that I spent what seems like a lifetime in the presence of said drives.

Their constant humming, the fans, and the little glowing Western Digital circle nearly did me in. Thoughts?

I like the drives as much as I like the cameras–that’s the editor talking, eh? My editing station is immediately adjacent to my side of the bed, so I get to be as intimate with the drives as I am with my wife. Mmmm.

It’s not remarkable to me that we can shoot feature films on small digital cameras. What’s truly remarkable is that these films can be stored in their entirety and edited within these small plastic cases. If you think about how laborious and even dangerous the editing process was for a hundred years, you realize that that the digitalness of post-production what has changed filmmaking.

The camera aspect has changed only slightly. It’s smaller and lighter, but the same physical acts are required in its operation–placing it on a tripod, holding it up to one’s eye, etc. But the image information, the ones and zeroes, and the “cutting” of something which is totally immaterial–get your head around that. We have created an abstract, intangible process based on an absurdly impractical physical process.

There are signs that we may move conceptually beyond “film editing” soon, but it will require the mind of a child to comprehend the new way. At this point, I’ve never actually cut on film but in the most profound sense I only know how to cut on film because conceptually there is no alternative. By the time my kids are making films, they’ll be using other methods.

The idea that a “razor” could have been employed at any point in the filmmaking process will be laughable to them. They’ll be watching individual shots on five miniature screens affixed to their fingernails, moving shot 1 to their thumb and shot 4 to their index finger. Does the scene work like that? No, move shot 3 to the thumb.

I’d recommend your next film, and I submit myself to write it, be called “Digital Thumb Screen Guy”.

Anyway – thanks to Alejandro. This was mucho interesting for me, even though the concept of someone enjoying the full editing process, after already serving so many other functions, confounds me. Personally, I like to step in at the rough cut stage, and then work off that, if it’s necessary at all.

Please take a second and go check out the Canary film site. You can follow Alejandro Adams on Twitter right here, and you may want to make this self portrait of him your desktop.

I’m also buying the DVD Tuesday, and will probably watch that twice within a week.

Now that it’s officially coming back to theaters (for an Oscar push) in late January, I’m guessing I’ll snag two [...]]]> I’ll be very honest and admit I saw Dark Knight four times in theaters – two regular; two IMAX.

I’m also buying the DVD Tuesday, and will probably watch that twice within a week.

Now that it’s officially coming back to theaters (for an Oscar push) in late January, I’m guessing I’ll snag two more IMAX viewings.

That’ll make 8 times I’ll have seen it in 8 months, which sounds like a lot. (The only other movie I’ve seen that many times in so short a time is my own.)

Do the math though, and that’s:

8 divided by 8 = 1

So like, while on one hand, it seems weird to say, “Yeah, I saw that movie 8 times,” on the other hand, if someone was like, “Hey, if you don’t watch this movie once a month for the next 8 months, I’ll punch you hard in the general area of your left cheekbone,” you’d be like, “no problem”.

Right? ‘Cause that doesn’t sound hard to do at all.

On the other hand again, you’re probably wondering why I wrote out “divided by” instead of using “/”.

The reason is simple – I went to public school, and during that public schooling I took what was known as “Algebra 2″ in 10th grade.

After that, I took it again in eleventh grade.

Finally, in 12th grade, I took “Algebra 2″ a third time. You’re probably thinking I was either dumb, or the school’s scheduling system was glitchy.

The truth is, I was home schooled for one day in 8th grade, and during math class, my dad told me the “rotten teachers” at public school would try to make me use “/” instead of the proper “fully written math”.

He told me never to do it any other way. Thus, I failed “Algebra 2″ three times, setting multiple records at my high school.

I also made them all made because I wouldn’t stop putting the quotes around “Algebra 2″. (If it’s not fully written out, it’s not real math, thus the quotes.)