Things are happening at a velocity that does not seem real. I recently upgraded to a Google Phone and so started using their Calendar app to track my appointments – and it has coincided with a period where every day sees me at a critical stage on something.
For 4 1/2 days over the Memorial Day holiday weekend I was in charge of staffing and managing the Shakespeare Orange County booth at the annual Garden Grove Strawberry Festival. It is traditionally our biggest fundraiser of the year – although I think our Celebrity Gala will surpass it in years to come if we keep it up. Running up and down our Amphitheater stairs lugging 5-gallon barrels full of strawberries is a good way to kickstart my summer fitness goals, I must admit.
Only days later, on Thursday, I finally reached the end of the first draft manuscript of my second novel in collaboration with M.F. Thomas. Our first, Seeing by Moonlight, recently became available in paperback, so the timing is satisfying. The new book is called A Sickness in Time and, while it is not a sequel to Seeing by Moonlight, it is like the first a mix of thrills and science fiction that takes place half in modern times and half elsewhere.
After some notes and discussions we started the formal drafting of A Sickness in Time on June 10th of last year, and wrote a great deal of it over the following five months, only for each of us to get consumed by other projects very near to the end. It is a source of pride and massive relief to have finished this step, even though we know there is much still to do in re-writing and polishing the book before we start cranking up the publishing machinery. I will say only that the book does incorporate time travel into its story, and when you’re messing with things like that, you especially want to edit carefully.
The very next day, I went to Burbank for the cast/crew screening of the indie romantic comedy feature Cloudy With a Chance of Sunshine. This is the first feature I’ve ever had an on-camera role in, and I shot it about year ago; it’s not at all unusual to have to wait this long. I only spent a day on set, and all my scenes were exclusively with the co-writer/director/star Kevin Resnick, so funnily enough this party was my first chance to meet anyone else in the cast.
The screening was on the Warner Brothers lot, in what we were informed is Christopher Nolan’s preferred screening room. Who knows if that’s true, but it’s a nice place to be when you’re going to see your head in giant size on a screen for the first time ever.
The movie is tight and polished and charming and given the microscopic budget stands as a feather in the cap of everyone involved, especially Kevin and his producer/writing partner/fiancee/all-around-dynamo Rebecca Norris. They are currently raising funds to travel and promote the film in its forthcoming life on the festival circuit, where I think it should see some healthy and appreciative response.
Of my own acting it’s always hard to speak, but the audience did laugh quite a bit; and since it is a comedy that is undeniably encouraging. The feedback from the audience was very warm and appreciative after the screening, although I was difficult to recognize since I am clean shaven and bespectacled in the movie and am currently three months into growing a beard for SOC’s production of Romeo & Juliet.
Our first formal full cast meeting/reading happens this Sunday, and it’s going to be a busy summer of overlapping stage work for me; I’ve been so consumed with casting and writing and other projects that I haven’t been on stage since December, and I happily confess to being restless about it. On top of all the above I have been carrying on my work with Arts Orange County, which is a most welcome and stable position that fits snugly inside my life.
But all of the above, it turns out, isn’t quite enough. A friend and former cast mate named Barney Crow and I are teaming up to produce a short film that I have written and will direct. Not counting class projects from that one time I took a couple of filmmaking classes, or the camcorder movie spoofs my friends and I made in high school and college over a decade before “viral” and “video” ever appeared together outside an essay on Cronenberg, this will be the first time I have seriously directed for film. I haven’t aggressively pursued directing since college, though I have directed several of my scripts for Earbud as well as some short stage pieces here and there. The moment to evolve seemed well-arrived, though, and I actually feel ready for it. Yesterday we were doing lighting/camera tests on our location, and all the work I’ve done on set for other people seems to have given me muscle memory for it all – at one point I caught myself looking around for whoever was in charge and realizing – oh, it’s us. We’re the filmmakers now. And there was confidence there.
I’m not being reckless about this (well, beyond doing it at all.) This short is designed to be as stripped down and simple as possible – one actor, one location, one locked-down camera setup. The whole crew is about 8 people. It’s just a story and a performance from an actress I trust with anything. When I filmed Cloudy I observed how marvelously-designed a role it was for me to have my introduction to film acting – all two-person conversations in the same location with the same scene partner. Removing variables allowed me to spend more energy on the work. My hope is that the same kismet works on this short film – naturally, we anticipate there will be the customary 2-3 disasters that on average afflict every filmmaking endeavor. We will survive it, though.
The days off are few. I do look forward to them, though.