» Fringe Blog – Writing on Film, Culture, and Things on the Fringe

Conscience

jelewis8 — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 22:50:24 +0000

It appeared as a sizeable bump above my left eye, aching when touched, growing inflamed and red. Over the next few days it shrank to almost nothing. Soon it was an imperceptible welt that took the sullen shade of my skin. The genie’s curse held true. My conscience was lost.

This Horrible, Wonderful Birth

jelewis8 — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 06:22:33 +0000

You have no idea what it’s like to feel so close to a project’s completion, and yet still be so far away, unless you’ve worked on a project in which that scenario played out as described, in which case you could easily commiserate with my plight. Really though, it’s less of a plight and more of a great feeling that is perpetually in stasis. That is what 13 Months of Sunshine feels like. Tomorrow night should see the last of the actual editing in of previously unseen and unused footage. The plan is then to screen the full-blooded, two-hour uncut version to a select group of individuals who will hopefully be willing to part with much needed feedback on the project. Does it totally suck? If so, what can we do to change the suck to less suck, and even if it doesn’t suck, what can we do to make it cleaner, tighter, better? We hope to screen on Sunday evening, so the next few days will be the equivalent of the last thrilling hill on the world’s second best roller coaster.
Why second best? Because it’s still the rough cut.
So why the static nature of things? Because the film has only just begun to be. It’s in the just-post-fetus stage now, with awkward limbs, a giant head, and a strange cord that apparently has been keeping it alive inside this bizarre, warm, biodome of flesh, muscle, and fluid. Biology doesn’t get any more gross and disgustingly venal than the basic functions…birth, feeding, defecation, procreation, and death. This is not to denegrate the beauty of nature and love and humanity and all that. La dee dah, but let’s face it, when a child is born, it’s born amid a disgusting outflow of blood, piss, and fecal matter. The real miracle of birth is that we manage not to remember that fact until we’re watching our own kids popping out and then that awful, awful sight and smell…
But yeah, babies are beautiful and all that. Which is to say, this film has just popped out, as disgusting and horrible as its environment is, it’s purpose is to grow up, mature, become a man (or a woman, as the case may be–I’m an equal opportunity metaphorist). So we try to ignore the blood and shee-ite, but let’s face it, it’s hard to concentrate on the baby when the crap is literally hitting the fan. Why they have a fan in the delivery room is beyond me. Maybe the mother demanded it. ANYWAY.
So the baby’s out, it’s been swaddled. Now it’s time to raise it up right, the way mama and papa imagine. For our baby, this means sound. This is the equivalent of the first fifteen years of our child’s life. And while I consider most babies things to be feared and held at arms length (lest they find a way to be dropped on their bouncy little heads and forever leave me in a haze of guilt), I find teenagers almost more reprehensible. At least babies have no innate knowledge of being evil or annoying or just plain scary. But teens actively put metal in their face, listen to noise that can be used to encrypt CIA transmissions, and generally make their parents’ lives a living hell.
Not that I have any experience with this stuff. I was a good kid, a good teenager, and except for my silent but mostly non-threatening rebellious final two years of high school, I was a model child. But I’m really straying off the path here. And it was a pretty wide frickin’ path to begin with.
All I’m trying to say is, I’ve got a child to raise, and the prospect is frightening, yet joyous. Parents get what I’m talking about.

On the Horizon

jelewis8 — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 18:17:15 +0000

I woke up today with the distinct impression that I had been productive. It wasn’t entirely illusory, either. I spent a bit more than eight hours on a short film credit sequence “rough”, which I’ll be meeting about today. It looks good. It’s got a Tom Waits vibe, which is hard to describe but easy to imagine. Just think Alice or Innocent When You Dream and you’ll get an idea of the visual feel of the 25 second piece. I like it, which as I’ve said before, is rare. I’ll probably hate it in a few days, of course, which contrariwise happens quite frequently. But the nice thing is this is just a concept piece, something to help the director latch onto something and move forward with new thoughts. Of course, once I’m done and have permission, I’ll post the sequence. I’ve even thought about doing a “how it was made” post some time, though that’s usually as far as those intentions go. Thought’s a lot easier than action.
Speaking of action, this week I’ve had quite a flurry of activity. Got a call yesterday about a script synopsis I had pitched to an agent. This call was from a producer who read and loved the small five page treatment I’d put together, and subsequently we are meeting today to discuss possibilities. I say “possibilities” because in this town, the ground itself is composed of the stuff. Tiny particles, to be sure, but they’re everywhere. Unfortunately, the nebulous nature of possibilities is also a curse. As currency, it’s totally useless, deflated to the point of nausea. But we thrive on the potentiality of it, the hope of something happening. Whatever that something is, we always imagine it to be good. Usually it simply never materializes. Sometimes you get screwed. Very rarely you get a six figure deal out of the “possibility.”
The weather here portends something on the horizon. I don’t know if it’s autumn attempting to worm its way into southern California summer’s imminent domain setup, or if it’s just a vague fluttering of the smog variables, but lately it’s been cloudier and overcast, slightly cooler, and well, fall-like. Nights are positively chilly. I recently found myself driving along a street that had trees–real trees, not the palm trees that masquerade as flora. Believe me, I know the truth about palms. I’m convinced they’re cilia that line the skin surface of some horrifically constructed monster, upon which we’ve paved roads and built skyscrapers and apartment complexes. One of these days, that monster’s going to wake up, and the palm trees will sway like hair reacting to a chill. And then, my friends, it’s all over. Read my book to learn how it all works.
It’s hard to believe I’ve been here a year and three months now. Just a few days ago it was an even year. A few days before that, it was yesterday I had driven in from the east. I realize the distinct chronological difficulties of parsing the last three sentences, but it makes sense in my head, which by all rights should be a punishable offense. Still, I beg your indulgence and thank you for your patronage. See you on the morrow.

Easter Rites

jelewis8 — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 19:54:44 +0000

I finished up the titles render for “Grounds Zero”, the short film starring Mo Collins and Keegan Michael Key, listening to Lyle Lovett and thinking about Easter, grateful for the beautiful cloudless sky for some odd reason–it’s not as if we don’t get them often here in SoCal–and appreciating my existence in a manner that would make me feel self-consciously introspective and happy-glib if it weren’t for the fact that I’m coming down to the last of my savings and without another paying gig soon, will have to break down and get at least a part time job somewhere. Yet somehow I’m more pleased than I can say.
For one, I finished up two big jobs, this render being the second, within a few days of each other, and considering my schedule, it’s pretty good timing. I’ve managed to effectively streamline my work schedule so that I have no time left over for writing; that was last week’s problem. I can probably wedge some time in, though I have one remaining paying gig that I’m trying to complete.
But enough about work and money woes. It’s the day after the most hallowed day in Christendom, which somehow sends more pleasure and reflection into my heart than seems possible given this cynical age where tradition and pomp and circumstances are viewed with disdain. Today, and hopefully for most of this week, I will be immune from the world’s jaded ugliness. At church we walked through the stations of the cross, or at least the modern church’s modified version, reduced to seven from the original fourteen (though a fifteenth was added in the eighteenth century). I don’t usually enjoy these kinds of productions. They seem elaborately staged to garner some kind of somber meditation, but at the bare minimum of expense for the soul. Reenactment is never a substitute for contrition, but it seems sometimes that’s exactly the intent. This time, however, seemed to speak right to my soul. I could only describe it later a a journey from selfish ambivalence to serene contemplation. I even watered up a few times as I found myself caught up in the moment of reflection of the sacrifice and salvation of Christ’s death. It’s difficult to convey that sense of relief one feels at the foot of the cross, but I certainly experienced it as I lay aside my burdens of the past year and yielded once again to the Creator. Truly a resurrection of the soul occurred yesterday.
I was supposed to have a podcast up last night, but work precluded. It should be up later this afternoon (this one will require some editing and the trailer has yet to be constructed). It’s filled with Easter juiciness, and is a little more serious and controversial than our previous efforts. That’s not to say this Fringecast doesn’t contain the irreverent and sarcastic humour you’ve come to know and love. But be warned: there is talk of menstrual cycles and bikini waxes.
On that note, I’ll leave you breathless with anticipation for the podcast. See you tomorrow.

On Waking and Internet Explorer

jelewis8 — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 17:44:48 +0000

I keep going to bed later and later, rather than earlier, and it’s causing the bizarre weather patterns we’ve seen the past few days. Yesterday was grayish and then it brightened up to reveal that Los Angeles Weather was capable of clutch play, coming back in the final hours of the day to within a basket, then the rain and cold really put on the show, and dominated the night time. I went to bed thinking my team had lost once again. But no! I awoke to the sounds of chirping and talking sunbeams that encouraged me to wake, Wake!
I did, but was not cheered. A warm bed is something to be cherished no matter the weather. It’s particularly odious to leave the bed when you’re in a position that maximizes comfort and sleepiness. To roust oneself from the ideal situation into one that is less ideal, however cheery and sunny, is to start one’s day with dissatisfaction, and the feeling that one has already started the day off on the wrong foot. Indeed, the wrong foot is whichever one touches the floor first, and the foot that follows is lemming-esque in its nattering mimicry of its brother foot.
The consequence of going to bed later, other than the obscure but highly scientific connection with Los Angeles weather, is that it takes me longer to wake up. By wake up, I mean convert to fully functional human being capable of interaction with self and society in a meaningful fashion. I may be ‘awake’ in the strictest definition of the word, but just because my eyes are open does not mean I am able to discuss the failures of Bush’s public relations team in any other terms besides “Uggggggghhhhh.” And that’s not even referring to my sleep related moanings, which usually sound like a squirrel that’s been given a child’s dosage of Ritalin…five times, then run over and its feeble chattering recorded and played back at quarter speed.
Decipher, decipher. See what I’m saying? This is why blog posts shouldn’t be written right after waking up. Makes the narrative go screwy.
I started work for a bloke here in town who pays low dollar for someone to visualize his production company’s logo. I have a meeting with him on Thursday to show him the goods–I’ll be showing him the low-res, watermarked version, and then negotiate for some percentage points on his next film sale. I’m doing this without a contract up-front, but it doesn’t mean I’m prepared to settle. I’ve also been asked to work titles for a couple of different films, so that’s on my plate, but those have lower billing since they’re non-paying. Then I’ve got Floyd County web work, which continues at a snail’s pace, mostly through lack of content, and somewhat through my inability to conquer a bug with one of the browsers (if you guessed Internet Explorer, you win a pack of screaming piglets as representation of my pain whenever I have to code for IE). It’s as if you’ve constructed a skyscraper that looks fantastic, and then you check the other three sides and see that it is, in fact, only a facade for a series of pipes and rebar that go up and up and up, supporting your giant cardboard front. That’s how I feel whenever I try to dismiss IE. Oh, no one uses it!
Except 90% of the morons on the internet. Not even my site looks perfect in IE. But I finally came to a conclusion about it that I have made peace with: Screw it. But I can’t, so I’m off to build another side of the skyscraper. Wish me luck. See you tomorrow.

Cross Country Photos

jelewis8 — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 18:13:54 +0000

A few photos from the trip are up at the photoblog. More will be added in the next few days.

By the By…

jelewis8 — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 09:54:04 +0000

…if my posts seem terse of late, I’m posting on borrowed time, and thusly have to sacrifice wit and expressiveness for the sake of getting anything online at all. Hopefully, with pictures to post in the coming weeks, this adventure will become more complete.
Thanks for bearing with me. I don’t know when I’ll be able to post next. Hopefully the next few days will offer the opportunity. Until then…

Down with the Sickness

jelewis8 — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 01:32:48 +0000

I could feel it coming on, in the subtle way you know a storm is coming or the Cubs are going to win the Pennant. Nothing tangible, except maybe that weird tickle in the back of your throat. Mostly it’s psychological. That feeling of dread, the sense that your life, for the next few days anyway, are going to be completely and utterly miserable. Then the night comes and the feeling is stronger now, more potent, with an urgency and inevitability that comes with experience. You know what’s going to happen; you’ve experienced it before. And it makes you feel miserable just knowing how miserable you’re going to feel when you wake up the following morning.
In my case, I first knew I was getting sick at Bollos, where I ordered a Orange Dreamsicle drink, or as the server told me, “It’s a French…poive-sant-bevoir c’est l’enfant du moi…” On ice, no less, with half and half that curdled up and created a filmy substance on top that looked like a cross between toxic waste dump runoff and the white stuff that collects at the corner of your mouth when you get really thirsty. Tasted like a liquid Dreamsicle, though, which is what I paid for, toxic waste notwithstanding.
And it was then that I knew something was wrong–deadly wrong. That tickle in my throat. That yammering sting just below my adam’s apple that threatened to explode into violent (and most likely, spraying) coughing at any moment. That liminal ache that begins at the back of your neck and travels inexorably upward into your brain. I wanted to deny it, and did. For about ten minutes.
Nature will take her due. When she does, it’s usually best to simply pay and move on. Hope the next collection is a far off time.
I honestly have not felt this bad in several years. It’s been four since I was last sick, and to my remembrance, times before have never been this brutal. I’ve never been deprived of sleep before now. Of course, you always think the current experience is the best, or the worst. It’s never simply an experience on its own–we always compare.
At any rate, I got about fifteen minutes of *actual* sleep two nights ago; my dozing moments were fraught with weird dreams involving the power my pillow had in protecting me from strange death lasers of various colours and circumferences. Unfortunately, they were temporary shelters, and I kept moving from room to room with my pillows, attempting to escape the beams. I noted that each room change was marked by a complete reversal in the direction I lay in my bed. I believe there were fourteen rooms, if I’m not mistaken.
Needless to say, I was not “up” for writing, working, or doing anything that is typically associated with being alive. I knew I had reached bottom when I decided not to check email. Today has been pretty similar, though I decided that sick or not, I did need to get some things done. Hence this post.
Despite the nausea, the feeling of suffocation, the blinding headache, the loss of taste and smell, sleep deprivation, throat lacerations due to constant coughing, hot flashes, cold chills, temporary blindness, and increased telekinesis (okay, I made up the last two), I do hope to have a couple of movie reviews up in the next few days. Right now, though, it’s all I can do not to heave all over my keyboard, so I will close now with a quote:
Sickness comes on horseback, but goes away on foot.
~William C. Hazlitt

On Spring and Crimes of Humanity

jelewis8 — Thu, 05 May 2005 16:52:44 +0000

The urgency at which I have been approaching the next few weeks seems vaguely like I’m a terminal patient striving to stuff a lifetime of activity into a two week grace period, the bit of time left before the agonizing end. At least, that’s how I’ve been feeling. You don’t have to have a life-ending disease to feel like this at times.
For me, it’s the way Spring sneaks up on us some years. Winter stubbornly hangs on and then all of a sudden you’re gazing at green buds on trees, dogwood and pear tree blooms falling like Japanese cherry blossoms in a Kurosawa dream, and the grass is definitely greener, all in the space of a few days, it seems. The illusion of time’s rapid advance in such a short time is punctuated and perhaps perpetuated by the occasional blasts of cold that remind you that maybe Winter’s not quite gone after all, that it’s still got you in the grip.
The next thing you know, you’re staring at a host of greenery and colour and life, slightly warmer temperatures, and the blessed sun, and you think, My God, it’ll all be gone soon! That’s where the urgency comes in, the frenzied feeling that not a single moment should be wasted. Indeed, you find yourself packing multiple activities into moments that were meant to hold only one, just because you’re a raging hellcat with Spring on your mind and a desire to see more than the pixellated text of a webpage on that bright and glorious day.
But today we hit another solid grey day. And there’s nothing more depressing than when it’s Spring and yet temperatures match the decade of the defeat of Naziism. No shorts, no sandals, no jaunts outside just for the heck of it. Not unless you’re into nature at it’s most dull. Green Spring under cold grey skies seems just gracelessly inhospitable to me, and personally, I don’t want anything to do with it. Leave it for the Balkans.
So my host of plans and dreams are given a bit of a jolt backward into the seat of a dull day. I suppose that’s the way it is, sometimes.
I started writing yesterday about the way I grew up in America, but the essay never really coalesced. It’s like that sometimes. But I didn’t want to leave the subject alone, particularly when it was supposed to counterpoint with the firsthand report about the mass grave site that was found a couple of days ago near Diwaniyah. Iraq the Model has the description, which came from a Kurdish woman who survived the brutal executions that took her family and large numbers of Kurds.
This would have been in the mid-1980′s, a time when I was busy building forts in the woods behind my house, fighting with my little brother, and riding bicycles for miles around on the back roads of rural Tidewater Virginia. I think about the very different experiences I had from so many people who have known nothing but terror and death. I was clueless of their tortured existence, and they were likewise ignorant of my own carefree life.
If there’s any truth or justice in the world, and I happen to think you can find it in small doses, scattered like medical packs in a video game, it exists to remind us that life is more than mere words, and more fragile than the petals of a rose. It is trampled and twisted and hated by men and women who have no regard for it or its keepers. They have no virtue and no conscience, and their world is marked by dark decay, fevered death that brings no relief to its victims.
For each new mass grave uncovered I am simultaneously saddened and relieved. The crimes are brought out into the light, and those little packs of justice and truth multiply a little bit more. I would trade my childhood to save those found buried by murderers and tyrants. Life is green and gold. Yet all these people knew was grey and black. Like a cold Spring where the sun rises behind clouds. It’s not how the world was intended. It’s not the way things are supposed to be.

Watch Zero Sum

jelewis8 — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 19:14:59 +0000

You can now view Zero Sum here. It’s an embedded Quicktime 6 file, so if you have any trouble viewing it, make sure your software is updated.
Unfortunately, it is somewhat large (139 MB), but worth it for the video and sound quality. I’ll put up a mirror site within a few days.