How Did It Come To This?

The last couple of days have been a blur.

Day before yesterday, I got to meet Albert Maysles.

If you're not going to bother following the link, just know that he and his late brother David are regarded as two of the (if not The) founding fathers of the Direct Cinema approach to documentary filmmaking. Aside from their most famous work (Salesman), they did pieces on the likes of Marlon Brando, Truman Capote, and The Rolling Stones. If my shameless celebrity name-dropping means nothing to you then, well, what kind of a 21st century American are you?

DocuBoy Jason has been interning at his place in NY for some time now and is going to asst. edit his company's next feature about the Dalai Lama. We got to talk for a little bit and he generously ignored the fact that I may or may not have been soiling myself in disbelief at the time. He had seen the stuff I shot for the Shadowboxer documentary during Jason's interview (because J was one of the editors) and had nice things to say about it (even though he probably didn't really remember it). My absurd pipe dream is that, in time, I might find myself working on (if not shooting) one of his next projects. He said he prefers the PD170 over the DVX100 so it remains to be seen.

The next thing I know, I'm at Bard College doing little more, it seems, than editing, eating, and sleeping.

The comic genius known to many as Raizin Bob-Waksberg wrote a play called The Long And Short Of It. Throughout the play, several video sequences are projected as part of the backdrop to match (or in some cases, clash with) the emotion of each scene.

You can check out some more stills from those video clips here
(this set has some stills that will be used and some that won't)
Raizin asked me to do this a while ago but I had to turn down the opportunity because I thought I was going to be in New Mexico by now. Since I'm not, I took the job at the last minute and now I'm here in upstate NY trying to get everything worked out. It's been nice to spend some time in wide open spaces, surrounded by mountains.

Much better than that smog we saw on Atlantic Avenue last week.

Right so things seem to be in order. I'm going to stay at Bard till opening night on Saturday then go back to Brooklyn and try and temp every day of the week to make some money to go down to Philly for a few days the following week.

In other news: P. Levering and Owens have a phone meeting with T. Tallarico scheduled for tomorrow evening to discuss PLAY. This is the infamous conversation to which I have referred many a time only now, it might actually happen. I'm supposed to check in with someone at LDE tomorrow or the day about Tennessee to get an idea of how long the next inevitable delay is expected to last. Shadowboxer played at the Philly Film Fest last weekend to mixed reactions. The release date has been pushed to JUNE 9th and will be released on 125 screens as I understand it. Details concerning the documentary on TV are still hazy but I'll be sure to keep you updated.

And lastly, the honorable Dan Finnerty made the first contribution to the BKuarium project the day after I sent the clips out but I haven't thought to put it up as a teaser till now. When I get back to Brooklyn, that'll be one of the first things I do so check back because his track is really cool.

The End.