Saturday, March 20, 2010
Taizé
Taizé tomorrow, and many blogs needed, but no time now to put them to screen. Much love, you all, and be back with you after a week.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Gumshoe farmer
Chris shows me his worm farm and assures me that he didn’t have his own worm farm until he was fifty-five, and that I’ve got time, which is the same thing many people tell me about marriage. It produces a lovely compost—the worm farm, I mean, not marriage—which he uses with his sitting-undisturbed-for-one-year regular compost, spreads over ground that he has dug only once for aeration (don’t want to disturb the microorganisms in the soil) and plants many of the vegetables that they eat and the apple pie of tonight.
It’s a far cry from his career as a detective in Peterborough, which he still dabbles in as a speaker across the world, since he pioneered digital ways of presenting information to a jury that takes them out of their seats and puts them out of their seats and in the crime scene. One can see the fingerprints on the trash bags, get a 360º view of the room. He busted one of the biggest murder investigations in this area, one we heard about long before we realized he and his wife, Pat, are avid members of our congregation and how we serve lunch club with Pat every other Tuesday. We watch earth in BlueRay and ooh and ah at the great white sharks leaping out of the water, reminding me how I never want to surf in Australia.
It’s a far cry from his career as a detective in Peterborough, which he still dabbles in as a speaker across the world, since he pioneered digital ways of presenting information to a jury that takes them out of their seats and puts them out of their seats and in the crime scene. One can see the fingerprints on the trash bags, get a 360º view of the room. He busted one of the biggest murder investigations in this area, one we heard about long before we realized he and his wife, Pat, are avid members of our congregation and how we serve lunch club with Pat every other Tuesday. We watch earth in BlueRay and ooh and ah at the great white sharks leaping out of the water, reminding me how I never want to surf in Australia.
Glitz and Glamour
When we brainstormed with the Youth Club about our film project, we received many different thoughts, from Mia’s “Rapping Vicar” (which we will film next week) to Shawn and Nathan—some of our youngest ones—saying, “What if… I were ‘Sausage Man’, and he was… ‘Potato Guy’, and… he could have a sniper rifle…” and so on. Oh, to be a middle school boy again: the Wild West or zombie-ridden frontiers of our minds.
Rebecca writes a murder mystery a la Death on the Nile. She casts and stars, after the as Constable PC Mc’D, sent in to sort out the Vicar’s death. Everyone’s got a motive—the gardener whose flowers the Vicar said were rubbish (compared to his own flowers), the woman the Vicar won’t let eat chocolate because she’s on a diet, a woman steals from the collection plate, and another plays pranks—yet when Rebecca/PC Mc’D delivers her verdict, everyone seems strangely surprised, and everyone has an alibi. It’s then that someone asks, “Where were you?” “He had it coming!” Rebecca/Mc’D cries, “You’ve got me! I’m the famous serial killer of vicars! It’s my job! The Mc’D stands for… McDeath!” Then, as the congregation tries to trap her, the lights shut off, and McDeath escapes… which is another way of saying Rebecca tries to escape through the door, but someone has accidentally bumped into it so she pulls and pulls and then dashes to the bathroom in the back of the shot and ducks in just as the lights come back on, a little black blur in a room the audience will never notice.
PC Mc’D, which we have briefly called “The Mc’D Chronicles”, is the program right before “Thurlby Youth Club Action News”, the rest of our film, which is our way of telling multiple stories within the same medium. Included are retellings of the parables of the Lost Silver Coin (with hand-chiseled chocolate bunnies) and the Good Samaritan, with Sophie, the smallest girl in Youth Club, as the vicious leader of the gang who beats up our traveling salesman: “Give us the bag,” “What a coincidence, because that’s exactly what we want,” “Okay, just don’t beat me up!” “Tough stuff, because that’s what we want too.” It’s a tough shoot, plagued by giggles, but the night’s cold does its part and they become cross with us—me, Ryan, James-on-camera, and Rebecca: the four directors—around the tenth take and suddenly they become laugh-less gangsters! Then we jump up and down because that’s what we do when we get a good take at Youth Club.
One of the most popular ideas is to do something concerning East Enders, and we consider going to the library and renting multiple seasons in order to incorporate their interest with our focus. Then I watch part of one show and immediately wish I were the humanoid figure in Ryan’s latest drawing—the one being held by a T-Rex, screaming “Don’t *#$%@^* eat me!” (literally) while the carnivore breaths tricolor fire and balloons and confetti fall all around—that to continue watching the show. Turns out it’s a Soap Opera that has been running for 25 years (they had a live show while we were here to commemorate its quarter-century accumulation of years) and is known for its dramatic endings and hopping from one couple’s fight to another. After 20 minutes I realize Ryan and I cannot possibly make a skit about this—not only is it obnoxious, but there are also a bazillion different characters—and the kids are sad. That is, until we tell Katherine, the most sad of the bunch, to “Write everything that you like about East Enders, and then read it as fast as you possibly can.” She does, with no shortage of Valley Girl “likes”, and comes off surprisingly awesome. Though it has nothing to do with our storyline, it brings youth alive, and I believe there is something so tangible about God in that. We’ll use it as an East Enders commercial, and as cheesy as our commercial is, it’s not too far off the adverts for the real thing.
Rebecca writes a murder mystery a la Death on the Nile. She casts and stars, after the as Constable PC Mc’D, sent in to sort out the Vicar’s death. Everyone’s got a motive—the gardener whose flowers the Vicar said were rubbish (compared to his own flowers), the woman the Vicar won’t let eat chocolate because she’s on a diet, a woman steals from the collection plate, and another plays pranks—yet when Rebecca/PC Mc’D delivers her verdict, everyone seems strangely surprised, and everyone has an alibi. It’s then that someone asks, “Where were you?” “He had it coming!” Rebecca/Mc’D cries, “You’ve got me! I’m the famous serial killer of vicars! It’s my job! The Mc’D stands for… McDeath!” Then, as the congregation tries to trap her, the lights shut off, and McDeath escapes… which is another way of saying Rebecca tries to escape through the door, but someone has accidentally bumped into it so she pulls and pulls and then dashes to the bathroom in the back of the shot and ducks in just as the lights come back on, a little black blur in a room the audience will never notice.
PC Mc’D, which we have briefly called “The Mc’D Chronicles”, is the program right before “Thurlby Youth Club Action News”, the rest of our film, which is our way of telling multiple stories within the same medium. Included are retellings of the parables of the Lost Silver Coin (with hand-chiseled chocolate bunnies) and the Good Samaritan, with Sophie, the smallest girl in Youth Club, as the vicious leader of the gang who beats up our traveling salesman: “Give us the bag,” “What a coincidence, because that’s exactly what we want,” “Okay, just don’t beat me up!” “Tough stuff, because that’s what we want too.” It’s a tough shoot, plagued by giggles, but the night’s cold does its part and they become cross with us—me, Ryan, James-on-camera, and Rebecca: the four directors—around the tenth take and suddenly they become laugh-less gangsters! Then we jump up and down because that’s what we do when we get a good take at Youth Club.
One of the most popular ideas is to do something concerning East Enders, and we consider going to the library and renting multiple seasons in order to incorporate their interest with our focus. Then I watch part of one show and immediately wish I were the humanoid figure in Ryan’s latest drawing—the one being held by a T-Rex, screaming “Don’t *#$%@^* eat me!” (literally) while the carnivore breaths tricolor fire and balloons and confetti fall all around—that to continue watching the show. Turns out it’s a Soap Opera that has been running for 25 years (they had a live show while we were here to commemorate its quarter-century accumulation of years) and is known for its dramatic endings and hopping from one couple’s fight to another. After 20 minutes I realize Ryan and I cannot possibly make a skit about this—not only is it obnoxious, but there are also a bazillion different characters—and the kids are sad. That is, until we tell Katherine, the most sad of the bunch, to “Write everything that you like about East Enders, and then read it as fast as you possibly can.” She does, with no shortage of Valley Girl “likes”, and comes off surprisingly awesome. Though it has nothing to do with our storyline, it brings youth alive, and I believe there is something so tangible about God in that. We’ll use it as an East Enders commercial, and as cheesy as our commercial is, it’s not too far off the adverts for the real thing.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Folks
Our youngest lay preacher with 21 years and a “Mr. Grumpy” tee shirt snarling at the TV in German during a moment of fellowship. Chris Ballard, one of our fellow under-forties in our patch, has invited Ryan and me to come over and rock, and we oblige heartily. Tina, his poor mother, can only be perplexed as Chris growls “Du hast!” and the other lines from Rammstein and me Kings of Leon, as Ryan ignites the guitar on Guitar Hero 5. Yet Tina is the most unbothered mom I’ve ever seen when Chris begins to teach us [real] drums—the basic rhythm 4/4 going high-hat/bass, high-hat, high-hat/snare, high-hat—and we are pleasantly surprised by our ability to perhaps-one-day-rock-on-percussion. I think of drums often how I think of tuba, which is fun and an exercise to do by oneself, but can be nails on a chalkboard to mothers; Tina, however, only pokes her head in to find out if Chris were continually belching or, in fact, singing Rammstein, and to tell me I probably shouldn't sing "Sex on Fire" in church on Sunday.
So we don't, and instead I lead the Deepings St. Nick congregation with some folksy arrangements of classic hymns. I have to say, ever since playing "Froggie Went a'Courting" for the Girls Brigade, I've had a fixin' for folk. I've only ever owned an acoustic guitar, and it's relieving to play a style that sounds best that way, since my attempts at emo and metal never quite work out on strings that play "If I Had a Hammer". There's something about seeing the girls' cheeks go smiley and brows furrow with confusion as I relate the tale of Froggie's proposal and subsequent marriage to Miss Mousey, and the disaster that befalls them as the big, black snake--the scalawag--chases everyone away and eats up all the wedding cake. With folk hymns any trace of formality falls away, and the style itself invites folks to sing along and, if I'm lucky, dance around. Perhaps someday I'll rock Nirvana and Skynyrd, but that's for a future stage of life, possibly when I can conscript my wife and kids to play along with me, like the Von Trapp family of death metal.
So we don't, and instead I lead the Deepings St. Nick congregation with some folksy arrangements of classic hymns. I have to say, ever since playing "Froggie Went a'Courting" for the Girls Brigade, I've had a fixin' for folk. I've only ever owned an acoustic guitar, and it's relieving to play a style that sounds best that way, since my attempts at emo and metal never quite work out on strings that play "If I Had a Hammer". There's something about seeing the girls' cheeks go smiley and brows furrow with confusion as I relate the tale of Froggie's proposal and subsequent marriage to Miss Mousey, and the disaster that befalls them as the big, black snake--the scalawag--chases everyone away and eats up all the wedding cake. With folk hymns any trace of formality falls away, and the style itself invites folks to sing along and, if I'm lucky, dance around. Perhaps someday I'll rock Nirvana and Skynyrd, but that's for a future stage of life, possibly when I can conscript my wife and kids to play along with me, like the Von Trapp family of death metal.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
The interview of my life
In light of my birthday, and since Ryan is busy rendering video from the Youth Club film we just shot—all of the sudden wisdom that crashed into me on the hour of my birth, March 3, 2010 like a squirt of Spring-like green food coloring into clear water, those lessons immediately learned in that historical moment about the order of life and the universe that comes with being a year older and demand to be uncaged like a rabid, cornered Chuck Norris—I have no choice but to interview myself. Meet question and answer:
Question: Where were you on March 3rd, 2009?
Answer: I was finishing up the final few weeks of my internship with Presidential Classroom in DC, living in the Georgetown University Conference Center Hotel, with my students all around, and there wasn’t really much snow in DC. I used to go running in it, if you can believe it. I was living with Ben and Corey and cycling among three beds—a proper bed, a pull-out, and a cot—though we fibbed to the girls that we forsook the smaller beds in order to sleep side-by-side on the bigger ones. I think maybe we got one of them to believe it… maybe. Anyway, one can really chart this year by the kinds of beds I’ve slept on.
How so?
Well, like I began doing that, then there were no jobs, so I moved to the attic of DNCCO’s—that’s Dixcy, Nolan, Colby, Colin, and Oakley—house and slept on a palate. I babysat and washed up and occasionally hefted whatever Nolan wanted me to heft. Housesitting for them was weird, though, since Oakley (the dog) would hear the alarm go off at 4 AM, roll over from where he was with his back to me and lick me straight up the face. It’s the kind of kiss I imagine my wife will be giving me someday, half asleep in the morning, but Oakley was cool and I don’t think he meant to be awkward; I mean, he’s a dog and walks around with no clothes on, totally unashamed.
Anyway, when my time was up with DNCCO, I moved—still at Starbucks—to sleep on a pull-out chair in Dr. Hyland’s living room because she and her husband consider it their mission to provide affordable, in-beltway housing to bound-for-grad-school folks like me. It was still very much a living room, with white cloths over all the couches and no door except for an oriental-like dressing screen. She used to come in all the time and offer me Korean food—she was Korean, by the way—and I had some great roommates, though I was always asleep when cool things were going on; a fie upon the morning shift and it’s infringement on social life!
I can’t count the beds I’ve slept in hereabouts in Europe, but I’ve overlooked Spanish mountains with a new momma pig five feet away, stayed in an English manor house (without serfs), you know, all sorts of things. I think my favorite was memory foam. Yeah, definitely. I don’t usually sleep well on comfy beds, but memory foam is ambrosia.
Are you any closer to sharing a matrimonial bed with someone? Finding a future Mrs. Darragh, I mean?
What if she hyphenated? I think hyphenation would be cool. Or not. I already have my name. I guess it’ll depend on how much she likes her last name. See, my mom hyphenated and I always respected that. If it’s like “Smith” or “Gertrudestein” then she may totally want to change it, but if it’s like “Wolfsbane” or something, I think that deserves to be kept.
Let’s put it a different way. Are you playing a gentleman caller to any young ladies?
Oh yeah, sorry. Not in the plan, but I got the chance to love someone reciprocally this year and that was nice.
Moving on to jobs, what do you think now that you’re a year wiser?
I still don’t like spending eight hours of every day doing something that I don’t want to do. I have no qualms about having a job, I just want to do something I enjoy doing.
But isn’t that just a reality of the working world?
Maybe. Have you ever seen a sea cucumber mad?
You mean when it turns itself inside out?
Yes, that’s right. I am a sea cucumber, and when I get into one of these jobs where I sit on my butt or do uninteresting stuff, it’s as if my backside gets sucked through my face, telling whatever is bothering me to go away in the strongest body language possible.
That’s awfully graphic.
I don’t think so. It’s science.
Whatever. What do you want to do, then?
Film, working with people, touching people’s lives, calling us all on a personal level to right the injustices of the world, logistics—which is a kind of math I like—all of it, and at the same time. All of it involves people, so all of it involves ministry, ethics, film plots, and poetry. That’s just how it goes.
Are you a poet too, then? I haven’t heard you mention it before.
Yeah, but nobody really knows about it other than when I randomly sit down like in Christ Church Cathedral at Oxford the other day over the W.H. Auden stone and jot down a series of thoughts. Literature elites and girls aren’t swayed by unfinished poetry.
Tell me about writing in the new year.
Twenty-three was a great year for writing. All of my success, really, came during that year—after the Florida Times Union dangled my op-ed piece for months and finally dropped it, I published my first article with the aid of a wonderful editor on the blog of the United Nations University—which was awesome!—and “Married and Ravenous” finally saw its direly needed rewrites and premiere after three years of nothin’. Now, it’s like moving on from an old, good relationship. I’ll always have that play with me, but I can both finally move on and finally know these years were not ill-spent, after focusing on it and not other things. Then I became a blogger.
And have you learned anything in particular as a blogger?
Yeah, that’s it’s really arrogant and self-devouring to interview yourself as a type of narrative.
You think so? Didn’t Stephen Colbert do that on TV?
My point exactly.
Well, what about your birthday in general? Free reign. What’s that they say in old school rap? “Spit it”?
It’s been a great year, and I can’t praise enough the meeting of Rachel, Andy, Tawny, and traveling Europe with Ryan and our awesomeness together on two continents. All of these things are almost better—nay, definitely better—than the prospect of seeing dinosaurs for real in the flesh.
Excuse me, what’s with dinosaurs? They seem to feature prominently in your writing, as well as dragons. Why is that?
Well, dragons are just pyromaniacal dinosaurs with awesome, scaly wings. Can you picture a stegosaurus with flames coming out of its herbivorous nostrils? I think there will probably be one in Heaven beside the live AC/DC concert with the original lead singer. But really, it’s been a great year. I’m on the eve of a watershed moment in my life—which is to say, from my early twenties, the decisions that affect the rest of my days, my career, my fam, etc.—and for the first time in my life I look forward to having a place of my own and a few year steadiness where I can study and tell stories and host friends (I haven’t been able to do that since January 2009), and hopefully make a positive impact on somebody; oh, and I’d like to play lacrosse and knock people over with sticks, but not like hockey because I’m really bad at ice skating.
Do you have any regrets?
They aren’t much good to me, regrets. I could say that I regret turning down a ride from the Production Coordinator on the one film job I got in DC, opting instead to act macho and cycle fife miles home in the rain, not realizing until I was halfway down the Maryland hills that I’d missed my chance to chat with him, create the bond that convinces him of my character and makes him want to hire me for future gigs. So I missed that, and didn’t get another film job the whole time, but if I’d gotten that chance, this future would be different, and I love where I am, I’ve just learned.
No, really, I just miss my friends strewn about the country and world. Kevin and my brother are overdue for a visit, and if there’s one un-ideological thing I want to do this year it’s to afford a ticket to come visit them. That and add abs to my daily pushup routine.
Recently I heard that you didn’t get into Emerson College for film school. Do you regret that?
Never. I poured into that ap and didn’t get it. Big deal. I have no desire for Emerson to be consumed by any monsters and I refuse to regret it. Beware of a fortuitous moment: walking around Oxford yesterday, I felt an almost overwhelming desire to be back in religious scholarship, making a difference in students’ lives, asking tough questions, the liveliness of a university that spans many departments. I can make my films in a divinity school. I must. It’s who I am. It’s just harder that way… requiring me to acquire everything on my own instead of having cameras, lighting equipment, and editing facilities at the ready, not to mention trained and ready crew. But most of my scripts-in-progress are for want of experience div school provides—like the daily workings of a hospital chaplain for my existential piece about hope in a DC hospital on Christmas Eve—and Duke, which was supposed to bin my application months ago after my deferral was up, has offered me a scholarship it only offers to four people a year. And Lauren Winner—whose work has sparked another one of my screenplays, this one about family ties and burial customs during Sherman’s march in the Civil War (I swear most of my film ideas are uplifting)—is a professor there, and she is awesome.
So are you going to Duke?
I don’t know. What do you think?
I don’t know. Now that you ask that, earlier in this interview you mentioned being self-devouring. How do you see that?
Well, you’re me. You can pretend you’re not, but you’re that investigative side that tries to be strong for everyone and say I’ve got it all figured out, but you’re the entrée, man. I’m cathartic and spun-around and that is how life is and it’s nibbling at your security. Mystery is more prudent at this juncture, man, so throw off your professionalism and dive into the pool that’s been sitting outside of your house for so long and has made you so curious you can’t take it.
You’re mad at the world.
No, I just rage against the machine. Heck, this is the year of Kiefer Sutherland. I have as many years as hours in a day. I see the circular holes that culture tries to fit us in and look at all of us and see a bunch of square pegs. I see the impermeable political talking points getting punched through by the hard rain of reality. I see the much sought-after money as illusory when compared to the wealth of our portfolio of friends, talents, families, taken-care-of bodies, and a spirituality that seeks to heal the wounds of the world. What is culture but the furthering of thoughts of those before us; and yet how few of us take charge of the fact that God has given you a sphere of influence? It is your family! It is your work and friends and the passerby on the street! For me, I will make films that defy convention. I will write poems that will make people either touched or mad, hoping not to be in the in between. I will nurture my relationships, I will pray, I will serve, I will challenge and protest, I will touch, I will taste, I will love, I will give. I am not your monkey, world; I am not your monkey at all.
Question: Where were you on March 3rd, 2009?
Answer: I was finishing up the final few weeks of my internship with Presidential Classroom in DC, living in the Georgetown University Conference Center Hotel, with my students all around, and there wasn’t really much snow in DC. I used to go running in it, if you can believe it. I was living with Ben and Corey and cycling among three beds—a proper bed, a pull-out, and a cot—though we fibbed to the girls that we forsook the smaller beds in order to sleep side-by-side on the bigger ones. I think maybe we got one of them to believe it… maybe. Anyway, one can really chart this year by the kinds of beds I’ve slept on.
How so?
Well, like I began doing that, then there were no jobs, so I moved to the attic of DNCCO’s—that’s Dixcy, Nolan, Colby, Colin, and Oakley—house and slept on a palate. I babysat and washed up and occasionally hefted whatever Nolan wanted me to heft. Housesitting for them was weird, though, since Oakley (the dog) would hear the alarm go off at 4 AM, roll over from where he was with his back to me and lick me straight up the face. It’s the kind of kiss I imagine my wife will be giving me someday, half asleep in the morning, but Oakley was cool and I don’t think he meant to be awkward; I mean, he’s a dog and walks around with no clothes on, totally unashamed.
Anyway, when my time was up with DNCCO, I moved—still at Starbucks—to sleep on a pull-out chair in Dr. Hyland’s living room because she and her husband consider it their mission to provide affordable, in-beltway housing to bound-for-grad-school folks like me. It was still very much a living room, with white cloths over all the couches and no door except for an oriental-like dressing screen. She used to come in all the time and offer me Korean food—she was Korean, by the way—and I had some great roommates, though I was always asleep when cool things were going on; a fie upon the morning shift and it’s infringement on social life!
I can’t count the beds I’ve slept in hereabouts in Europe, but I’ve overlooked Spanish mountains with a new momma pig five feet away, stayed in an English manor house (without serfs), you know, all sorts of things. I think my favorite was memory foam. Yeah, definitely. I don’t usually sleep well on comfy beds, but memory foam is ambrosia.
Are you any closer to sharing a matrimonial bed with someone? Finding a future Mrs. Darragh, I mean?
What if she hyphenated? I think hyphenation would be cool. Or not. I already have my name. I guess it’ll depend on how much she likes her last name. See, my mom hyphenated and I always respected that. If it’s like “Smith” or “Gertrudestein” then she may totally want to change it, but if it’s like “Wolfsbane” or something, I think that deserves to be kept.
Let’s put it a different way. Are you playing a gentleman caller to any young ladies?
Oh yeah, sorry. Not in the plan, but I got the chance to love someone reciprocally this year and that was nice.
Moving on to jobs, what do you think now that you’re a year wiser?
I still don’t like spending eight hours of every day doing something that I don’t want to do. I have no qualms about having a job, I just want to do something I enjoy doing.
But isn’t that just a reality of the working world?
Maybe. Have you ever seen a sea cucumber mad?
You mean when it turns itself inside out?
Yes, that’s right. I am a sea cucumber, and when I get into one of these jobs where I sit on my butt or do uninteresting stuff, it’s as if my backside gets sucked through my face, telling whatever is bothering me to go away in the strongest body language possible.
That’s awfully graphic.
I don’t think so. It’s science.
Whatever. What do you want to do, then?
Film, working with people, touching people’s lives, calling us all on a personal level to right the injustices of the world, logistics—which is a kind of math I like—all of it, and at the same time. All of it involves people, so all of it involves ministry, ethics, film plots, and poetry. That’s just how it goes.
Are you a poet too, then? I haven’t heard you mention it before.
Yeah, but nobody really knows about it other than when I randomly sit down like in Christ Church Cathedral at Oxford the other day over the W.H. Auden stone and jot down a series of thoughts. Literature elites and girls aren’t swayed by unfinished poetry.
Tell me about writing in the new year.
Twenty-three was a great year for writing. All of my success, really, came during that year—after the Florida Times Union dangled my op-ed piece for months and finally dropped it, I published my first article with the aid of a wonderful editor on the blog of the United Nations University—which was awesome!—and “Married and Ravenous” finally saw its direly needed rewrites and premiere after three years of nothin’. Now, it’s like moving on from an old, good relationship. I’ll always have that play with me, but I can both finally move on and finally know these years were not ill-spent, after focusing on it and not other things. Then I became a blogger.
And have you learned anything in particular as a blogger?
Yeah, that’s it’s really arrogant and self-devouring to interview yourself as a type of narrative.
You think so? Didn’t Stephen Colbert do that on TV?
My point exactly.
Well, what about your birthday in general? Free reign. What’s that they say in old school rap? “Spit it”?
It’s been a great year, and I can’t praise enough the meeting of Rachel, Andy, Tawny, and traveling Europe with Ryan and our awesomeness together on two continents. All of these things are almost better—nay, definitely better—than the prospect of seeing dinosaurs for real in the flesh.
Excuse me, what’s with dinosaurs? They seem to feature prominently in your writing, as well as dragons. Why is that?
Well, dragons are just pyromaniacal dinosaurs with awesome, scaly wings. Can you picture a stegosaurus with flames coming out of its herbivorous nostrils? I think there will probably be one in Heaven beside the live AC/DC concert with the original lead singer. But really, it’s been a great year. I’m on the eve of a watershed moment in my life—which is to say, from my early twenties, the decisions that affect the rest of my days, my career, my fam, etc.—and for the first time in my life I look forward to having a place of my own and a few year steadiness where I can study and tell stories and host friends (I haven’t been able to do that since January 2009), and hopefully make a positive impact on somebody; oh, and I’d like to play lacrosse and knock people over with sticks, but not like hockey because I’m really bad at ice skating.
Do you have any regrets?
They aren’t much good to me, regrets. I could say that I regret turning down a ride from the Production Coordinator on the one film job I got in DC, opting instead to act macho and cycle fife miles home in the rain, not realizing until I was halfway down the Maryland hills that I’d missed my chance to chat with him, create the bond that convinces him of my character and makes him want to hire me for future gigs. So I missed that, and didn’t get another film job the whole time, but if I’d gotten that chance, this future would be different, and I love where I am, I’ve just learned.
No, really, I just miss my friends strewn about the country and world. Kevin and my brother are overdue for a visit, and if there’s one un-ideological thing I want to do this year it’s to afford a ticket to come visit them. That and add abs to my daily pushup routine.
Recently I heard that you didn’t get into Emerson College for film school. Do you regret that?
Never. I poured into that ap and didn’t get it. Big deal. I have no desire for Emerson to be consumed by any monsters and I refuse to regret it. Beware of a fortuitous moment: walking around Oxford yesterday, I felt an almost overwhelming desire to be back in religious scholarship, making a difference in students’ lives, asking tough questions, the liveliness of a university that spans many departments. I can make my films in a divinity school. I must. It’s who I am. It’s just harder that way… requiring me to acquire everything on my own instead of having cameras, lighting equipment, and editing facilities at the ready, not to mention trained and ready crew. But most of my scripts-in-progress are for want of experience div school provides—like the daily workings of a hospital chaplain for my existential piece about hope in a DC hospital on Christmas Eve—and Duke, which was supposed to bin my application months ago after my deferral was up, has offered me a scholarship it only offers to four people a year. And Lauren Winner—whose work has sparked another one of my screenplays, this one about family ties and burial customs during Sherman’s march in the Civil War (I swear most of my film ideas are uplifting)—is a professor there, and she is awesome.
So are you going to Duke?
I don’t know. What do you think?
I don’t know. Now that you ask that, earlier in this interview you mentioned being self-devouring. How do you see that?
Well, you’re me. You can pretend you’re not, but you’re that investigative side that tries to be strong for everyone and say I’ve got it all figured out, but you’re the entrée, man. I’m cathartic and spun-around and that is how life is and it’s nibbling at your security. Mystery is more prudent at this juncture, man, so throw off your professionalism and dive into the pool that’s been sitting outside of your house for so long and has made you so curious you can’t take it.
You’re mad at the world.
No, I just rage against the machine. Heck, this is the year of Kiefer Sutherland. I have as many years as hours in a day. I see the circular holes that culture tries to fit us in and look at all of us and see a bunch of square pegs. I see the impermeable political talking points getting punched through by the hard rain of reality. I see the much sought-after money as illusory when compared to the wealth of our portfolio of friends, talents, families, taken-care-of bodies, and a spirituality that seeks to heal the wounds of the world. What is culture but the furthering of thoughts of those before us; and yet how few of us take charge of the fact that God has given you a sphere of influence? It is your family! It is your work and friends and the passerby on the street! For me, I will make films that defy convention. I will write poems that will make people either touched or mad, hoping not to be in the in between. I will nurture my relationships, I will pray, I will serve, I will challenge and protest, I will touch, I will taste, I will love, I will give. I am not your monkey, world; I am not your monkey at all.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Middleschool shorts
Callum, removing his cool knit hat to play the vicar, is a good sport as he dies five time to get the shots we need. He hasn't planned to be in our film, but he comes along to help Rebecca in her baby--she's written, is starring, and is one-quarter directing a murder mystery at Youth Club--and Callum, the first to arrive, is conscripted to play the vicar. He puts on our foam-and-printer-paper vicar collar we made which shows up well on film even if it seems ridiculous and he promptly dies five times.
It's a Clue game, really, with the vicar getting murdered, pandemonium ensuing, and set at ease by the arrival of Rebecca as English bobby PC Mc'D. She interviews everybody, finds someone has been stealing from the collection plate, someone is jealous of the vicar's flowers, another mad that the vicar asked her to stop eating chocolate because she is on a diet. Not much of a reason to kill someone, but it is the evidence at the crime scene. That is, until Rebecca--that is, PC Mc'D--accuses one, then another, before finally one of the accused asks, "Wait, where were you at the scene of the crime?" PC Mc'D nervously puts her hands to the side before it comes out: "He had it coming! I mean, I'm PC Mc'D, the world-renowned serial killer of vicars, it's my job! The Mc'D stands for: 'McDeath!' Mwahahaha!" Then the lights go off and she's escaped and a "To Be Continued..." slugline crawls across the bottom of the screen.
Odd sort of story, sure, but Rebecca wrote it herself, organized all of the actors and their costumes, and then she starred in the thing. We're shocked by how well the middle school actors snap from shrieking to in-character the moment we call action, and they're not a bit shy under the lens that freezes us forever in a moment of time. We split the directing credit four ways, for Ryan, me, James our IT-loving 9th year, and Rebecca. It's a true ensemble, with James or Ryan setting the shots, me directing the kiddos, and always checking with Rebecca making sure it all fits her vision. We'll get it edited and ready to shoot a different project next week, tired and somewhat daunted, but this is where we are at the moment, simple as that.
It's a Clue game, really, with the vicar getting murdered, pandemonium ensuing, and set at ease by the arrival of Rebecca as English bobby PC Mc'D. She interviews everybody, finds someone has been stealing from the collection plate, someone is jealous of the vicar's flowers, another mad that the vicar asked her to stop eating chocolate because she is on a diet. Not much of a reason to kill someone, but it is the evidence at the crime scene. That is, until Rebecca--that is, PC Mc'D--accuses one, then another, before finally one of the accused asks, "Wait, where were you at the scene of the crime?" PC Mc'D nervously puts her hands to the side before it comes out: "He had it coming! I mean, I'm PC Mc'D, the world-renowned serial killer of vicars, it's my job! The Mc'D stands for: 'McDeath!' Mwahahaha!" Then the lights go off and she's escaped and a "To Be Continued..." slugline crawls across the bottom of the screen.
Odd sort of story, sure, but Rebecca wrote it herself, organized all of the actors and their costumes, and then she starred in the thing. We're shocked by how well the middle school actors snap from shrieking to in-character the moment we call action, and they're not a bit shy under the lens that freezes us forever in a moment of time. We split the directing credit four ways, for Ryan, me, James our IT-loving 9th year, and Rebecca. It's a true ensemble, with James or Ryan setting the shots, me directing the kiddos, and always checking with Rebecca making sure it all fits her vision. We'll get it edited and ready to shoot a different project next week, tired and somewhat daunted, but this is where we are at the moment, simple as that.
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