July and Half of August: World Premiere in Albuquerque

You’re going to be seeing a lot of posts leading up to the screening of July and Half of August, the short film I wrote, at the Albuquerque Film and Music Experience.

Seeing the picture of “my” lead actress, Annika Marks, on the Celebrity Guests page of the festival website, is making the upcoming world premiere feel … actually real. (Not to mention the fact that Annika announced it on her Twitter feed, turning the title of my script into a hashtag. #JulyAndHalfOfAugust. Bless you, Annika. I have created something that is now a hashtag. Granted, used by only one person thus far, but I love her for it anyway.)

The feeling of reality (as opposed to it being all like a dream) reminds me of when I walked into the bar in Burbank where we would be filming, just over a year ago, and saw this lying on the bar. It was an out-of-body experience.

Filming that night was a race to the finish, as any low-budget short film is, especially when you have to be out of the location at a certain time. The team worked together like a bunch of dogged Oompa Loompas, and for the entire time, everyone melded as one. It’s been a long time since I’ve acted or performed, but that sense of collaboration is one of the main things I miss. Writing is so solitary. And whatever triumph you may have is yours and yours alone. It can be lonely. But something like this requires other people. Other people have to get on board, devote themselves to one thing, and everyone plays their role: the makeup artist, the sound guy, the grip, the DP, the actors … And for that brief period of time, everyone is all ONLY doing one thing. Nobody’s zoning out on their cell phone. When it’s time to quiet down, you could hear a pin-drop, everyone holding their positions, book mike, slate girl, nobody moves, nobody speaks, nobody breathes: because we’re in the midst of filming a scene, and that’s all that matters. Chit chat is to a minimum, except in the long dull moments when the lights had to be reversed. At the end of the night, Brandeaux (the director) shouted, “That’s a wrap,” and the entire bar burst into applause. We had done it. Compromises had been made, because of the amount of time we had, but we had captured what we needed to capture so that Brandeaux could then go off and edit, and he had what he needed. The applause, though, was just a cathartic burst, before everyone became Oompa Loompas again – automatically – for the load-out. We didn’t have that much time and not only did all the equipment have to be loaded out into the trucks, we had to un-do all of the changes we had made to that sweet little bar. (It was a Green Bay Packers bar … in Burbank. Which is so charming. But we had had to cover every possible Green Bay Packers logo that might show up in the background, we had to cover some of the neon lights because they messed up the shot, and on and on.) The team was a well-oiled machine and the best part about that is: it’s not like everyone there had worked together a million times before. Brandeaux didn’t know a lot of the team assembled (his producer had done that), and a lot of the people didn’t know Brandeaux, or the producer, or anyone else. Didn’t matter: Insta-Team.

At the very last moment, everyone was gone. The truck had driven off to drop off the equipment. The only people left at the location were me, Brandeaux, and Peter, the gorgeously talented DP. It was a cold night in Burbank, and the fog was thick and romantic. Our cars were drenched in condensation. It was 3:30, 4 o’clock in the morning, so of course the entire town felt deserted. The three of us were exhausted and yet energized. (And Brandeaux had a Tee-time at 10 a.m. He considered driving to the golf course and sleeping in his car so he wouldn’t miss it.) This was the first film he directed, after being First AD all over town, and it was obviously the first time something I wrote was filmed, so we had been like little kids jumping off a cliff together. I had never met him before this experience, remember, but now we are friends for life, obviously. By the end of the shoot, and I’m not exaggerating, we were having entire complex conversations telepathically. It didn’t even occur to me until a couple of days later how funny it was. He’d call “Cut”, glance over at me, say something about what had just happened (silently), I’d respond (silently), he’d respond (silently), I’d nod like, “Yup. Totally agree” – and then he’d run off to talk to the actors before the next take. And these were complex thoughts we were passing back and forth, about pacing, intonation, intention, mood. I’m laughing just remembering this. How quickly a bond like that happens when everyone is working on the same thing with focused concentration.

In our very last moment of the night, Brandeaux went out into the middle of the street with the slate, and Peter, our cinematographer, took this picture. There was a lot of emotion flying around. Triumph, exhaustion, delirium, satisfaction.

One of the most exciting things is that the film festival is a chance for (some of) the team to reunite. It’ll be exciting to see everyone again. A little mini-reunion, and, best of all, it’s because of the film that we’re reuniting. So the collaboration (in a way) continues.