Animals Coming Out of My Walls
Sep. 13th, 2008 10:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rinueAn hurricane has hit Houston, where I am producing a film that is supposed to start shooting in 9 days but which has no cast and no camera. Also, we are over budget. (Projected budget. I have so far paid no one anything.) I expect people to get mad at me every time I talk to them, because this is no kind of way to run a film. I would be mad at me. I am mad at me. Other people think this is ridiculous and that I am a great producer. I get love letters. I think they are fooled because I am a great director, great AD, great sound editor, and great cameraman. It is assumed that I am generally great. But if that is true, why am I doing a bad job? Also, nobody else in my position could do better. So I will pull things together? It is stupid.
--
James, Ciro, and I went to a bad poetry reading because we are trying to sell copies of James's poetry book. Which I haven't yet read. Most attendees favored a pseudo-confessional beat style - cliff notes stuff, the kind that needs swear words for impact. I'm trying to be nice and clever. If you've been to unmoderated open mics, you know what I'm actually saying.
We wrote our own pass-around poem that was better than the stuff on mic, even though we all tried our best. Worst? Ciro cheated and was deliberately good sometimes ("we're animals, malefactors, light"). My favorite line was James's "animals coming out of my fuck white animals" - so I wrote:
Just
A
Man in a hat
Euclidian in
Shape
--
The Dallas film industry is non existent - strictly corporate video and the rare ad. Some video art, because the art scene is decent. I am unsurprised, because it was the same when I left. Still, one hopes. Instead I am stuck doing more auteur work, more scrounging for financing, to create a New Wave in a city with no audience for it. It means being brilliant instead of professional, and I can do it but it makes me tired.
I think sometimes about what it was like to be a velociraptor in Jurassic Park, running at a wall over and over again, getting thrown back. Running the cleverest way possible, every way, every spot every height, testing every point until you know you can't get out, you can never get out, there is no weak spot. And then one day after you have given up, all of a sudden the power is out and the walls don't matter at all, and it feels silly and inevitable.
--
James, Ciro, and I went to a bad poetry reading because we are trying to sell copies of James's poetry book. Which I haven't yet read. Most attendees favored a pseudo-confessional beat style - cliff notes stuff, the kind that needs swear words for impact. I'm trying to be nice and clever. If you've been to unmoderated open mics, you know what I'm actually saying.
We wrote our own pass-around poem that was better than the stuff on mic, even though we all tried our best. Worst? Ciro cheated and was deliberately good sometimes ("we're animals, malefactors, light"). My favorite line was James's "animals coming out of my fuck white animals" - so I wrote:
Just
A
Man in a hat
Euclidian in
Shape
--
The Dallas film industry is non existent - strictly corporate video and the rare ad. Some video art, because the art scene is decent. I am unsurprised, because it was the same when I left. Still, one hopes. Instead I am stuck doing more auteur work, more scrounging for financing, to create a New Wave in a city with no audience for it. It means being brilliant instead of professional, and I can do it but it makes me tired.
I think sometimes about what it was like to be a velociraptor in Jurassic Park, running at a wall over and over again, getting thrown back. Running the cleverest way possible, every way, every spot every height, testing every point until you know you can't get out, you can never get out, there is no weak spot. And then one day after you have given up, all of a sudden the power is out and the walls don't matter at all, and it feels silly and inevitable.
