Film as Prayer

"Dancing With You" is in the Fire Island Golden Wagon Film Festival, July 15-17! I am trying to figure out which day, it's not on the website yet . . .

I am also trying to figure out how to get there . . . I have never been to Fire Island, NY. That's IF I can afford it, and IF I can cancel the plans I already had, which I may not be able to do . . . they all love to tell you that your film is accepted just two weeks before the festival!

http://www.goldenwagonfilmfest.com/" title="http://www.goldenwagonfilmfest.com/" target="_blank"http://www.goldenwagonfilmfes...

Greetings from the TVNET.net Online Film Festival.

Congratulations! We are pleased to announce that your film has been selected for inclusion in the festival.

Due to technical considerations, we have shifted the dates for the online festival. The fest officially goes live on July 1st and runs the entire month of July. Please email your name and film title to admin@tvnet.net so that we can set up your access account, and we will send instructions on how to login to the website to view the festival programs. Spread the word to check out the fest at:

http://www.tvnet.net

Thank you for your submission, and we look forward to the show.

Regards,

Eric Kurland
eric@tvnet.net

Yay!

Also, we wrapped Bill’s 4 short shoots today, with “White Bitch”, and it was fabulous to see Jessica and Ian again, although it was a long slog with the boy-dog playing the titular White Bitch. Many takes. Sigh. Bill and I talked a week ago about how it would probably be tough to shoot it, with two untrained dogs. Yup. But we got it, thanks to hard work by all. And then I went to the Film Forum to take a class in how to use my new camera. Great happiness, and exhaustion.

I just directed my short "Fishing" yesterday (pictures on my site), as part of an intensive four days of shooting four separate shorts for the Austin Festival competition. I have been wanting to direct it for a year, and it was so sweet! My good pal Bill Murray was the DP. We shot the woodworking scenes in the morning, and in the afternoons we went over to Mom's house and went down to the little lake beach at the Street End to shoot the fishing scenes. It was freezing (June in Seattle), and it rained at the end (I had to shield Bill's nice video camera), but I think we got some nice stuff. SO much fun to be filming my own narrative material again!

I worked Saturday on "The Landing", on a very hot day, taping Wally Lane's script (I was Casting Director, Grip, Boom Op for a few minutes, and very much the first AD-like person, yelling "Quiet please" a lot!), and tomorrow will work on "White Bitch", Joe Acton's script. Bill cancelled the shoot of his "Sheriff Percy" series of shorts today because of rain. Not a popular decision with the six actors I had to call this morning to cancel, who had taken off work for it. UGH!

My first SAG shoot; I am now a signatory, due to some rushed paperwork. That is because my husband Terry is SAG, and I used him in it. So now that that's out of the way, we can use more SAG folks. YAY!

I am learning a lot. I am scheduled to take more classes later this summer and fall. And the huge news is that I got the grant of money for the video camera, to my JOY, and it will be here in a few days. Then I have to learn to use it. And the editing software. And from there, watch out, world! I rejoice that God has granted me this camera out of the blue, and I am thoroughly grateful for the chance to use it, hopefully to make good movies.

May I get the skills I need to do it right! Amen!

So, "Dancing With You" just got into its seventh festival (I forgot to count The OC one that I didn't go to, so it really is 7!).  Again with Utah! They seem to love it there!  The Gloria Film Festival, it's called. August 2-6.

And I just signed a contract with Foundation Films Distribution to represent it, so who knows . . .

They say they want it because they want my feature, not because they are going to make any money from a short.

So I'd better make one!!!

Anyone have a couple of hundred K lying around the living room?  Hey, it already has distribution . . .

All digits crossed . . .

Just need to get the script perfect, and raise the money, that's all . . . yeah, that's all . . . no prob, right?

I have finally begun to submit scripts to contests. Here's hoping . . .

Failure

by Cornelia Duryée Moore (NYC 2001)


Failure is a word that we are all forced to dance with on a regular basis. Every artist that I know suffers from fear of failure. And we Christian artists add a layer: stewardship. Are we serving God rightly by fully using the gifts God has given us? Are we failing God, as well as failing ourselves, by not working as hard as we know we should?

I am haunted by these fears.

Currently, I have four feature scripts, none of which is quite ready for prime time. I have a short film making the rounds of a few second-tier film festivals, because it didn’t make it into first-tier ones. I work on other peoples’ movies because I can’t seem to get the money together to finance the independent shooting of one of mine. I shoot and edit my little shorts, but have never yet felt truly good about one.

I am waiting for “success”, like a great many Act One grads. And it is elusive.

What does the word “failure” mean?
1 a : omission of occurrence or performance; specifically : a failing to perform a duty or expected action b : a state of inability to perform a normal function (heart failure) c : a fracturing or giving way under stress (structural failure)
2 a : lack of success b : a failing in business: bankruptcy
3 a : a falling short : deficiency (a crop failure) b: deterioration, decay
4 : one that has failed

To me, it means that I am faced with the truth of my sinful nature. The only thing that I am really called to do is to do my best for God. To create the best ideas, words, sentences, scenes, and scripts that I am capable of. If I am doing less, I am not living up to my call.

Honestly, my best, in my limited humanness, is not good enough. And I can only get past that by crying out to God, and opening up to the Holy Spirit’s inspiration. It sounds simple. But, by dint of my predilection for addictions like TV, food, and web surfing, I can while away as many hours as I have available, if I’m not on guard. My writing hours, as a mother of two active boys, are irregular. And when they come I have to jump on them. Too often, I just let them slide. Especially if I don’t have a writer’s group deadline coming up. Deadlines keep me going.

So, I fail every day. I fall down, I get up. You do too. Some of you less frequently than others (you inspiring/maddening ones who actually sell scripts!). Which brings me to envy.

There is a reason why envy is one of the Seven Deadlies. If I think about my friends’ sold scripts and novels and plays, out there in the world being excellent, I sometimes have to fend off serious envy. A big part of me truly rejoices in their success, because I love them dearly, and because they are my Christian siblings. But another part of me can’t help resenting them, if I am not all prayed-up. And that resentment can grow, fester, and drive me to hide from it through addiction and procrastination. A vicious cycle.

Addiction:
1 : the quality or state of being addicted (addiction to reading)
2 : compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance (as heroin, nicotine, or alcohol) characterized by tolerance and by well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal; broadly : persistent compulsive use of a substance known by the user to be harmful.

The other night I was driving and heard a “Focus on the Family” segment about addiction. The speaker said that addiction can be created by any substance or activity that releases endorphins, allows you to escape from your problems, and creates a desire in you for more of that escape. If you repeatedly seek a ‘bliss out” experience, finding yourself disappearing into novels, video games, doughnuts or late-night TV, you may be indulging in an addiction. Anything can be deified, taking the place of God in our lives, and wasting our precious time.

I have a writer/ actress friend who, once a year, goes an a one-week “story fast.” She feels that she needs to focus on reality for one week of each year. So for one week, she doesn’t watch TV, see a movie, or read a newspaper or novel. And, for her, this discipline brings her closer to her muse, so that her praying, writing, and acting get clearer. She begins to notice the world around her in new ways.

I respect her Lenten approach to her media addiction. I did fast from TV usage for one Lent, and I did feel clearer. As a storyteller, I suppose it is natural that I can vanish into other peoples’ stories, and lose myself for far too many hours. Not all of that is justifiable research, no matter what I tell myself.

When any activity comes between the Creator and the created, and God’s still, small voice is blocked from getting through to me, and I am stuck with just the matter behind my eyes; unhooked from the Holy Spirit’s grace, I fall into sin and failure. There is no other word for it.

As artists, we need to learn to speak out of our failure. While it is not the only ubiquitous human experience, it is a very important one. My husband’s clowning teacher at Brandeis, Cheryl McFadden, had each actor enter the room and try to be funny for five minutes. When they had all failed miserably, she told the assembled class, “The clown always fails, and then gets up and tries again. That’s why we love clowns.”

Madeleine L’Engle, in The Irrational Season, says “[W]hen I look at the people I know whose faces are alight with joy, no matter how terrible their outward circumstances, I can see in them poverty of spirit, the comfort of mourning, purity of heart - all those characteristics which, put together, are a description of Jesus of Nazareth: who died on a cross, publicly, between two thieves, on Good Friday. A failure. In worldly terms, a complete washout. The original non-achiever . . . Why on the cross? Why despised and rejected by the majority of the Jews, his people, forsaken by most of his friends? Why a total failure? . . . I bump headlong into God’s failure vs. man’s success, and man’s success is worth nothing, in comparison with the glorious failure of God. Experience is painfully teaching me that what seems a NO to man, from man’s point of view, is often the essential prelude to an even greater YES.”

We are children of the Living God, redeemed, healed, and lifted up by God’s grace. And through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can be freed from sinful addictions, and inspired to actually tap on a keyboard and make a story brimming with the glory of that same Spirit. And if we remain failures in our own eyes and in the world’s, if we never succeed at this crazy writing thing, we will still have succeeded in our call if we can stay clear and free and connected to God. All that truly matters, eternally, is who we are in God. If we do the dishes in communion with God, if we drive the carpool in openness to the Spirit, if we wake up out of our various fogs and actually pray, then we are being who God calls us to be.

And then it doesn’t matter, all this worrying about careers and successes. Because we are home. And we can rejoice with those who rejoice, and grieve with those who grieve, and we can lead a life of freedom and joy and generosity. May it be so for all of us.

Barbara Nicolosi suggested, in her blog, this chain-blog. The idea is to answer the following five questions on my site and then invite five other bloggers to do the same. Apparently, this is called a meme.

Here are my responses:

1. Total number of books I own: impossible to count unless I did it for days. We have two entire rooms devoted to them (my husband's office and mine), both with at least four full floor-to ceiling bookshelves. Both boys have a huge bulging floor-to ceiling one in their respective rooms. Plus, they overflow into almost every room, filling every flat space, and some that aren't flat. And then there's 'Death Garage' . . .

2. The last book I bought: "Horse People" by Michael Korda.

3. The last book I read: "Ya-Yas in Bloom", by Rebecca Wells, one of the saints in my literary pantheon.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me:

Anything by Madeleine L'Engle.

Anything by Laurie King.

Anything by Annie Dillard.

"Brothers Karamazov" by Dostoevski (which husband also said was his fave).

"Anna Karenina" by Tolstoi. (Okay, so I feel Russian this week!)

5. Tag five people:

Crystallin, http://crystallin.tblog.com/

Sean Gaffney, http://pages.sbcglobal.net/sc...

Susan Issacs, http://www.susanisaacs.net/

Beth Amsbary, http://www.prayeriegirl.com

Jeff Berryman, http://www.jberryman.com/

I drove the 4 hours down to the Forest Grove Film Festival yesterday, and, due to its utter boringess, left at 4 to drive on home. I saw most of the Rising Stars Student Film Series, and really the only rising stars in it were the 4 UCLA or USC thesis films, all shot on 35mm, with lots of toys (dollies, jibs, cranes) and lots of money, and fabulous acting and directing. My little movie doesn't stand a chance against these guys. Whole cities of folks made them.

And then there were . . . the other ones. Ugh. Shall we say that, in their first year, they accepted a few that they shouldn't have. Which, privately, they admitted to me.

Quite depressing. There were no scheduled parties, no interaction between filmmakers, and very little audience. Out of the four I have attended, definitely the worst. No prize ceremony (the only reason why I would have stayed down there overnight). No honorees, no stars. Sigh.

So I came home, got in late, and slept until 1 p.m. (except for the obligatory 2 hours of fending off Titania the Wild Kitten between 7-9 a.m. until I desperately called Terry on the other line and had him rescue me!).

Went to 5pm church, and we went out to dinner at Jak's. A MUCH better day than staying down there.

Poor things, they'll do better next year . . .

Went to The Film Company's first-year gala tonight, and it was poignant, since they did not 'cast' me into their company a year ago when they started (I am supposed to be an "Adjunct Artist", but they have never called). My energies have been called elsewhere. But I met two wonderful fellow dancers from twenty-three years ago in Walla Walla! Most joyful to reconnect. One has had a famous performing career that I have followed, one works in a wonderful museum that I patronize.

This weekend I go to the Forest Grove Film Fest., but I am not going to be able to go to the Toronto one (AGH!), as we have no money for planes and hotels.

Please God let me sell a script soon . . . We are in a HUGE financial crunch, and I am in trouble trying to make my next film out of air.

Hurting . . .

So far, the most fun I have had at any festival. These folks ROCK. And they picked my short to screen, one out of only ten shorts chosen, and Leslie La Page, the founder, said they looked at over 700 films. So, though it didn't win (sigh), it did impress them enough to screen.

I met some fabulous women filmmakers, and hope to submit to these wonderful folks again and again!

Great glee!

And exhaustion. Much partying. Much dancing. Little sleeping. Two nights in hotels with no opening windows!!!

Need to cleanse poor ol' bod . . .

But I am utterly grateful for the experience.