Serve You Glory On A Silver Platter

I am nervous about tomorrow.

Well, technically, I am nervous about today. I'm waking up in a paltry four hours, donning a very convincing tablecloth, and portraying Dregr Jarrat again for the first time in two years.

I wish it was the performance alone that I worried about. But it's really the incredible time-crunch we're under to finish what we began, where we began it.

Three-and-a-half years ago, at the soundstage at Pittsburgh Filmmakers, we filmed the Dregr scenes for "Star Wars: Hunt for the Holocron." It was our first shoot. We we so excited we did 12 takes of the first shot, a medium-shot that started with me in the background, walking to the foreground, and cutting Luke into two pieces with my lightsaber. Tomorrow, as we build the set and rehearse the lines, we are preparing to film completely new Dregr scenes to replaces those old ones, new scenes written with all the knowledge about the movie and myself gathered since. And even still, they pose an incredible challenge. They are nexus points, exposition scenes with ties to all the other characters, and as such are very delicate. Add to that the fact that we have only 6 hours with the actress playing opposite of me, and you have a very intense, high-stakes situation.

Jeffrey is here, and I am delighted. He flew up from Houston after work, and he flies back early in the evening on Sunday. We watched the rough-cut, the rough assembly of scenes from the movie, and it was an amazingly revealing experience. I learned a couple of things. They may seem simple, or obvious, but they are genuine surprises to me:

1) The movie will mostly make sense. Nothing insanely random happens.
2) The movie is much, much smaller than I thought it was. It really is just the story of a couple of characters and what happens to them over the course of two days.
3) We actually do need to hear, from Dregr, why he wants the holocron, and why E'Din fights him for it.
4) Despite a couple rough patches, including but not limited to pacing and writing, there are some genuinely exciting moments that feel like Star Wars.

After watching the rough-cut I turned to Jeffrey and asked, "Is it worth finishing?"

He looked at me for a moment and then, choosing his words carefully, said, "Yes. Absolutely. That's not the question at all."

And I felt a little better. He had never watched the whole thing end-to-end, and for him, it was a sign of hope, a sign that maybe there was a movie at the end of all this, a movie worth making and worth watching. It seems a little silly to me now, all this hullabaloo over a little Star Wars tale, like I've picked up a painting I did as a child and traced its lines with my fingers, remembering old strokes and the earnestness with which I made them. Sure, the movie won't be perfect. It might not even be good. But it will be complete, and I will have steered it through, and people will enjoy watching it.

If I can do that, make one person's life better for an hour, then I will have accomplished something truly Good.

Here's hoping.

M

Erect in Defiance of God's Will

Current time: 3:17 AM. Estimated time until iRooster crows: 5 hours, 43 minutes. Wake-up Track for iRooster: Theme from "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan." Number of hours scheduled for work tomorrow: 5.

Planning to party all night with friends getting while getting crunked off your ass?

Priceless.

/cliche

How've you been? Good, good. How's that thing that you were stressing over? See, I told you it would all work out.

Life is bigger than a lot of this little crap we get stuck in. I know that. In my mind I know that. I know it like I know an equation, like I know a date. I don't, however, know it like I know a piano. Like I know an image. I can talk about it but I can't feel it, explain it but can't explore it. The phrase "forest for the trees" is so beautiful and I wish I had made it up because I would use it all the time. It's as though, because we only have eyes on one side of our head, we are both spiritually and biologically incapable of seeing all sides of reality, all sides of a situation.

How is it that in the span of five minutes you can go from exalted to excrement? I seriously have been all over the place the past, well, okay fine the past two months but I'm mostly thinking about the past two weeks. On the one hand I haven't felt this creatively virile since 2003. On the other hand I feel like an absolute shmuck who can't even wake up early enough to shave his face before work. Both are true, and yet they seem contradictory. How can you be productive at some things and a total lame-o (wow I wish I had a thesaurus) at other things? "Sure I'll write that beautiful independent short film about two 20-somethings at a crossroads in their relationship, storyboard it and shoot it in black and white and submit it to a film festival," versus, "Jesus, fuck, what time is it ohgodi'mlateagain." It is like some neurotic Odd Couple occupies the same studio apartment that is my brain and fight over the toilet seat being left up. Sure they love each other, but you can't possibly sustain such anarchy, such utter dichotomy in one individual.

I've been thinking a lot about this idea of a non-dual transcendent, a place beyond up and down, right and left, i.e. zooming out the camera far enough to see that east is in fact west and vice versa. If it exists, it is where God is. I wonder why the human brain creates the illusion of separation, of division from oneself, if created by He that is both hard and soft. Why the game? Why can't we see this place for what it is?

I wonder precisely because I feel a division inside myself, a distance from myself. Mark came home for the past couple of days, in from NY to attend a number of business meetings, and he invited me to come hear a motivational speaker. The speaker was an ex-NFL player whose nickname had been "Meat," and the fact that I remember most of what the guy said is a testament to the simple, straightforward wisdom this clod mustered for an hour and a half. He said, "Everyone has a little devil on his shoulder, a doubting Mini-Me who sits there and, cranky as hell, constantly tells you bad news about yourself. To fight 'im, you have got feed your inner giant, feed your inner dreamer. You have got to find that part of yourself that knows you deserve better."

Now, I mean, this is great advice. I love it. Simple, straightforward, correct (the original concept of "the satan" was as adversary. Satan, in Judaic texts, used to work for God, testing the resolve of his followers, and was only later associated with a force apart from God). But the part about "inner dreamer" was what really hit me the hardest, because I am a dreamer. "We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams," to quote Willy Wonka. That is me. To a fault. Or was me before I came up against my limitations, my handicaps, my vulnerabilities, all of the which the real world is elucidating faster than I can make excuses. My inner Slugworth is delighted watch the gumdrops crash, watch as I flail and flutter and try to make sense out of the jumble, watch and snicker as I wake up late, accomplish little, and then think about how much I am not doing and how fast my life is going.

It is a pity party, people. Hope you brought sad streamers and wet firecrackers.

Anyways, it's between that voice, the one that kicks the oompa-loompa in the gnads when it gets angry, and the dreamer, the music maker, the guy with the boat and the creepy chicken beheadings playing behind him, that I dwell. And Wonka destroys as much as he creates, corrupts as much as he consoles. He's a whirlwind, a force of nature, loved and feared, loving and fearful. Man I love words. And that is how I feel. Disappointing. Anointing. Disillusioning. Envisioning.

Okay, point being is that I'm struggling to feel like a consistent person and it's driving me nuts. Moving on.

Happy St. Patrick's Day. I think it's pretty cool that being "Irish" can belong to everyone, at least a little bit. Drink some green beer! I'll talk to you.

Your
Martin

The Beating Heart of God

Jessie's favorite saying is "your mom." It's the swiss-army knife of her vocabulary, applicable in, well, just about every situation, and it is lodged in my brain.

"How was your day?"
"Your mom."

"What are you up to?"
"Your mom."

"The house is on fire!"
"Your mom."

I'm sitting next to her now, her body warm against mine, her breath rhythmic in sleep. She is a such a pretty girl. I like going to sleep after her, because seeing her plaintive, peaceful visage nearly ensures me happy dreams.

It's my spring break, and between shifts at Apple I decided to loop down to Berkeley Springs on my way to and from Philadelphia. It's a short trip, but I wanted to see Dave and Steph, both to finalize some movie business as well as just hang out. Apparently they live pretty close to one another now, so I'm hoping that ensures that I'll see them both. It's hard for me to keep asking people for help with the movie - sometimes I feel like a wholly incompetent leader, and so when I feel like people have lost their faith in me, it's a blow, not completely unexpected, but still a disappointment. I have an amazing, patient crew, and I think we're at the end of the time where I can realistically expect them to stick around. We have one more shoot coming up though, on the weekend of March 24, and this will be the last one, the last push, the last time. Old faces and new will be there, and I think we will be partying like hell when it's over. I'm to the point where I want to be able to watch and enjoy the movie. It deserves that chance.

I listened to something that changed my life today. Julia Sweeney (remember her from SNL?) has a one-woman show called "Letting Go of God," and it was so bittersweet, so honest, so forthright and thought-out and tragically funny, that it's easily one of my new favorite vessels of ideas. I hope everyone gets a chance to pick up the CD and take a listen. I will certainly be picking up a couple copies and giving them away.

Years ago, Mat and I had a conversation at an Eat'n Park where, for twenty minutes, the beauty and wonder of the universe was glimpsed over grilled stickies. It was right in that time when we were just rekindling our friendship over long talks about writing and the screenplay for the movie, and inevitably we always seemed to, in the course of talking about stories, end up talking about things like the meaning of life and its purpose.

Anyways, for these twenty minutes the muses smiled, and like a cool wind peace and wonder fell upon our table and we became genuinely, truly alright with the great big question marks. The Big Why. The Big Why Not. We realized that whether or not there is a God, this place, this existence is equally miraculous either way. If I am merely an assemblage of carbon atoms, then the fact that carbon atoms can combine to form consciousness is an amazing, mind-blowing instantiation, regardless of whether it evolved or was designed. What is the real difference between God existing and not existing? He is one way of talking about the things that happen to us, but maybe he's not the only way.

The fact that anything exists seems intensely peculiar to me. Why something and not nothing? What created the elemental forces like gravity and magnetism? Who or what lit the wick for the Big Bang? Whether some deity dreamed it up or... or... I don't know, I don't even have the language to try and describe the alternative, the fact that it and we and this are all here is truly, truly stunning. Special. Unique. Gorgeous. You should SEE the stars in Berkeley Springs. For the first time tonight, I could see that the Pleaides are really the beating heart of Taurus, the thicket of starts at which Orion is aiming. Those stars might not be connected at all, might have no idea they are related in the minds of the little Earth people, and yet there they are, existing, shining regardless (I want to type "irregardless" because it is a much better word but, alas, it's not actually a word), and like the beating heart of God they are timeless in their ever-changing states.

Anyways, I'm getting philosophical. I'm sorry. The warmth of Jessie's body gets me all confident, like I could look up at the night sky and feel at home amidst the constellations, the great dragons and warriors and lobsters and virgins, big as half the sky and still infinitely small in the whole of the universe.

Find some stars and look and listen. Let me know what you hear.

Your
Martin

God Broke My Finger With A Dodgeball

Yup. A dodgeball, people, thrown with a nasty locked-curve. My pinky, too. Poor little guy. He has five weeks to heal, or else I will be giving the world's first one-handed ragtime concert on April 13.

And regardless of what the Blogger spell-check thingy says, dodgeball is one word, one sport, one dream. Ye have not lived lest ye has dodgeballed. I could break ten fingers and I would still play every week. I'd wear oven mitts and catch like a seal catches penguins: with extreme prejudice.

Hi!

I've been good. Very good, actually, which is why I haven't been getting drunk and writing to you about how mean the moon is. Manic-depressive Martin is good fun for about a week, and then it just gets really, really old. It was scary for a time, though; I felt like I couldn't write anything good unless I was drunk. This post may be proving me right, but I'd rather have less to talk about and a thinner waistline than more to say and be Chubs Magee for the rest of my life. My little foray into self-destruction actually gained me six pounds. Leave it to me to find a way to take up smoking and GAIN weight.

So, I stopped smoking. And drinking. Mostly. The rule of thumb has been: Doing one makes you do another, so cut it out, shmuck. Which has worked pretty well, though the sea is unpredictable and storms brew quickly. So far, so good.

I had to realize that there was nothing interesting about being self-destructive. I think a lot of people, myself heartily included, confuse "tortured but brilliant" with "lonely and overcompensating." It's easy to be fascinated by conflicted people; they're like going to see a movie about mobsters. It's a relatively safe way to experience something dangerous. Because, really, we are all capable of picking up a gun and firing it, but those that actually kill people? Wow, man. What kinds of other crazy shit are they capable of? What are they going to do next?

Anyways, so I've been good. Working at Apple. Trying to get a movie shoot together for the weekend of March 24. I started a new screenplay. I'm developing a documentary on young Pittsburghers. Making a CD. Preparing for the concert. Finishing applications to grad school.
Jessie said to me tonight, "Wow. You're actually busy," which was very liberating to hear. Busy is progress. Busy is good.

I hope you're well. Haven't heard from you in awhile. Hope you're staying busy, too.

your
martin