Quote of the Day

"A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water."
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Multiple Guess

Match the person with where I've seen them over the past three days...

a. Shooting a film outside my apartment
b. Performing in Cannes
c. Taking my plane back to New York

1. P Diddy
2. Busta Rhymes
3. Woody Allen

Cannes Film Festival

I've done the festival circuit and seen plenty of festivals, but nothing is quite like Cannes. Press everywhere. Indie filmmakers in tuxedos with black bowties. Posh entourages in white linen.
Stressed phone calls in every language trying to close a deal or find a deal. Screens on the beach with dozens of million-dollar yachts on the water behind them with techno throbbing across the plage. Stunning. It's 8am and I'm headed back...

I See You Baby...

Alphachick posted this on her blog, but it's too good not to pass on... The numbers are in (not that the blondes could actually count them) and officially Brunettes do have more fun than blondes.

And on and on...

March...
April...
May...

Is this what they mean by Time starts to go faster? I think that actually Time picked up its coat, walked out the front door, and left me standing there wondering what happened to the past few months. Luckily it took the winter weather with it.

The sun is shining on New York... I can see it through the huge windows in my new office space. You don't realize how much your own space is important to you until you don't have it anymore and this space has been liberating and invigorating... from here you will find I actually remember my password to my blogger account, I am working on several new feature projects and looking at picking up some commercial work, and most immediately... preparing for the Cannes Film Festival. So get ready to get jealous! The updates will be coming fast and furiously... but later...

Earth Hour 2008 - Get Involved

There was a brainstorming session that led to an idea similar to this, but hopefully Earth Hour has enough momentum to make an impact in the US. The stats themselves are staggering: "On 31 March 2007, 2.2 million people and 2100 Sydney businesses turned off their lights for one hour - Earth Hour. This massive collective effort reduced Sydney's energy consumption by 10.2% for one hour, which is the equivalent effect of taking 48,000 cars off the road for a year." I'd like to see a picture from space that showed the impact of this one hour.

Check it out and commit yourself to eating dinner by candlelight at http://www.earthhour.org/

Just because

I used to make friends with the wrong crowd
Just because I could
I used to challenge what couldn't be done
Just because... who else would
I used to do what I shouldn't do
Just because I thought who
are you?
Now I walk a mile in the blistering snow
Just because I can...

The Great Escape

I've read about cinematic masters who were awed by their experiences in a darkened theatre. The lights go down and a career is born. They escape to celluloid, saving every penny to buy a ticket. They vow their lives, they focus on their dream on a story you not only want to tell, but must tell. Something that you want people to hear, that resonates in your life. For me, it was a means of communicating. Something I could throw my entire being into. I was absolute. I was focused. But I was not awed.

Yesterday I found myself in a movie theater. A rare treat these days. Watching "The Orphanage" - Guillermo del Toro's suspenseful homage to Peter Pan. Not the most amazing film, but as the credits rolled and the music held me silent in an empty theater, it hit me. It wasn't another Saturday night that I had filled with a movie where I was running off to the next bar. It was my escape. I wanted to be here. I wanted to stay here. I wanted to live here with the stories in my head being twenty feet tall. I could finally see what I had not seen before.

Why now? What had changed? Perhaps it was too easy to see a film or a theater piece when I was younger and I took it for granted. Perhaps my Saturday nights were too chaotic to stop and breathe in what I had just seen. Or maybe I never had the means to express myself behind a lens and communication is a two-way street. Ultimately, I defer to how the intangible is described in "The Orphanage": sometimes seeing is not believing - it is the other way around.