[NEohioPAL]Re:All Hail RENT!

[mikeanthnort at aol.com]

Film Czar...where do these folks get such charged material?  It's gotta 
be Shaker Heights, right?  The reason I ask is because I am completely 
awash in a reality based purely in Hollywood.  Really.   Who won the 
"Battle of Shaker Heights"?  The Film Czar?  The Turkey Czar?  John 
Crapper?

Speaking of crap, Bill, I've got to say, there's a lotta crap because 
there's A LOT of opinions--and you know what they say about opinions?  
Never mind, it's Turkey Day!  Pass the gravy, already!!

Speaking of opinions, with your triage classification of the filmic 
species in Cleveland, I suppose with regard to my last film project, 
I'm a burner.  But is it possible to be obliged to be a burner if the 
story contained on the screen is that of a scarce and ambiguous 
landscape (not to mention the audible difficulties)?

I dunno; to Learners, Yearners, and Burners, I would add 
Avante-Gardesmen, Feminists, Surrealists, Hyper-Montagues, 
Mise-en-scenities, Verisimilidudes, Sci-Files, and Imports.

Finally, go see "RENT" everyone!  Delicious!  Extra-extraordinary cast! 
   Made me live in thoughts of age-old friends, artistes, loves, and, 
with any luck, the inspiration spilled over by its power of music will 
help concerned members of at least this community put together some 
sort of legitimate Vaccine-to-Beat-AIDS-by-2010 Campaign for the world. 
 We've got the tech to do it; we've got TODAY to do it....

Happy Plancksgiving and Thanksgiving, everyone.  Even to this Film Czar 
guy, may you find a nice film studio in St. Petersburg or Havana :)

XO,
Mike


-----Original Message-----
From: Bill <cinevid at yahoo.com>
To: neohiopal at lists.fredsternfeld.com
Sent: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 00:57:18 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [NEohioPAL]All Hail Film Czar and Film Prophet

  All Hail Film Czar and Film Prophet

  You know, most of the time I sit with calm amusement as I read the 
various ramblings as to why Cleveland isn't 'on the map' when it comes 
to motion picture film and TV production. However, these latest posts 
are just too funny to ignore... A self proclaimed Film Czar? What the 
hell is that? Alex, I thought you were joking! And Christopher, you 
seem to have so much intelligence and yet you completely miss the point.

  Ya wanna know the reason why we can't all just get along and make 
movies together? Well here it is. There's too much crap!!! And widely 
varying degrees of crap. One of the only reasons our monthly Indieclub 
meetings are successful is because we're not trying to create a 
consortium; we're not trying to unite our resources, we're not even 
trying to improve eachother's work. We're j ust watching videos. And 
guess what? We see a lot of crap. We see some good stuff too, but 
mostly we see Learners, Yearners and Burners.

  Now, Learners are novice filmmakers who make crap because it's their 
first film and rather than learn the trade first, they go ahead and 
make a movie as practice and hopefully they'll improve. We sit politely 
and smile, wishing they had thought about lighting, sound, acting, 
dialogue, and camera work before making us sit through their 
experiments.

  Yearners are filmmakers who really want to make good films, so they 
use everything at their disposal to make the best possible film they 
can. However, they're still somewhat plagued by compromise and the 
results are never what they hoped for, nor what a real distributor will 
buy. Much easier to sit through though.

  Burners are the worst. These are filmmakers (u sually prolific) who 
make crap every time out of the gate. Their camera work is mostly 
hand-hell shaky cam. Their lighting is barely more than ambient and 
they often use the on-camera mic to capture dialogue. The acting is 
wooden and undirected; the stories are either so deep you need waders, 
or so shallow you can't find a point; and to top it off, they're fully 
convinced they are great filmmakers.

  But why do I call them Burners you ask? Well, because they burn the 
bridges that sincere Yearners might someday want to use. They burn 
bridges with actors who get soured against indie filmmakers because 
they have nothing decent to show for all their hard work (not even 
copy). They burn bridges with locations because they are so unorganized 
that they overstay their welcomes, mess up property and never send 
copies of the video, like they promise to do. They burn bridges with 
investors because the investor never sees a dime of their money back. 
They burn bridges with the legitimate film commission, because, as I 
said before they make crap and what film commission is going to support 
and encourage more crap???

  Yet that's not the reason why we don't need a film czar or film 
prophet or any other coordinating force. The real reason is no one 
wants to work on someone else's film. You see, most of the people that 
comprise the indie scene here in Cleveland are 
writer/producer/directors and we're all working on our own projects. 
And guess what. I'm not all that interested in spending my valuable 
time working on someone's project which I consider to be crappier than 
my own. I can just as easily be spending my time and resources creating 
my own crap.

  Sure everyone would like to think there's a benevolent brotherhood of 
filmmakers; a selfless society where everyone submits ideas and work 
samples and then the members vote on what script to do and who to 
direct it. The commu nity is presented with the proposal and since it 
bears the backing of so many filmmakers, the businesses get involved 
and support the project with services and finances. The best actors 
come from all around to have a part in the project and a glorious 
motion picture is produced that wins the Oscar for Impossible Dream...

  That would be a good plot for a fantasy picture, but in the real 
world, writers will lose interest if their script isn't picked. 
Directors will bail if they can't direct and actors will walk away if 
they can't be the lead. And you guessed it the end product would 
probably be... well, I don't need to say it again. (though I really 
want to)

 Bill Johns
 crappy writer/producer/and director
 www.cinevidproductions.com

  P.S - I guess I'm in a sour mood because just yesterday I lost a 
serious investor (producer of two features in LA) because she said the 
acting in one of the scenes I sent her wasn't very good. I knew it when 
I shot it that I was compromising, and even though we're reshooting 
that scene, it's too late to regain that contact... ah CRAP!


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