People I Know Intimately Who Don’t Know Me At All

I mention in this that "72" would show at the "music video thing tonight at Casbeers." Well, that music video thing, the TMC Music Video Showcase, it's running again this week. Tuesday the 17th at the Josephine Theater. Almost exactly a year after this was posted, Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Worked a couple weekends ago on a project with the Parker Creek gang. (Which would be a good name for a Western, "The Parker Creek Gang!") Should be entertaining. We shot in Michael O'Neal's house, which is a freaking museum of late 50s/early 60s bachelor culture. It's like an altar to my history that I was too young to have been a part of. There's a part of me that really wants to sell everything and buy one of those houses, live that era like he does. Then there's the part of me that has a wife and child, and that part has its foot on the neck of the other part.

Officially, I was the art director, or something like that. But since Michael's place really didn't need any designing, I was just there to hang out. I'm working a little on a poster and maybe the titles sequence. The project should be really fun to watch. It was a great time to shoot.

I don't do that sort of thing enough, collaborations. The past couple of years, most of what I've done has been me alone at my computer, sometimes making up little voices as I talk to myself, sometimes just editing until my eyes cross. I need to get out with real people now and again.

Editing is a weird life. Kind of like being a stalker, really. I shoot a beauty pageant (as I did last month) and edit it into a commemorative video for the contestants to enjoy. That means I spent all of one day with these women (most of them trying desperately to avoid me -- come on, I can almost understand your average schmoe wanting to avoid being on camera, but you girls are beauty queens! By definition, you want people to look at you!). And then I spend days editing the program, getting to know each of them in ways they really don't want me to know. I see everything. EVERYTHING. When I was doing the Rollergirls inaugural season video, I knew them like you might know the characters of your favorite show. It got a little uncomfortable, even -- I was dealing with these women personally, and knew them very intimately, and yet had to restrain myself in conversation with them, as most had no idea who I was!

Still, I'm damned good at it. And it's nice to make a living at what I'm good at. Or at least trying to make one. Just bought a new dedicated computer for editing, anyone wants something done, come see me. I gotta pay for this thing.

I've been really awful about letting the world know where my films are playing.

"72," an experimental pieces I did in collaboration with Mad Mason for my Chez Bernard show early this year, played last week at Girl Fest Hawaii in Honolulu. (It's the piece with the beauty queens, for those of you in the know. I might've shown it at the music video thing tonight at Casbeers, but I've got a meeting.) I didn't go to the screening. Lisa couldn't take time off work, and I'm sure as hell not going to Hawaii without the love of my life. Shame, I've always wanted to go to the islands. We'll get there eventually.

Likewise, that old workhorse "Mars Needs Bibles" has put on its eyeliner and falsies for a screening at a festival in Sao Paolo, Brazil today and Thursday. Wish I could be there for that, I've wanted to go to Brazil for longer than I've wanted to go to Hawaii. But I can't afford it.

A few more in the offing. Talking to London and Barcelona. The one in Spain's far enough away, I might just have to save up for that trip. Never been to Barcelona.