Breakfast with the stars

In terms of the festival I was really only there for the breakfast. It was a filmmakers only thing and it was very nice. It was at the home of ... I bet she's a board member of the festival. Anyway, the kind of place on a private road where you have to tell the security guard whose house you're going to. I remember the house from when I was here with Passing actually. It was another lovely spread, but what was really great about it is that it's filmmakers only so you really get a chance to meet and talk with people. It's easy enough to start a conversation because it's pretty safe to walk up to almost anyone and say, "So what's your film about? And when do you screen?" I handed out my business card to 3 new people today. And one of them, the one from my favorite film of last night (sorry Debbie) is going to start work on a feature film in September part of which will be set in Boston. I told him yes, absolutely, get in touch.

Recovery Part 2 - The Cape

I'm back at the cape. It was fantastic having mom and dad take care of me for the last month, but it also feels very good to be well enough to be on my own. Though only sort of on my own since Jim and family are at the house. The diet that mom and I have so diligently followed for the last 2 weeks crashed and burned last night. There is nothing even phase 2 compatible much less for the last 2 days of phase 1. But there is also no room in the kitchen for me to go shopping. We had pizza for dinner. I will start again on Monday.

The Road to Recovery

It's done. Done is good. And now I will keep feeling better a little at a time. It went pretty well as far as these things go. I'm uncomfortable any time I'm not just sitting still. And I walk around hunched over like a question mark. But having read about all the symptoms I could have had before and all the things that could go wrong during and after, really this is a breeze. They gave me the good drugs so I'm alright. Though the drugs do specifically say that they impair mental faculty so don't hold me to anything.

Going under the knife

I'm heading back to Boston tomorrow to have the surgery on Tuesday. To be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about that. Relieved that the wait is finally over, certainly. Not scared. I think I've been running around so much this month that it doesn't entirely feel real. I've had so many trips to that hospital for appointments that it doesn't feel any different even though it's very different. I more than half feel like I should be biking to get there. I do wish it could have all happened more quickly. The more time I have to think about it the more I think about it.

Anyway, don't know when I'll feel like posting again, or when I'll have anything interesting to say. Recovery is going to be a lot of sitting around while my abdomen heals up. I don't think that will be exciting for anybody. In about a month I'll be heading out for the Woods Hole Film Festival where Killer is screening. I'll definitely have a lot to say about that. And then two weeks later it will screen again at We Like 'Em Short in Baker City Oregon. I won't make it to that but I am more than a little pleased to say that it's screening nationwide. 4 states so far and counting.

Living in an artists' colony

I am in Maine for the week teaching my Final Cut X class. The Maine Media Workshops is a place to go to take week long classes on topics related to photography and film/video. The classes on offer this week are: Portrait Lighting Techniques, Creativity and Invention in Photoshop, The Large Format Narrative Portrait, Designing Interactive Publications, Camera Operator, Final Cut Pro, DIT on Set, The Director's Craft, plus the 2nd week of Four Week Film School. We all eat 3 meals a day together under the tent so in addition to my own students I've had a chance to meet students and instructors from the other classes as well. So I'm surrounded all day by creative and happy people. It's really kind of fantastic.

Pre-Op

The pre-op appointment was kind of boring except for the 3 vials of blood that they had to do a lot of poking to get. It's the 4th time I've had blood drawn in the last 2 months and this chick had a hard time finding a useful vein. I'll admit I'm not an easy one, but ouch.

Art imitating life

I am really looking forward to my adaptations class in the fall. One of the shortcomings I tend to have is thinking up story ideas in the first place. If this class can help me to find existing ideas and make them film-worthy that seems like a good thing for me.