Race — Now Freeze! — Go Deep!

This is what my days are like: race as fast as you can, then stop on a dime and go as deep as you can —

Now run —

NOW STOP — go deep —

This is also what my movies are like.

Friday my day was sequenced like clockwork: any wrong move and the whole thing would collapse.

I had an appointment with the shrink in the morning but I also had a 3 pm call with a producer on a movie where I hadn’t yet figured out how to clarify what it is we’re doing.

I raced around before the shrink appointment, promising myself to devote the shrink appointment to figuring out the movie.

Race — drop — go deep —

The shrink was useless. I did emerge with an idea about a white noise playlist of a 1950's New York psychiatrist office complete with the sounds of a ticking clock and traffic from the street below (can someone make this and send it to me?) But I did not emerge with the movie clarified. The subject of the imminent call.

I got back in my car.

Now what?

I found myself driving to Temescal Canyon. Maybe a hike will shake this thing loose.

Looking for the movie

I hustled up that mountain in ninety degree heat. Still nothing.

Heat stroke can help you find it

I listened to music on the way back to Venice. I find that movies don’t happen linearly: they happen when you allow your mind to get loose to the point of shapelessness, and then start working around those edges. It’s not A to B to C, it’s A to ❤️ to 🔄

I went to the gym to roll out my back on a foam roller and listen to music some more. More deep time.

Look, I’m gonna sit down with this actor and say you are [redacted] … that is your real life and that is this movie …

It was already time for the call so I hurried out to sit in my car and turned on the air conditioning. I waited for the call and thought to myself

We’re not actually far apart on this. I’m just not selling it very well.

The phone rings. It’s his assistant: something is going sideways and they need to push thirty.

Ok. I take the time to write some sentences. Sitting in the driver seat of my car. Clarity. Feel this. Stop running. Go deep.

The phone rings again.

“Hey … Thanks for waiting … Oh, sorry, I need to call you back.”

I’m really thinking hard on what he needs from me. I feel like it’s all there — the only thing that’s missing is that hooky logline that I loathe because my work is so much richer and meatier than some stupid logline. As an artist, it feels bad for me to reduce something so meaningful and rich and complex down to one sentence.

An email pops up on my phone: he is so sorry but he’s gotten tangled in something time-sensitive. Can we push to Monday?

Now I’ve got a few hours before I have to get downtown to meet another producer I’m working with at a Science-Entertainment Exchange event about adventure-scientists. We get super inspired and wind up pitching the hell out of each other standing around afterward —

Race —

I had already planned to go camping for the weekend so I leave from the event. I wound up driving up the coast listening to the audiobook SAPIENS and setting up my tent after midnight that night.

Go deep —

I didn’t think about the first movie at all over the weekend. I was hoping my unconscious was working on it. I did a lot of hiking. I did my kundalini on the beach. I thought about it a little bit. I kept coming back to the feeling that we’re actually close on this.

This is all the deep thinking that goes into one phone call.

Part of me feels like I’m spending too much time alone and the other part doesn’t know how to do this job otherwise.

Which came first? My need to be alone or the job I found that demands I be alone?

I think a lot about why I like camping so much. I have ADD, and I am easily overwhelmed and distracted. Camping simplifies my life in a way that is comforting. All I have to worry about is keeping myself alive. What is the next action I need to take to keep myself alive? If my unconscious wants to work on a movie, that’s fine. But for now, this sweet van:

I was packing up my Prius this morning on the side of the PCH. A handsome surfer in a dripping wetsuit was packing his identical black Prius behind me. We started talking. I told him I had to go now. He said I should stay, go down to the beach.

I said I had to go conduct business.

He touched my hair.

Are you sure?

I was sure. I drove back down the coast listening to SAPIENS. When I got home I took a shower — I was beyond filthy after having hiked and camped for three days. Then I recorded an interview for my podcast Threat Surface.

The minute I ended the recording the producer called. From Friday. I told him everything that had come to mind that day — that we’re not far apart and here’s why, what I’m gonna say when I sit down with the actor.

I told him I just hadn’t sold him before. And today I sold him.

He told me to call my agent and he would call my agent. Now we have to start figuring out actors and directors.

Time to race —