Film, Pop Culture

When Movie Productions Go Bad

Working on a low-budget indie film is new to me. When I worked in Hollywood I worked for big people and therefore there was big money put into the films (in other words I worked on pieces of crap). Everything was taken care of on set- food, transportation, accommodations- and you only had to worry about your own duties and not making eye contact with ANYONE.

On a low-budget, guerrilla-style indie feature, none of this applies. Typically cast and crew wear many hats, eat homemade meals, and sleep on air mattresses. As stressful as it sounds, it can be a lot of fun because the ego involved in Hollywood is nonexistent. Everyone is the same and all working towards the same goal. They’re working on the project because they believe in it.

Currently we have 6 people sleeping in a 3 bedroom house with only 1 bed and 4 couches including one couch from the set of Tree of Life. We are all sleep-deprived and pushed to the max. Daily needs like eating, showering, and peeing have gone out the window. (more…)

September 9, 2011 by
Austin

Things They Lost In the Fire

photo by Keye TV of Bastrop, TX
Right now, surrounding Austin is on fire.

Small pockets in Austin are on fire.

Yesterday, I was having drinkings with a friend at the Black Star Co-Op (the world’s first co-operatively owned and worker self-managed brewpub) and noticed a plume of black smoke behind her shoulder. The smoke cloud could not be more than a few miles away in Central Austin and we both got concerned. The entire city is combusting, I thought to myself. We scrambled to Twitter to see what was going on (both our first go-to for news) and didn’t see anything. Later we learned that a fire started about a mile away but was quickly extinguished. Over 40 counties are on fire in Texas and local news reports new fires in Austin daily.

Everyone is on edge right now and heartbroken over the destruction the fires have caused, most notably the Bastrop fires. Over 550 homes have been damaged in Bastrop.

It’s eerie how this complete annihilation can be occurring so (more…)

September 7, 2011 by
Film

Loves Her Gun

Holy crap, we’re making a movie!
I can’t believe it’s actually happening.
One day Geoff and I were writing a treatment, next thing I know we’re starting production.
Today we’re on day 5 of production. Some of us have gotten very little sleep.
From the support of friends and fans, we were able to reach our US Artists goal. We have a terrific cast and crew on board whose talents have been showcased in Cannes, Sundance, and SXSW. Trieste Kelly Dunn (Cold Weather, Canterbury’s Law) is playing our flawed heroine and Francisco Barreiro (We Are What We Are) as our loveable knight in hipster armor.

So besides being the co-writer and general extra hand on set, I’m also handling all the social media and PR for the film. If you have a moment, please check out our Tumblr page which we will update with photos, videos, and fun stories about independent filmmaking. Same with our Facebook page. I also finally set up an Instagram page which I’m having so much fun with!

I will update more later. (more…)

September 6, 2011 by
Austin, Film

Slacker 2011

Austin, Texas is a film city. It is not always easy to find film work in, but it’s an excellent place to write your script or make your movie (see why here).

Moviemaker Magazine named Austin, Texas the #5 place to Live, Work, and Make Movies In.
We host arguably the #3 film festival in the U.S. (SXSW) and a respectable up-and-coming festival that features big Hollywood movies and players (Austin Film Festival). We have studio directors who got their start in Austin and continue to shoot their productions in here (Richard Linklater, Mike Judge, and Robert Rodriguez) and we have a plethora of indie filmmakers whose work has been seen at every festival on the planet, literally.

So needless to say, some pretty interesting and creative stuff comes out of Austin.

A perfect example of this is the “reimagining” of Richard Linklater’s perennial indie classic Slacker, which will be premiering tonight at the historic Paramount Theater on Congress Avenue. If you went to film school, you (more…)

August 31, 2011 by
20-Something, Hipstercrite Life

Making the Twenty-Something Leap

There comes a point in every young person’s life where they have to make the jump.

Have to because they can’t kid themselves that they’re happy with the safe route anymore. Working jobs that mean nothing to them and waking up every morning trying to kid themselves that they care. Ignoring the hunger pains of a creative appetite gnawing away at them.

“But life is sometimes about working jobs that you don’t like!” the age-old sentiment kept cycling through my head. “But not if I have any say it!” I finally answered back one day. Last week. When I realized that now was the time.

I was born from a musician and an artist. One took the safe route her entire life and regrets it, the other jumped on the Autobahn to creative anarchy. My father tried going the safe route- which included marriage, kid, and steady employment- but ultimately he couldn’t handle the confines. Do I blame him? No. Because I’m just like him. “And that scares me,” my mother can often be found saying. But we live (more…)

August 30, 2011 by
Hipstercrite Life

The Twice Monthly Non-Period Period

source

I noticed something lately. About once or twice a month I get really apathetic. Discouraged. Run down. Confused. Tired. I want to sleep under a rock for 48 hours and when someone starts talking to me I give them a blank stare as if to say, “Back the f on up away from me, friend.” I sit at my computer feeling like a lead weight. I shuffle home and plop on the couch and can’t think of anything. I curl up into a ball on the couch and whine like a little bitch and want nothing more than the day to end.

It’s not my period. I know very damn well when that hormonal voodoo is messin’ with me. And it’s not depression. I have a pretty damn good life and depression does not run int the family. Instead I guess it’s a ‘everything is finally ganging up on me!’ feeling. And I’m not even sure what triggers the malaise. Something or things slight enough that it falls off the radar, but if I actually took a minute to think about it, I’d see the string that led me to that place. (more…)

August 26, 2011 by
Music, Pop Culture

Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham Are My Soap Opera

When I was a young girl I fantasized a lot about Fleetwood Mac. Specifically Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. They were my teenage soap opera. I would lie in bed for hours gobbling up their discography, paying strict attention to the sharp pangs of Lindsey’s anger and the romanticism of Stevie. My heart would flutter as the story of their love and break-up wafted from my turntable. For those of you not familiar with Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were a young couple/struggling musicians in California that got their big break the day that Mick Fleetwood and John McVie from the British blues band, Fleetwood Mac, heard them. He welcomed them on board as their lead singers, alongside keyboardist Christine McVie, and the rest is history. This super band when on to record one of the best selling albums of all time, Rumours, with over 40 million copies sold, in addition to many other high-grossing albums that have earned the band their place in rock (more…)

August 24, 2011 by
Film, Pop Culture

The Cultural Significance of Rick Moranis

Lately the Moranis has been on my mind and in lieu of no new post today, I wanted to revisit an ‘ode to Rick’ that I wrote awhile back. Enjoy and share your love for Rick Moranis in the comments below!

A childhood fascination of mine that has transcended into adulthood is my love of nerds. Short nerds, tall nerds, young nerds, old nerds, aesthetically questionable nerds, sexually subordinate nerds- it doesn’t matter. The more socially awkward the better.

Where did this love come from? I’m not sure. Believe me, if I knew, I wouldn’t have spent all that money seeing a psychotherapist on Saturdays and then supplementing my emotional purging with a trip to Golden Corral after every visit.

Maybe it was from the hours of watching “Back to the Future”. Somewhere between the ages of four and six I discovered that Doc Brown could get my latent sexuality flux capacitor up to 1.21 gigawatts. It wasn’t long after that that I ached to get a glimpse of Egon Spengler’s proton pack. By the time (more…)

August 23, 2011 by
Writing

When Are You Most Creative?

source

Some days you have it and some days you don’t.

It’s a total mystery as to the why either one happens.

As a friend pointed out when we had a discussion about this over the weekend, Steve Martin once said something along the lines of, “Forcing creativity is like trying to force a shit. You just can’t do it. You have to let it flow naturally.” Now, I tried Googling this quote for verification, but I can’t seem to find it anywhere which leads me to think that my friend is full of shit. However, I did find two OTHER delightful quotes from Steven Martin on creativity:

“Writer’s block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol.”

and

“Despite a lack of natural ability, I did have the one element necessary to all early creativity: naivete, that fabulous quality that keeps you from knowing just how unsuited you are for what you are about to do.”

(I beg to differ Martin’s claim of “a lack of natural ability”- he seems (more…)

August 22, 2011 by
Hipstercrite Life

Everything Dies, Baby, That’s a Fact.

Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact. But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.

Maybe it was the lyric or the couple of glasses of whiskey I drank earlier in the evening that kept pushing me deeper and deeper into the car seat. Hitting the back button on the stereo, I turned and gazed out into the blurry night every time Springsteen sang those words. I closed my eyes and felt the warm rush of tears as I thought about where his spirit was now that his body is gone.

“What happens to us when we die?” I blurted to my boyfriend as he drove us home from the memorial service. I was a child again, hoping that someone could give me a direct answer on this thing that looms over all of us.

He began answering matter-of-factly, the sort of answer one without a religious upbringing gives. Like me.

But I don’t want to believe that I’m not sure what to believe.

We sat two rows behind her. The widow of the young man who died so sadly. The sight of her petite shoulders occasionally (more…)

August 19, 2011 by