Bush League: Paper Edit :: 02. 1.08
Spent a few weeks banging out a rough structure for Bush League with these paper cards. Long jobs.
Definitely looks like a meth addict lives here. Needs a dirty fish tank and a stained couch. The towel over the window is to keep the cops from controlling my mind with radio waves.
Tiger, Oak and Echo: Square One :: 02. 8.08
This project has been in a drawer for a long time now. It was my grad school thesis film that I wanted to make when I went back to Lithuania in 04/05. It proved to be way too ambitious. At the time I think it was a 30 page script. The whole thing crashed and burned, bam, straight into a brick wall of problems (see November 04 in the archive) ouch. It was a reckoning for sure.
I'm glad it failed when it did, no long-term damage done and I hadn't spent any real money on it yet. I've been slowly growing it ever since into a feature length script. When I was in Lithuania last October I met with another producer. It was a reminder of just how tough it is to get something like this done there. There's almost no industry, so there's almost no equipment around that's worthwhile. No money. But there are lots of theatre actors and lots of raw talent. And maybe more than anything, the whole country is jam packed with locations that are visually striking and completely authentic. I'm kind of hedging until the HD technology is ready for something as tough as this and within my reach financially.
The story is about a young man's rapid decent from innocent boyhood to soldierdom and guerrilla war in the forest. The initial inspiration came from my coworker Gintaras. He was my good friend and coworker when I was teaching English during Peace Corps in a small town called Kupiskis.
His story was simple. He said his uncle used to sleep sitting up with one hand under his chin and another across his leg. We were at his little ramshackle country cottage when he told the story. He tells stories a certain way, and his big ones almost always start with a mysterious opener. I was still new. I'd only been in Lithuania for six months at the time. I had no idea where I was and hadn't begun to tap into the things that had happened there.
"What?"
"That's how he slept in those days when one wind blew red and the other blew green. That's how it was in little farm houses like this one."
"Why did he sleep like that?" I didn't even know why he was talking about his uncle. I was watching TV on a tiny Russian made black and white.
"He went into the forest to help. He was some kind of patriot you know. In those days, the wind blew red during the day, the Soviets would come to take food." He was peeling vegetables with a knife and dropping them into a pan. His huge thumbs worked a carrot. "At night the wind blew green." He pointed out the kitchen window toward the trees.
"So that's the red wind, the Soviets. So what's the green wind?"
"The Forest Brothers, they were living in the forests. The partisans."
"Why at night?"
"That's the only time it was safe for them to move. They came to farms to get bread or potatoes, but you see it meant that the farmers were feeding both sides. They were trapped."
"So why did he sleep like that."
"He slept like that the rest of his life. I remember watching him in our apartment in Vilnius. He sat sleeping on the edge of his bed like this." He sat resting his head on one hand hand and crossing his lap with the other. "He was waiting to fight. He slept sitting on logs in the forest. Waiting in case of a fight, this hand on his gun."The image of a man sleeping like that, was a lightning strike on my imagination. What forces, what fears could be so strong that they could shape a man's behavior like that? Gintaras has a way of lighting history up. It's the moment that got me started on this.
Since then I've learned a lot of Lithuania's history and its tremendously dark and difficult. In less than a 80 years there've been four occupations, the Jewish holocaust, mass deportations to Siberia, over fifty years of Soviet occupation and two eras of democracy and independence. And much of the history is still alive in the memories and personalities of the oldest generation. It makes it an incredible place to talk to people. Its a little country physically, you can drive across it in less than a day. There are only around 3 million people, but it's a case study in human behavior and survival that seems almost infinitely deep.
Today, the old people who lived through WWII and the era of Stalinization that followed tell these stories with so much emotion that it can be overwhelming. There's a sense of urgency. Time is passing and the stories haven't been told. Under the Soviets history was suppressed, so it wasn't until the early nineties when the Soviets fell apart that people began to formally organize the history and present it. Still, most individuals have no outlet for what they know. The countries youth are understandably moving on.
I inadvertently took on a small part of the responsibility when I started this project.
At the moment the script is one act shy of being a full-blown feature script. I still need to write a prologue, which recently arrived in my head off the winds here in Baghdad. It's been a good place to ponder the story. Listening to soldiers talk has helped a lot.
Here is a drawing my friend Stephen Hawkings did last year. The Soviets are sweeping the area and the three main characters are caught as they try to secure enough food to wait them out. Chickens fly as the chase ensues and one of the Forest Brothers goes down. Stephen is doing more development drawings next week; I can't wait to see them. This is the very best reason to be a filmmaker: because it's a big form that has lots of space to invite talented people in to. I'll share them as they come.
He never updates it, but here's Stephens website: www.hawkbird.blogspot.com. Very talented guy me thinks.
In the meantime Bush League is slow cooking into a rough cut. I feel a lot relief as I edit it. I've been worried that a certain feeling had gone away. The first few times I ever edited I felt a really deep affection for the footage and lots of excitement. Very much like Christmas as a kid. It was a pleasure to go into it and watch it unfold. A lot of that feeling has come back with Bush League.
Drinking the Tigris: Obama's Time Cover ::
The newest light stencil. The TIME cover needed a tweak. I've got to give this guy my support, he's given me a much needed shot of inspiration. Whoever wins, I will be happy to close this era. It's been a dark age.
Bush League: Words on Reggae Fitzgerald :: 02.14.08
Man I love Fitz. I've been sending him a few bucks now and then to work on his third record. He names all of his records Kadandulu. He told me it's the name of a special bird that cries if its nest is destroyed. The last money I sent, he took half and bought a mountain bike. Makes me smile so much cause he was definitely sneaking, but I don't mind at all. Glad to help the guy, and glad he's not buying beer with the money.
I met him in Mzuzu, Malawi in 2004. He was walking around selling his cassettes out of a box. He had dreads back then and a knit Rasta cap. I bought a couple of tapes, but to be honest, never listened to them because I didn't have a cassette player. When I was back in Malawi last year, he caught me on the street and started hitting me up for a trip to America cause he thought he could do better there with his music. After that, I was dodging him for a little while cause I was scared of his full court press for a round trip ticket, then I don't know what happened, a few weeks later it hit me that I could help the guy out somehow. He wanted to promote his music and I had all my camera stuff, so we started planning for a video.
We needed to pick a song, so we walked down to a bar that had a tape player and put his tape in. His music started, and it rocked my brain. I didn't know his songs were that good till then. Edson, a local who's always around and can be seen wearing a yellow shirt in the video, started dancing. I was kind of impressed, but didn't know if it was really good, or maybe I was just wanting it to be good and liking the moment.
In the video, the room he wakes up in, is actually his sisters room. The little boy is dancing on his front porch. The big group of kids surrounding him, that's at a little school up the street. The bicycles are bicycle taxis. I paid them three or four bucks to peddle us around and I'm sitting backwards shooting off the back of one. The crowd in the street, those are the neighbors who were around and wanted to jump in. The night stuff indoors, that's all shot across the street from his house at a lodge/hotel. Some drunk guys made that difficult. The gold boom box I rented for ten bucks. The whole thing cost about 25 dollars to make, which is important cause film/video work is far too often about money. This is folk art to me. Both the music and the video. It's about the common person. Deep inside, this is really the filmmaker I want to be. People always say things like, "Oh, you could be the next Spielberg", That's who everybody thinks of when you say filmmaker, and I like Spielberg, but I want to be like Mark Twain or Woody Guthrie. I think about Hemingway's adventures all the time, and Steinbeck's endings. I also think about Emily Dickenson, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen a lot, but mainly I just think about being free. Free from the obsession that it's no good if it doesn't make money. That's is lame if 12 to 15 year old boys don't go to see it twice. That's is lame if agents don't call you when you're done.
It's been a long day; I'm tired and rambling.
I'm now a full blown fan of Fitz's music. He has another song called 'Penya' that I listen to all the time when I drive over here in Baghdad. I don't know what it means, but I yell along with it, "Peeeennnnyaa aaa aaa!" Damn, it makes me feel good!
Today I received this new email from Fitz:
"cy how are you, about me am just so fine.I want to tell u that the ulbum is finished.now i need to put in CDs for promotion ,and journey to radio stations Blantyre and lilongwe .Pliz help me anything little . Yewo tisanganenge. Fitz."
Congratulations to you Fitz. I know its not easy to make a record in Malawi.
I'm excited to hear the new songs, I hope some of them will find a place in the film. I'll send some dough his way, if you'll send some love for the guy. So, one more time, here's the video. Take a break, sit back and let it in cause Malawi is good for you! From my people to my people, your friend Fitzgerald Simfukwe!!!
Dis one hearrre!
Kadandulu, Fitzgerald Simfukwe -
Drinking the Tigris: Jon Taplin's Blog :: 02.24.08
I started reading Jon Taplin's blog about a month ago and have been impressed by his analysis of a half dozen important subjects. I left a comment on his blog the other day, was excited to see this response:
http://jtaplin.wordpress.com/2008/02/22/note-from-baghdad/
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