There is light in my lady's house

"Thank God you see me the way you do, strange as you are to me"

Interesting day. Starting from the very beginning of it, I had the pleasure of having one of the better conversations I can recall having with the lovely Samantha Escobar. All things were discussed and even as the conversation concluded around five in the morning, I was ready to keep going. I ended up not being able to fall asleep for another hour or so after that. Needless to say, I woke up late. Probably somewhere in the 11:30 - 12:00 region. I woke up thinking that the day might begin well having just made this connection with someone who up until a couple weeks ago was almost a complete stranger to me. However, I woke up feeling quite the opposite. I didn't want to get out of bed. There were children yelling at the top of their lungs outside, the ice-cream truck parked across the street sat for hours emitting its insufferably repetitive jingle of "Do Your Ears Hang Low?" and it was just one of those morning when you realize that you don't actually have any reason to get up and that just makes you sad. And then after finally getting up, I start feeling all of this anxiety.

• My car has been parked in the same place for 4 days. Is it ok?
• I don't have a job. I haven't worked a set in a month. Running out of money.
• How am I going to pay rent.
• My registration is still expired. Need to get new stickers.
• Mom is calling. What does she want? Is she going to ask if I've gotten any work? I don't want to deal with that.
• How long do I have to live in Koreatown? I kind of hate it. So much so that I don't even want to go outside and be reminded of it unless I have to.

So just all of this shit piles up in my head, my first instinct is to start drinking or to smoke but I convinced myself that wouldn't really make it better. So I'm sitting here having a fairly bad day when my phone rings. It's Mr. Trent Ellis and he has a job for me. Almost instantly I felt better. He got me a 2nd 2nd AD job on some short for the next six days at $125 a day. Not the best rate but I'll take it.

So anyway, my day got better. And as thoughts of all of the negative things left my mind, positive ones came rushing in.

• I'm going home in a little over a week.
• I get to spend July 4th in California for the first time with my good friends.
• I have friends that think of me when a job opens up.
• I'm living on my own and getting by.
• I just met one of the most intriguing, unique, lovely, inspiring people I've ever met and we seem to get along.
• Things are constantly changing. New things happening. Life is being lived and I'm feeling pretty goddamn lucky to be where I am.

Nights & Weekends

NIGHTS & WEEKENDS (2008)

Written & Directed by: Greta Gerwig and Joe Swanberg

So I just recently watched this movie. This was two days ago. I'd been searching through the Netflix "Instant Play" options and decided to do a search for The Duplass Brothers and in the results were

• Cyrus
• Baghead
• The Puffy Chair
• Nights & Weekends

Now the only reason Nights and Weekends popped up is because Jay Duplass is in the movie for a minute and I think he produced it or something. Also seeing that Greta Gerwig had so much involvement and because I enjoyed her performance in Baghead and in Greenberg, I decided to give this a try.

Almost immediately, with the opening shot of the film, you can tell what you're getting yourself into. It's clearly a very low budget movie with minimal camera work and an improvised script. Although there have been many instances in which I'll begin watching a movie like this and just instantly get fed up with it's unambitious nature, this was different.

It opens with Mattie and James, the film's protagonists fucking on the kitchen floor. Or rather preparing to bone. The camera is set in one position for the entire scene which lasts probably 5-7 minutes. And the scene doesn't actually portray any sex. They sloppily enter the kitchen, fall to the floor and spend these 5-7 minutes undressing each other. And it wasn't pretty, ya know. Articles of clothing don't come off as easy as movies usually depict. But with this, it felt so real. Like these two people are REALLY about to fuck. And from that point on I was hooked.

The film goes on and you soon realize that you're not in for a plot full of drama or really a plot at all. The film explores the difficulties of maintaining a long distance relationship. It's separated into two halves. The first half being a time when they were together all of the time. The second half depicting their relationship suffering from the long distance.

Say what you will. I understand this isn't a film that would generally receive very much enthusiasm, but I thought it was great. I felt that the two actors portrayed some of the more genuinely REAL performances I've seen in a long time. I believed that relationship. For a moment, I believed that these were actually people that some camera man was following around.

...and it really inspired me, ya know? I realized that, although the stuff I want to do will be slightly more plot driven, the most important thing I want to portray is real life. And this is a sentiment that is constantly thrown around by amateur filmmakers. People want to be "truthful" and "honest" in what they're portraying but that can come down to the truthful reaction Shia LaBeouf has when a robot is chasing him. When I say it however, I mean that I want to capture the moments that people live their lives for. The moments that make people nostalgic. Create scenarios where people can be totally and completely intrigued based not on just conflict necessarily but on a conversation, a mannerism or a look because it's just too real for them to look away.

And I really fucking hate when I get on these rants about where my convictions and passions lie because when I read it back to myself, I feel like I come off sounding like a douche.

But alas, I am who I am and I feel what I feel. And I felt more after watching this movie than I have felt doing anything in a long time.