“How come your films aren’t funny anymore?”
This was a line I used to hear all the time when I switched from making short films to features.
Stolen Toyota
They are two different beasts. I made short films as slices of my life, with me as your deadpan narrator. With my features I was dealing with different issues and a totally different filmmaking style. I appear in all of my short films, I do not appear in any of my features. My features do have light moments but they are certainly not comedies.
I never set out to make funny films, they just happened. It was a combination of my writing, the locations, my delivery, and the films were all about experiences we’ve all had at some point. Family vacations, high school dating, and my car being stolen.
One year my film Stolen Toyota was among the films that opened the Eugene Film Festival. It’s about my faithful old Toyota pick up, that was stolen and totaled. It chronicles all of the hoops and absurdities I had to deal with from the police, and the insurance company. We even filmed the first time I saw my totaled truck in a wrecking yard after the theft. The film also featured four other people who had crazy stories about their cars being stolen and the stuff they had to deal with.
Stolen Toyota
Stolen Toyota has consistently been one of my most successful films and has played all over the US, Canada, and Europe.
I was in Eugene opening night, and it was great! The place was packed. People laughed at the right places. At the reception afterwards people were coming up to me telling me how much they loved my film. Many of them had their own stories about their cars being stolen. And yes, the film is funny, but not in a joke kind of way. It’s situationally funny.
Not to say that all of my short films are funny.
The following year on opening night, the Eugene Film Festival’s featured another of my films, Friday Night. I got an allergy shot and ended up in the ER in anaphylactic shock. According to one of the ER physicians I was lucky I got there when I did. If I had been 5 minutes later I probably wouldn’t have walked out.
I made the film less than 48 hours after I was released from the hospital. The experience was raw and I was still feeling all of the effects of the ER visit and the realization that I almost died. The film was shot in high contrast black and white using a red filter to minimize any grays. I put up a single key light high lighting just part of my face. I didn’t use any back light to separate me from the black background. The effect I was going for was that I was disappearing into the darkness. I added a blue filter in printing to make the film feel cold.
I told the entire story in a single take, and then we did a few cutaways and I told a few parts of the story a second time for editing purposes. I couldn’t have told the entire story again if I had tried, it was too draining, too emotional. The tears you see in the end, are real. It was a hard film for me to shoot but I felt that I needed to, in order to deal with the experience. I’m very proud of the way the film turned out, although it is really tough for me to sit through it because it is so emotional and raw.
Again, the theater in Eugene is packed. While Friday Night plays, you can hear a pin drop. Absolute silence. At the end people didn’t know how to react. It’s a tough film to watch, especially if you know me.
At the party afterwards people wanted to tell me how much they loved my film that screened the year before, Stolen Toyota. No one wanted to talk about Friday Night. I understood that. It wasn’t like they didn’t like the film, they didn’t know how to react to it, especially to me.
After I made Friday Night, I felt I had taken my short films as far as I could. I didn’t have anything that I had to make to get off my chest, if you know what I mean. I was satisfied with all of the shorts I had made, and I was ready to move on.
I believe all of my films, short or feature length, are personal in some way or another. They might not be autobiographical, but they are still very personal. When I started making features I was in a different mind space, and I was working with different issues. I was not thinking about making comedies, I had other things I needed to get off my chest. I also know how hard it is to keep humor flowing over 90 minutes, as compared with 7 minutes. It’s a totally different ball game. Like any artist, I wanted to move on and tackle different themes.
For years afterwards I got that comment, “How come you’re films aren’t funny anymore?”. I learned not to take it personally. Some people only like my work when it’s entertaining and funny. That doesn’t mean my features are bad films, they just aren’t what some people expected.
Obviously I moved on. I didn’t want to be trapped by my own short films for the rest of my career. I’m also very proud of my feature films. Oh hell, I’m proud of all of my work. Some films came closer to my original vision than others. Some of my films I find a little harder to sit through, that includes the shorts. But overall, I feel like I’ve made some pretty good films.
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While I was touring showing my films all over the country, I started writing books. I didn’t have time to make more films, and I was exhausted. I made a lot of films in a very short time. On the road I was doing guest lectures, teaching filmmaking workshops, going to film festivals, and driving like a crazy person. Over my seven years of touring I drove about 200,000 miles.
I started writing and the first couple of books were on filmmaking. It seemed a natural extension at that time. Then I wrote Road Dog about touring with my dog, Moses, and all of the people we met and the crazy adventures we had. Since then I’ve written two collections of short stories, From Arrah Wanna To Muleshoe, Misfit Stories From Misspent Lives with Mark A. Nobles, and Dennis Barton Is A Bastard And Other Stories.
And the question I’m being asked now?
“When you’re writing your stories are you already imagining them as films?”
No. I don’t think of them as films at all. My books and films are two absolutely different creatures. I’m writing short stories for totally different reasons than the ones I had when I was regularly making films. I don’t ever want to see my short stories as films. I am not interested in making them as films. I have said what I wanted to in each story and then it’s time for me to move on to the next one.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining about people’s reactions to my work. I love the fact that my short films reached such a huge audience and people continue to watch and react to them today, so many years after I made them. The reception to my features has been great as well.
My books continue to sell, slowly, but they are selling. And the people who have purchased the books reach out and tell me how much they like my stories, and want to know what’s coming next?
I’m grateful for the audiences I have, whether they like my work or not. The questions I’m asked are fine. It means that people are engaging with my work, once again whether they like it or not. But I don’t want to keep doing the same thing over and over. That’s not interesting to me. I want to expand on what I have done. I want to explore new themes and most importantly, I want to be a better writer, and a better filmmaker.
I have a lot of things I’m working on right now, both films and books. I’m looking forward to sharing them with you all as I complete them. And they are all different than what I have done in the past. That’s the part that I like.
Please remember, if there are artists whose work you like and they turn around and do something absolutely different than what you are used to, applaud them. Whether you like the work or not, applaud the artist and the fact that they are trying to grow. You don’t have to like everything someone does, but please don’t hold them back because it’s something you’re not a fan of. Let artists create freely. You never know, after they do something you don’t like, they might follow it up with something you think is fantastic and maybe it changes your life? Who knows?
I think we all win when artists grow, and create new and different work.
There is no Angry Filmmaker Rant this week. It’s not that I have nothing to rant about, I certainly do. I just haven’t written anything. I’m sure there will be a rant next week.
Remember, if you don’t like what I’m writing these days then unsubscribe. And don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
To the rest of you, thank you for reading, subscribing, and supporting me and my writing and filmmaking. I am continuing to heal from my recent health issues. Thank you all for your kind words.
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