So, here it is. It’s under 14 minutes long, and I would consider it a small film about a guy who feels like he’s getting older and should probably be doing something with his life already. This is his attempt to grow up and reach out at the same time. I hope you enjoy it.

Night Becomes Day from 4+1 Productions on Vimeo.

If you want more, click on over to our Flickr set and enjoy. Have a great weekend, may the sun continue to shine on you.
01 Busted

I couldn’t wait to get a few of my favorite shots out there to all of you. Some of these are outtakes, some might make it into the commercial. We haven’t color corrected anything yet, so this is just the way it came out of the camera.

Enjoy.

TEASER: The New Reliability from 4+1 Productions on Vimeo.

CREDITS:
Director: Jacob Hinmon
DP: Travis Cline
Art Director: Megan Pugmire
Stylist/Makeup Artist: Ebel Artistry
Actors:
Adrienne Vogel
Bernadette Miller
Adam Davis
Seth Allen

Mr. Grumpy Pants is a name that was given to me in response to my lack of enthusiasm to sign up for a lame “ride your bike to work” online campaign. The name seems to strike the right chord with those who know me, though, due most likely to the fact that no one has ever thought me to be anything but perfectly cheerful, jovial, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. The irony of a certain office mate calling me “Mr. Grumpy Pants” is striking, to say the least, and so people that know me laugh and laugh at the mention of it as my nickname at the office. I told my parents of the nickname while dining with them a while ago (knowing that my parents certainly do not deem me to be grumpy in any way) and my dad nearly fell over laughing — thus is the absurdity of calling such a genuinely good spirited person such as myself “Mr. Grumpy Pants.”

This said, I would like to talk a bit about things that bother me and keep me from reaching my maximum jovial-ness. Because everything bothers me, just not all at the same time.

Last night, Jake walked in with the mail and pointed out that Netflix had sent him and me (we both have Netflix accounts) a promo piece offering a free month of Netflix to friends and family. Jake set the mail down and asked, “at this point, who hasn’t heard of Netflix?”

—–> Jake pondering the economic impact of Netflix

This is a great question. The short answer is “no one.” If your friends haven’t told you about it or if your kids haven’t mocked you for not knowing about it, you have, on numerous occasions, been bombarded by Netflix pop-up windows while innocently surfing classy sites like www.espn.com and www.thereifixedit.com.  Jake and I talked a bit about Netflix and how it has become so well-known so quickly. There’s a pretty simple reason for this — it’s fast, convenient and has a HUGE selection of movies to choose from. (Also, there are now a ton of films/documentaries/TV shows that one can stream instantly on Netflix’s website.)

—–> Jake’s Netflix ID is “Movie Lover”. Anytown, USA is a great place to live.

I am a bit sad about the demise of the local video stores. I used to love going to Blockbuster on the weekend to get a new release or to browse the older titles. In a way, it’s similar to the demise of the newspapers. These two things played large roles in my life growing up and sometimes it is crazy to realize that neither Blockbuster or newspapers will be around in 10 years. However, change, though it can make me super nostalgic, can also make my life easier. I can check mlb.com’s app on my iPhone to see if the Mariners won instead of waiting for the paper in the morning. (The Oregonian doesn’t even report the Mariners’ score because the games end too late – it’s easy to see why papers are falling by the wayside.)

—-> Breaking news! Obama elected President in November! Sorry it took so long to tell you, we’re becoming irrelevant!

We all know about how Netflix has made viewing movies more convenient. One aspect of Netflix that I really enjoy and that is not so talked about, is how it recommends movies that I might like. I would say that 75% of those recommendations do not appeal to me, but what’s the harm in a recommendation? (Actually, certain movie recommendations can reflect poorly on your taste and hurt your pride. I would like American Pie 3? Apparently, Netflix thinks I have awful taste!)

—-> “We think you’d like Alien vs. Predator.” I hate myself.

Netflix recently recommended that I watch Mongol. I ended up watching it and really enjoyed it. I would recommend it to anyone  who, like me, enjoyed Braveheart and Last of the Mohicans. The movie is the story of Genghis Khan, from the time he is a child until he is the Khan of all the Mongols. We see him experience love and heartbreak, success and defeat. Through it all, the director, Sergei Bodrov, paints Genghis Khan as being a just, moral leader who protected the Mongols from tribal conflicts (not how I envisioned him). The cinematography is beautifully done — I enjoyed all the different landscape shots- from an old, prescient monk stumbling through the desert to save the future Khan, to Genghis Kahn as a child trekking towards snowcapped mountains to ask his deity to spare his life. There are a lot of violent war scenes, but I found them much less gruesome than Braveheart or Last of the Mohicans (no decapitations or ripped out hearts). (This film is in Mongolian and Mandarin and was nominated for the 2008 Oscar for best Foreign Language Film.)

Without Netflix, I doubt I would have ever watched this movie. It wasn’t a life-changing event, but it was entertaining. So, though I am nostalgic for the old, simple days of going to Blockbuster to rent one movie on the weekend, I can appreciate the change that Netlix brought into my life.

—–> Remember the good times? Not even a little bit? But we sell overpriced snacks!

Listen. I just want immunity from their pop up ads. Can’t I get some kind of code that grants me immunity while surfing online? Don’t they know I’m already a member?! C’mon!!

—–> Surprise! Stop enjoying your web experience and look at me! Look at me! Look at me! I don’t care that you are already a member! I don’t care! Look at me!

-Mr. Grumpy Pants

One of my favorite parts of the film is when Steve and Ned first meet Bill Ubell, the bond company stooge. They step into the elevator and Steve immediately says, “I hope you’re not going to bust my balls, pal.”

Which leads to this exchange:
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you’re a bond company stooge.”
After a moment of disbelief BIll replies, “Well, I’m also a human being.”

Then Steve apologizes and they demonstrate their teamsmanship through a group cheer like the one you would do at the end of a Little League game. This kicks off their next big adventure.

The spirit of Life Aquatic lies in its team. They may be mismatches and castoffs from society, but they work together to make documentary-movie adventures. They collaborate.

Collaboration has been on my mind lately. A great team can make all the difference. But, as mentioned here and elsewhere, sometimes we talk more about collaborating then we actually collaborate. In that spirit, I’m going to talk more about collaboration. Or, more precisely, I’ve made a list of a few reasons why I believe collaboration to be as rare and difficult to accomplish as it is exciting to talk about.

1. No, you don’t understand: I’m the star of this show

As Louis CK pounded home on Conan O’Brien’s show last year, my generation (whatever you call past GenX) is the most spoiled generation ever. Not only are we spoiled rotten, but we also believe it is our destiny to become rich, famous, and important. The drive to do something great, or be someone who contributes is easily surpassed by our egotism and expectations of rewards handed out for whatever we feel like doing. The star mentality doesn’t lend itself to working with others.

2. The undeveloped role player

A second difficulty we find is lack of training. When were we ever taught to play a role on a team?  Remember how well those “group projects” went in high school? Three people sitting around procrastinating, while the one hard worker planned and worked and took the project home to finish working on it late into the night. You think she wants to work with you on the next big thing now?

If you played a team sport and lucked into a great coach, you may have learned a bit of it then. If he (or she) could pound anything through your thick skull. Even then, it takes years to learn this stuff. And our schools (higher ed included) aren’t doing a good enough job at instructing us how to collaborate.

3. With no reason not to, we surround ourselves with ourselves

These days, it’s easy to completely sequester ourselves from anyone with an alternative opinion. I’m an artist? I don’t have much need for an accountant or a businessman as a friend. I’m a cop, why would I hang out with a writer? We’ve come to a point where it feels so comfortable and easy to surround ourselves with people who think, believe, talk like, and are interested in all the same things as us. And that’s what we do. The trick is that doing this takes away an essential element of collaboration: In order to collaborate, each party must bring something unique to the table. So if I surround myself with director-types, we’ll have a grand old time quoting Wes Anderson movies (and trust me, it is grand), but chances are we won’t be developing synergistic genius.

I don’t have the answers, but I suspect mixing in a dissenting opinion, putting the process and end result ahead of personal glory, and doing only what we can (as it is said genius does) can’t be bad ideas.

Beyond this, why do collaborations fail? And why don’t they come to fruition in the first place? While you’re thinking, maybe we should get together and make something great.

Self-directed Pseudo Study Abroad (Paris for three weeks)

In the 2003-2004 school year a few of my fellow film students and I felt like we weren’t getting as much out of the available screenwriting classes as we could. We put our brains together and started a writer’s group. We brilliantly referred to ourselves as ‘writer’s group’, or sometimes ‘the writer’s group’ when our egos were especially swollen. Because we were all single, and up for anything, our Saturday night meetings often flowed into late night discussions on any number of topics. We started meeting for lunch occasionally. Next thing you knew we were playing basketball into the wee hours of the morning, catching an afternoon matinee, or accidentally talking until 5:30 am on a school night. It was the first time in my life that I was really part of what I would call a ‘tight crew’. Everything flowed with that group.

I mention all this by way of introducing how I wound up in France for a month in the summer of 2004. My friend Shane was widely touted as the most talented member of the writer’s group (he’s now a grad student at Columbia).  I had lived in France for a couple of years and was always thinking about going back. Shane was just a fan of France (this was right at the height of the ‘Freedom Fries’ movement as well, shows you what kind of  character Shane has). He and I began throwing around the idea of going to France that summer. Every couple of weeks we would ask each other if we were really serious about going to France. I’m serious if you are, is how we would respond. It was like a staring contest and neither of us blinked. It’s safe to say everyone wound up a winner. The prize: a weekend in New York, a week visiting my future wife in London (who was on a legitimate Theatre Study Abroad program), and three weeks in Paris, France.

Most of our time in Paris was spent going to movies. We saw the city, of course. We went to museums, ate crêpes (and gyros which are really good there), sat in café’s, took pictures and all that. But one of the great things about the French is their love of the cinema. They have a nationwide Festival of the Cinema, for crying out loud. Three days worth of movies for a quarter (or something very cheap), day and night, as many as you can see. Beyond this they have a healthy respect for all-night retrospectives and the genre-themed series. We were able to easily see two to four movies a day, all in English (Shane doesn’t speak French, he just loves the place). While we were there one particular theater was running a series of films noir. They had one film that played all week, and then the other screen was playing a movie that changed every day. We were there often. At this theater the usher actually walks you in and shows you to your aisle, and you tip them some change for their efforts. It took us a day or two to catch on to this practice, but we made up for it from then on.

We caught a Jim Jarmusch all-night marathon. That night was our record, four movies in one twenty-four hour period. But the gem of the movie-viewing on this trip was Some Came Running.

13. Some Came Running
Some Came Running stars Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Shirley Maclaine. We watched it one night, and then the next night we took Lucie, the daughter of the family we were staying with, out to watch it again. I hadn’t ever heard of it before we went, and we couldn’t find it on dvd upon our return, so we bought it on laserdisc. That’s how excited we were about this movie. There’s no use restraining myself when I talk about it, and now that it’s available on dvd many of you will be able to watch it and will inevitably be disappointed (according to Posnanski’s rating system). But there’s no slowing down my enthusiasm for it. The bright lights at the carnival ending are certainly outdated, the story is couched in melodrama and could seem old-fashioned. But this is the movie that still has me saying that Shirley Maclaine is hands down the best actress of all-time.

Let’s break down what I love about this movie:
1. Vincente Minelli uses the melodrama structure to critique the societal airs put on by small town America circa 1950s
2. Shirley Maclaine disappears for ⅔ of the film and still owns it
3. The shear amount of drinking people did back then (at least in this movie) was unbelievable
4. The contrast between the teacher and Maclaine’s character
5. The relationship between Sinatra’s brother and sister-in-law is priceless
6. As writer’s group member Lee S. later put it, “You think it’s going to go one way, and then it turns out going a completely different way.”

All of these elements combined to create a viewing experience that I will never forget.  Did you ever like a movie (or song, or anything really) so much that you want to share it with everyone? But then when you’re watching it you are so nervous that they won’t appreciate it like you do that you almost can’t enjoy watching it? That’s the way this one is for me.

14. Elephant
Elephant was another movie I saw in France. I had been wanting to see it since it’s release, but for some reason missed it while in the states. Some people aren’t that into his current ‘realism’ style. I love it. I find it mesmerizing. In this case I think the style is perfect for the content. We know what’s going to happen, and we just dreamily follow along  as it unfolds.

There’s a moment in the film where the camera passes through the lunch room and it drifts by a couple in the midst of a mini-argument. The girl says something like, “I don’t understand why you would say that. A couple of weeks ago when I sang the national anthem everyone liked it.” And the camera drifts off. There’s something about the way the girl nails that line that I loved.  The timing had to be just right. With the camera going on one long take, she had to deliver her line at a specific time, and in the perfect way. That’s a lot more work than you would imagine. With that one line I had a glimpse of their whole relationship.

This exemplifies what I love about the style. The small moments are magnified by the silence that surrounds them.

Nearly made the list:
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
Les Choristes
Force of Evil

Read parts I and II while waiting for the final part of this series, coming soon!

Movie Store Clerk/Film Student

In 2001 I went to college. I packed my bags into my old VW bug and hit the road. My school experience covered 5 years, and to be honest, some pretty typical “film school nerd” type movies. But just because these movies are loved by many, doesn’t mean they aren’t great. It also doesn’t mean I didn’t have great experiences watching them.

7. Silence of the Lambs
When I first headed out to go to school I left in mid-July and crashed at my aunt and uncle’s house until I could find a place to stay. I quickly got a job at Blockbuster and began enjoying the free rentals that came along with it. Since I was about 10 at the time Silence of the Lambs came out and never saw it, I decided to check it out one night after I finished the late shift. I got back to their place at around 1:30 am. I went down to the basement so as not to disturb anyone and popped the movie in. I sat there in the dark and watched the whole thing. By myself. I’m not usually into scary movies, they just don’t scare me that often. But try watching this movie by yourself in a basement, in the middle of the night. The creepiness factor was through the roof. I definitely did the “Cautious, cautious. Quickly, quickly. FAST!” walk back up the stairs and to my room. It’s safe to say I did not play it cool, despite my intentions.

8. Blair Witch Project
Since I was out of the country and not paying attention to movies at the time this had its theatrical release, I missed the whole experience of it being supposedly real and making a quarter of a bajillion dollars and all that. So it wasn’t until 2002 that I finally sat down to watch it. Again, I was home alone. For some reason my roommates were gone, and it was late again. THis is pretty much the only other movie besides Silence of the Lambs that has ever really freaked me out. These were my two scary movie experiences. It looks like a pretty simple recipe: watch alone, in the middle of the night, make sure it’s earned its ‘legitimately scary’ chops. Done and done.

8. The Royal Tenenbaums and 9. The Man Who Wasn’t There
Even though these movies don’t have much in common (and I’m sure every reader saw them making it on this list from a mile away), they’re on the list and I’ll always think of them together. They came out within 6 weeks of each other. I saw each of them probably 4 or 5 times in the theater, including one time when my buddy Sean and I drove about an hour to a Pub Theater to catch The Man Who Wasn’t There and then stopped off on the way home to watch The Royal Tenenbaums. That was a good movie day.

When you add in Ocean’s Eleven and Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (I’m sure I’m forgetting a couple others) to the mix, this was a pretty spectacular two month period for movie releases.

10. All the Real Girls
A buddy from one of my film classes told me I had to get my hands on this movie. Our entire friendship was essentially based on him recommending this movie to me, and me loving it. It’s a small town romantic comedy, done right. From the second Bust Ass (yeah that’s the character’s name) orders “a hamburger and, um cottage cheese” I knew something special was happening. The visuals, the pace, the dialogue, all right up my alley. It’s probably the most quotable movie of the Aughts (as I’m going to call this decade when I’m 65 and older).  Heavily influenced by Terrence Malick’s style, director David Gordon Green jumped right to the top of my favorite directors list.

Incidentally, this movie played a key role in my strategy to win over my future wife. I lent her the movie to watch before we even started dating. She watched it and was so overwhelmed by how good it was she immediately called me. I missed the call, and she sat there having an existential crisis until I called her back. Note to those pursuing women: bowling them over with great movie recommendations goes a long ways, but only if they’re part of an overarching and well thought-out strategy. Don’t think your good taste in movies will get the whole job done.

11. Punch Drunk Love
My buddy Niel once accused this movie of being the password to get into the secret-hipster-indie parties that he alleged I attend. It has all the elements you need: directed by P.T. Anderson, Adam Sandler playing an off-beat role, inaccessible use of sound/music/color. This movie played in my city for two weeks, and I think I saw it three times in that period. I knew the window was going to be short, so I took full advantage. What I’m trying to say is, I love Punch Drunk Love. Maybe it was that I loved watching people leave the theater when they realized this wasn’t Waterboy II, of course it has to do with P.T.’s style and Sandler’s performance. But there was something so simple and pure at the center of this movie (ironic considering the plot catalyst) that got to me emotionally.

People make fun of me for it, but I still always ask why Adam Sandler doesn’t do more movies like this.

12. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Every year there are movies released that are supposed to be great. The autumn leaves start to fall, the studios start releasing the heavyweight Oscar hopefuls. Expectations are high. The great sports writer Joe Posnanski has a modified system for rating movies. Instead of just giving a movie a number of stars, you take the number of stars you are expecting and subtract that from the number of stars you actually give the movie. So if I was expecting to get a 3 star experience from Juno and I ended up with a 2 star experience it gets a -1 and was therefore an overall disappointment.

This gives you a better idea of your actual movie experience than a simple star ranking (I think I got his system right, and I wish I could link you to his explanation of it, but I couldn’t find it in his archives). My point is that, with raised expectations, a movie rarely delivers adequate or full satisfaction. I’ve gone to dozens of movies I had fairly high expectations for and left slightly unsatisfied because the movie was only “really good” and didn’t knock my socks off.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was seen coming. The hype was through the roof due to the great trailer and the talent involved (Gondry-Kauffman-Kuras-Carey-Winslet-Ruffalo et al). It still knocked my socks off. I think it knocked pretty much everyone’s socks off (save the most jaded, cynical film snobs). It was just that good. I was on board from the get go, but here are a few moments that sealed the deal:

1. When Elijah Wood knocks on Jim Carey’s window out of the blue and asks if he can help him
2. When old Jim Carey still gets beat up by the little bully
3. Any scene with David Cross or Elijah Wood in it
4. And of course the last scene between Carey and Winslet where they decide, despite themselves that they want to try again

Going to see it opening weekend I ran into at least a dozen friends, and at the end we all just kind of stood there, stunned, not really knowing what to say (except Shane who claimed on the way out that he didn’t like it one bit because there was not a single pirate involved. He was going through a pirate thing at the time).

Sometimes a movie lives up to its hype. My expectations were a 4 star movie, and I got a 5+ star movie.

Nearly made the list:
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Adaptation
Lost in Translation
George Washington
Dogville (this probably deserves its own post)

Continue reading Part III. Click if you missed Part I of this series.

I’m going more or less chronological from when I saw them. This doesn’t always correspond with a release date. I’m going to break them up into ‘eras’, or time periods of my life, just for fun.

Adolescence, the early years

The summer of ‘93 I spent in Salt Lake City living with my buddy Jonathan’s family. My parents were getting divorced, I was 13 years-old. And we basically spent our summer getting slurpees, going to the dollar theater and playing baseball. Not a bad way to spend a summer, if you could ignore the divorce part. The first three movies come from that summer. In order:

1. Jurassic Park
We saw Jurassic Park the opening weekend at Trolley Square.  We waited in a line that wrapped all the way around the corner for what seemed like at least an hour. The place was packed. The theater was huge, fitting maybe four or five hundred people. It had stadium seating. This was not standard in 1993, and I had never been in a theater like this before. Every seat was taken.

In the age of seamless CGI, it’s easy to forget how awesome Jurassic Park was.  There were dinosaurs up on that screen, and they looked real! And they were coming right at us! People were screaming and curling up in their seats. Not me of course, I just gripped my arm rests and did my best to play it cool. Maybe the experience is magnified because I was thirteen. But Jurassic Park was a legitimately tense movie, with the T-Rex chasing the car, and of course, the Velociraptors. All around good fun.

2. and 3. Groundhog Day and The Sandlot
I put these two together, because they were basically interchangeable in my experience. As I mentioned, we spent most of our summer playing baseball and going to the dollar theater. These two movies were playing at the dollar theater and we must have seen them each six or eight times. Great, classic movies that always remind me of being 13 in the summertime. It still gets a little dusty in my house any time I watch the end of The Sandlot when Benny ‘The Jet’ Rodriguez steals home. Benny was never on the juice. He may have lost a step or two, but none of us should be surprised to see some fireworks out there. Great times.

Nearly made the list:
Last of the Mohicans (my first R-Rated movie. This is when I first discovered they’re not evil, they’re just really cool!)
Braveheart
Reservoir Dogs
Pulp Fiction

Adolescence, the later years

I guess I didn’t watch many movies during the school year when I was a kid. I spent a lot of time playing sports and driving around.

I graduated High School in 1998, and that summer took a few classes at the local community college, College of the Canyons. They had a deal where the classes were free for recent graduates if you signed up by a certain time. I took two Film classes and an English class. Having a couple classes a week and not much else to do, I got in a ton of movie time. This was an eye-opening time in my movie watching life. A transition from the “That was awesome!” era of my youth, to the “artsy-fartsy, independent/foreign film snob” era of my post-adolescence (still trying to find my way out of that one).

4. Blue
As part of my contemporary film studies classes we watched Kristof Kieslowski’s Three Colors Trilogy, Blue, White, and Red. I think you are supposed to like Red best, it’s the last one, it’s about re-connection and redemption. But for some reason it was Blue that opened up an entire new way of looking at movies for me. This movie showed me their potential. The elliptical ending (that was later lifted quite egregiously in Donnie Darko) was a game changer. I didn’t know what it meant, and when the movie was over I watched as my professor walked to the front. I fully expected him to explain what had just happened, what it meant, and why the director did it. I expected answers.

What I got was, “I have no idea what the ending meant.”

Having been raised on the pre-packaged U.S. style of clear-cut, make-sure-the-audience-doesn’t-have-to-think endings, this blew my mind. In a good way. You could say I’ve been trying to watch this movie for the first time again ever since.

5. Saving Private Ryan
I was listening to a podcast conversation the other day that was talking about how great Saving Private Ryan was, and it really brought back the experience for me. I went in to seeing this movie knowing that it was going to be an important one. But the first 20 minutes of the movie depicting the D-Day landing were unbelievable. They made me sick to my stomach. That’s probably as close as I’ll ever get to experiencing war. I left the theater in a thoughtful daze. The combination of innovative technologies and attention to detail were amazing.

6. Swingers
I’ve probably watched this movie more than 25 times. At age 18, I just knew it was cool. Trent was money, and I wanted to be as smooth a talker as he was. As I watched it again and again, I appreciated a lot more what Jon Favreau was doing with the Mikey character (as hard as it is to watch). And then when I got to my film school days, I really admired what these guys pulled off in terms of movie making craft: tight script, fresh take, low-low budget, fast shoot, indie cult hit. Great template for the late ’90s indie movie. In retrospect, I think it’s amazing Favreau put this together, and watching Doug Liman’s later movies I always smile about how he got his start on Swingers. I still want to write the next perfect role for Vince Vaughn, and direct him in it. That guy hasn’t fully explored his potential yet.

Nearly made the list:
The Big Lebowski (ironically, is probably higher on my list of favorites than any of these three, definitely watched it more)
Good Will Hunting
Fargo

Click to read part II of 18 movie experiences that changed me.