Watching the sun rise from a rice field.

In many ways, I believe I was undone by Glass City.

Let me explain. For the two or three of you reading this blog who might not know, I started a theatre company some years ago called Still Waiting Productions, a charity troupe of young artists that put on a show every summer, even for a couple of years after I left the company to manage itself. The best summer of my life, coined The Five-Year Summer once upon a time, directly belonged to that company and to its members, many of whom I now call my closest friends. That summer inspired Glass City, the first feature film I ever wrote, shot or produced. I wrote a budget, I assembled a crew helmed by director - and future best man - Cole Simon, and I had the best filmmaking experience of my life. Nothing has ever remotely come close to toppling it.

I couldn't begin to tell you why. I've worked with better and more experienced crews since. I've accomplished far greater projects. I've been to Bangladesh and back, I've shot a six-figure film, I've directed and produced a SAG feature, and I've survived and thrived as a freelance artist in a bustling city. Why does a film like that hold such weight for me? It's flawed, it represents everything a beginner filmmaker does - that is, cobble together all their influences into one generally unoriginal piece - and not a single shot from it exists on my demo reel today.

I remember Dostoyevsky. "Something that made us, for a time, better perhaps than we are." I've come to realize in the wake of the past projects I've tackled that nothing will ever eclipse that good and true feeling I felt each day I was on that set. The feeling of crafting that first film. The joy of knowing that, for better or worse, I was with my friends every step of the way and they were with me right back.

And it's not that these past projects haven't had that last bit. I wouldn't trade a single person on these crews for anyone. But, as a producer, I don't think I've ever felt more alone. And, even as I acknowledge the immensely wondrous job Justin's done on Separation Anxiety - in my mind, there's no one else better, even me - I don't have the buoyancy of cinematography to keep me from getting down each day.

For two years and change now, I have been trying to replicate a feeling and a time that cannot be replicated. I can't keep putting myself in that. I don't want to. I remember the last time I felt lighter than air shooting a film: in Bangladesh, sitting in the middle of a rice field with an HD camera the size of my fist, capturing the most majestic sunset I've ever experienced. That was the moment I realized I was doing something no one in the world had ever done. And that was the reason watching Strong Bodies Fight last weekend moved me to tears. It reminded me, for that brief moment, why I chose this life.

I want to be reminded again.

CALL FOR EXTRAS - Separation Anxiety

Friends:

We're over halfway through production on Separation Anxiety, and the last five days will definitely be the most challenging for us, so we need all the help we can get!

If you're interested and able, we're looking for extras to serve as airline customers at the Toledo Express Airport from 8:00am-5:00pm Tuesday thru Saturday, Nov. 17-21. PAs are also definitely needed!

PLEASE send an email to glasscityfilms@gmail.com with your full name and contact information (address, email, phone) if you can make it out! We need specific dates, times, and information for airport security reasons. Food and snacks will be provided, along with IMDB credit once the film's out.

Come out and be a part of the biggest Glass City Films production yet!

Cheers,
John Klein
Producer, Separation Anxiety

A few hiccups, but all is well.

With the blog, I mean. I updated once - see below - and for the next week, my blog was for no discernible reason completely invisible to the world. If I typed in the URL, I would get a white screen and a random error message for which the kind folks at Blogger had no answer whatsoever. Le sigh. Yet, here I stand, and here I shall write.

I leave for Columbus in 18 hours to begin production on Separation Anxiety. After running the gauntlet on Happily After, and after our 13-day stint on Glass City, for some reason I can't bring myself to be nervous about this. With minor exceptions, everything has gone so tremendously well that I worry we're missing something. Because it's either that, or we've come perilously close to perfecting this business of low-budget film production.

Everything feels so close, and yet so far. Tomorrow? Really? And in four weeks, we'll be done? Really? I want it all to be over so I can take that much-deserved break, but after this, there's the uncertainty of editing and, more importantly, distribution. Part of me is absolutely terrified, simply because of the subjective nature of the business, but the other side of me knows that these two films - Happily After and Separation Anxiety - are far and away the best films I've ever done. That has to count for something, somehow.

I need to go see a movie in the theater. I had the pleasure of seeing a preview screening of Where The Wild Things Are about a month ago, but that was the first film I had seen in two months. I didn't capitalize on the summer season like I had hoped, and I'm really eager for the awards season to start so I can make a point of checking out films on the art-house circuit. Regardless, I feel like either going to the movies is too expensive, or I don't have enough time, or I can't find the excitement in me for any of the dreck that's out right now. Who knows.

Something's coming, something good. If I can wait...

Inauguration Day

I've spent a bit less than a month not updating my Xanga blog, and I realized early on in the process how much I missed it. Not the format, and not the community, but the simple act of recording my thoughts and sending them out into the ether. So, in the wake of finally and fully completing principal photography on Happily After, and as I stand on the precipice of producing Separation Anxiety, I decided it was time to start anew. A change of scenery, if you will.

We finished our pickups for Happily After at 6:30am on Wednesday, October 20, 2009. 21 days of shooting, spread across two months. I suppose it was rational to expect the longer schedule; between stunts, animal talent, and the sheer number of locations and scenes, there was no chance of this film following Glass City's insanely short timetable. Too many company moves, too many issues with actor availability, too many things all around. And then, of course, the fateful injury of our lead actress. God bless SAG's insurance package and a woman with the heart of a lion who doesn't know the meaning of "recovery time."

I've had trouble adequately describing my first experience as a director of a feature film. Certainly, I feel like I acquitted myself well, simply by virtue of finishing. I didn't make any enemies, I kept my set running smoothly, and I learned a great deal as the shoot progressed about building the structure of a scene from the ground up rather than starting from one department's needs. Call it the cinematographer in me to start with the visuals, but it's not the best strategy sometimes. And I would say I enjoyed it, as much as I would say the position didn't fit me as well as I thought it might.

I'm excited to see the finished product, though, even more so than I thought I'd be after wrapping. This is genuinely going to be a good, sometimes shocking movie, and I can't wait to hear people's marveled reactions at our budget, our shoot schedule, and our war stories. The film festival circuit will be exciting, indeed.

I haven't quite adjusted to the fact that we'll be shooting Separation Anxiety 11 days from now. That I'll be living in Ohio for a month. I won't say I'm worried, but I will say I'm absolutely dreading being away from my fiancee for a month; the longest amount of time I've been away from her since she moved to Chicago is two weeks. Brutal.

Did I mention, by the way, that I'm looking extremely forward to getting married? Part of what's been so difficult about the past six months, I think - beyond the insane schedule and the money woes - is the lack of any stability whatsoever. It stuns me more and more to think that I'm excited to find some sort of steady job and become a house cat of sorts with my wife. I've always been eager for that, but the rush of freelancing initially made me wonder if I could sustain it forever; having been through it for several years now, I know there's an end game in sight. It also helps tremendously that I'm madly in love and that Kathleen pretty much rocks my world. Has it truly been over four years already? Wow.

I'm exhausted. I can't wait for a vacation.