Source Code

Why Filmmaking is Like Software Design

http://filmmakermagazine.com/67052-why-filmmaking-is-like-software-design/

Pitch Black

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

– Dylan Thomas

The Pact

Thinking she might accept my overture, I sent her a couple presents in past years
She kindly ignored me, so this year I sent her two, without a box
Heard nothing back but saw her out on the town, her golden hair dancing in the sun, surrounded by a flock of more handsome fellows
She pretended she didn’t see me but I caught her looking in my direction, wondering, perhaps, if another girl might come along one day, and she’d miss out on a guy as sweet as me,
maybe then, she’ll call

Let the Right One In

I stand at a crossroads, no compass in hand. Behind me, a long rocky path that began with hope and aspiration but has led here, to this more humble and obscure place. I’ve come to know one who I met along the way, walking side by side with me on those cold bitter nights, always eager to point out the paths I might’ve chosen. Should you embark upon this trail, you will come to know him too.

The Shining

The cataract moon glows dimly, well past midnight. It’s taken a little time, too much perhaps, to move its shadow across my desk. My hand aches and my mind…well, it’s not what it used to be. But nevertheless I lay my pen upon this empty page knowing that I’ll soon feel your cold hand upon my shoulder, urging me to come back to bed.

Magnolia

Not a horror film per se, but raining frogs nonetheless…

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Not long after my dad died of cancer, my friend Jake and I killed about a thousand baby frogs. That’s the God’s honest truth. We shot ‘em all dead with our BB guns. It was senseless, stupid shit. I remember the way they all froze, no survival instinct. “Move you fucking little bastards! Just jump in the water! Get out of the way! Do something, anything!!” It was like their whole purpose in life was to die that day, to be shot and left to rot along the edge of a murky black pond tucked within the bowels of Long Ridge Road. You should’ve seen them, the helpless little bastards, the way they flopped over, onto their backs. It was so pitiful. Plip. Plip, Plip, Plip. Each one, pierced by a copper pellet, two, tops. Their soft white under bellies, flipped face up, left festering under the warm afternoon sun. I swear we must’ve killed at least a thousand. I wondered if anyone would find them. Dead frogs. At least a thousand, easily. I know it may sound strange, but it was all rather peaceful. It really was. Jake and I hardly said anything to each other as we cocked back another round and fired at will. Plip. Plip, Plip, Plip. This was our little Columbine. It was pitiful.

We arrived on dirt bikes with spring-loaded pellet shooters sticking out of our pockets. Ride ‘em cowboy! Hee, haw!! The small dark pond—it was smelly and black—bordered one of many trails we’d ride. My bike was a ’79 Honda XR-80 with a thick dull black stripe that ran along its shiny red steel gas tank, Jake’s, a Kawasaki KD-100, with a bulbous orange gas tank, was exactly like his sister’s. Her name was Mattie, she was a tomboy, and half her face was a little bigger than the other half. Mattie wasn’t there that day, for some reason. The Kawis, that’s what we called the KDs, had two-cycle motors, the kind that whine like chainsaws when you rev ‘em. Neeee, neee, neee, nee, nee, nee! You had to manually mix the gas and oil together. If the mixture was too rich, they’d leave a long trail of blue smoke behind, usually left for me to chase. “More is better,” Jake would say, “If it’s too lean, the rings will wear. Maybe even seize up.” So he always aired on too rich. Man, was I jealous, my Honda didn’t make any smoke and it usually had trouble outrunning the Kawis. It had a four cycle engine, a four banger, or thumper, as the biker rags called them. To me that just meant slower and NO FUCKING BLUE SMOKE.

My dad promised me a minibike before he died. My mother and brother followed through on that promise, not even two weeks after they buried him, with a Christmas present from J.R. Motorcycles in Greenwich. But my XR wasn’t exactly a minibike, it was more of a trail bike, more like a real fucking motorcycle, and that was a good thing in my book. I was happy and it let me forget about everything, school, homework, my dad, cancer, you name it, everything. It was divine.

The Dark Knight Rises

A friend made a comment about my films. He said there was something “dark and edgy” about them that intrigued him, but he didn’t know what my “director’s voice” was. On my IMDb page there’s a “real life” quote that I’ve been trying to have them delete, with no success. (Thank you, Amazon.) Anyway, it’s kind of embarrassing and reads, “I’m here to write and direct feature films that explore my childhood fascination with the moments that exist between life and death, dreaming and waking, yin and yang.” It’s pretentious bullshit. I wrote it years ago, when I first got into the business (and really didn’t know what I was talking about). I was told by another friend at the time that I had to have a “Director’s Vision” statement before submitting any material to the Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab. With a quote like that, no wonder I was never accepted.

Anyway, the other night I’m lying in bed, unable to sleep (not an unusual occurrence), and I was thinking, “so what exactly is my director’s voice and do I even have one?” I’d read in a book that there are only three kinds of working directors: the competent, the good, and the great. I’ve made four features, so I must be fairly competent, but without knowing my “voice,” my “vision,” how can I possibly improve? Then it occurred to me, perhaps it’s woven within my own personal story, of how and why I got into the film business. God willing, I’ll turn 45 in October – on the 9^th, to be exact (I always liked sharing the same birthday with John Lennon). Compared to other filmmakers, I became one rather late in life, around age 36. I chose to walk away from a successful and lucrative career in software to chase a childhood fantasy. My dad came down with colon cancer at 45 and died at 48 so I didn’t want to look back on my life, as I approached forty, and realize that I hadn’t followed my dreams. Despite being pretty good at software design, it never felt quite like my thing, my passion. I learned how to excel at something that I didn’t love so I figured the sky would be my limit in filmmaking. Looking beyond any potential risks (there were many more than I predicted), I felt I had to make a change.

So there I was, lying awake, thinking about my first film, The Other Side of the Tracks, which is all about stagnation and the importance of “moving on.” Then, it occurred to me, my second, The Melancholy Fantastic, is also about “letting go” and is colored with the same melancholic regret we sometimes feel for the past – dwelling on moments we wished had gone differently, if we could only go back. You know the drill. And, again, here I was doing exactly that. The bane of my existence.

With my third, House of Dust, which hasn’t been released yet, a young woman takes control of her life by confronting her worst fears. She goes off to college, despite being schizophrenic, and comes face-to-face with her inner voices – wrestling with demons that we come to realize aren’t so “inner.” I penned the original screenplay but had it re-written to “amp up” the action and thriller moments – not my forte. While it may have lost some of its overall melancholy tone, there was still a thread of that brooding in the narrative and I tried to latch onto it even more in the execution.

Lastly, with my current film, The Midnight Game, a group of high school students decide to play a pagan ritual – a decision stemming from the realization “when are we ever going to get another chance to do something like this?” In this case, a spontaneous choice leading to ill-fated consequences beyond their control; things going horribly awry, to say the least. I know it’s a little more of a stretch in this case, but the idea of missed opportunities is certainly a thread within the story, and the one I felt most connected to.

Perhaps that’s the risk of living in the moment? The hidden dangers lurking in the shadows? But it’s a risk worth taking. Because not doing so poses an even greater one—the risk that you’ll look back and regret your whole life.

So I’m left wondering if I’m on to something here as I feel my way up the dark well that is filmmaking.

Four down. Onto number five. No ropes.