Hello,
Just thought I'd let you know that I have not sent out most of the discs yet. The four other (i.e., besides me) principle actors got theirs and then I bought some cheap mailers on line -- and then I realized that I'm way too broke to go mailing these things out to people right now. Sorry! Yet one more thing that will have to wait until I have an income.
I have been networking a little bit about finding an professional editor to "clean up" the rough cut, but to no avail. I had hoped Kevin/Bill or R.J./Larry might know someone, since they work FT in The Biz, but neither has produced a savior so far. I recently met someone who, I inferred, may work with digital sound - or went to film school for audio? - something. It wasn't a good time for me to clarify this with her, but I'll be in touch with her again before too long and see if there's anything there. Also, as the editing went along, I asked three former students of mine, independently, if they would like to help out -- two actually answered me -- but to no product. I might give that route one more go, though, if through slightly different channels. We'll see. I'll keep poking around as I can.
I'm disappointed that only Christine/Vitta really shared her experience of watching the film after she got the disc. It feels so strange to have this be such a big deal for me, to have been "connected" in this weird virtual way to these people all this time, and now that I have done as much as I can with it, to send it out and get almost nothing back. It's bizarre. Kevin, for example, called me very regularly for the first few years after the shoot, and then kept in touch less regularly but reliably for the last few years -- asking how it was going every now and then (wanting his footage!!) -- and now I wonder if we'll never speak again -- unless I send a note that we got an editor on board. Why should it be any different? For them it was one gig, and gigs end. There have been plenty of projects and plays that I've been a part of, after which I don't expect to stay in touch with people. That's the nature of the business. It was a fun July (I hope it was mostly fun) more than a decade ago. It wasn't life-changing for them; it wasn't their one big project. I, though, have carried this around in my heart and psyche for a decade, feeling tied to them all this time. Not to have a reunion and a "premiere" where we all got together and saw the movie as a group, sharing memories and wincing and laughing together, feeling our ambivalent pride together, seeing the decade in each other's changed-but-familiar faces and all that, but rather to be divided off in the world, everyone seeing it independently - invisibly - in their "new" lives, has been rather anti-climactic and, honestly, sad for me.
But what that means, of course, is just that I need to make another movie. A better funded movie with an editor attached. And to get it done inside two years at most. Right? Right. The answer is always to work again.
