....But It Wouldn't Mean Nothin'...

[Top, A.C. Abbott, writer/director of "Disowning Claire," one of the funniest and best films I saw at Indie Fest 2009 in Anaheim; Below, Indira Somani, who won Best Documentary for "Crossing Lines" at the Heart of England Film Festival, my female compatriots within the Boy's Club of filmmaking.]

[p.s. new pics of Indie Fest 2009 can be seen on the Smalltimore, the Movie Facebook page. Click the link on the right, and become a fan if you haven't already!]

Wow, it has been really nice to have a few days without having, as in, being obligated, to do anything movie-related. And yet, I keep doing movie-related things. Sunday I attended the Stonehenge auditions at the Creative Alliance, Monday I attended the CAmm Cage Happy Hour at the Creative Alliance, and last night I attended the premiere of the new Kevin Kangas film, "Bounty," with my filmmaker friend Eric Thornett, who I do not see nearly enough of these days.

After the movie, which I did enjoy, for the record, Eric and I caught up with each other as well as some of the Usual Suspects, a.k.a. fellow filmmakers, producers, and actors that we know, over drinks at the Club Charles. Eric knows Kevin fairly well but hadn't seen him in ages. Eric actually "appears" in Kevin's new movie, albeit via a "Wanted" poster, and a deranged voicemail message on an answering machine (Eric's screen credit reads, "The Taunter").

In keeping with the Zero Degrees of separation that is the Smalltimore tradition, particularly in the microcosm that is Baltimore indie filmmaking, Johnny Benson ("Bentley" in Smalltimore), also "appears" in "Bounty," and funny enough, also only via his voice. Johnny was present at the screening in his signature Vampirate regalia.

Now Eric and Kevin have been doing this movie stuff a LOT longer than I have been, but I couldn't help but be a little jealous of their rapport and camaraderie, with each other and with other actors and producers there that I know or know of through various channels. It is like a fraternity, complete with lots of crazy war stories. Fun to listen to, but somehow I felt a little left out.

It reminded me of when I first got to know Eric and his entourage, and for that matter, even before that when I got to know Sean Stanley and his crew. It amazed me then, and still does, how much people will do for someone else (for free) when they believe in that person and their vision. I think I have talked about that here before, but I really wanted that, I really wanted to build that for myself, and I still do.

The other thing is that, filmmaking, no matter where you go, is largely a Boy's Club. I'm not crying about it, I am just telling it like it is. And sometimes, as a woman traveling in those circles, it can feel a little lonely. It isn't easy to explain exactly what I mean, but I'll try.

The thing is, it is not even about how men and women relate to each other. It is that men relate to other men differently than women relate to other women. Guys who are filmmakers are like... guys who are football fans. Or guys who play guitar. Or World of Warcraft. Guys who share a common and all-consuming passion like that develop bonds that can make someone who is not yet fully vested, so to speak, feel like an outsider. Like you're the only one in the room that doesn't know the secret handshake.

And women... we're (a) just wired differently, and (b) there are far fewer of us in the mix. Although there were a couple - and by couple, I mean that literally: there were TWO, besides myself - female filmmaker types at the post-party, namely Stacie Jones-Gentzler and Elena Moscatt, two super-smart women who are very cool to boot.

I hadn't thought about it before, but I think it does say a lot for a woman to be able to keep her footing in this industry. Now that I think about it, I can honestly say that I don't know any half-assed female filmmakers. The ones I know are very strong, smart, visionary women who don't take any shit, and also, unlike a lot of men that I meet in this realm, do not have delusions of grandeur, and don't let their egos get the better of them. At the festivals I have attended over the summer, with only one exception (ask me in person and I'll tell you what movie NOT to see if it comes to a festival near you), the pieces by female filmmakers were often the cream of the crop. But I have seen a lot of mediocre (and worse) films and shorts by the same men who pat me on the head and tell me how much I have to learn. And I silently thank them, for I do indeed learn from them - what NOT to do.

I do feel that my own "entourage" is beginning to gel. People like Regina Guy, who I know I can count on for absolutely anything, and Michelle, of course. The three of us working together is what gave me the idea for the title of our short, "The Red-Headed Menace." Michelle and I are going to shoot another short soon, I can't WAIT. And I have a lot of both male and female actors that I know I can call on at any time and they will give me their all, and production assistants, too.

Anyway... do NOT get me wrong, I have met some amazing men who have bent over backwards for me, such as Eric, Sean, and Charlie Anderson. And most of the time I don't mind being a woman in this man's world of filmmaking. I have always liked standing out in certain ways. I was always the shortest person in my class in school, and I liked that. I like having the name Jeanie, because there aren't that many of us, and very few in my age group. I always liked having green eyes. And I've liked having red hair... um, since 2003.

And really, I am not complaining, just observing, while I have a few minutes to breathe and reflect on the whirlwind that has been this summer. I am happy to be where I am, and even though I might have had a few girlie "moments" after Kevin's premiere, you know what? There were people there who had never met me who knew who I was and knew about "Smalltimore," though they hadn't even seen it. Move over, boys. I'm not leaving anytime soon.

CONTEST: Feed a Starving Actor!!!

I was just about to rename the "Smalltimore the Movie" Facebook page, "Phil Calvert & Friends" as we have recently had a deluge of his friends become fans of the page, but I decided to take a count to be sure which actor had the most friends on here, and it turns out that Kyle Holtgren wins (for the moment) by a nose! The current tally is:

Kyle - 12
Phil C. - 11
Kelly Coston - 7
Cheryl Scungio - 4
Orlando Gonzalez - 4
Johnny Benson - 2
Al Letson - 2
Will Lurie - 1

So, as a little incentive, I decided to create a little contest.

Feed a Starving Actor!!!

Whichever actor of the main ensemble has the most number of friends on the "Smalltimore the Movie" page by midnight, May 6th, the eve of the Maryland Film Festival, (and NO, I do not know if we are in yet, but for good or evil, I'll be drinking that weekend) will be treated by me to a ridiculously decadent dinner at the PRIME RIB Restaurant. What's your pleasure? Oysters Rockefeller? Lobster Bisque? Or a steak from one of the top 20 steak houses in the entire COUNTRY? This is not a dinner for the faint of heart, folks.

If a person is friends with more than one of the actors, they will each receive credit. If you don't know one of the actors personally, just post to the page who you are "voting" for and I will add it to their tally. If you are already a fan but not a friend of an actor, you, too, can post your vote. ONE VOTE PER FAN if you are not friends with any of the actors. Watch the trailer to see who's who, and make your voice heard!

Cheryl Scungio as Gracie
Orlando Gonzalez as Tony
Joyce J. Scott as Mrs. Talford
Kelly Coston as Mel
Johnny Benson as Bentley
Darik Bernard as Darik
Will Lurie as Andrew
Phil Calvert as Thom
Tom Diventi as Tucker
Kyle Holtgren as David
Tiffany Ariany as Angela
Phil Amico as Jack
and
Al Letson as The Voice of Reason

So, do your good deed for the day and become a fan of the "Smalltimore, the Movie" Facebook page. I'll be posting an update every 7-10 days to let you know the stats.

Let them eat steak!

The Importance of Focusing

(I took this photo in Koblenz, Germany, in 2002. This and other photos of mine can be seen in "Smalltimore". You can see more of my photos at http://www.geocities.com/moxiegallery/home.html. I thought this site had been deleted a few years ago, but it is still up!)

Ugh, my eyes are crossing. Today I dug deeper into the glorious Without A Box website, looking into the details of about 150 festivals to see if "Smalltimore" would be suited to them. That may sound like a lot, and I have been working on it for about 4 hours now, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. I have thousands to go, literally.

I did find quite a few possibilities along with some tempting long shots. I am looking through them in the order that deadlines are coming up fastest. I think when I get through the first 300, then I'll stop and sort through the ones I have picked out as "maybes" and decide if I want to submit to them or not. The average submission fee is about $35 for earlybird, $50 or more for last minute, so it adds up fast. I've already submitted to 18 festivals to the tune of about $1000, so I am about tapped out and need to start becoming very selective.

I received a congratulatory email (about the Heart of England Film Festival) from my friend John Wood who lives in Germany. He used to live in Baltimore and was one of my closest friends here. He reminded me of one of our favorite moments together, in the context of, "who woulda thought it?", me becoming a filmmaker.

I think it was in the autumn of 1999 that I for some reason became very interested in photography. I had always taken lots of photos, but never with a manually operated camera. I wanted to learn how to do that, and how to develop and print my own photos, so I signed up for a weekend class at MICA. John loaned me his trusty old Minolta, and after receiving my first homework assignment, he spent an afternoon with me down at the harbor taking photos that played around with the depth of field. I had only ever operated a point-and-shoot camera before, with automatic focus.

We were on Light Street at Baltimore, and John stopped at the McDonald's to grab a burger. A block south of there, he unwrapped the burger and used a City Paper box as his table while I took a picture of him. I quickly pointed John's own camera at him and clicked the button, snap went the shutter. John asked, "Did you focus?" I replied, "I need to focus?"

I love that story.

Once he showed me how to focus, I actually took a very cool pic of him eating that burger. My instructor liked it a lot. I spent the next few years taking thousands of snaps, setting up my own darkroom in my kitchen, organizing solo exhibits and later group exhibits with some artist friends, and have sold many of the photos I took during that time, including the one above. It is one of my favorites, and John was also with me when I took this. It is titled, "The Wheels of Fortune." I was visiting John and his wife Anja while they lived in Trier, Germany, and we took a day trip to Koblenz. We saw these three little girls whose mother let them run around naked in a fountain on this hot summer day. They were so cute, and I loved the juxtaposition of this tiny, carefree girl and her tricycle with the wrinkled, scowling old man in his wheelchair.

Last year I sold all of my darkroom equipment in order to put that money towards the movie. I had lost my passion for developing photos (it is expensive and time-consuming) awhile before that, though I still love photography itself. So now I have a much more expensive and much more time-consuming passion! But at least with filmmaking, it is not me working alone in the dark. I enjoyed the solitude of that, but I am now enjoying the camaraderie and collaboration that is filmmaking.

One of the other big differences between photography and filmmaking is that photography is much more of an instant gratification; filmmaking is somewhat the exact opposite. I have always thought of myself as an instant-gratification kind of person. But here I am. I wrote the first draft of the script more than four years ago. I took a long break inbetween, but I have been working hard and continuously now for almost two years. And still have work to do.

The point is, you never know what you are capable of, but if you truly have a passion for it, as well as patience and perseverance, you will likely succeed. Filmmaking, like photography, is not brain surgery. It is something to be learned, and something with which you have to be using several different parts of your brain at the same time. And it is definitely something that if you don't love it, you're not going to do it well. It's just too much work to plow through if you are on the fence about it.