Go Big or Go Bust: On Maintaining A Semblance of Emotional Balance with The Help of Rachelle Garniez and Arden Myrin

December 09, 2015 in go big or go bust

Not sure what’s going on besides trying to make tracks with this ‘Go Big’ plan but I am feeling Vulnerable, Anxious and SAD.

Maybe it’s because it’s getting dark at 4:15?

Or could it be astrological?

Or is this just … life?

I’m listening to Rachelle Garniez’s deliriously beautiful “Who’s Counting” on repeat (video below) which helps cause it unleashes buckets of tears. (Thank you Rachelle!)

Then after a good cry, I like to fall on the floor laughing at this MAD tv video with Arden Myrin.

(For some reason, this video won't embed but the link is below.)

Bobby Lee Dates Arden Myrin (3:25)

And then there're a few minutes left to try and squeeze in a little productive work before it's bed time.

Anybody else having a hard time? Any tips to share?

(Click on the Like button for an instant heart warming micro-treat.)

Go Big or Go Bust: How Jonas Mekas May Have Just Pulled Me Out Of My Anxiety Death Spiral

December 07, 2015 in go big or go bust

This t-shirt and Louise scrambling through forty-three episodes is, unfortunately, not pure fiction. I, like Louise, am an anxious person.

Without a looming deadline, I’m generally in a state of worry that I’m not where I’m supposed to be, not doing what I’m supposed to be doing. Low blood pressure sometimes gives me an aura of serenity, but scratch the veneer and you’ll find a seething mass of desire, self-recrimination, apprehension and angst, a shredded copy of Sartre’s Nausea my constant companion.

But I hit a vein of gold in meeting Jonas Mekas for lunch last Friday.

Convinced that a lock on time management would alleviate my anxiety, I’m always ready to ask how other people do it. I wanted to know how Jonas Mekas is overseeing the massive Completion Project for Anthology Film Archives while, according to a recent article in the New York Times, devoting most of his time to his writing and films. Mr. Mekas responded that, in a shift, he’s now spending half of his time at Anthology.

His voice was ringing in my ears over the weekend until it suddenly hit me why: this seemed in contradiction to what I’d read in John Leland’s article in The New York Times:

“…he wakes up without intention or worry. “I’m not seeking… and I’m not planning.”

But ‘half my time’ sounds like planning to me.

“…he has become more "obsessed” with his writing and filmmaking…because he has cut down on the time and energy he spent at Anthology Film Archives…”

As I folded a third load of laundry, the pieces of the puzzle fell into place.

Jonas Mekas doesn’t plan his days, but there’s obviously some template he’s following. Could it be that his obsessions are his guiding force?

Having my own issues with obsession, it seems appealing, even practical to stop fighting and trying to control obsessions and ... give in! There would be no anxiety. The big decision, about what to spend time on, would have been made by taking a frank look at the overriding obsession. And this would explain why Jonas Mekas could tell me at lunch that he just does what’s in front of him (see 'next' blog entry below). And he can do it without intention or worry or seeking or planning.

Could this be the dawning of a new day?

Go Big or Go Bust: On Meeting Jonas Mekas, Hearing About The Anthology Film Archives Completion Project And Getting Sage Life Advice

December 04, 2015 in go big or go bust

I had the honor and pleasure of being invited to lunch today with the lovely Sebastian Mekas and his father, Jonas Mekas, a hero of mine and of art and of independent film. In 1990, Jonas Mekas was responsible for giving my feature film a month-long run at Anthology Film Archives, the cinema and library on 2nd Avenue and 2nd Street in New York’s East Village which he founded and continues to oversee.

In two recent articles in The New York Times, John Leland has written about Jonas Mekas’ extraordinary life and approach to life including how, at 92, he feels 27:

“…he wakes up without intention or worry. “I’m not seeking,” he said. “I’m not a thinking person, and I’m not planning…”

“…In a 1974 essay, “On Happiness,” Mr. Mekas concludes with a meditation on a plate of grapes that might serve as his summary of his life. “This plate is my Paradise,” he wrote. “I don’t want anything else — no country house, no car, no dacha, no life insurance, no riches. It’s this plate of grapes that I want. It’s this plate of grapes that makes me really happy. To eat my grapes and enjoy them and want nothing else — that is happiness, that’s what makes me happy.”

With my apparent addiction to feeling 'anxious and tense', I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to find out how he maintains this attitude. And so I asked him, how do you do it? How do you live like this without expectation or desire?

He looked me straight in the eye and then he looked away, pausing for a moment and looked back: “You just do the next thing in front of you. Live your life! … There’s no answer to this question!”

Anthology Film Archives is planning a $6 million Completion Project which will make it the largest repository of independent film-related material in the United States. The drawings of it look gorgeous. It'll even have a café and a Sky Room and Roof Terrace with a catering pavilion.

On May 7, 2016, there'll be an auction to benefit this work. Artists, cinephiles and others are invited to give and to make contributions to the auction (signed movie posters, props, an acre of land in Vermont, a piece of music to be written for a special occasion or purpose … “It’s a wide window.”) and to spread the word. “It’s best done in person.”

Go Big or Go Bust: How An Indie Gets In The Door To Pitch A Pilot (Part 1)

December 02, 2015 in go big or go bust

So it’s getting down to the wire over here. I mentioned to a friend (let's call her Susan Miller) that I want to go out and pitch this pilot idea in January ... February?

She emailed me back:

friend: It just occurred to me -- who is setting up your meetings? Do you have an agent or a producer who is scheduling these?

me:        I have neither an agent nor a producer. This is the root of the problem. I’m tackling the thing twig by twig and hoping they don’t all snap off.

friend:    Do you want to go over your plan with me? I mean, how are you getting in the door to producers/studios/networks?

me: I don’t really have a plan. I don’t have the connections to get in the door.

friend: Maybe we can have a regular phone convo. Because I'm concerned about your not having a plan. But maybe you have viable or possible ideas.

me: I have a list of people … people I sort of knew… once. One guy I worked with thirty years ago.

friend: Anne, you can’t go out to LA without meetings set up.

me: Who said anything about going out to LA?

friend: Well you said you were going out to pitch…

me: I meant going out of the HOUSE.

Stay tuned. And please leave comments if you have suggestions on how you or someone you know successfully stormed the doors of HBO, Netflix, Amazon, etc.

Also please click the Like button for a special surprise.

Go Big or Go Bust: An Inexpensive Life Hack for The Cyber Life Sitting Problem

November 30, 2015 in go big or go bust

In honor of Cyber Monday, I thought I'd share in tedious detail the pride and joy of my cyber life: a scavenger-hunt-style standing desk.

There are few downsides to having spent most of the past eight years sitting at my desk editing and getting-distracted-from-my-job-of-promoting The Louise Log. But one glaring downside is the time not spent on exercise or even movement. You've probably heard that 'sitting is the new smoking'.

After listening to me hint about how much I’d like to be able to work at my computer while standing, Mr. Green made me this gorgeous standing desk for my studio.

But not everyone has Mr. Green in their life. And even I don't have the room for an extra desk in our NYC apartment. I needed something which would take up no space at all.

Here’s my solution: a deconstructible standing desk which, when you get tired of standing, can be taken apart in 12 seconds so you can sit down.

Here’s what you need:

We got this at Ikea in around 2000 to organize the clutter of pens and paper clips.  You could substitute any strong box of the right height. — We got this at Ikea in around 2000 to organize the clutter of pens and paper clips. You could substitute any strong box of the right height.

The big ticket item at $40 - $50 -  the mStand Laptop Stand by Rain Design — The big ticket item at $40 - $50 - the mStand Laptop Stand by Rain Design

Love the price of this component! And when not in use, it gets stowed under a shelf.

White boards are available for a few dollars online or at the dollar store. There are two benefits to using a white board instead of the top of the cardboard box. 1) Being smooth and monochrome, it's a lot easier on the mouse 2) When you move from s… — White boards are available for a few dollars online or at the dollar store. There are two benefits to using a white board instead of the top of the cardboard box. 1) Being smooth and monochrome, it's a lot easier on the mouse 2) When you move from standing to sitting and back, the mouse, the keyboard, etc move in one fell swoop.

I'd love to hear about your life hacks for life online ... please write them in the comments. Oh and, the best cyber treat of the day is awaiting you ... just click the Like button. Not kidding.

Go Big or Go Bust: On Pitching and the Burning Question: Do You Have to be Cool to Pitch Successfully?

November 25, 2015 in go big or go bust

As I see it, there are three types of people: people who are cool, people who are not cool andpeople who, through an alchemy of body type, style and self-restraint (silence is a great tool), manage to give the impression that they're cool.

I fall into the third category. Or I did. And let me tell you, it’s a sad life. And it’s exhausting. With all that energy going into creating an impression, into pretending excitement, empathy, interest and everything else. I always felt like the inside of a pumpkin, hollow and a little slimy.

To get somewhere as a filmmaker, you pretty much have to pitch. And the essence of pitching plays into all of the darkest fears of someone who doesn’t feel cool, who has a fear of rejection, of being publicly humiliated, who has, let’s just call it what it is, a fear of *annihilation*. And so, up until now, with one miserable exception in front of a Brooklyn arts organization and one horrifying weekend at IFFCON (a pitch festival by invitation only, GOD HELP ME) I have avoided pitching. That is about to change because I want to make this fake reality show for television and am going to have to pitch the idea. I feel compelled to explain the depth of my anxiety.

In middle school, new to the area, I asked the girl who sat next to me in study hall if we could be friends. I agree it seems more like a question from a pre-schooler than from a seventh grader. Hey, I was young for the grade. Anyway, she had an interesting long nose and was serious and thoughtful. She answered me the next day: her mother wanted her to be friends with girls who lived in town. Dagger to my heart. We lived way out in the country, far from school and she lived in town. Obviously, the cool people lived in town.

I spent the rest of the next six years trying to become the most popular girl in the school.

I’m not sure if my classmates would agree that I succeeded but I did get elected to a lot of positions. And I felt popular. Hey so what if I barely graduated? I felt cool.

(To be continued)

Go Big or Go Bust: On Going With The Goddam Flow

November 23, 2015 in go big or go bust

With everything that’s behind and ahead of me in wanting to get this pilot in front of the right people, I’m pin balling through every phase of the emotional wringer.

And then early Saturday morning, I had a dream. It was just around daybreak when a person’s lucky to be able to get back to sleep, much less have a dream.

A 20-something, Middle Eastern-looking woman and I were talking in the hall of a building at 14th St and 8th Avenue. There was nothing fancy about the way she looked or dressed but she radiated a beautiful strength and confidence. She mentioned that she meditated two or three times a day for an hour each time and was cutting back on the people she sees. She mentioned that ‘Henry Fun’, who is dying, is one of them. It felt like I was not someone she’d be making time for.

And so I drifted off in thought, thinking about what a pity it is that I’m not a sitting meditation person, that this is obviously why she’s so strong and confident and I’M NOT. And suddenly, I remembered something I was supposed to be doing and let out a whole body cry of frustration.

She looked at me with a look of wonder and horror, as if to say: “How old ARE you, anyway? THREE?”

In that flash, I got it, something I’ve been struggling with for decades. This is what self-will run riot looks like and I don’t have to fall victim to it anymore. I can let go. I can get into the darn river and go with the goddam flow.

blog postponed due to the situation in Paris

November 13, 2015 in go big or go bust

My heart and thoughts are with Paris and its people.

Go Big or Go Bust: Getting Ready for a Flurry of Activity (BONUS: hear Mr. Green learn from Matthew McConnaughey)

November 11, 2015 in go big or go bust

It's the season for hibernation ... but I'm going in the other direction - I'm coming back to life! After almost a year of thrashing around and trying to figure out the next step, I've got a plan.

Here's a (2:00) clip to start the ball rolling. More soon. (Please click the 'Like' button and be instantly rewarded for your big heart.)

Go Big or Go Bust: #WAW2015 and The Power of Groups

November 09, 2015 in go big or go bust

I’ve spent more than a couple of Christmases at home alone at my desk. Not that I’m complaining, The Louise Log has rarely felt like work. But so a social life has always been pushed to the bottom of my schedule.

So when my pal Veronica James recommended that I join her at the annual weekend retreat of Women At Woodstock, with a group of women (mostly) over 50, I hesitated. It’s risky to a) spend money to go to a conference and b) to take time away from what feels like a mountain of projects I want to get to.

All Veronica, an extremely hard-working and effective (but fun) person, had to say was: “Come. It’s really good.”

Veronica James, author of "Going Gypsy", during her talk "Getting Your Website The Attention It Deserves"

And so I went. And I wasn’t disappointed. There were authors, career coaches, a photographer, a website designer/social media marketing expert, bloggers, a tarot card reading life coach, a financial adviser, a pharmaceutical saleswoman, two dating and relationship coaches, an elected official and more. It was such a mixed group that it sort of felt like a campfire on the beach - no pecking order, no competition.

There were workshops and talks as well as lots of time for having a real conversation with almost everybody. It felt like a weekend with friends of a friend … which is actually what #WAW sprang out of, when Ann Voorhees Baker was going through a divorce after a long marriage and invited a group of friends, who didn’t know each other, to a cabin in the woods.

The atmosphere of support and honesty, of sharing knowledge and encouragement, with people revealing their dreams and their doubts, asking for feedback, asking for help. It was truly moving. It was also inspiring. And it seems like it could even prove to be materially valuable.

With Patty Chang Anker author of "Some Nerve" who did a workshop "What Are You Afraid Of?"

Go Big or Go Bust: Six Top Tools for Creative Work in the Digital Age

November 06, 2015 in go big or go bust

This blog was started as a way of keeping you, dear reader, up to date on my efforts to get The Louise Log out to a wider audience. (The urgency to reach more viewers is financial - this show needs to become self-sustaining in order to continue.)

I thank you for giving me a wide berth as I’ve gone down meandering paths into my past life, trying to see if there’s some obvious pattern at work here and, if so, how I might be able to break it.

The good news is that, in spite of me and my personality still at the helm, we have a very exciting plan in the works which I’ll be able to say more about in the next week or so.

Until then, here’s some of what I’ve learned from making this show.

I used to routinely face a wall of anxiety too tall to see over and too wide to get around. The only possible way to deal with this is, obviously, was avoidance, otherwise known as procrastination. As you may have read, in what is by any standards an epic mastery of this approach to life, I managed to stretch out the rewrite of the script for my ‘second feature’ for SEVENTEEN YEARS. Making The Louise Log taught me a number of tools to deal with this demon.

Tool #1 is limitations. Having ‘wasted’ so many years on one miserable script, I was like an over-primed pump ready to explode. It helped that I was fifty-five years old and well aware that people start dying at that age. So before mine got me, I started to set my own deadlines. Mr. Green had been writing a blog once a month for years. I decided that I’d make one video a month.

Tool #2 is a variation on Tool #1: Start where you are with what you have.

In film, I’d worked with Camera Operators and Directors of Photography. I knew nothing about shooting and less about video. Furthermore, in 2007, no self-respecting filmmaker was shooting video with a camcorder and putting it up on YouTube. Fortunately, as previously outlined, I had the gift of desperation. There was the family camcorder which, guess what? Like cell phone cameras, camcorders are point and shoot. A two year old could press the two buttons and probably get something worth looking at.

I’d worked as a film editor and had always been intimidated by video editing. Apple’s imovie is so simple, two year olds can now edit the video they’ve shot. I went to the Apple Store’s One-to-One sessions and learned imovie until I broke it with overly complicated sound tracks. Then I learned Final Cut Pro.

Which brings me to Tool #3: Baby Steps

If the first episode had been with more than one actor, I probably would have broken out in hives and cancelled the shoot for not being able to breathe.

But by the fourth episode I was working with two actors. By the fifth episode, there were four actors (two of them children), props, several shots crossing the very busy Seventh Avenue and a rented location (the local public school),

By episode forty-three we had four SAG actors in their underwear, a fifth (fully clothed) SAG actor 900 miles away on Skype and a crew of five.

Tool #4: Practice Makes Perfect. Well, yes and no.

On the one hand, working constantly, my craft exploded. I learned more making The Louise Log than in making all my other films combined.

But a great thing about digital technology is that you don’t have to get it right the first time. Or even the seventeenth. For Season One, we didn’t have a professional sound mixer on set. The sound for the first seventeen episodes was whatever the camcorder picked up. In the episode in the Principle’s Office (12), the air conditioning noise was so invasive, it ruined an otherwise strong episode. Yes we had to lose thousands of views, but we took down the original uploads of almost all the sub-par audio, dubbed them and re-uploaded a lot of Season One.

Tool #5: Collaborate and Ask For Help

Digital technology makes it possible for one person to do almost every job. Please don’t ask how I know this. Unfortunately, the chances of a one-person project reaching a wide audience are greatly diminished. If only for the (extremely important) fact that the marketing and promotion will be easier if a lot of people are involved and invested, work with a group.

Tool #6: Story Trumps All

Make sure the script is strong or make sure you have the leeway to salvage it in the editing if it isn’t. A voice-over saved us more times than I can count.

Don't miss out! Special bonus delivered INSTANTLY if you click the 'Like' button.

Go Big or Go Bust: On Putting On A Show of Being A Nice Person, Donkeys and The New Yorker

November 04, 2015 in go big or go bust

At the end of the last post before this blog was hijacked by the saga of How To Be Louise, was a ‘suggestion’ that I would finish another story:

< < The clenched-fist-and-teeth approach to career success carried me through pretty much to this Summer. >>

Wishing I’d made some notes to know just what that was referring to, I’ll try to muddle through.

Blame it on my childhood. Or, as Dr. Kumar (Vedic Astrologer) would say, “Blame it on your karma!”. Everybody’s more or less afraid of people, right? Well, I fall squarely on the ‘more’ side of that equation. And along with that fact, as far back as I can remember, I’ve had the feeling that it was my job to put on a show - not only a show that I wasn’t afraid but, notching it up, to make a convincing case that I really liked everyone and was an all-around ‘nice person’.

An accepted fact of life in our house was having to hug and pretend to be at ease with distant relatives who showed up out of the blue. This was usually restricted to major holidays and I’m pretty sure all of my sisters colluded with me on that. It was part of the deal. We curtsied. We passed hors d’oeuvres at our parents parties. And we hugged old relatives who we didn’t especially know or like.

But one afternoon, when I was at most seven years old, I distinctly remember that all of my sisters ran the other way while I walked into the belly of the beast. We were still living on our grandparent’s farm with a large herd of Sardinian donkeys. My mother announced that some ‘reporters’ from The New Yorker had come to write a story about the donkeys and that it would be very nice if some of us went out to meet them. We lived over two hours from New York City in the rolling green country of Warren County, New Jersey. I had less than no interest in New York City or The New Yorker. I vividly remember a wave of exhaustion passing through me, my eyes rolling back in my head and the silent scream “Noooooooooo.” “Can’t Lee (my older sister) do it?” Lee liked to read and was always in the middle of something she couldn’t put down. And Lee had a laboratory in the basement where she could always say she was in the middle of an experiment. Lee definitely had some great valid excuse. But the funny thing is, I don’t remember my mother insisting. I remember some feeling of pushing myself. “Aww righttt.” I gave in, lowered my head and submitted to my fate. I’d go meet the darn grownups and put on a show of being a nice person.

As an adult, I once saw a clipping of the account of that visit (in the 'Talk of the Town'?) It featured a little sketch of my sister Victoria and me with our hair in our eyes but I don’t even remember if we were mentioned. Much more vividly, to the marrow of my bones, I can recall that feeling of so many more decades ago, that I was wasn't enough as I was, that I'd have to ‘rise to the occasion’ to go meet these grownups.

Living from a tap root of the conviction of my inadequacy is what (I think) I was referring to as ‘the clenched-teeth-and-fist approach to career success’ (and to life, for that matter). I’d like to think that that belief has been falling away for decades. It may have taken a more decisive hit this summer ... but only a look through those free-writing pages will jog my memory on the details.

(to be continued)

Click the 'Like' button for something very sweet. Right away.

Go Big or Go Bust: the challenge of finding distribution for a NY indie film (Part 11 of 11)

November 02, 2015 in go big or go bust

(I’m reprinting the last two paragraphs of the last blog post for context.)

Jackie Raynal, who had been on the crew of early Godard films I had loved and watched at her Bleecker Street Cinema, was the first to call. She loved the film and wanted to invite Mr. Green and me to her Central Park South apartment for drinks. It was all very understated, all very restrained but I’m telling you, it was a love fest. Jackie is French, Jackie is sophisticated, Jackie is a woman. Jackie felt that people in France would go crazy for this film and she and her husband were interested in talking about launching it at the Bleecker Street and then distributing it.

My first New York apartment had been just off Bleecker Street. I’d gone to art school in Paris. The Bleecker Street Cinema was my favorite downtown movie theatre. It was all coming together.

I never heard from Jackie Raynal again. Nor did I ever hear from Lucky Red. The Fort Lauderdale Festival sent press clips which included two wonderful reviews of How To Be Louise on two different days in The Miami Herald. I clung to them.

It was a hot July that summer in New York, hot and humid as I remember. Ralph McKay the director of Jonas Mekas’ Anthology Film Archives on Second Avenue in the East Village had called to ask me to come over to talk about the possibility of screening HTBL. I stuffed myself into a pair of black jeans as I was going to the East Village, after all, where a tough version of cool trumps even the weather. Or so I figured.

Ralph McKay was not at all what I expected. He was young and gentle and seemed more like an artist than a businessman. He and Jonas Mekas wanted to give HTBL a month long screening. (!!) They thought the film would do well and build an audience and they wanted to open it on a Thursday. Most films in New York City opened on Friday so this would make a bigger audience and longer reviews more likely. And, Ralph McKay assured me, this was just the kind of film that Vincent Canby of The New York Times, a friend of Jonas Mekas, would love. They would do everything they could to make sure Canby came to the press screening. We wouldn’t have to pay for a four-wall. We wouldn’t have to buy ads. And if we got a good review in the Times, I could go back to Dan Talbot and his offer from New Yorker Films. Indeed, all my dreams were coming true.

I went into high gear designing and having a poster made up to plaster downtown New York. The poster came back not looking anything like a movie poster but I figured that by getting a strip to paste over the top and another strip with all the credits to paste over the bottom, we could salvage it. And in spite of the cat and Frank and glue all over everything, a handful of our old crew and I hand-pasted headers and footers and made up a gorgeous black and white poster.

On the day of the press screening, I got a call from the Anthology. Vincent Canby was in the hospital. He wouldn’t be at the press screening.

The next morning, on the day of our opening at Anthology, I heard NPR’s Neil Rosen give HTBL a very positive review live on WNYC and rushed out to get the papers. The New York Post had given us three stars and called it “very sexy”. After reading the first few lines of the review in The Times, I called Lea Floden who had starred as Louise, and shouted them at her into the phone: “A Judy Holliday character who seems to have fallen into a Jean-Luc Godard film.” Lea, in Los Angeles, had already read the review and told me to take a deep breath.

Caryn James, who had reviewed it for The Times, was not a fan. In fact, her ‘review’ seemed to veer into personal attack territory. “Anne Flournoy, who wrote, directed and produced this low budget film ... sometimes pulls back to suggest an arch superiority … “How To Be Louise” quickly becomes a low-energy exercise in directorial attitude…” Ow ow owww.

The New Yorker Films deal was contingent on a good review in The Times. Our hopes for distribution, which only five minutes before had seemed well-founded, were suddenly bleak.

The audiences at the nightly screenings at The Anthology grew over the month but they never filled the house. The review in The Times put a pall over everything.

My artist energy and whatever free time I had went into writing the script for ‘the next film’. Mostly I was focused on all that goes into keeping a family clean and fed and the job of raising two children. Telling other mothers at the playground that I was a filmmaker began to feel like a fiction from another lifetime. Time after time, I wrote and rewrote my script with notes from producers, with notes from friends. On good days I was certain that all this would come to something. On the many bad days, I swallowed the bitter pill that my life as a filmmaker was over.

Seventeen years later, in a summer of desperation, The Louise Log sprouted out of my experiences of marriage and motherhood and my fear that if I didn't set some deadlines for myself, I'd never finish anything again. I'd make one video a month. Six months later I 'finished' the first one. It was supposed to be a one-off thigh slapper and it was anything but. It was dark. It was a meditation on mortality and wasted time. Armed with some self-knowledge at this point, I realized I could spend the next seventeen years bringing it up to my standards. I uploaded it to YouTube on the last day of the month which happened to be the last day of the year. People in my address book wrote that they loved the actor (Christine Cook) and asked for another one with her. Thrilled at the response, I did one video a month for four months in a row. But I was running out of ideas as everything I had was in that script of so many rewrites. With Bob Berney and Mr. Green's encouragement, I decided to shoot and throw this enormous effort up on YouTube for free. It became the basis for episodes 5-17 of The Louise Log.

In 2013, The Sundance Institute launched How To Be Louise online and to celebrate that, we had a screening at Indiescreen in Williamsburg.

And that's my whole, never-before-told, story.

What did I learn from all of this?

I leaned the importance of working on what I love and with people I respect. That way, regardless of artistic or commercial success or failure, I’ll have used whatever (days, years) it takes, feeding my soul.

And I learned that 'failure' is not necessarily all bad. In the clear light of twenty-five years later, I think this ‘failure’ may actually have been my lucky break. With my tendency toward maniac workaholism, if I’d had the option of a career when my children were small, it’s possible that I might have managed to avoid the life-changing experience of that surrender historically demanded of mothers. Had I been busy as a bee with my big career, I doubt that being completely broken by the loneliness, the drudgery and the exhaustion of motherhood would have been anywhere on my agenda. In avoiding that, I might have also missed out on the great love of my life, of and for my family.

If you click the 'Like' button, you will get INSTANT feedback on your basic true nature. Not kidding.

Go Big or Go Bust: How An Indie Filmmaker Hunts Down A Distributor (Part 10)

October 30, 2015 in go big or go bust

After sweeping the Italian press with rave reviews, I returned from Pesaro feeling as I had when How To Be Louise had been invited to be in competition at Sundance: my career was assured. I would soon be joining Susan Seidelman, Jim Jarmusch and the new generation of New York film directors.

With an active eighteen month old, it took a while to notice that the phone wasn’t ringing off the hook for the first step of that plan to go into effect:

Where were the offers of distribution? Figuring I should strike where the iron was most hot, I asked around about Italian distributors and called Lucky Red, a film distribution company in Italy, who’d been highly recommended as ‘right up my alley’. As I remember, the phone call wasn’t exactly a love fest but hey, the language barrier was certainly an issue. I mailed them hard copies of the press, a VHS tape and a very good letter.

In the meantime, I started cold-calling and mailing off VHS copies of the film and the press to distribution companies in the States. Janet Grillo at New Line Cinema got right back to me. “I don’t know. It’s not for New Line. it’s … it’s PETITE.” Petite? Hey are we talking about dresses or my life’s work? What the heck, New Line distributes Nightmare on Elm Street. I vowed to be more careful about which companies I approached.

Dan Talbot of New Yorker Films liked what he saw and told me over the phone: “If you get a good review in The New York Times, I’ll distribute this film.” Wow. YESSS. New Yorker Films! Reputable. Solid. First class!

My job instantly narrowed: 1) find a New York City film programmer who would show HTBL so it would get a review in the Times or 2) ‘four-wall’ it (Rent a movie theatre for a long-enough run so that HTBL can qualify for newspaper reviews.) The bad thing about option number two is that you have to lay out a fair amount of cash to rent the theatre and then (this is the pre-internet era) spend a huge amount of energy trying to tell everyone you know about it as well as make up ads and pay newspapers to run them to get an audience in there to defray the cost of the four-wall.

Just making this film I had gone to the mat with the begging and borrowing for the past four years. I’d thought my job was to make the darn film. I picked up the phone and started calling all the independent theatres: Bleecker Street Cinema, Cinema Village, The Quad and the newcomer, Anthology Film Archives. I mailed or Frank and I hand-delivered VHS/press packages.

Jackie Raynal, who had been on the crew of so many of my favorite early Godard films I had watched at her Bleecker Street Cinema, was the first to call. She loved the film and wanted to invite Mr. Green and me to her Central Park South apartment for drinks. It was all very understated, all very restrained but I’m telling you, it was a love fest. Jackie is French, Jackie is sophisticated, Jackie is a woman. Jackie felt that people in France would go crazy for this film and she and her husband Sid Geffen were interested in talking about launching it at the Bleecker Street and then distributing it.

My first New York apartment had been just off Bleecker Street. I’d gone to art school in Paris and my family name is French. The Bleecker Street Cinema was my favorite downtown movie theatre. It was all coming together.

(to be continued)

Click the 'Like' button. (You get an instant surprise.)

Go Big or Go Bust: on Steve McQueen. And Me. And The Power of Less.

October 28, 2015 in go big or go bust

I have to interrupt this story of making my first 16mm feature (for under $80,000), of traveling with it to the competition at Sundance and to Berlin and thinking that I would then sit back and preside over a bidding war between hot indie distributors. Please check back for that on Friday. Today I’m burning to tell you what's going on right this minute.

For the past couple of months, I’ve been practicing a new form of meditation. Inspired by The Power of Less a book which my friend and collaborator Victoria Trestrail sent (written by the same guy who has the wildly popular blog Zen Habits) I’ve been doing an eating meditation. Instead of my bad old ways of eating at my desk and chewing as I continue to work, I’ve been sitting at tables with and without other people and keeping the focus on the moment. I love to eat. I never make time to meditate. This is a win win situation. I’ve been surprised at my ability to stick with this. It feels like the foundation of a new way of living and I’ve been feeling a calm and a focus and a peace I’ve rarely known … until a few days ago. Suddenly, I’m eating at my desk again. I run up and down to the basement throwing in loads of laundry as I chew and then back to the computer. “I have to! I’ve got to get this finished!” And I don’t seem to be able to get my inner bull back into its pen.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Green was watching the Saturday night movie on our local PBS station, Channel 13. He’d missed the opening credits and wasn’t sure what he was watching. The star looked sort of like Paul Newman, sort of like Steve McQueen but wasn’t as handsome as either of them. I never sit down to watch television for fear of losing a day but soon found myself sitting next to Mr. Green on the couch. Even though this star was not all that handsome, he was compellingly, quietly and naturally so intense that I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

Eventually it became clear that this actor was indeed Steve McQueen. And later we discovered that it was Steve McQueen in Bullitt.

I wanted to see the beginning (and it isn’t streaming on Netflix) so headed over to the public library to check out the dvd along with two biographies of Steve McQueen for good measure. Who was this guy? And how had he learned to channel this intensity, this incredibly rich inner life. He seems like a genius. I figured he probably went to Harvard.

Well from the little I read of one of the biographies, I think old Steve was a middle school drop- out. He may have had the worst childhood of anyone ever. Abandoned, neglected and abused, he lived with his mother who worked as a prostitute out of the bedroom they shared in Indianapolis, surrounded by the rail yards, open sewers and … hog pens? The author of the biography was definitely making the case that the source of the rage that powered him and his performances was his childhood.

Long before fast food, he was known as ‘Big Mac’ because of his larger than life appetite for life and his habit of hoovering down food like an animal. He’d tear through a meal with a cheeseburger in one hand and a piece of pie in the other. Shooting a scene with him, Karl Malden (who had famously worked with Brando) was quoted as saying that McQueen scared the daylights out of him, springing at and attacking like an animal.

I think seeing Bullitt and reading about Steve McQueen put me in touch with my own raging, impatient inner animal, an energy which is generally channeled into maniac workaholism. The frustration of being an artist under the radar makes me mainline work like a crack addict. NOW.

I just wolfed down a bowl of lentil soup as I typed. More about all this soon.

Go Big or Go Bust When You Least Expect It - How I Love Italy (Part 9)

October 26, 2015 in go big or go bust

If you’re here for the first time, welcome to a post about the making of my first feature film (How To Be Louise) (trailer below) and my adventures with it on the festival circuit and beyond in search of distribution. What I’d imagined would be one or two entries has turned into a multi-installment epic.

Returning from six months in Japan to the broken-down charm of Williamsburg was a shock: the bloom of living in bohemia was off the rose.

With Frank in Williamsburg pretending that the bloom was not off the rose.

Our neighbor Larry Ungarten with Frank and me. (I'm wearing my Berlin Festival t-shirt)

Lea Floden, Larry Ungarten (under the arrow) and Bruce McCarty in "How To Be Louise".  Larry has a great moment in this scene. — Lea Floden, Larry Ungarten (under the arrow) and Bruce McCarty in "How To Be Louise". Larry has a great moment in this scene.

n Japan, I remember once leaving a bakery and breaking up a big cookie to share with Frank who was confined to his stroller. When some large pieces fell onto the street, I figured “Big deal. The birds’ll get ‘em.” But looking around, I had second thoughts. The street was immaculate and the people in their impeccably pressed suits and knife-pleated skirts all seemed complicit in keeping it that way. I bent down and picked up the crumbs to throw away in a proper garbage can.

Here in Williamsburg, with our now walking sixteen-month-old Frank, the distressed look I had so loved had become a burden. Even the appeal of a low-population neighborhood within one subway stop of Manhattan had lost its allure. None of my artist friends had children and the only people in the kiddie park were drinking bottles of English 800 in their wheel chairs.

We started working every angle to find an affordable apartment in Manhattan.

In the meantime, How To Be Louise was going on to festivals without me. Antwerp, Atlantic International Film Festival, Fort Lauderdale, Haifa Intl Film Festival, and Santa Barbara Film Festival among others.

And then, there came an invitation from a festival I’d never heard of —in Pesaro, Italy. There was going to be a section for American Independents. Having been in competition at Sundance and in Berlin, I have to admit that my ‘high standards’ had crossed the line into outright snobbery. I’d heard of Venice. But, Pesaro? At first I shrugged and thought, well, okay maybe the film can go. If the print is available. (We had only one print for screenings as even a 16mm print could cost over a thousand dollars.)

Truth is actually stranger than fiction because Mr. Green had been planning to leave at just the time of the festival for a lecture tour in that general region of Italy. My dear sister Mary arranged to take off from work to join Frank and me in Pesaro for a few days so I could take my eyes off Frank and be there as a filmaker.

The festival put us up in a lovely small hotel with the other indie filmmakers, many of them from New York: Paul Morrissey who had made many films with Warhol, Jon Jost, Abigail Child, Su Friedrich and others.

Here I am posing in front of the festival posters and the cinema in Pesaro where the screenings took place.

Frank and I standing in the middle of the street in Pesaro

All of our meals at the hotel were taken care of by the festival and, unlike at Sundance and Berlin where everyone was pretty much on their own, there was a delightful spirit of camaraderie at the large tables in the hotel dining room. Frank, with his passionate love of spaghetti, was always in a good mood. We were artists and being treated so well, respectfully. How could I have ever considered passing this up?

We all have our strengths and our weaknesses. I like to think that I’m good in the moment, present and real. Unfortunately, as far as executive function, that's a card missing from my deck. When my sister Mary left to go back to her job in New York, the full horror of my lack of foresight and planning hit me like a Mack truck.

At eighteen months, Frank was a big talker. Furthermore, he was in constant motion. There was no way we could go to screenings. In fact, there was no way I could have a conversation. Here I was in Pesaro, surrounded by filmmakers, film lovers and even film curators from MoMA and beyond. I saw the filmaking crowd at meals, but other than that, I was attending to my toddler, so close and yet so far. We had more than twenty-four hours until Mr. Green would arrive and give me back my freedom. Frank and I hit the beach. We spent time at the kiddie park. I was counting the seconds.

After one very long morning picking Frank up and depositing him on the seat of yet another enormous motorcycle parked around the town square, Adrienne Mancia and Jutte Jensen from MoMA came running toward me. “There you are, Anne! Your film is the hit of the festival!” I actually thought they were being sarcastic but apparently the Italian press had gone crazy for How To Be Louise. Corriere della Sera had used the phrase “unreserved praise” along with my name in one sentence and seven other papers had singled out How to Be Louise as the film of the festival.

(to be continued)

Click on the 'Like' button for some instant gratification. Promise.

Go Big or Go Bust: New Efficiency Model - Codependency from Japan to San Francisco (Part 8)

October 23, 2015 in go big or go bust

With both Sundance and now Berlin behind me and no big distribution deal in the works, I felt the emotional equivalent of having the tendons behind my knees cut. There was nothing to do but to accept my situation. Hey we weren't going to sell off the rights to just anybody.

I flew from Berlin to Brooklyn to meet Frank and Mr. Green and we headed back for two more months in the suburbs of Osaka, Mr. Green to finish out his guest professorship, me to my exile with Frank.

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t that I didn’t love Japan. Visually, gastronomically and culturally, it's one of my favorite places. The cleanliness alone makes me feel more relaxed and safe than almost anywhere I’ve ever been. It was the combination of not speaking the language, being in a suburb without a friend and this active one-year old for my constant companion which made the experience a little like being exiled to Mars.

I settled in for the duration, resigned to the fact that my film just might not get distributed. And I set right to work on a revenge action plan: whenever Frank went to sleep I would work on the script for my second feature. It would be a comedy about the incredible loneliness of marriage and motherhood, the dashed expectations of my highest hopes and dreams. But this next film would not be made on a shoestring. At the very least, I’d need a budget for a babysitter, and anyway, to insure distribution, we’d need a star - so we’d have a budget of millions. When it opened to rave reviews, everyone would be clamoring for my first feature, How To Be Louise. I’d show them.

We toured a little around Japan.

With students of Kagoshima University on a boat in front of Sakurajima, one of the most active volcanoes in the world.  The towns on either side of the volcano share ash-removal equipment depending on where the prevailing wind is depositing the… — With students of Kagoshima University on a boat in front of Sakurajima, one of the most active volcanoes in the world. The towns on either side of the volcano share ash-removal equipment depending on where the prevailing wind is depositing the ash.

In April, we headed back to the States. The first stop was the San Francisco International Film Festival.

My to die for papier maché earrings were made by an artist in Berlin.

I’d been reading about David Lynch’s new hit television show Twin Peaks which hadn’t been available in Japan. We watched an episode in our hotel room, aptly named I thought, the Queen Anne Hotel. I scoured the San Francisco phone book to see if there were any Flournoys. It was fun to be back in the US.

The festival gave an elegant lunch for the indie filmmakers where I met Wayne Wang, whose Chan Is Missing had been a huge inspiration. Peter Scarlet, the Director of the festival, told me that HTBL had a very high audience rating (I think he said it was the second most popular!!) and that a radio station wanted to interview me. It was all happening so effortlessly. Things were looking up!

I’d never done a live interview but figured I’d be all right as I love to talk if I know the subject matter which, in this case, I certainly did. Mr. Green and Frank and I went over to the radio station in Berkeley.

Halfway into the interview, the radio show host managed to render me speechless: “You know, I was watching a screener of your film with my girlfriend the other night and she remarked: “This is actually a portrait of codependency!” Panic engulfed me. Codependency? I wanted to change the subject immediately but, overwhelmed by fear and then suddenly by anger, was afraid to open my mouth. And well I didn't: A portrait of codependency? My film is a comedy! You make it sound like a mental health tract! And why is your girlfriend even qualified to comment? You know you're probably turning away potential viewers! ARE YOU SAYING I HAVE ISSUES?

I have no idea what I did say out loud (if anything) after his 'observation'.

So as we walked away from the radio station, I asked Mr. Green how it went. He winced. And then his face froze in the wince: “Well…” He made that little twisting motion with his hand like he was unscrewing a candle flame light bulb sticking down from the ceiling. I'm not exactly sure what he was saying. And come to think of it, I still don't really want to know.

(to be continued)

Guaranteed to give you a thrill: click the ‘Like’ button to see what I’m talking about.

Go Big or Go Bust: New Efficiency Model - Surprises at The Berlin Film Festival (Part 7)

October 21, 2015 in go big or go bust

Having a projector bulb burst five minutes into the screening of your first feature film and watching a very influential person get up and leave the room should be high on any filmmaker’s list of Things To Avoid. I tried to put the recurring image of Richard Pena, Director of The New York Film Festival, out of my mind. But there he was, in instant replay in my head, over and over, and over, rising from his seat and heading for the exit. Fortunately, we had our big screening still ahead of us, in the Panorama section of The Berlin International Film Festival aka Berlinale.

Official Trailer (2:07)

I’d seen How To Be Louise so many times, I did not need to watch it again. But the chance to see it anonymously, surrounded by hundreds of film lovers, was too tempting an opportunity to miss. What if they didn’t get it? What if they booed? What if, God forbid, they walked out? Heck, I'd already weathered that. It would be instructive. It would be a once in a lifetime experience. And it would be important to know if and when they didn't 'get it'.

To my joy (and great relief) none of my dark fantasies came to pass. They LOVED it. They laughed everywhere I hoped they would and then some. Their applause over the final credits sounded like thunder. I was beaming. My face hurt from smiling. The Berlin Festival crowd got our film. I couldn’t wait to tell Mr. Green.

After spending a good thirty minutes mastering the basics of German pay phones, I rushed to call him with about three pounds of Deutsche Marks.

On the fourth ring he answered: “Oh Annie. I’m so glad you called. Where are the long pants? For Frank. I can’t find any clean long pants.” The demands of life with the one-year old I’d left him to take care of were much more pressing than my news and I think Mr. Green listened to only part of my recap before he cut me off with a quick congratulations, signing off to get back to his charge.

I headed for the airport with invitations to more film festivals but again without a distribution deal. But I left Berlin having connected with a lot more filmmakers. And the more peers I met, the more I realized that my plan and vision were extremely naive. Here I figured, I’ve done my part, I made the film. Come and get it. A lot of these other filmmakers were taking a different attitude. They were planning on spending a year on the festival circuit. My idea of hitting two or three festivals and finding a distributor started to seem laughable.

(to be continued)

BONUS: Click on the 'Like' button below. You're going to LOVE it.

Go Big or Go Bust: New Efficiency Model - The Berlin Film Festival (Part 6)

October 19, 2015 in go big or go bust

After having the ‘World Premiere’ of How To Be Louise at the Sundance Festival (trailer below), I flew from Salt Lake City to Newark to pick up one year-old Frank at my parents in New Jersey.

(2:07) trailer for How To Be Louise starring Lea Floden as Louise and Bruce McCarty

On arriving at my parents, guess who didn’t recognize me? Guess who wouldn’t even look at me? Choking back tears, I wallowed in heartbreak until my mother suggested that I pull myself together.

Frank and I headed back to Brooklyn to join Mr. Green who had arrived from Japan to meet with students in his lab and to take over with Frank. Having schooled Mr. Green on what he needed to know, I set off for our European Premiere. (Premieres are a very big deal in the world of film festivals.)

Having never been to Berlin, I didn’t know what to expect but my hopes were high from what I knew from Kurt Weill, Lotte Lenya, Marlene Dietrich, the Bauhaus and Max Beckmann. I was not disappointed.

In spite of it being a bitterly cold February with the usual icy streets and sidewalks, the mood of the city was jubilant: the Berlin Wall had come down just two months earlier. Lea Floden and I stayed in a small hotel and had schedules packed from morning til night. We went to a festival party in a high-ceilinged room hardly bigger than an over-sized living room. The draw was neither movie stars or film producers, but rather the Soviet Army marching band in full uniform. They played Swing Era music with lots of brass and I can't find the words to describe how explosive, how loud and incredibly exciting it was. It was like the music was coming from inside my body.

And then there was Berlin. On one of my forays into the streets around the festival, I came upon a pharmacist who seemed to be trapped in the 14th century. The pharmacy had large windows through which I could see that it was a jewel box of exquisitely functional wood work - shelves, drawers, cabinets and mirrors. But it was the pharmacist himself who made my jaw drop. He wore a perfect white lab coat and his white hair was cut in an impeccable Prince Valiant bob with a page boy curl. This vision eventually inspired Everett Quinton’s character Ethelred’s hair in Season 3 of The Louise Log.

Everett Quinton in the Prince Valiant wig - (We didn't have the budget for the curl of a pageboy.)

Lea and I met up with some other filmmakers who were taking a trip over into what had been behind the Iron Curtain ninety days earlier. The drab and barren-looking architecture and the looks on the faces of the people in East Berlin were in striking contrast with the opulent and free feeling of the western part of the city. In the guarded way the East Berliners looked around (or didn’t look around} while sitting on a bus or walking past us on the street, it was clear that decades of a repressive regime had affected them.

I spent most of my time in Berlin at the festival, walking in one direction or the other of a very long hallway in the building which housed The Market. It was easy to meet new people and find old friends. Our friend and long-time champion Lynda Hansen who organized American Independents in Berlin was there and we met Josef Wutz, a producer and actor and many others I've lost touch with.

Like everyone, we had a few screenings set up at The Market. As you might expect, The Market is where the business happens in modest screening rooms for small groups of people in the industry. A very nice bonus of Market screenings was the Sign-In List which was handed to the filmmaker after the audience had been seated. I was thrilled to see that a number of film festival directors were at our first screening, including Richard Pena of the New York Film Festival. My first short had screened at New York before he was the director and I held my breath imagining that my first feature might be invited too.

Less than ten minutes into the screening, the bulb in the projector burst. Eventually the lights came up. Some time later, a technician poked his head in and asked for our patience in several languages. There was complete silence in the room. I was in the back row chewing off my nails. After a few more minutes, Richard Pena got up and left.

(to be continued)

BONUS: click the ‘Like’ button below and get an instant thrill.