racing daylight

2012-02-02T11:51:00.000-08:00

So, where were we? Oh yeah, since we made Racing Daylight Melissa won an actor at the SAG AWARDS

She's at work on TREME, a sensitive, music and food filled testament to the rebuilding of New Orleans, post Katrina, with or without Federal aid.

Giancarlo Esposito has been working on the series BREAKING BAD, and now in ONCE UPON A TIME, and look for him in the film I,ALEX CROSS

Jason Downs has a new album available on itunes,

with the hit single BITCH OF THE WEEK

Sabrina Lloyd's film HELLO LONESOME IS UP FOR THE JOHN CASSAVETES AWARD, at this year's SPIRIT AWARDS.

She and her husband have adopted a sweet girl named Florence -- camera shy here upon her mum's back

Me? I saw a bear!

Now okay, enough away! I'm off to the future, to the Night Mare's world, where only Mina, a rogue Dream Weaver has any chance to reclaim the day. More on the ongoings of RACING DAYLIGHT'S talented cast anon, when we'll check in on Denny Dillon and David Strathairn.Please tell your friends, we'll be on Showtime starting next week!

Park City Schedule for PREDISPOSED

2012-01-26T05:50:00.000-08:00

http://filmguide.sundance.org/film/120289/predisposed

2012-01-26T05:36:00.000-08:00

Melissa's got a new film at Sundance PREDISPOSED by Phil Dorling and Oscar nominee Ron Nyswaner. Trivia- Phil's first job in film was in the art department of RACING DAYLIGHT

This is Melissa in the film.Trivia - I play a receptionist in the film. Thanks Phil and Ron!

Ron Nyswaner

Phil Dorling on the left. PREDISPOSED plays at the Sundance Film Festival This weekend.

Melissa Leo, Jesse Eisenberg, Tracy Morgan, Isaiah WhitlockTrivia - Isaiah Whitlock and I were in the TCG finals the same year. He worked at ACT in San Francisco and I was at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

2012-01-22T12:24:00.001-08:00

JOIN US ON FACEBOOK

Catching up

2012-01-22T12:05:00.000-08:00

It's been a while. In that time Melissa won an Oscar!

David an Emmy. Me? I've been lost in the writing of a futuristic feminist fantasy.

Anyway, thanks so much to Freyr Thor

and Vanguard International

http://www.vanguardcinema.com/racingdaylight/racingdaylight.htmfor getting us to Showtime Showtime Official Site :: Schedules :: Program Details :: Racing Daylightand for signing RACING DAYLIGHT up for 7 more years! You never know what can happen in five years of racing daylight. Onward!

2012-01-22T11:58:00.001-08:00

and here as well!

Showtime Official Site :: Schedules :: Program Details :: Racing Daylight

2012-01-22T11:57:00.000-08:00

Showtime Official Site :: Schedules :: Program Details :: Racing Daylight

2012-01-22T04:05:00.001-08:00

We're on SHOWTIME NETWORK staring in Feb. the links never work for me on this blogger so here's the straight link. http://wb.vu/52. HAPPY 2012!

Showtime Official Site :: Schedules :: Program Details :: Racing Daylight

2012-01-19T13:24:00.000-08:00

Showtime Official Site :: Schedules :: Program Details :: Racing Daylight

2011-10-10T08:08:00.000-07:00

IMPORTANT! AND PASS IT ON ...

2010-07-08T09:03:00.001-07:00

FROM NEIL GAIMAN'S BLOG

Important. And pass it on...
POSTED BY NEIL AT 9:40 PM

John M. Ford was pretty much the smartest writer I knew. Mostly. He did one thing that was less than smart, though: he knew he wasn't in the best of health, but he still didn't leave a proper will, and so didn't, in death, dispose of his literary estate in the way that he intended to while he was alive, which has caused grief and concern to the people who were closest to him.

He's not the first writer I know who didn't think to take care of his or her posthumous intellectual property. For example, I knew a writer -- a great writer -- separated from and estranged from his wife during the last five years of his life. He died without making a will, and his partner, who understood and respected his writing, was shut out, while his wife got the intellectual property, and has not, I think, treated it as it should have been treated. These things happen, and they happen too often.

There are writers who blithely explain to the world that they didn't make a will because they don't mind who gets their jeans and old guitar when they die but who would have conniptions if they realised how much aggravation their books or articles or poems or songs would cause their loved ones (or editors, anthologists or fans) after their death...

Writers put off making wills (well, human beings put off making wills, and most writers are probably human beings). Some of us think it's self-aggrandising or foolish to pretend that anyone would be interested in their books or creations after they're dead. Others secretly believe we're going to live forever and that making a will would mean letting Death in a crack.

Others make wills, but don't think to take into account what happens to our literary estate as a separate thing from the disposition of our second-best beds, which means unqualified or uninterested relatives can find themselves in control of everything the author's written. Some of us are just cheap.

All this bothered me, and still bothers me.

Shortly after Mike Ford's death, I spoke to Les Klinger about it. Les is a lawyer, and a very good one, and also an author. I met him through Michael Dirda, and the Baker Street Irregulars (here's Les's Sherlockian webpage).

Les immediately saw my point, understood my crusade and went off and made a document for authors. Especially the lazy sort of authors, or just the ones who haven't quite got around to seeing a lawyer, or who figure that one day it'll all sort itself out, or even the ones to whom it has never occurred that they need to think about this stuff.

It's a PDF file, which you can, and should, if you're a creative person, download here:

http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/SIMPLEWILL.pdf

As Les says, your options are:

1) Recopy the document ENTIRELY by hand, date it, and sign it at the end. No witnesses required.

2) Type the document, date it, sign it IN FRONT OF at least two witnesses, who are not family or named in the Will, and have each witness sign IN FRONT OF YOU and the other witnesses. Better yet, go to a lawyer with this form and discuss your choices!

Having said that, the first option, a "holographic will" isn't valid everywhere -- according to Wikipedia, In the United States, unwitnessed holographic wills are valid in around 30 out of the 50 states. Jurisdictions that do not themselves recognize such holographic wills may nonetheless accept them under a "foreign wills act" if it was drafted in another jurisdiction in which it would be valid. In the United Kingdom, unwitnessed holographic wills are valid in Scotland, but not in England and Wales.

So the second option is by far the wisest.

Pass it on. Spread it around. And then, if you're an author, or even a weekend author with just a few short stories published, or one thin book you don't think anyone read or would want to republish, fill it out. Sign it and date it in front of witnesses. Put it somewhere safe. And rest easily in the knowledge that you may have made some anthologist, or some loved one, in the future, a bit happier and made their lives a little easier.

(Or better still, print it out and take it to your own lawyer/ solicitor or equivalent legal person when you get a formal will drawn up. As Les says, take it to a lawyer and discuss your choices.)

Feel very free to repost it on your own webpages, or to link to it above, or link to this blog entry -- it's http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2006/10/important-and-pass-it-on.html -- which contains all this information.

(And the same goes for you artists, photographers and songwriters, although a few words may have to be changed or added.)

[Edit to add, Les's template is appropriate for the US. If you're outside of the US, go and see a lawyer -- you can take Les's template with them to show them the sort of thing you have in mind. And if you're an estate planning sort of lawyer in a foreign land and you feel like doing a template document, send it to me and I'll put up a webpage here with all of them on.]

IMPORTANT! PASS IT ON ...

2010-07-08T08:59:00.000-07:00

Please vote! 8 days to go!!!

2010-04-23T07:45:00.000-07:00

http://www.refresheverything.com/rosendaletheatrecollective

Racing Daylight in Movie Maker Magazine online

2009-04-09T12:50:00.000-07:00

Please read a making of story in this week's Movie Maker online

MELISSA LEO WINS AT THE SPIRIT AWARDS!!!

2009-02-22T06:25:00.000-08:00

Melissa Leo has won a well deserved BEST ACTRESS award at the Film Indepepndent Spirit Awards for her work on Courtney Hunt's FROZEN RIVER. TThe hometown team is so proud!

Lovely photo from the Celtic Dreamer

2009-02-12T05:36:00.000-08:00

Taken at the WOODSTOCK FILM FESTIVAL screening of RACING DAYLIGHT at the soon to be 60 year old ROSENDALE THEATER!!!

Thanks!

SPIRITUAL CINEMA CIRCLE

2009-02-06T05:46:00.000-08:00

We've just signed a contract to have RACING DAYLIGHT included in the Spiritual Cinema Circle compilations distributed to their world members in over 70 countries.

Thanks so much to Anna Darrah for selecting our film to be used in this way. We have hoped that RACING DAYLIGHT would be a tool to promote thought provoking conversations, disagreements and understandings of the primariness of love and of the soul. Thanks so much for honoring us in this way.

Reprint: BILLY PALMER, a character bio

2009-02-03T06:53:00.000-08:00

Dude!!! What the fuck?! Cool, huh? I mean .... like, yeah ... where you goin' now, cuz I was thinkin' like, I don't know, maybe doin' somethin' like, shit ... you know, like, maybe I will, you know, cuz it's possible to, like you know ... get there from here ... you know? You okay with that? ... Cuz if you're not we don't have to, you know, we could maybe get it together to hang out somewhere else with them, you know, so don't sweat it if you're not sure yet, cuz we can decide like later, man, you know?

Huh? Vicky? What the fuck, she's great, man, old ball and chain, right? But you know, like what the fuck, right? Neutered, right, males, right, married men, like ... fucking women and shit right? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha, right? Yeah, my mom was all like, you know, .... "Vicky Palmer! That whore?!", hahahahahahahahahaha, like look in the mirror, you know, right? She's a fuckin' saint, my mom, right? Not!

In highschool, man, that's when I got hip to her shit, like you know. Yeah, right? Had to work twice as hard for old Richy-Rich man Lessiter, right, lazy old farts on his crews, right, it's construction, right, I'm like sixteen and some old fat ass says like, right in my face, right, like I'm s'pose to know or somethin' right, "Slow down kid, no one's gonna fire you while old Lessiter's nailin' your mom." ... Just like that, right, I mean, what am I s'pose to do with that, huh? Like fuck you, dickhead, your daughter's blowing guys for quarters in the boy's bathroom, scumwad, like right? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Nah ...I don't believe it at first, right, but you notice shit, like, you know, secret shit, and I know it's true and shit so I shut the fuck up to save the old man, right, drunken piece a shit, and I take care of the little guys while she's out, right? Shit ... you know ... but I'm over it, man, like who fuckin' cares, right? History, right? The old man's dead, she's with Lessiter now, and Thanksgivings a bitch, right? ... But ... like .... I got vicky, right? Like what the fuck ... maybe we can, you know do some shit like later, man, okay like ... you know, right?

Reprint: THE DRIFTER

2009-01-29T04:20:00.001-08:00

Ice blue flames flick the darkness, sharp edges bite at the dawn, the chill. How long now ... another few days I expect, till I face the past to see if there's a future there. I write in this small notebook, its leather binding now worn and rough in patches, spattered and splotched, liquid's history marks its cover with a heiroglyph known only to sprites and water daemons. I chronicle the events of my time in hiding, running from the grumblings of a war whose face I wear.

White men fight over economic subsidies, a president fights to align his constituents, all under the banner of the abolitionists cry, and yet ... they ALL hate us. Hate that we're the reason for this unrest, this anger, this ' nigger ...' animals, trainable, not educable. My people grow their food, wipe their asses, craft their civilizations, and we're the ones who are the beasts? They brought us here, flesh eating cattle, couldn't breed the fight out of us, the history, the memories as stories back to thatched huts and tribal fires, warriors ... and now that our presence has placed challenge to their collective morality, we are again to blame. The irony of it. What is fair after all? We the people ... ALL men are created equal ... according to someone's gods.

Who am I in this changing America? Born a free man to a Placee. Raised handsomely on funds deeded to us by a white father whom I call 'Sir' and 'Mister', a man who hears "Father" and "Papa" from white children elsewhere, in a world where I am not known, not welcomed. Where do I fit now that all distinction of class and money have gone, our way of life so irrevocably altered by this war to come. Any man may put a saddle on my back, a bit in my mouth and claim me as property. Some of our people will fight with the Confederacy, a futile effort to preserve the old ways of money and pastime. We men of color who have also owned our brethren. How must we pay for this? I run.

One aches for home. The smell of the river water at low tide when the mossy greens, the dark secrets of its depths, lay naked to the sun. Fish stews musky with bayou herbs, the lilt of Patois, sinister magic in spiced air, strains of a banjo companioned by lapping water, creaking wood, crickets bowing small fiddles ...

A free man. I will remain a free man ... by the waning flames of this small warmth carved out of night into day ...

Netflix Viewer Reviews

2009-01-20T04:36:00.000-08:00

It never occurred to me that when you make a movie you're holding up a big sign that says 'hit me!'. I regularly peruse the reviews written by viewers on the various movie sites and I have to say that we're running positive except on NETFLIX where we average about 7 out of 10 positive and low ratings. It's the negatives that stick with me. Clearly this is a personal issue but also an instructive one.

I picture the negative reviewers in grey tinged y-fronts, (yes they seem to be all men), with big bellies and pizza boxes strewn about a room with the curtains drawn, stacks of unwatched movies and unwashed dishes, maybe a cat. Men who have no women in their lives, and who live to pontificate on what's good and what's bad with no grey in between, excepting their own u-trow, and no concept that an opinion is genrerally just that, not fact.

The negative reviewers all seem to be actors as well, since they lament the participation of the players in RACING DAYLIGHT as embarassing or wasted. So sad. I don't believe the actors feel this way, as many of them are returning for our next adventure SLAP AND TICKLE. I'm sorry that they missed the nuanced moments, the psychological underplay, the humor.

I try to figure out if the reviewers know that many people spent years crafting and executing a dream which they have somehow successfully maneuvered into the marketplace, and that the same people realize their film is not for everyone. It was never intended to be. I try to figure out these things and then realize that all I can really do is learn from this experience to be kinder, more thoughtful in my own criticism. Nothing is really black and white...only shades of grey.

New Years resolutions:

Focus on the positive
Be kinder to self and others
Let go what you can't control
Stop reading Netflix reviews
Make another movie

Reprint: ANNA

2009-01-20T04:33:00.000-08:00

It was snowing. There was a fire in the fat bellied stove, a chubby baby in the basket at her feet, her hands in rhythmic concentration, repeating a pattern with hook and yarn, an everyday industry requiring no thought, so her mind wandered weaving unconscious spells, benedictions Anna wondered where he was ... Harry, where they laid him to rest. She hoped there was a view. Harry liked a view. A hillside on a rainy day when the mist rose up off the back meadow, hovering its invocation over the bee stung monardas and yarrow. Blessing it.

"Magic happens in the mist ..."

He'd whisper, as if he'd known the sacred words that unlocked those mysteries and measured them out in careful deliberate doses, not to awe, but to admire. He'd mezmerized her always. His small gallantries when no one else could hear, as if it were a secret only they would share. All her life she'd known he was her destiny, she'd recognized him, from somewhere deep inside, the memories embedded so long ago, she can't remember the time or place, just the longing. It took him a while to come around to the truth of it, chastising and chiding her for speaking her truth about them, for saying intimate things that made him wince and think, in that time before he'd come to recognize her as well.

Then he'd seen her. One day crossing the meadow in her flannels and frills, picking flowers, and talking to herself as if it were the most normal thing in the world to hold considered conversations in first person. She'd seen him then, and smiled. It pierced his heart, the simplicity of her, the truth she spoke so darn scary and deep its irritation worming its way into his heart. Before he knew it, her truth became their truth, for he truly could fathom no one else filling him up the way she did with her questions and wisdom, her hand in his.

And then he was gone. All their hopes now hers alone. There was the child, and there was Edmund, gifts from God. Religion an institution she had not abandoned though the Lord had set her such a hard burden to bear, she'd have missed the social life.

Anna pulled at the ball of yarn suspended through the arch of the child's basket. The ball nestled next to the flanneled baby swaddled there, a turtle on its back, all four appendages dancing toward that moving thread, eyes popping at the teardrop prisms off the lamp, and sometimes startled by something unseen just past his mother's head. She wondered if he saw spooks. The old folks always spoke that way, as if the ghosts of the dead were part of living. She had to admit to having seen shadows at the fringes of her sight, her thoughts, and sometimes to hoping it was Harry come back to her. To them.

Jack was a strong baby. The Stokes were sturdy stock. They were cousins to her kin, but then everyone in Cedarsville and its outlying lands had a claim to the founding families. Anna had come from two towns over to visit Stokes Farm with her mother and father one bug nettled day. Someone's wedding, or christening. She'd not wanted to come all that long way by carriage and then a hot walk across the meadow, boiling in Sunday frippery, to the old farmhouse by the pond. She was eight, after all and would have preferred climbing a tree. She'd sat under a one instead, frowning, shooing away the gnats and that pesty little kid Edmund who'd started poking at her the minute they'd met.

Then she'd seen him ... Harry Stokes. He was 15, dressed in long trousers, and she knew she'd known him forever, that they'd made promises, somewhere, sometime, that only she'd remembered ...

The fire popped, boots scraped on the back porch, Anna startled from her reverie. She looked around her to what is, and smiled, ready to greet the man who has rescued her from ridicule and shame, who has taken another man's baby as his own, whom she has grown to love and trust and would never hurt for anything in the world. For all that was Harry was lost, its archeaology buried deep in the lining of her soul, to be mined in another time. This life it would be Edmund, he had earned it.

Reprint: HARRY AGAIN

2009-01-13T05:05:00.000-08:00

Married ...?! I must've misunderstood. While I was busy dyin' Anna was marrying my cousin Edmund? There was even a child now, the conception of whom I didn't even want to consider. The familiar pain in my chest flared again, the feel of that Confederate's knife twisting the truth deeper into the already damaged organ. Anna was married, and not to me.

I Stayed around the farm the better part of a month, I thought to win her back, finding time alone with her, reminding her with the heat of my kisses of promises made and broken, in a vow to someone else, our love a casualty of war. Edmund. My kid cousin, pest, who we let tag along with us, endured his endless questions and the moony way he'd look at Anna like she was a dish of Aunt Oneida's fresh peach ice cream.

When he left me to die on the battle field I chalked it up to fear and inexperience. Everyone else thought I was a goner, why wouldn't he? But now it took on a sinister tone. I watch him now with fresh eyes, the way his hand rests with ownership on Anna's back, the way he cannot meet my eye or shake my hand, the shut bedroom door, the child who should have been mine ... Had this been his plan; to get me out of the way and make Anna his own? It was improbable. It was ...

I left the day she took my ring off. As long as she was wearin' it there was hope. And then ... there was nothing. Nothing but an endless stream of tomorrows far away from the place I had always planned to turn up my toes, my loving wife and a passel of babies with babies of their own gathered round, tears and fond memories. There have always been Stokes in Cedarsville ... but they won't be mine. My future stretches out on an endless road to somewhere else. I could not stay in Cedarsville and watch my cousin live my life, with my wife.

I headed west.

There's always somewhere to hang your head and drown your sorrows.

Reprint : GRANDMA or IN EMMELINE'S HEAD

2009-01-08T05:12:00.000-08:00

There's a yellowjacket buzzing between the window and the screen. A frustrated hum the soundtrack to the moving picture which has become my life. Every now and then it knocks its body into the glass, the buzz fierce, determined. I could tell him that the fight is futile, but he still has to live it out to its close, where I forsee a new beginning, or what would be the point. The sound of life about to end is romantic, haunting, inevitable.

When did I first slip away? I wonder this when the sun glances off the window glass due east, the way it has on sunny days for the past ... oh ... so many years. I use to hide in my head all the time as a girl. It was safe in there, even if you didn't know what you would find, or where you would travel, if you didn't like it you could always change your mind. Life's not like that. The rules are less malleable and the colors less kind. I learned to do my chores and mastered looking like I was listening in school, then I could wander away at will, to anywhere at all. Maybe I knew then that I would retire here.

Yellowjackets, so aggressive, a barbed stinger made for repeated use. There's a hormone in its venom which acts like a homing device enabling them to swarm their victim, drawn to it, a small army of heat seaking missiles. It's horrible when you're swarmed. Your body becomes a rag doll, flailing and flapping, to make the pain go away. It's a deep hurt, the sting of a yellow jacket. But I still don't wish this death on it. Wasting away between window and screen, all that you can't have right over there.

Meat tenderizer neutralizes the venom. I use to carry it with me in the meadow where there was always a predator to be found protecting his queen. The MSG breaks it down. It works on jelly fish stings as well, Portugese man-of-war. I don't remember how I know this and not the other important things of life like how to talk, or walk, or even that to do these things might be important, to someone.

I was married young. Got caught up in the whirl and swirl of it, its reality only becoming clear at night when that old man would come to me reaking of liquor the points of his beard poking my cheek as he rocked himself on me, in me, those whiskers ... yellowjacket stings ... i was too young ... what was I thinking about ?...

"Get that spoon out of my face, Vicky Plamer!" I'd scream it if I could remember how.

Vicky Palmer, a child I wouldn't let feed my dog. She'll give up soon and go watch her shows. She likes the shows where people are unkind to one another. Where they gather in groups to laugh and ridicule. I liked jane Austen. Same thing really, different costumes. How did it go? Something like "We laugh at our neighbors and make sport for them in out turn ..." nicer language than our contemporary vernacular, but it's just people poking fun at other people. It's when they get the fists and guns and the ... I was the only girl growing up.

I had a daughter. She got pregnant by a boy who went MIA in Vietnam. It made her hard. She never liked me much. Thought I was dowdy. "Provenical..." Oh, baby, who cares? Really? I mean what difference does it make to how we live and die, if it's only skin deep? I always hoped for more. More meaning between two people. Had it once. Brief. Treasured. Beautiful. Something I draw off that dusty shelf in the back corner of my memories every now and again so as not to make it ordinary, eveyrday, but a special occasion memory. A remembrance of a time that was as fleeting and as swift as butterfly wings ... He was a drifter. Came to work for Abner and me one summer. That was all. I never thought of him as a place to run away. He was a destination all his own. Just for that while. A gift I gave myself because I deserved him.

Gentle laughter. Real smart and not afraid to share it with me cause I was a woman or stupid, all the things you start to believe after repeated use. Sun warmed skin on skin in the mountains and valleys of this land I had known my whole life ... to see it through a stranger's eyes birthed it back to me whole, mine again ...

"Zzzz...zzz...zzzz..." A stuggle against the window, now the screen, valiant. I gave up the struggle. It was too hard to participate. Once you lose the use of language folks write you off as stupid, not there. I was still having thoughts and ideas and I was angry. Trying to tell them, him... I was the one losing my mind after all. That's when ... the pills.

"Psychotic episodes ...", "Dementia ..."

That's how the doctors diagnosed my anger. How they controlled it. The drugs take you away for awhile. Further away than I had ever travelled in my head. I tried to stay here, live my life, but staying present took the day, there was no room for creative thought, trying to maintain 'normal' took so much effort. ... Now, normal is this.

Abner died. I sat in my wheelchair at the service. Violet sent flowers. I wonder how old Sadie is now? She was three, no four when she left us. It was nice having a child in the house again. ...

What's that sound? That scratching. "Zzzz ...." That yellowjacket is frantic. Something's changing. Wood on wood. It's familiar, that sound ... I haven't heard it in years. The buzz is moving off ... I wonder who opened the window?

Reprint: HARRY; COMING HOME

2009-01-05T05:12:00.000-08:00

When they found me at Cedar Creek, that battlefield in Virginia, I was pushing out my last breath,

"Anna ...".

There was pain, in my chest, as if my heart was broken,

"Anna ..."

They heaved me onto a pile with the dead, and near dead, sure I wasn't gonna make the night, too many others with a better chance of seeing the sunrise. Come the dawn the pile of bodies on top of me had grown, I must have welcomed the warmth, until I decided not to suffocate instead of bleeding to death, the pressure of all those bodies above having stemmed the flow of my life's fluid enough for the wound to close up a mite on its own.

It took me near an hour to work my foot out into the open enough to wiggle it sose someone might notice. I could hear the voices of the medics, and walking survivors, calling for the living. I hoped someone might pass my grave and notice that the meter of my foot was different from those of the twitching corpses. It occurred to me that a regular rhythm, some synchopated measure, might serve,

'Oh! Susanna ...' I tried to hum it in my head, while bobbing my foot in time to the beat, my feeble voice muffled by the cloth and flesh tomb.

I thought back to Anna and me dancing to that song, old man Finkbbinder on fiddle, poncy Billy Ofsteder singing full tenor. I'd change the name to "Oh, Miss Anna ..." and whisper it in her ear all soft and secret. She'd catch her breath, and tell me not to hold her so close, it was getting hot in there ...

"...Oh don't you cry for me ..."

My cousin Edmund watching us, ignoring sweet Helly who followed after him like a lapdog.

"... Miss Anna, don't you cry ..."

My foot alone in the air, the rest of me crunched under meat sacks of blood and excrement in what use to be the living, singing that song.

"Over here!!"

A voice boomed near by. I felt the pile jostle overhead and the pressure give way to a gunsmoke clouded sky. I thought maybe it was heaven.

I woke up again in a dungy hospital tent to some grizzled old man, smeared in blood, digging a horse needle into my chest

"Aaaaaggghhhhhh ....!!!

There was something in my mouth, I bit down hard, grateful for a place to revenge the pain. Someone splashed me with liquid, liquor by its smell, and then I was gone again until I came to much later in more pain then I knew anybody could have and live. I thought about Anna, she was what I was livin' for. The look on her face when I dragged my sorry ass back and walked her down the aisle of the reformed church we'd been worshipping at since we were children.

I lived for the soft of her skin, the memory of the warm wet between her thighs the one time she had let me in, when I'd told her I was heading off to war. How we'd repeat that bliss after making a pledge before the preacher and the rest, make us some sons and daughters ... there have always been Stokes in Cedarsville. The thought of Anna made me pray to live instead of wishing I was dead. Anna was worth living for.

It took longer than I'd hoped. Everytime I'd get near well enough to make the journey home, I'd push too soon, and land myself in some flop house nursing a fever and an abcess. A spinster lady took me in up in Maryland, or was it Delaware. Said she was only doin' it in the hopes that some other woman was doin' the same for her men folk on the road home from war. It took almost a whole year to make it back to Cedarsville, and when I rounded that bend down Schooner's Lane, named after the ship builder turned farmer who'd settled the land along with the Stokes men back around the time a Henry was king in England, by the time I turned that corner and saw the farmhouse, well, I thought my aching heart was like to burst with joy. I was finally home, almost to Anna ...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

REPRINT: SADIE'S FIRST HOLIDAY ON THE FARM

2009-01-03T05:27:00.000-08:00

Sadie spent her first holiday back on the farm alone. Grandma was there, but she didn't talk, just sat, propped in her wheelchair, staring at nothing. Moving with assistance, Emmeline Stokes could transfer her weight from one warehoused position to the next, offering no emotion to the event. Sadie wondered what she was thinking ... where had she gone so far away in her head while her body was maintained on the farm. First by Mrs. McMichael, Emmeline's oldest friend, whose brood had all grown and moved away from Cedarsville in search of the bright lights and big citiness of Manhattan, an island so far out of Lily McMichael's realm of thinking it might well have been on Mars instead of just 2 hours down the Thruway.

But Lily had dropped dead of a heart attack on her way to bring Emmeline her supper. So Sadie was sent a telegram by a social worker, and she'd left her quiet librarian's life in Lorain, Ohio, where there was nothing much to hold her, to come home and see to things. There was no one else to do it. But Grandma had been a shock.

Emmeline, Sadie's Grandma, had married onto the Stokes farm the summer she was 17. Abner, that was her husband's name, Abner Stokes was 30 when she caught his eye. He'd been married before, but that wife had been barren and then she dried up and died on him at least five years before Emmeline filled out, right in front of him. Her dad had owned the dairy farm down the road and she was always taggin' along after her brothers. Then giggling with her friends walking past Abner's barns. And finally whooshing by in the souped-up cars of teenaged boys. It had been too much for Abner to bear, his imagination was wild with raw images of flowers wrenched from their stalks before the blossom had bloomed. So he'd married her and they'd had Violet and not much else.

Sadie couldn't remember her Grandma whole. Violet, her mother, lit out off the farm as fast as she could. She'd dragged Sadie, the lovechild of a boy who'd never come back from Nam, and headed west for glamour and the movies, for which she knew she was destined. They ran out of money in Lorain, Ohio and Violet died there many Marlboros and MaiTais later. Leaving Sadie alone to clean out her drawers and rent her mother's room to make ends meet.

Sadie'd flirted with that other life, the one of booze and barstools she'd inherited from her mother, which resulted in several small tatoos and waking up to men who held no interest by daylight, no real joy at night. There had to be something more to life. Something like the adventure of the novels into which she escaped. But so far life's journey held nothing more glamorous then picking out a container for her mother's cremains, and then figuring out where she'd have wanted them spread. She knew her mother would not want to be locked in a box, but rather floating in the ether of something grand. Sadie had taken a trip to Cinncinnati and dumped Violet into the Ohio River, where she'd swirled away, a grey-green mass, sinking on her way to Kentucky.

But, like I said, Grandma had been a shock. Sadie had seen pictures after all, and heard stories of someone powerful and vibrant and alive. "Not enough room for the two of us ...!" Violet had always said. Sadie assumed this meant personalities. Personality was what Violet had a lot of, and Sadie had known to diminish her own to make room in the small house, or it would probably have exploded. But Grandma just wasn't there. No personality at all. Like a window onto nothing. It had been a great disappointment to Sadie.

She had so looked forward to belonging to something larger than every day. But Grandma was just maintenance ... in the beginning. Sadie started poking around the old farm house a month or two after she'd set up a routine for Grandma with Mrs. Palmer, and gotten herself a pocket-money job at the used bookstore in town.

Town. One block of not much. There were the weekenders who brought the exotic with them up from New York City and looked down their noses at the trades. There were the regulars who roamed the town; Dollar Bill, the homeless guy who they say walked out of his office on Wall Street straight up the Henry Hudson, landing in Cedarsville, in the same suit, now shredded and dirt caked, the Windsor knot of his tie holding his collar together. His parents had had a house there when he was small. It was where he'd been happy.

There was a Busy-Body, who owned the dress shop down the street. Gender dubious, She liked bouffant hairstyles, rhinestone glasses, and sold a mix of kitch and boutique. Her companion was a troll-man, who everyone knew was a woman, also known as the Gossip. She could be relied upon to recall the salacious events of Cedarsville, no matter the era, and made the most godawful smelling linament, which worked really well, but could clear a room. Sadie wondered what President Bush would make of this heterosexual couple.

And then there was Henry. Henry Becker, whose mother, Abby, had been the only person Violet could tolerate in that small town, so the stories of little Henry Becker were tinged with a magical charm, and the mandate to look after Violet Stokes's girl was inherited. Henry had showed up at the bus the day she arrived with her small suitcase of treasures, the rest of her life not worth the freight. He'd driven her up to the farm house, took her in to meet Grandma and Mrs. Palmer, and she hadn't been able to get out a word. Not a single word. Nothing seemed good enough to say to him, this special and rare beast who had come so suddenly upon her in this wooded place. She wanted to be her best self for him.

This had never happened to her before. She could talk. Have conversations. Though she rarely did. Henry had been something else. He was a seismic event. The heat rushed to her face, her chest got tight, and all the words rushed from her head ... all she wanted to do was throw her arms around his neck, give her mouth to his, feel his hands on her ... but she could never find the path, the words, which are the normal road to such events.

Henry had awakened something in her. When she set presents for Grandma and herself under the small tree she'd sawed down and decorated with the red-glass ornaments she'd found in a dusty trunk, forgotten reflections of a warmer time in the old farmhouse, she gave herself a present from Henry. It was wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with a green velvet ribbon, a ribbon her mother had given her to wear in her ginger hair at a piano recital when she was 12 ...

She didn't need to open it, she knew what it was. So she stared at it, wondering how she would react if it had really come from him. Well, because it had really come from him in a way, its spirit. She knew her cheeks would flush with color and she'd smile without being able to stop herself as her fingers fumbled with the ribbon, too pretty to let go to waste, looking up at him as he watched her, waiting for her impetuous delight ... when she'd fling herself into his arms laughing at the small scrap of old paper on which he'd written but a single word ..."Hope?".

Sadie smiled, blushing as if it were more than her fantasy. It was enough.

HAPPY-MERRY!

RACING DAYLIGHT Races Heart Beat

2008-12-29T14:51:00.000-08:00

Lorna London Sloukji
BellaOnline's Entertainment News Editor

Racing Daylight races heart beat

"I always knew I would end up insane," says Sadie Stokes, one of the protagonists in Nicole Quinn's Racing Daylight.

A story that encompasses ghosts, murder, passion, and love, Racing Daylight unfolds three stories, told from three different perspectives.

The first story shown is Sadie's, a lonely woman living in the country who takes care of her sick grandmother. Played by Melissa Leo, Sadie's life becomes saturated with colour and adventure when she sees a man in her mirror that calls the name "Anna". Sadie then begins to act out as her ancestor, Anna exemplifying characteristics of boldness, much more different than her original personality.

We learn that Sadie and Anna both want Henry, played by David Strathairn, the farm's handyman who "Anna" mistakes for Harry, her lover.

We also see the love and mystery story unfold through Henry's perspectives. Played by David Strathairn, Henry's storytelling unravels his relationship with Anna, leading to another man in Anna's life, which then results in yet another perspective. Edmund's story discloses even more information, as viewers learn more about Anna, the two men in her life, and what happened to her to cause such inner turmoil.

Award-winning writer and theatre director, Nicole Quinn makes her feature film directorial debut with Racing Daylight, a story rich with plot and character development.

Reviews for Racing Daylight have commended its narrative structure, performances, and overall presentation.

"Excellent work!" says director, Seret Scott. "Every element (cast, crew, designers, editors, writer-director) everybody was completely on-board in making (this) moving, frightening, visually stunning film."

Writer and director, Nicole Quinn endured many hardships including losing loved ones. She wrote Racing Daylight amidst all the rapid changes in her life, declaring this screenplay as "a map through the then unknown land of grief."

Is this another chick flick? Another love story with complex characters? If you enjoy symbolism, question your haunting past, or wonder about the transcendence of time, then Racing Daylight is simply a great film full of colourful characters, astounding performances, and a solid screenplay.
"If you don’t mind that some things in life are not readily explainable, then this may well be a journey you’d like to take," says Quinn.

Racing Daylight released on DVD December 23, 2008.

WHY RACING DAYLIGHT?

2008-12-27T05:51:00.000-08:00

My mother died in august of 2000. My brother informed me, at her funeral, that he had four months to live. He lived six. Three months after he died my sister was told that the goiter she'd had removed the year before had been mispathologized and that she actually had a rare form of cancer; medullary carcinoma of the thyroid; from which she died after two years of multiple surgeries and numerous drugs.

I wrote RACING DAYLIGHT in the midst of this life changing season. It became a map through the then unknown land of grief. A place everyone visits and from which some never return. I knew then that I would make this film, it seemed so important.

Many will watch RACING DAYLIGHT and see the quirky characters, the sweet small town, and the lack of overt sex and violence and think of it as a 'girl' movie. And to that I reply, what's wrong with 'girl' movies? 52% of our population are female, and yet we talk about cinema targeted at this segment of the population as if it is second class by virtue of its 'girl' or 'chick' moniker. Its content often the stuff of life; love, loss, hope ... is a 'dick' flick (thank you, Gloria Steinam for the phrase) with guns, bombs, violence, and in-your-face pornography somehow more accurately reflective of the human condition? Is this the world to which we aspire? I hope not.

It is hard to get a film made. For men and women. It is even harder to gain distribution. Thank you VANGUARD for seeing our film as a story, well crafted, well told, and peopled with amazing actors. It's a subtle ride, so if you're looking to be hit in the face with fast paced action, this may not be for you. BUT ... If you are compelled by subtlety. If you like puzzles. If you don't mind that some things in life are not readily explainable, then this may well be a journey you'd like to take.

Come visit us in Cedarsville. The countryside is beautiful and the ghosts are friendly.

RACING DAYLIGHT FEATURED IN NETFLIX TOP TEN DVDS RELEASE LISTS

2008-12-20T06:02:00.000-08:00

MovieJuice: December 23th 2008 New Releases!!
Mainstream Releases 12-23-09 {16}
robowriter new dvds 12-23-08 +starter+ {29+}
New DVD Releases 12/23/08
New DVD Releases 12-23-08

Also Featured in the following Top 10 lists:
Phatz' New DVD Releases 12-23-08 {44+} CURRENT
*CURRENT* New DVDs week 12/23, +27th {54 Titles}
Mainstream Releases 12-23-09 {16}

*All lists on Netflix

EXTRA SCREENINGS AT ROSENDALE!

2008-12-16T06:20:00.000-08:00

Uncle Tony and Michael Cacchio have advertised our film as screening at the ROSENDALE THEATER TUEDAY, WEDNESDAY and THURSDAY 12/16-12/18 5PM.

We'll be there! Will you?

THOUGHTS ON WOMEN AND AGING

2008-12-14T18:59:00.000-08:00

Ethel Michelson of Rosendale sent me this quote from an Alternet Digest article:

"The thoughtful film critic Wesley Morris, for instance, praises the face of Melissa Leo, a 40-year-old actress in "Frozen River," for its "amazing and unlimited capacity for solemnity,grief, despair and rage. If you've been to a movie lately, you know what an un-nipped, untucked, Botox-free miracle that face is."

I agree, it's a lovely miracle map of a life, Melissa's beautiful face.

RACING DAYLIGHT AT ROSENDALE!

2008-12-12T04:03:00.000-08:00

We open our dvd release run tonight: Dec. 12 until Dec 18th. 5pm nightly. We have dvds to selll!!!!

TONS OF SPIRIT!

2008-12-03T09:45:00.000-08:00

CONGRATULATIONS to MELISSA LEO and the many women of FROZEN RIVER who are thawing hearts at the box office!

RACING DAYLIGHT, our lovely film starring MELISSA LEO releases on dvd December 23rd after its one week run at my favorite movie theater; The ROSENDALE THEATER!

We will have dvds to sell, they make nice holiday gifts and stocking stuffers!

MELISSA LEO IN "LIMBO ROOM" AT ROSENDALE THEATER

2008-11-25T06:15:00.000-08:00

Melissa Leo is hosting a screening of LIMBO ROOM at the Rosendale Theater, she will be available for a q&a after the film.

Plot: When an on stage rape scene sparks an offstage affair, the line between reality and fiction becomes blurred.

Directed by Debra Eisenstadt
Written by Debra Eisenstadt and Jill Eisenstadt

The owners of the Rosendale Theater, Tony and Michael Cacchio, are true champions of independent films and the people who make them.

Mystery piano in woods perplexes police

2008-11-24T03:41:00.000-08:00

A friend sent me a note this a.m. with this article.

the note:

For some reason this story reminded me of your armoire in the woods...

the article:

Mystery piano in woods perplexes police

By Josh Levs
CNN

(CNN) -- Was it a theft? A prank? A roundabout effort to bring some holiday cheer to the police? Authorities in Harwich, Massachusetts, are probing the mysterious appearance of a piano, in good working condition, in the middle of the woods.
A police officer examines an oddly placed piano in the woods of Harwich, Massachusetts.

Discovered by a woman who was walking a trail, the Baldwin Acrosonic piano, model number 987, is intact -- and, apparently, in tune.

Sgt. Adam Hutton of the Harwich Police Department said information has been broadcast to all the other police departments in the Cape Cod area in hopes of drumming up a clue, however minor it may be.

But so far, the investigation is flat.

Also of note: Near the mystery piano -- serial number 733746 -- was a bench, positioned as though someone was about to play.

The piano was at the end of a dirt road, near a walking path to a footbridge in the middle of conservation land near the Cape.

It took a handful of police to move the piano into a vehicle to transport it to storage, so it would appear that putting it into the woods took more than one person.

Asked whether Harwich police will be holding a holiday party in the storage bay -- tickling the ivories, pouring eggnog -- while they await word of the piano's origin and fate, Hutton laughed. No such plans.
Harwich police have had some fun, though. Among the photos they sent to the news media is one of Officer Derek Dutra examining the piano in the woods. The police entitled the photo "Liberace."

Review from fellow filmmaker at S.N.O.B. Jill Wisoff

2008-11-20T09:17:00.000-08:00

Review from fellow filmmaker at S.N.O.B. Jill Wisoff. Jill's film CREATING KARMA was a wacky comedy, Winner of the Broad Humor Film Festival. Thanks, Jill!

RACING DAYLIGHT, the kickoff film which I talked about in my first post, was a flawless indie dramatic feature offering. Directed by Nicole Quinn who hails from Ulster County, NY, the film is a romance and ghost story told from the point of view of different characters and jumps in time from the Civil War period to the present. Fascinating, clever, amusing and well crafted dialogue, acceptable production values with thoughtful choices of staging to take advantage of the HD medium, and excellent editing make this a not miss on the indie circuit and, as well, the film will be released worldwide through Vanguard. To boot, the film is entertaining with a fantastic performance by David Strathairn (who I notice is a darling of indies lately...the last film I saw him in was the short "The Shovel" but this film is a SMORGASBORD of David in a feature as the romantic lead...what a fascinating and fun actor to watch). Melissa Leo plays the complicated "haunted" woman. Sarah Plant "dressed" this film with her amazing and unique music score. The ensemble of actors were professional and effective all around (and indeed though this was an indie Nicole apparently asked and got not only Hollywood stars like David, but amazing tech on this from talent that wanted to work on the film after reading the script). I look forward to Nicole's next feature and offer congratulations to all production and cast members who were smart enough to work on this project, putting aside perhaps their usual fees, because they wanted to help realize this intelligent script.

Understanding Exclusion

2008-11-19T05:11:00.000-08:00

If, as the UC Santa Barbara team of Professors Bielby and Bielby have asserted, "All Hits are Flukes: institutionalized decision making and the rhetoric of network prime-time program development", (American Journal of Sociology), and I have to say their study is pretty convincing on the subject. If all hits are flukes, then it becomes imperative for "institutions" (studios) to create rhetoric in support of their predictions of future success, for their own survival.

The study goes on to tell us that much of the rhetoric created, or the assumptions used to measure future success, are predicated on the concepts of 'imitation', 'repetition', and 'reputation' as the hallmarks of predictable success. Hm... so if you weren't there, haven't done it before, or don't pretend to be what went before, you are considered a 'high risk'. Though in fact, the 'new' idea has as much chance out of the gate as the old. Interesting, the subtle equation of exclusion.

Women and minorities are excluded from the cultural conversation by these assumptions, which are, in essence, speculations, trotted out as fact, when a film or television show is scrutinized for its success potential in the market place.

'Speculation' then is wielded as a tool of fact by which others are excluded.

If all hits are flukes, then there is no one sure model. And every time someone champions a past success in relation to my dreams, that 'valued' opinion' needs to be leveraged against the truth. The truth is that I have as much chance of predicting success as the thirty year old studio white guy. Maybe more, as I live among the people, not in the land of holly and wood, and my tastes are directly influenced by the people I meet at ball games and the library, etc. The problem; I have to greenlight and finance my own projects in order to change the conversation to something which interests me.

And soon, if my flukes hit, I too will be the one imitated, repeated and reputed. And as long as I remain outside of the 'institutions' I can continue to move forward, creating worlds anew without having to reflect exclusively on what went before.

So, the lesson I take away from this is that I no longer look to the paradigm to affirm or negate what I do. I give myself permission to create and dream worlds not readily available on my screens. Onward!

Racing Daylight review from Kansas City Star, A'n'E Vibe!

2008-11-16T05:31:00.000-08:00

Rating: unrated

DVD RELEASE: December 23rd 2008

4 Stars

Reviewer: Deborah Ground Buckner

Writer and director Nicole Quinn tells a haunting Southern story in Racing Daylight. The film is three short films together, each presented from a different viewpoint. When they are viewed in their entirety, they become pieces of an intricate puzzle uncovering a story of lost love and attempts to regain it in another lifetime.

In Sadie, Sadie Stokes (Melissa Leo) has returned to Cedar County to care for her Grandma (Leclanche Durand) nearing the end of life. “There have always been Stokes' in Cedar County,” but Sadie and Grandma are the end of the line. Sadie has a crush on Henry (Academy Award-nominated David Strathairn), her grandmother's handyman, but she can't get a word out in his presence. One night, Sadie sees a face in her mirror, a man who calls “Anna!” then disappears. Sadie learns the gossip of her ancestor, Anna, who left her husband, Edmund, and their son to run away with Edmund's cousin, Harry. Anna begins to take possession of Sadie, bringing out a new side who shops for fashionable clothing and becomes the aggressor in her relationship with Henry.

The second film of the trilogy is Edmund. Set in Civil War time, the costumes and settings recreate the period, nicely aided by haunting fiddle music. Edmund's story of life without Anna is told, as he lives with his mother and young son. Just as Sadie, in the present time, found herself haunted by spirits of the past, Edmund, in the past, is haunted by Sadie's return to the present time, seeing glimpses of Anna in her movements. The concept that different times exist simultaneously and face these intersections is enthralling.

The third film, Henry, returns to present day and gives Henry an opportunity to relate his feelings for Sadie and his observations of her behavior as Anna casts her spells. David Strathaim's portrayal is wonderful, bringing a gentle, but intelligent folksiness to Henry whose quiet life of labor and memorizing Civil War facts is turned upside.

Without announcing from the beginning it is a mystery, the film becomes one, gradually fitting together the clues and culminating in a moment of resolution and redemption. It is a moving experience, a mix of pathos and humor, just as life has always been through the ages.

OUR FIRST DVD REVIEW!

2008-11-12T04:55:00.000-08:00

Racing Daylight

By Ed Grant -- Video Business, 11/10/2008
VANGUARD
Street: Dec. 23
Prebook: Nov. 14
> Unconventional chick flick toys with time-travel.

A clever variation on Akira Kuro-sawa’s Rashomon, this time-traveling romance presents three points of view on events in present and post-Civil War America. The film is smartly scripted by director Nicole Quinn, but its strongest suit is its cast. Melissa Leo (Righteous Kill) plays the schizo lead character, a present-day woman who has hallucinations that she is her 1860s ancestor. The superb David Strathairn (Good Night and Good Luck) steals the picture as the man she loves in both eras, who solves her dilemma when he turns into a third-act narrator who explains most—but not all—of what we have seen.

Shelf Talk: Racing Daylight is hard to categorize, but it is most like memory and time-travel chick flicks The Lake House and The Notebook. Target female viewers looking for a slightly offbeat “timeless romance” with a comfortably happy conclusion.

Drama, color, NR (nothing offensive), 83 min., DVD $19.95
Extras: none
Director: Nicole Quinn
First Run: DVD premiere

BEST FEATURE, S.N.O.B. FILM FESTIVAL

2008-11-10T04:31:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Felicia Menard and the rest of the board of the S.N.O.B. Film Festival in Concord New Hampshire for inviting us to participate, for making us feel so welcome ,and for awarding our film on top of it all.

The audiences were smart and with it. The questions delightful. All in all a wonderful time. Grass roots growing strong!

ROSENDALE THEATER DEC.12-18

2008-11-07T04:52:00.000-08:00

In our bid for an Independent Spirit Award Nomination we will have a one week theatrical run at the Rosendale Theater, Rosendale, NY, Decemebr 12-18, 2008, 5pm nightly.

Thank you Michael and Uncle Tony for enabling us in this way. In the name of independent filmmakers everywhere THANKS!

S.N.O.B. NOVEMBER 7TH!

2008-11-06T04:14:00.000-08:00

We're the opening night film at the S.N.O.B. Film Festival in concord, NH. S.N.O.B., an acronym for Somewhat North Of Boston, has invited us to open their grassroots festival this Friday at the Red River Theater in concord.

We are thrilled!!! Thanks so much to Felicia Menard and the Holiday Inn, and all of the crew who are hosting us in New Hampshire.

ROSENDALE THEATER IN DECEMBER!

2008-11-02T04:42:00.000-08:00

We have entered our film-that-could into the Independent Spirit Awards, specifically for the John Cassavetes Award. To qualify, a film must have had a commercial theatrical release of at least one week before December 31, 2008.

MIchael and Tony Cacchio of the Rosendale Movie Theater, the oldest movie theater in the US run by the same family, have come to our rescue and have offered us the required theater time. We will return to the Rosendale Movie Theater, where we premiered for a hometown audience May 2007, this December. Dates to be announced soon.

And if we get a nomination and you're an IFP member please vote for us!

THANKS NYWIFT/CWNY!

2008-10-29T16:01:00.000-07:00

And to Two Boots Pioneer as well. Such a charming venue. A great receptive audience came out in the torrential rain. We are grateful for your time and thoughtful questions.

And thanks to the cast and crew who continue to show up! You rock!

NYWIFT/CWNY Screening OCT 28

2008-10-21T05:50:00.000-07:00

A reminder:

NYWIFT/CineWomen Screening Series
presents Racing Daylight

Sophia Raab, Producer, Nicole Quinn, Director
Tuesday, October 28
6:30 PM
Two Boots Pioneer Theater
155 East 3rd Street
(between Avenues A and B)

Tickets:
$6.50 CWNY/NYWIFT/IFP members
(must show membership card)
and Students/Groups/Pioneer members
$10.00 General Public
Buy Tix at
www.twoboots.com/pioneer

or call 800-595-4849

Cash only at the box office.

Afterparty at:
ELLA
9 Avenue A
(bet 1st & 2nd Streets)
Free Pizza / Cash Bar
Happy Hour Specials
$5 Beer, $6 Wine/Well Drinks
$2 off Specialty Cocktails
Attending the Q&A following the screening: Director/writer Nicole Quinn, producer Sophia Raab, director of photography Stephen Harris, editor Jamie Kirkpatrick, composer Sarah Plant and cast member(s)

Racing Daylight is a ghost story, a murder mystery and a love story which crosses time. What happens when time collides? Sadie thinks she's going insane. Edmund's sure he's being haunted. And Henry, well Henry's racing daylight.

Told as three short movies Racing Daylight is the story of Sadie Stokes (Melissa Leo) who's returned to the family farm to care for her catatonic Grandma (Leclanche Durand). There have always been Stokes in Cedarsville. Sadie and Grandma are the last. Sadie's life has been pretty colorless until the man appears in the mirror calls her "Anna!" and then fades away. As Sadie takes on the characteristics of her ancestor, Anna Stokes, she realizes that they both want the same thing, they both want Henry (David Strathairn) the farm's idiosyncratic handyman/civil war junkie. Only Anna thinks Henry is her long lost Harry (David Strathairn).

This magical love story of hope and forgiveness is set against the backdrop of the Hudson River Valley, with light that glows from the inside out, and specifically the Shawangunk Ridge; home to Revolutionary war battles, the Underground Railroad, Native Americans and Dutch settlers.

Academy Award Nominee David Strathairn (Goodnight and Good Luck) stars opposite Melissa Leo (The 3 Burials of Malquiades Estrada, 21Grams) and Leclanche Durand (Sleepless in Seattle), along with Sabrina Lloyd (Sports Night, Ed, Sliders), Jason Downs (Hairspray, Clara's Heart), Giancarlo Esposito (The Usual Suspects, Do the Right Thing) Denny Dillon (Dream On, Saturday Night Live), and John Seidman (Jeffrey) in this love story which crosses time.

RACING DAYLIGHT OPENS S.N.O.B. FESTIVAL!

2008-10-10T04:35:00.000-07:00

Thanks for inviting us!

S.N.O.B. Invited us to become friends and to submit our film through MYSPACE. It proves it works, this self-promoter friendly medium, the internet.

As independent filmmakers, with product to sell, niche markets to woo, we're always looking for event screens. We don't have a P&A budget, which we will have the next time around, enough at least for a stockpile of screeners and niche festival entry fees.

That's been our great revelation. If you're not married to the traditional model of theatrical release, and then on to ancillary markets, and are clear about where and who you think your audience is, (especially if your film straddles genres) you can drive your film towards that audience, see if it flies, sort of test drive it for potential distributors.

Straight to DVD is not the failure it once was. It used to be 'actors' wouldn't do tv, it was seen as a a comedown. Now some of the best work is on tv. The advent of cable as a player forced a more competitive market. If theatrical is only the commercial (taking into account the blockbuster exceptions and Hollywood accounting), the independent filmmaker only inflates the cost of the film by venturing there, and yet needs the exposure in order compete for viewers. So much product, so many choices.

The internet and its social interacting networks have become clear avenues of distributing information to niche consumers.

Grass roots audience building for us. And until the walls of restricted access are built, one can still pioneer in cyberspace.

VANGUARD GIVES US THE WORLD!

2008-10-07T05:30:00.000-07:00

Vanguard Cinema International will be releasing RACING DAYLIGHT on dvd in the U.S. and Canada December 23rd!

We have just signed a worldwide contract with Vanguard and are delighted to be seen around the world on Vanguard's arm. We are honored by their faith in our title and by the credibility this lovely label affords us. onward!

RACING DAYLIGHT @ S.N.O.B. FESTIVAL

2008-09-26T05:15:00.000-07:00

We have been invited to screen at the S.N.O.B. Festival in Concord New Hampshire! The festival runs from Nov 7-9.

Thanks so much for including us.

RACING DAYLIGHT SCREENS: CINEWOMEN NY/NYWIFT

2008-09-24T04:45:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, October 28th in the NYWIFT/CWNY Screening Series at the Two Boots Pioneer Theater! The screening will start at 6:30. The afterparty is to be announced.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY!

2008-09-16T06:34:00.000-07:00

Stephen Harris's beautiful images have garnered us a "Best Cinematography" award at the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival.. thanks so much!

RACING DAYLIGHT SCREENS: TROMADANCE IN INDIANA AND THE CANNES IN A VAN FESTIVAL AT THE MOVIUM IN LONDON!!!

2008-09-15T05:31:00.000-07:00

We're thrilled to have been included in these very special festivals:

Lloyd Kaufman, B-movie king, has expanded his festival to the midwest:

SUMMER Tromadance Film Festival

September 26th-28th in Franklin Indiana, Indiana University New Expanded Version of the Tromadance Film Festival Partnering With The B Movie Celebration/ The Indy Film Co-op

AND

The Cannes in a Van Film Festival @ The Movieum Of London

RACING DAYLIGHT ON NETFLIX!

2008-09-06T12:56:00.000-07:00

It's the little tings. I have to say, it was quite a thrill when our movie poster came up on Netflix this morning!

Our official DVD release date is December 23rd, all the usual places are taking pre-orders and we will be selling off the site as well.

We will be screenigng at the NEW YORK FILM AND VIDEO FESTIVAL - NEW YORK on September 19th - Village Cinemas East at 6pm.

And again in Brooklyn on September 28 LIU's Kumble Theatre with REEL SISTERS OF THE DIASPORA FILM FESTIVAL AND LECTURE SERIES.

We are so proud to be screened by both of these wonderful organizations.

RACING DAYLIGHT WINS BEST FEATURE NY YORK FILM AND VIDEO FESTIVAL!!!

2008-08-15T04:52:00.000-07:00

Our Los Angeles premiere was at the New York Film and Video Festival in Los Angeles, where we won the top prize and Melissa Leo took Best Actress and Giancarlo Best Supporting Actor.

Thanks so much to the festival! We are proud and honored.

DVD date due soon. It's looking like just before Christmas.

THELMA ADAM'S BLOG: FROZEN RIVER

2008-07-30T05:00:00.000-07:00

When I saw Frozen River last January at Sundance, it knocked me out. IMDB I'd been a Melissa Leo fan since she played Det. Sgt. Kay Howard on Homicide: Life on the Street. We became friends through the Woodstock Film Festival, and I adore Racing Daylight, her movie with David Strathairn that has yet to get theatrical distribution. When I saw Frozen River (FR), I discovered that when an actress who's also a friend appears on screen, it's doubly interesting because you're rooting for her, and you want her to be great, and you know she can be great. I saw the drama about two struggling single mothers forging a friendship while smuggling on the NY-Canadian border, and I literally wept in two ways. I wept because this particular story moved me emotionally but, also, to watch someone you love create a work of art is extremely affecting. And, over the process of becoming an advocate for FR that week in Park City, I bumped into Michael Barker and Tom Bernard of Sony Pictures Classics at a screening. I told them they had to see FR: it's tremendous, I told them; it's adult and has Melissa Leo, you know her from 21 Grams and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and she should be on the Oscar track. And, by festival's end, not only had Michael and Tom bought FR, but Quentin Tarantino and the jury awarded it best narrative feature and it went on to open New Directors/New Films at MOMA. Last month, I sat down beside Melissa for a chat:

Thelma Adams: Melissa, when did you step into FR to play Ray Eddy?
Melissa Leo: Five years ago-ish, I was in Chatham, NY with James Schamus [Focus Features]. He'd brought 21 Grams up there for a screening. At the after-party, a wide-eyed blond-haired gal came up to me and said 'I have a short, will you read it?' And I said, 'sure.' I read a script called Frozen River about two characters: the blond and the native; they didn't even have names. About four years ago, [writer-director] Courtney Hunt, [co-star] Misty Upham and I went up to Massena, NY and shot the short. After, I saw that short and was very impressed by what she had done, Courtney said, 'wanna do the feature?' And I said, 'oh, I didn't know you had one,' and 'sure, let's do the feature." So every six, eight months I would call Courtney and say, "Are we going to make that movie?" And she would say, "oh, yeah, no, I'll get right back to you," so I would kick-start her again to go look for the financing. Eventually we found it in her own backyard through her husband and his business associates.
TA: Melissa, your character is tough, and yet when her sons are around, her behavior is warm, natural. When Ray Eddy's getting ready for work and the younger son is there, there's a real bond. I know you have a great connection with children - I've seen that with my own daughter - and you're really present and you can see that on screen.
ML: What you have to realize is that little actor never acted before -- and he wasn't sure that he wanted to. So, it took a lot of work with me and the older boy and sometimes Courtney as well. Sometimes there are actually all three of us off-camera with the little boy on screen prodding him in this direction, prodding him in that direction.
TA: FR was in development for years, but when the money came did it happen quickly?
ML: It was in the works for a long time and then we had a lot of issues: the winter had not gotten cold enough to freeze the water we needed frozen, and then we started going and the water began to unfreeze. So there were both a money factor and a weather factor that made us have to giddy-up and go and just shoot it.
TA: Courtney told me she pulled the shoot together the week before ...and she cast a lot of non-actors.
ML: Yes. We want up to the reservation outside of Montreal, Tonawanda, and a casting woman - they have a theater group - held auditions up there, Misty and Courtney and I met with the actors; they were a varied group of both actors with experience and others who were just willing to give it a try.
TA: The movie revolves around two great central performances - you and Misty. The acting avoids melodrama. Is that partially because Misty is so solid?
ML: Solid is a really good word for her. Misty, however, is a consummate actress. And not really very much like her Lila Littlewolf lead. There's a lot of gregarity in Misty, she's deeply, deeply wise I'll be walking somewhere with her and I'll go, "Misty, are you sure it's this way?" and she'll go "yeah, I'm sure" and, alright, I'm with Misty. She always knows where she's headed. She's remarkable.
TA: Has FR changed her career?
ML: That's waiting yet to see what happens with it. What Misty is acutely aware of and, I think is worth mentioning, is that there has never in the history of film been anything like her performance. Misty and her native community across the US are aware of it: she's not playing an Indian, she's playing a person with a complete life, with the ups and the downs of it, the wisdom and the mistakes, and a rounded person whose tale does not hinge on their being an Indian or not. It's an extraordinarily rare thing to have that kind of character in a film and I hope that she and the performance are celebrated and she can parlay it into other things. She has the talent to do it.
TA: Your character is also strong and fully realized. How much of that was on the page? What did you contribute?
ML: It's difficult for me to know how much of myself I end up bringing. Comments from people after the fact like my mom's friend who just can't get over the fact that I really knew how to look for that change in that couch [laughs]. She's known my history. She's known me my whole life. I'm not quite sure what parts of the character are parts of my self. What I do know is first of all in the writing of Ray Eddy, she was a whole, complex character with flaws that Courtney wrote, and Courtney even was, as many writers are when they write, her character. And very, very generously gave me the character when it came my turn to play Ray Eddy and Courtney, then, took a backseat. So there were things in her writing that are primary to who Ray Eddy is, and there's what I then brought to it, which is innate in me. I'm not sure how to describe what that is. And, then, there's also the direction that Courtney gave me. With another director at the helm, and me in that part, it wouldn't have been the same thing because Courtney made me make Ray more likeable, that even though she might be doing things people might question, that you would still care for her. That's very much Courtney's hand in the direction. Courtney had a very keen eye that that was important and, now, in viewing the film, which is very different from reading or performing the film, I understand and see the importance of that. So Courtney's direction of me was a big, big part of it.
TA: What was Courtney's approach?
ML: What a director must have is a vision of their film - and Courtney had that in spades. She knew every heartbeat and turn of her film as we worked so I knew I could trust her. There were some bumps to get through in the first handful of days of shooting. Courtney's never really been on a set before. There's a way things work that everybody else there knows because the gaffer and the grips and the electric, they've all been on lots of sets...
TA: ... as have you...
ML: As have I. There was a really scary day about three days in. We were shooting late in the film, not when we're out and Mark Boone Jr. is being mean to those poor Chinese girls and then he shoots me in the ear, but right after I get in the car. So we're starting the scene. We haven't shot the other stuff with Mark Boone and the girls, where Ray gets shot in the ear, but we're shooting right after when I get in the car. So we're in the car, it's pouring out with snow, with me driving to the start mark. Courtney's in the back seat with what they call a clamshell, which is a monitor so she can see what the camera's seeing. And I turn to look over my shoulder, quick as I'm driving to the start mark. 'Courtney, do you think that we've been driving a little while and now we start the dialog or have I just got in the car, and we're starting the dialog,' Does that question make sense?
TA: Yes.
ML: Didn't make sense to Courtney! [Laughter] So then, I'm now about to act like a woman who's just got shot in the ear, I'm getting a little amped up because I know my face is going to be about this close to the camera in about three seconds, because they're going to call rolling and I ask Courtney one more time [voice rising] 'just be very clear with me if this is a little while down the road or if I've just gotten in the car?" and she says [softly, whispery] 'don't talk to me like that."
TA: And what did you do?
ML: I remembered that I was working with a first-time director. We were going to have to work this out after we got the shot. They rolled the camera. We did the take. We got there. I got out of the car. I looked for a producer and I said, [loudly] "talk to her!" And they did. And it never happened again. That's the amazing thing about Courtney. Is that she could learn even as we were doing it. And when we got through that third day, and that particular bump, and we came back the next day, something had changed. I knew we were going to be OK.
TA: Does that typically happen on a set? Is there that moment when it galvanizes or it doesn't?
ML: This was very different for me in so many ways because here I was being given that opportunity that I have waited a lifetime for, the opportunity to carry the film. So everything mattered that much more to me. I was that much more involved in all of it. There's all kind of utter nonsense that goes on onset but, somehow, you get the darn thing in the can anyway.

ROUND LAKE

2008-07-28T04:55:00.001-07:00

Round lake was a lovely community of Victoiran cottages circling out from a gorgeous old auditorium. While the audience was sparse, they were absolutely our audience. So much understanding and interest in this film for people who like to think.

Sophia and I felt as if we'd gone on vacation in this Albany bedroom community. The restaurant in town is the LAKE RIDGE which I highly recommned for its mix of standards and contemporary cooking. Lovely setting, not stuffy.

Thank you Sharon Walsh for inviting us. Round Lake Auditotrium invited us to bring SLAP AND TICKLE next summer. We will be delighted to do so.

MELISSA LEO AND GIANCARLO ESPOSITO ATTEND LA SCREENING!

2008-07-18T04:08:00.000-07:00

Melissa Leo and Gianacarlo Esposito will be attending the Q&A

RACING DAYLIGHT WILL SCREEN:
Tuesday, July 22nd, 8pm

http://www.nyfilmvideo.com
LAEMMLE SUNSET 5
8000 Sunset Blvd
West Hollywood, 90046
323.848.3500
Screen 3

BEHIND THE SCENES

2008-07-09T04:33:00.001-07:00

JULY SCREENINGS

2008-07-05T03:50:00.000-07:00

JULY 17 - Children's Media Project, Lady Washington Firehouse, 20 Academy Street , Poughkeepsie, 845-485-4480

July 22- New York Film and Video Festival, 8 p.m. Lemmle Sunset 5, Screen 3, 8000 sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, California

July 25 - Round Lake Auditorium, 8pm

JULY DATES PENDING:

Apple Store, N. Michigan Ave, Chicago, Ill.
Cathrine's Backyard
Westchester Backyard
Stone Ridge Backyard

RACING DAYLIGHT ON DVD DECEMBER 23, 2008!

2008-07-02T04:14:00.000-07:00

We have delivered our film, photos, artwork, and bts to Vanguard Cinema Ineternational who plan to release it in October of 2008. We are proud to be associated with Vanguard. Look for us! Just in time for Christmas ... The perfect stocking stuffer.

SOME OF OUR CIVIL WAR SCENES:photos by Dion Ogust

2008-06-25T05:06:00.001-07:00

RACING DAYLIGHT SCREENS IN LA!

2008-06-20T04:09:00.000-07:00

In anticipation of releasing a film on dvd with no theatrical release we are growing our audience one screen at a time. We are pleased to be screening in Los Angeles, California, my birth place, though it has been many years since I've called it home.

So if you're reading this and you live in or near the LA area and you'd like to check out RACING DAYLIGHT you will find it here:

RACING DAYLIGHT WILL SCREEN: Tuesday, July 22nd, 8pm at the:
http://www.nyfilmvideo.com/

LAEMMLE SUNSET 5
8000 Sunset Blvd.
West Hollywood, 90046
323-848-3500
Screen 3

GRASSROOTS THEATRICAL RELEASE

2008-06-12T04:43:00.000-07:00

We've applied to the IFP for a NYSCA regrant to aid in the distribution of our film-that-could. We've learned so much on this journey, most of it related to optimism and faith in the ability of the little guy to survive in a rowboat with ocean liners on all sides. Our grassroots summer screening tour is about to get into full swing and we're excited about the many and diverse venues we have lined up.

To all of you who have offered up your living rooms and backyards, to all of the film folk who have offered us a hand, we thank you. If you find yourself near the Childrens Media Project in Poughkeepsie or Round Lake near Saratoga, or around the corner from the Film Lounge in London, perhaps at a backyard BBQ in Westchester, Connecticut, Ulster county, or New Jersey come on in and say hello. We will also be found at the NUYORICAN POETS CAFE in the East Village where we hope to hold our DVD launch in the fall.

Tildy Davenport, a local civic leader, has asked when she can buy dvds of RACING DAYLIGHT

"I want to give it to everyone for Christmas." she told me.

We'll be on DVD in the fall and are grateful to the growing fan base who want to share the spirit of love across time with their loved ones. As a collective of artists the only way we will pay our deferred crew is to sell, sell, sell this dvd, and all of the support and encouragment has put wind in our sails. I know, it was a rowboat, but now it has sails too!

www.independentfeatures.com

2008-06-09T04:04:00.000-07:00

So we've entered another online film festival; www.independentfeatures.com. We tried Babelgum but asked to be removed because they only ever loaded two of our three films, which didn't play properly, and they had the audacity to promote some films on the home page and not others. Both Sophia and I (mac and pc users) could not load the viewing instrument. Once the festival was up and running we could get no response from any of the coordinators re: our technical problems. Here's hoping this is a smoother run.

We would certainly like our DVD release through VANGUARD CINEMA INTERNATIONAL to have some exposure. Please visit: www.independentfeatures.com view our film and vote often!

Other venues where RACING DAYLIGHT may be viewed in the coming months. Please contact us for details:

MOLLY'S LOFT, Brooklyn, NY
APPLE CHICAGO, 7/08
CHILDREN'S MEDIA PROJECT, Poughkeepsie, NY, 7/08
CATHERINE'S BACK YARD, STONE RIDGE, NY July 2008
ROUND LAKE AUDITORIUM, ROUND LAKE, NY, July 25.
WESTCHESTER BACKYARD FILM FESTIVAL, July 2008
TRIBECA COMMUNITY CENTER, NYC
JUSTIN'S HOME, Maryland
EVANS-ROBERTS' BACKYARD, New Jersey
MANHATTAN PLAZA COMMUNITY ROOM - NYC
FILM LOUNGE - London
DIGIFLICKS- world premiere movie
DELAWARE COUNTY ARTS ALLIANCE - (date pending)
MARKET ARCADE, BUFFALO - (date pending)
NORTHWEST CONNECTICUT COMMUNITY COLLEGE (date pending)
LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND EU Cultural Capitol Celebration 10/08

NOTHING ELSE TO DO?

2008-06-03T04:47:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across a blog which devoted itself to lampooning other's projects and initiative. The nice part is that we nerds get to respond here in cyberspace.

THE PREMISE:

Crappy Loglines I love
This site is for fans of the original Query Letters I Love, and qlil2. This site features a collection of loglines that should never be made into movies in Hollywood. If your logline is up here- have a sense of humour- you need it in this business! This site is dedicated to Managerguy, the Empress, the Sharkies and Pandas.
Monday, July 10, 2006
Henry's Current Record: 0 Wins; 386,254 losses.

MY RESPONSE: This was not a Hollywood film, so we're okay there. A Sense of Humor? I do have a sense of humor, and found none here, only ridicule and 'fun' at other's expense. I'm old fashioned, and as my dear mother would have said, "if you don't have something nice to say, shut the fuck up!" But that was mum.

Racing Daylight
GENRE: THRILLER
An old farmhouse has been in the same family for generations, holding all the secrets in its walls, becoming a portal between the times. What happens when time collides? Sadie thinks she's going insane. Edmund's sure he's being haunted. And Henry, well, Henry's racing daylight.
posted by -j. @ 9:32 AM 5 comments
5 Comments:

At 1:25 PM, Sahve said...
When time collides with what? Finish the thought! However, I like the title. That's all though. I would hazard to guess that the querier liked it too and worked desperately to come up with a plot to go with the title and unfortunately, like dear Henry, came up short.

MY RESPONSE: When time collides with itself, dear. Actually the logline was written well after the script.

At 7:16 PM, Cassie Burton said...
The querier's answered all the questions, so there's no need to see this film.

MY RESPONSE: A film is the visual representation of those answers. And maybe your imagination is the same as mine and you have seen all of the same images in your head. But if not, I suggest you give it a try, on me.

mzdplvfe - There's no way I'd see this stinker anyway.

MY RESPONSE: Ouch! Maybe it's not your taste. But no one died, and at last look there was no olfactory involvement.

At 9:25 AM, BlackCapricorn said...
Its tough to race daylight in a house

MY RESPONSE: We do it everyday.

At 2:45 PM, Taffy Doublewide said...
I think "racing daylight" is just another way of saying "Edmund, you only think it's John Malkovich you're screwing" in polite company.

MY RESPONSE: Okay ... bit of a reach, but okay ...

komjk: A really expensive comb for bald people.

MY RESPONSE: Ah ... yeah, okay, right, sure, just put your arms through the white sleeves and we'll wrap it around for you.

At 4:25 AM, nico said...
This crappy loglined film will be out on dvd in the fall.

MY RESPONSE: Check it out if you dare!

DISTRIBUTION!!!

2008-05-24T04:41:00.000-07:00

We have just signed a USA DVD distribution deal with Vanguard International. With plans to release our film-that-could in the fall we are continuing our grassroots theatrical release with screenings at Apple stores, colleges and universities, living rooms, community centers, libraries, backyards and any other venue which will let us hang a sheet and project our love child. Please watch for us as the world premiere feature online on DIGIFLICKS.

Thanks to Vanguard for taking us on. We know that we are a quirky film. We also know that to our niche audience we have become a comfort film. Repeat viewing is the norm and I'm proud to say that many of my film fanatic friends number RACING DAYLIGHT among those films they have on a special shelf. Those films they watch over and over again because they like spending time in those worlds. Thanks to all of you who have visited Cedarsville. To those of you who come back often, it's nice to see you again. And if you've never been, well, it's an easy detour, not very far off the main road, the folks are nice, the food is fresh off the farm, and magic happens with regularity. The door is open, come on in.

APPLE CHICAGO!

2008-05-05T05:07:00.000-07:00

We've been invited to screen at the Apple Store on N. Michigan Ave in Chicago! Thanks so much to the Apple Programmers at the Soho store who have given us good marks. And thanks to Marissa Flaxbart and Patricia Thomas, the Chicago programmers for liking what they heard. We are grateful to all of those who are willing to showcase a film made by a team of artists without industry backing. These screenings are our theatrical relelase, helping us create an audience for our 2008 dvd launch. We hope to be in the windy city in June.

Onward!

THE CASUAL CRITIC WEIGHS IN ( A Fairhope Blogger)

2008-04-18T07:31:00.000-07:00

"I loved this film - there is just no other way to say it. Told from the perspectives of different characters and spanning different time periods, it tells a love story that lasts through the ages. But romance is only the beginning. There is also intrigue, murder, supernatural incidents, and ultimately the truth of a buried family story. Racing Daylight was a beautiful story that was artfully told with amazing photography and a wonderful soundtrack. It also helped that we were watching it on the beach, so anytime water was featured on screen, there was a natural soundtrack of waves gently crashing only 20 feet away." Anita Havel http://www.anitahavel.com/

It was indeed a lovely way to watch a movie, on the beach. Thank you, Anita!

RACING DAYLIGHT FINDING ITS NICHE!

2008-04-08T04:16:00.000-07:00

“The best movies are always about character development and storytelling; Racing Daylight excels at both. This visually attractive, carefully crafted film keeps viewers guessing, lifts their spirits and transports them through time. David Strathairn and Melissa Leo deliver memorable performances. This audience-pleasing film stands-out and deserves wide distribution.” Thomas Baker, Ph.D., Coordinator, The Accolade, www.theaccolade.net

Thank you Thomas Baker Ph.D.

Audiences are responding to RACING DAYLIGHT!

We opened the first romance film festival, the FAIRHOPE FILM FESTIVAL in Fairhope, Alabama the inspiration of Ryan Robinson and his brother Brad. Opening night was on a huge screen on the beach. A crowd arrived with picnics and open minds. Many seniors were glad to see a pastime recreated in the movies on the beach, which was a regular event before WWII. It was lovely. We are so proud to have been included in this innovative niche event and even prouder to have won their first GRAND JURY PRIZE.

We moved onto Miami Florida for the WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL which screened 100 films by for and about women in 10 days. Women filmmakers from all over the world were represented in a mix of issues and celebration. With so many quality films we were surprised and honored to receive the BEST U.S.A. NARRATIVE FEATURE PRIZE.

RACING DAYLIGHT been invited to accompany the WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL to Liverpool, England in October where we will participate in the city's year long events as the 2008 EU Cultural Capital.

Thank you to all of those who voted for us. To those who took the time to view our film in its entirety and found the pot of gold at t'other end. We like to think of our 'not edgy' film as seduction versus rape. If you like foreplay, chances are good you'll get this film.

WORLDWIDE SCREENINGS!

2008-03-28T09:19:00.000-07:00

Thanks to those of you who have responded so enthusiastically to our call for private screenings.

SCREENINGS OFFERED AND PENDING:

Brooklyn Loft - April - Molly Conners, Producer of the Sundance Jury Prize winning FROZEN RIVER (also starring Melissa Leo)
DigiFlicks - world premiere of their movie channel, thanks Ron Aberdeen
FilmLounge - London - thanks Christopher Joseph
Children's Media Project - Poughkeepsie, NY - Thanks Nicole and Maria
Manhattan Plaza Community Room - NYC, Thanks Perla de Leon
Backyard in New Jersey - Thanks Cathrine Evans
Maryland - Thanks Justin R. H. Schoenfelder
Fisher Film Festival - Suny Sullivan, NY, Thanks Scott Healey
Tribeca Community Center, Manhattan Youth Org., Thanks Maria Reidelbach
TABLA RASA Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Thanks Audrey Frank Anastasi and Joseph Anastasi

JOIN US!!!

RACING DAYLIGHT SEEKS SCREENING HOSTS WORLDWIDE!

2008-03-27T08:20:00.000-07:00

RACING DAYLIGHT starring Melissa Leo, Academy Award nominee David Strathairn, Jason Downs, Giancarlo Esposito, Sabrina Lloyd, and LeClanche Durand. 3 short films tell one story in two different time periods. A quirky ghost story, murder mystery, a love story which crosses time. what happens when time collides?

In an effort to grow our grassroots audience for a 2008 dvd launch, we will hold screenings in living rooms, community centers, libraries, etc ... worldwide. We will send you a dvd with postage paid return if you will host a screening of 20 or more people; potluck, big screen tv, on a sheet in the yard, anyway you like to watch movies. In return all we ask is that you gather at least 20 working email addresses for our sales list and any interesting comments we can post on our viewer response page.

We will also be available(director, producer, cast, and key crew members pending availability), for post screening q&a(s) either in person, if we can drive there, or by phone (we will pay the charges).

Please drop us a line at info@racingdaylightthemovie.com if interested, so we can add you to our map. Power to the people!

ACCOLADE- AWARD OF EXCELLENCE!

2008-03-23T05:24:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Thomas Baker Ph.D. and the Accolade organization for giving RACING DAYLIGHT an Accolade Award of Excellence. We are honored that you responded to our film in this way.

We have heard that our film is 'soft' ... 'not edgy' by industry standards, and to these comments I say "YES!". Our film is intentional. Soft as opposed to hard, round as opposed to edgy, hm ... sounds female to me.

RACING DAYLIGHT: "DUELING HATS"

2008-03-07T11:46:00.000-08:00

An excerpt from the "Edmund" section of the trilogy RACING DAYLIGHT

NYU TISCH SCREENING

2008-02-28T04:51:00.000-08:00

The Goldberg theater in the Tisch Department of Dramatic writing was packed with writers. NYU instructor Mary Gallagher, a stunning playwright/screenwriter in her own right (Ayn Rand starring Helen Mirren), a fellow Actor&Writer (actorsandwriters.com) met me on the 7th floor. Sophia had left me at the Beard Papa's across the street buying cream puffs with David Smilow, another Actor&Writer, who also plays the Confederate who kills Harry in RACING DAYLIGHT, who we ran into at the Astor Place Starbucks on his way to a rehearsal, for the HB lab, of his play HIT THE BUTTONS. Whew! Sophia had gone ahead to take control of the technical aspects of the screening. She is awesome and detailed and charming and kind. A wonderful business partner to have.

So, packed with, not just writers, but screenwriters, Sophia and I huddled in the front row of the Goldberg theater surrounded by about 60-70 students. In that moment, I could feel my cheeks getting red and hot, the skew of this audience had not occurred to me until this moment. These people were potentially my worst nightmare!

There are markers in the way this film generally plays to an audience, or at least ones I have come to notice in repeat tests, markers of whether the viewers are in synch with the rhythm. In the first book shop scene Emily Ruscoe's "Whatever .." usually earns the film's first chuckle, followed by Sadie's "Well it is, you little twit ..." as the second. By the end of the film, if they laugh at the fart joke they're still llistenting, which is all you can really ask of an audience after all. Once we hit the first mark with this audience, and the chuckles came, I calmed. They reacted delightedly, as we have heard so many now, to the antics of Sadie, Edmund, and Henry, and their subtle esoteric love story, which we have offered up in whimsy, and economy.

The questions were about the making of. The first of the evening a question about the ppm, the financing, not an art question but a question for the executive producer. In our post-mortem on the drive home, Sophia noted that in a group of writers not a single question was related to the story or structure, the questions were all how did you do this thing, get these people, make it happen, the industry ... with questions as well about how long it took to write, whether I preferred writing for art or money ... they were clearly smart people, very smart, each about to launch into this world and wondering. It was so interesting to be among them.

I spoke with Madeleine, a writer who's focusing on cable at present, interning at Jon Stewart and writing spec scripts. She thanked me for the way we portrayed women in our film. I am grateful for this comment because it was a concerted effort to portray a woman's beauty as completely tied to her vision of self. Thanks for noticing and for reinforcing our notion that changing the conversation is about changing what we see.

Roxanne Bridglall along with Mary shared their classes with us last night and we are grateful. Jamie Kirkpatrick and Jason Downs came with us to field a broader spectrum of questions. Thanks guys! And thank you to to another wonderful audience who received our film with good humor and enthusiasm.

We are not an "edgy" film by industry standards. We have no pretentions to it. "Edgy", which to me means that someone has to get slammed up against the wall while getting simultaneously fucked and shot in the head in the opening scene, has its place, as do films such as ours, which assault different cognitive senses. We are a love story which crosses time, with elements of history, ghost stories, and murder mysteries all wrapped in a jigsaw puzzle of breathtaking beauty, coupled with exquisitely simple performances from some of the best actors working. Racing Daylight consistently delights and has a proportionately high repeat viewing interest. We are excited by the possibilities.

Watch and vote for us on Babelgum, the online film festival judged by Spike Lee, premiering in March,

http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifhref="http://www.babelgum.com/online-film-festival/">

Due to the time constraints imposed by this festival, our 3 act structure has served us allowing us to show RACING DAYLIGHT as 3 seperate films, (Sadie, Edmund, Henry), which make up the RACING DAYLIGHT TRILOGY.

WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

2008-02-27T09:26:00.000-08:00

We were accepted at the WIFF in Miami, details are not yet available. What I found interesting and informative were the list of facts I found on their sponsorship page and which I share here:

1. Women are decision makers!

Because 43 percent of families are headed by women, women are often the ones who make the most purchasing decisions:

1 53% of investment decisions (Securities Industries Assn);
2 55% of consumer electronics (Consumer Electronics Assn);
3 80% of home improvement decisions (Lowe’s);
4 66% of computers (Intelliquest);
5 68% of new cars (J.D. Power);
6 92% of residential real estate (Tom Peters)

2. Women’s Income Growth Accelerating!

1 Over past 20 years, US women’s income has climbed 63%, while men’s has stayed steady (+0.6%) (US Bureau Labor Statistics)

2 Women bring in half - or more - of household income in most US Households (55%) (WSJ, Nov 1997).
3 1 out of 4 USHH is headed by single female (US Bureau of the Census)
4 Professionally speaking Women are obtaining:

50% of Law School degrees,
46% of Medical degrees,
38% of Business degrees.

Among women who have completed grad school,

43.5% earn more than their husbands (New York Times, 3/26/01)

3. Women Know What They Want!

1 Women spend disproportionately more on goods and services than do men.
2 Today’s women are many things: career women, homemaker, wife, mother, daughter, grandmother. She’s a decision-maker seeking the best for herself and her loved ones.
3 She’s also a savvy consumer who spends her dollars with businesses that recognize and cater to her special needs.

4. Women are Family Health Gatekeepers

1 Make 75% of all health-care decisions
2 Control 66% of $1.5 trillion annual healthcare spending

5. Women Recognize Those That Support Them!

Arts & Culture, Kids sports, Opportunities for Women.
Women care…and they vote with their wallets

1 Environment
2 Global ethics
3 Volunteerism

Sources: Men’s Health Network - Utilization of Ambulatory Medical Care by Women: United States, 1997-98, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Center for Health Statistics : Vital and Health Statistics, Series 13, # 149 : July 2001 Ipsos Public Affairs survey of insured women age 24-44 for Aetna, quoted in Marketing to Women newsletter Nov. 24, Pew Internet Report 2000

www.wiffonline.org

BILLY PALMER

2008-02-25T04:58:00.000-08:00

THE DRIFTER

2008-02-19T09:45:00.000-08:00

TROY!

2008-02-08T03:55:00.000-08:00

We screened at the Arts Center in Troy, NY last night. I had never been to Troy, unless you count the journeys made with Homer's Paris, Helen, and that horse. It's a beautiful gem of a city, Troy, a small island of renovated historical buildings next to the gates of RPI (Renselear Polytechnical Institute), with neighborhoods which fan out into Brooklyn-like town houses fronted by ice-clad trees, twinkling crystals under the street lights. The Arts Center is a group of industrial buildings in the heart of the downtown.

It was buzzing with people when we arrived. We had brought a mini-dv deck, Stephen Harris's, to patch into their projector as we have sworn NEVER to screen on dvd again. Too much chance for technical error. William Gill was there to help us. He was delightful, affable, and unable, with the cables at hand, to rig up the setting we needed. Thank you, Will, for such a cool head and great trouble shooting. We appreciate your efforts.

Luckily Sophia, ever intrepid leader, brought clean dvds newly minted on Donn Gobin's state of the art machine, which she handed to Will grudgingly as an audience had already formed and it was five past the start time. We had considered sitting out the screening in a bar ... a sushi bar across the street ... but realized no one who had never seen the film would know if it skipped or not, and we might be returning to a Q&A that made even less sense then the ones which happen after a clean run.

Disclaimers were made by Laudilina Martinez who charmingly mc'd the evening keeping the whole of it fun and entertaining, and then we were off!

It was a delightful audience who stayed with it, laughing through Sadie and Henry, thoughtful and engaged during Edmund. The questions were smart and entertaining and once again everyone signed on to our dvd pre-order list, so many who want to see it again. One woman, in the second half of her life, saw her first dildo in our film and whooped with joy when her friend explained to her what it was. "I've never seen one!" she exclaimed in a giggling stage whisper.

We have been invited to return to Troy where we will screen for an Organization of professional Latina women, and also to sell our dvd at the Farmers' Market there. I love this grassroots campaign we have begun. Taking our film to its niche audience which is the widest and most diverse niche demographic I've ever seen.

Our testing has shown us that we can play this movie anywhere in the United States to people who like to think and they LOVE it. Husbands look so relieved at the end, having assumed that they were in for a 'chick-flick' and surprised to find that there's something here for them too.

So we will NEVER screen on dvd again! That said, it was a lovely evening and we are grateful to Kevin Craig West for inviting us to bring RACING DAYLIGHT to Troy.

APPLE SOHO SCREENING

2008-02-04T04:08:00.000-08:00

It was pouring rain last Friday night and Prince street was full of bobbing umbrellas . Inside the Apple Store the lights were bright and the populous abundant. Our movie screened, such a gorgeous picture! From my seat in the back row center I could hear the film and the store as well, which I found distracting, but then I have a preference for a dark no talking from the audience movie, and find it difficult to train my focus on the one event, my mind darting hither and yon, a butterfly in a blooming meadow.

But I know that my kids thrive on this seeming chaos. When we screened at Ursinus in the cafeteria they stayed with it. Here too the audience seemed to be able to fall into the world of Cedarsville and not just be voyeurs to it. Most stayed for the q&a and the questions were a good mix of technical and artistic, which were answered deftly by Stephen M Harris, Jamie Kirkpatrick, and Jason Martin on the technical side. These three speak tech fluently, it's very sexy. Sophia, Melissa and myself fielded the creative queries.

Melissa Leo was in town fresh off her Sundance whirlwind with the jury prize winning "FROZEN RIVER". Her commitment to our project is so greatly appreciated. Producers of FROZEN RIVER , Chip Hourihan and Molly Conners, honored us in the audience along with many others who had braved the weather to see what caliber of film the Panasonic HVX 2000 and Final Cut Pro, in the hands of artists, can make.

Molly commented on how exciting it was to see Melissa, after a week of watching her onscreen at Sundance, to see her in such different roles than the ones she usually inhabits. The softer, beautiful side of Melissa. We too love to see this other Melissa onscreen, the breadth of her range only just scratched. A remarkable actor, I am in grateful awe of the gift she has given us with these performances.

Apple - Soho was a cool venue!!! Thank you to Frank who set us up and worked his Apple magic making our visit so effortless and comfortable.. To Dan for running the evening. And to Brian Popovic and Corey Smith for all for which they won't take credit.

We are applying to other Apple Stores around the country with a recommendation from the Soho staff. With any luck we will get to see our film projected in such a fabulous way again. Next time I'll sit in the front row.

FROZEN RIVER WINS SUNDANCE JURY PRIZE!

2008-01-29T04:15:00.000-08:00

Why, you may wonder, are we so excited at this seemingly unrelated triumph? For so many reasons, not the least of which is that it's star Melissa Leo is also our star. It's also a film written and directed by a woman with women in the lead roles.

CONGRATULATIONS COURTNEY, MELISSA, AND MISTY!!!

CONGRATULATIONS to JULIE CHRISTIE and RUBY DEE! Two women well over the Hollywood target age who gave us performances of beauty and integrity, and to Sarah Polley for daring to take us where many of us fear to travel with a blend of humor and pathos.

I've been in contact with Thelma Adams, film/DVD critic for US Weekly, and Melissa Silverstein, www.womenandhollywood.blogspot.com, to discuss the irony of a woman-guided film taking the top prize when the sundance critics' panel was again composed soley of men. Melissa Silverstein noted that the difference between male and female helmed films was reflected in the purchase prices as well, Frozen river selling for about 1 million, yet all the boy movies, like Hamlet2, sold for much more. Isn't the equation how it performs, not who made it?

WOMEN!!! Wake up! If you don't go to the polls, the movies, the anything ... or let the powers that be know you are not happy with the choices you're being offered, well ... our absence is viewed as apathy not disinterest. Get interested. Get vocal. When women vote women win.

Here's the rub ... many films made by women FOR women, not to sugggest that Frozen River falls into this category as it is a story with enormous humanity, but many female helmed films are made by women FOR women and are killed before they reach their target market, by male critics. 51% of the population is being told by Papa what's good for them, or that the reflections we cast of ourselves into the popular conversation are sub par, or of no interest, or more incredibly that our reflections of ourselves are WRONG. Huh? Seriously? What is that about? Will somebody please explain to me why this equation seems equitable? And if not, why it still exists?

The yardstick is still how men see women, not how we see ourselves. Level the playing field please. Give us more women critics! I suspect less of the traditional fare would survive a deluge of estrogen. Yes, judge my artistic content and execution, but on the intended playing field please. I DO NOT WANT SOME MODEL-DOTING TWENTY-SOMETHING TESTOSTERONE DRIVEN STUDIO EXEC, AD MAN, POLITICIAN TELLING ME WHO OR WHAT I AM. I do not want my work to be leveraged against what's come before as the only stamp of good and true. I can chew my own food, thank you.

Studio films target the testosterone driven "prick flick" market (thank you Gloria Steinam for the introduction of this apt term), consisting of 14-18 year old males, as if they are the only movie goers and the only repeat offenders. It's middle aged women who are buying those boxed sets of PBS and indie films, AND the "chick flicks" at a premium which we will watch over and over again. When I go to my local theater on a Monday night the audience is full of middle aged + women, and we're regulars. Hm ... what's missing here?

Though women directors sit in that esteemed chair far less than their male counterparts, the ratio of award winning films is disproportionate. Pay attention investors... a far greater percentage of women's films are winning awards, though less women are making films. Again I say hm ...

If I know Melissa Leo's in a film I'm going to see it. Not just because she's a friend, but because I know that the film is gonna be interesting, textured, complicated, not black and white but built in the grey-zone where most of us live. And the women are gonna be three-dimensional, not JUST moms and arm candy. I will go to see anything with Frances McDormand, Meryl Streep, Liv Tyler, Brenda Blethyn, Helen Mirrren, Judi Dench, Fanny Ardent, Sarah Polley, Drew Barrymore, Renee Zellweger and a host of other female actors worldwide who choose material that challenges the status quo, which challenge our view of women throughout history. Women who dare to tell her story. This win gives us hope. I like hope. It sure beats the alternative.

PDS - SCREENING

2008-01-25T04:26:00.000-08:00

We screened at Poughkeepsie Day School yesterday. Once in the afternoon for students in grades 7-12 and once again at 7pm to a mosly adult gathering. The James Earl Jones Theater, donated by that esteemed alumni parent, is a state-of-the-art theater with great sound, and a beautiful picture. We brought a rented mini-dv player, in Sophia's ongoing committment to never letting us live through another screening reacting to the random skips and pixolation from dvd machine to dvd machine. An imperfect technology, the dvd, in the public projection arena at least.

Sophia and I arrived early to meet with David Held, the I.T. guy, who easily patched us in and recalibrated the aspect ratios, he gaves us a lovely, crisp picture, thank you very much, David. When the students started arriving some of them looked pretty young, based on our thinking of the likely age range for this film. Sophia and I exchanged looks which told us we were both thinking the same thing. We were surprised and delighted to find that different ages reacted to different parts of the story. Sophia's guess is that Sadie's innocence, and the innocence of that crush is something with which young adults can relate. That feeling of being near someone you like and you're not sure whether to scream and jump up and down, or punch them in the arm, or find some other way to punish them for the chemistry which makes you act like an idiot.

Whatever the reason, they giggled, and tittered, and laughed, and screamed at Grandma's growl, and then again when she spoke on her death bed. They laughed at the fart joke! This in and of itself is not extraordinary, I mean who doesn't laugh at a fart joke? But structurally, for me, as a storyteller, it's a marker. If at that point in the story the audience laughs at the fart joke they're still listening, they haven't wandered away. So when the kids whooped in surprise at Henry's description of a scared stomach, it was heaven. They'd stayed with it.

When the credits rolled a lone female voice lamented,

"I don't get it...!"

We all laughed. The questions that followed were interesting and curious and fun, and it was very clear that we had found an unanticipated audience. We'd always expected it to play well in the 21-75 market, intellectuals, puzzle and mystery lovers, romance, Civil War, but had not thought of the 13 year old market as remotely ours. And not just the girls, the boys had many more questions of a "how did you...?" nature. It was a lovely eye opening lesson for us.

The evening screening was less vocal, but again we were reassured at how consistently well our-film-that-could performs, and how many want to see it again. We have begun to collect email addresses for our DVD launch which will happen this spring. So if you'd like to be on that list please let us know at:

info@RacingDaylightTheMovie.com

Thank you to the Drama Teachers, Greta Baker and Laura Hicks for inviting us, and to Sandra Moore and the PDS Development staff for taking such good care of us. We look forward to returning to your theater with our next film, SLAP&TICKLE.

SOUND & MUSIC

2008-01-22T06:34:00.000-08:00

When Jamie Kirkpatrick finished putting his sensitive editing skills to our footage it went out to sound and music. A new journey for me who had never ventured this way before.

Sound Design was Andrea Bella and ADR Michael (MIscha) Feuser a husband and wife team who operate in a basement studio in their apartment in Park Slope Brooklyn. Amazing! They made field trips with microphones to many of our locations to harvest. They brought a Foley Artist over from Germany who worked with antique cloth for Grandma and Anna, the tinkle of china, the rattle of cicadas ... breathtaking detail to an already rich palate.

At some point Andrea asked me if she might attempt a sound montage to accompany the visual one Jamie had so incredibly rendered from my scribbles on the page. Absolutely! What a brilliant idea, and its execution only heightens the moment.

Mischa filtered out generators and airplanes ... magic ... they worked with the actors in ADR in an unusual, more organic way, in front of a screen, and listening to the cadence of their own voices to recreate the mood, the words, like music, no bells and booths. Melissa and David were there together, overlapping, competing for number of takes, remembering the moments and giving them to us again. It was beautiful. A nice way to work. Very generous actors. We are so grateful.

While the sound design is in progress I started meeting with Sarah Plant, our composer. Sarah is a very gifted professional working out of an attic studio in the country. It's amazing what and where Mac equipment allows people to work. Quality of life.

Sarah asked me to give her a list of the music in my car. We've known each other for years, but never in this way. I give her that list. My tastes are eclectic from Cecilia Bartolli to Kanye, which I listen to with my son. She asked me what I was looking for ... that was a nice question to be asked, because I knew the answer to that and would not have known how to express it otherwise. I was looking for 'Puckish'. playful, magical, slightly ominous but you know it's all gonna work out in the end type music. If I had to quantify it in Shakespearean tones I'd liken it to' Midsummer', a place and time where it's all possible and gonna happen anyway, so why sweat it?

Sarah's music did all of that and more. The score on its own tells a story, and with pictures ... breathtaking moments which couldn't have happened any other way. We talked about instruments as characters. She'd heard Sadie as a cello, and sometimes in triplets and ... it's a lovely score. She wrote it a woman possessed. It was beautiful to be a part of this type of creativity. We are so honored to have her music to enhance our delghtfully simple and lovely story.

The opening credits music was a fluke, and one, like so much else on this film, filled with serendipity. We recorded the score in Woodstock over a 2 day period. Sarah had invited incredible musicians to play for us, and they said yes! For fun she had asked each of them to improvise to an Afro-Caribbean piece, "Chocolate" she had written for another film but which appears in the Racing Daylight Dress shop scenes. The second day of recording Sarah says,

"You've got to hear the music Tomas improvised."

She says it several times during the day, I never hear it, too much going on, until I'm on my way out the door and she says, you have to hear the Tomas solo. I do. It's amazing to me. I ask her to please send me the track because I have an idea to use it for the credits and want to send it to Jason Martin who is editing that compelling sequence with photos culled from the Stone Ridge Library collection.

Sarah sends me an mp3 with the caveat that she thinks it's too Latin sounding to set the tone of the film. I listen to it, and I agree and reply that I thought just the cello track would work, and isn't that what she played for me? She sends me the cello articulated and it's exactly as I'd heard it; wild and daring, and timeless. But she tells me that she played me the tracks overlayed, and that the cello alone might be a good idea, but it's not how she played it for me. Funny that. All I heard was the cello, when she played it, and Jason Martin said it fit perfectly. Meant to be. Thank you, Sarah and Tomas.

Thank you Andrea and Mischa who put this film together with such love and care and taste and talent ...I truly admire artists, and was so fortunate to have found so many willing to collaborate, at such a high level, on RACING DAYLIGHT, our collective film-that-could.

ANNA

2008-01-14T05:19:00.000-08:00

WOMEN, MAKEUP, HOLLYWOOD (if only ... at least 51%)

2008-01-09T05:12:00.000-08:00

Sophia, our producer, has asked me to ramble about our choices regarding makeup in Racing Daylight.

Melanie Demitri is a gifted makeup artist and has worked on Emmy award winning teams for soaps, news, and has crafted public faces for many celebrities; Barbara Walters, Meredith Viera, Star Jones, and currently Cynthia McFadden ... she knows how to give glam. Melanie is an old friend. We were neighbors for over a decade in brownstone Brooklyn, she held my son when he was a week old, and he'll be 18 soon. So when we sat to talk about the makeup for Racing Daylight we knew each other well enough to talk in shorthand.

We both agreed immediately that if we could get our female actors to work without it, or the bare minimum, powder, it would help to establish the character of the piece. A story about a woman in her everyday. Many of of us, women I mean and some men, do enhance with a pencil, give ourselves lipcolor, but most of the women I see in my day to day do not wear much if any. Who has the time?!

Melissa was delighted! We gave her fake lashes, the kind that last for a bit and are placed one at a time. Not the full stripper set, much more modest. Melissa's lashes are very fair so the choice was to dye them or enhance, just so we wouldn't lose her eyes on camera. We used street makeup when Sadie becomes Anna, her more confident, sensual id. It's funny to think that the choice to tone down the makeup was considered novel even risky by members of our crew.

We shot the first Anna-Henry truck love scenes after we shot the Sadie-Henry truck scenes, where barefaced Sadie expresses her longing for the Civil War anecdote spouting Henry. Anna's hair was loose and she had a redder mouth, but the transformation from Sadie to Anna is all Melissa.

Stephen, our d.p., directs a lot of commericals and he was concerned that we would shoot Sadie so raw. Terrified that we were making a big mistake to the point of mutiny when Anna showed up without a glamor transformation armed only with an attitude. He asked,

"Aren't you gonna glam her up?"

"Nope. I'm making a point ..."

"But ..."

"... And that point is, that what makes a woman beautiful and sexy to somone is not what's on her face or body, but how she feels about herself."

Here he frowned, considering, so I continued,

"Let's get through a take, and after that, if you think it needs something more, well, then, we'll talk about it, then."

He seemd to think that was reasonable so we shot the scene. He turns to me after we cut and says,

"Female. This is a very female perception."

I'm not sure whether this is a 'chick flick' comment, but he continues,

"I like it. I feel like a voyeur to how women think. I like it. Very female."

We shot a couple more takes and moved on, issue vanished.

And this is why, as Gloria Steinam has said, "it's not a question of gender but of consciousness." We need to learn AND teach as we go, in the day to day.

All of our female actors were very comfortable with very little on their faces in front of an HD camera, which shows EVERYTHING. Brave souls. And they all look FABULOUS!

We want women to identify with themselves in our film. Since we didn't have to answer to anyone to make it, we considered what we wanted to say that would be subtly revolutionary in a film made by women who think for women who think, and the men who think with them.

As a footnote* John Seidman wears the most makeup in Racing Daylight as the transgender dress shop owner. But that's another story...

AMERICAN MADE - RACING DAYLIGHT

2008-01-07T04:32:00.000-08:00

How many now have said, in varied phrasings, that if Racing Daylight were coming from Europe we would be considered novel, interesting, and marketable. Its simple pace, its lack of overt sex and violence, the lyric storytelling, so many wonderfully textured performances. I'm a fan of single camera films made in Europe and when I was teaching myself what a director does I included a book by Mike Crisp who directed for the BBC; "Directing Single Camera Drama", clear and to the point. But, I am an American who tells a story that, while steeped in our Civil War history, is truly a human story, one of love, loss, and hope. The stuff that can happen anywhere, to anyone on the planet.

Our budget would not allow for more than one expensive piece of equipment, (meaning the camera), and since we had no hope of a post budget, we needed to do as much with this camera as possible. It was a Panasonic HVX 200 .... which uses disks in a p-2 format, instead of tape. Each disk has the capacity for twenty minutes of footage, and the camera can hold two cards at once. The disks are downloaded in the same amount of time, 20 minutes per card, into a hard drive and backed up to a second firewire drive. There is no archival byproduct from this system, so if you worry and have the funds transfer to tape at some point, as these containment systems have a finite shelf life, 25 years, though we have replaced one faulty hard drive already. The picture has the clarity of HD and the diffusion of film. In the hands of an artistic genius like Stephen M. Harris the results are stunning. So little did so much. By the time we wrapped Stephen said he saw no reason to shoot on film again ... though he has.

We had a wobbly set of sticks, which we replaced with expensive sturdy legs on the few occasions we locked off to disappear our characters. We decided to let the actors tell the story, to trust their performances and not manipulate the camera too much, for they are complicated and subtly simple psychological journeys the characters take. We also had Shaun Harkins and his Cabletrak Jib for 4 days which, as I've said, put a lot of money on the screen.

(*Shaun has since given us a Moviola dolly with a lift arm and crabbing capabilities. I think he got it off the "Goodmorning America" set when they were changing over to new equipment. Our next film, Slap&Tickle" will benefit greatly by this wondrous new asset.)

Stephen also drove the "Fig-rig" so-called for its creator, Mike Figgis, who modified a steering wheel as a means of doing handheld shots with more control, less expensive than a steady-cam.

We decided to divide the look of the three films, and to do so in-camera, again because we had no $ for post. Sadie's look is technicolor, old fashioned in the present day. Edmund, which is set in the 1860s, has a silver chromium overlay, like a Deguerrotype. Henry is hyper present and so we went for an almost sodium vapor like tone. These treatments are subtle but add so much to the character of each short film. Stephen and Jason Martin's color correct, done in "Afterworks" , is brilliant.

There's a fan base growing for our movie-that-could. We are exploring all manner of digital delivery in an effort to reach our niche audience. We started digitally, it seems prudent to let the nature of its creation dictate its method of dissemination. We are proud to be an American Made film that does not fit the mold. We are storytellers. We are thinkers. We are movie viewers ourselves.

Next: SOUND DESIGNERS and the COMPOSER

APPLE SCREENING DATE CHANGE

2008-01-04T08:26:00.000-08:00

Just when you think it's safe to put it in print .... the date for our Apple screening has changed to 2/1/2008, still a Friday and still at 6:30. Please look for posters in the NYC flagship stores and newsletters.

A NEW YEAR!

2008-01-03T07:15:00.000-08:00

It is indeed a New Year and we've just booked a date to screen at Apple-Soho. 2/15/2008, 6:30 p.m.

We were told by industry veterans that a film without a distribution deal was not gonna get Apple's attention. It's amazing how often we're told that we CAN'T do something based on rules which were set in sand yesterday before the windstorm.

Optimism will out!

We thought that our use of all digital technology which, at the time, meant we could ONLY edit on Final Cut Pro would certainly make us attractive, even if we did not come out as a bona fide 'studio' independent.

We also thought that our incredible editor, Jamie Kirkpatrick, and seasoned award winning d.p., Stephen M. Harris, would add some glitter to our shiny red wagon. Maybe it's because we know a few people who work there or that the Final Cut Pro liason in L.A. is married to Debbie Zipp (http://www.inthetrenchesproductions.com) and she loves our film and has our teaser running on her site ... or maybe they just liked the film, its content and character, and its stellar cast ; David Strathairn, Melissa Leo, Giancarlo Esposito, Jason Downs, Sabrina Lloyd, LeClanche Durand ... well, you get the picture.

I'm not sure what combination of factors and events have led to this new good thing which we were told couldn't happen.

Hm ... so which next impossible to climb mountain will we find has a starircase round the back?

2008!

HARRY AGAIN ...

2007-12-31T07:15:00.000-08:00

GRANDMA - EMMELINE'S THOUGHTS

2007-12-27T04:18:00.000-08:00

HARRY:COMING HOME

2007-12-23T10:18:00.000-08:00

When they found me at Cedar Creek, that battlefield in Virginia, I was pushing out my last breath,

"Anna ...".

There was pain, in my chest, as if my heart was broken,

"Anna ..."

They heaved me onto a pile with the dead, and near dead, sure I wasn't gonna make the night, too many others with a better chance of seeing the sunrise. Come the dawn the pile of bodies on top of me had grown, I must have welcomed the warmth, until I decided not to suffocate instead of bleeding to death, the pressure of all those bodies above having stemmed the flow of my life's fluid enough for the wound to close up a mite on its own.

It took me near an hour to work my foot out into the open enough to wiggle it sose someone might notice. I could hear the voices of the medics, and walking survivors, calling for the living. I hoped someone might pass my grave and notice that the meter of my foot was different from those of the twitching corpses. It occurred to me that a regular rhythm, some synchopated measure, might serve,

'Oh! Susanna ...' I tried to hum it in my head, while bobbing my foot in time to the beat, my feeble voice muffled by the cloth and flesh tomb.

I thought back to Anna and me dancing to that song, old man Finkbbinder on fiddle, poncy Billy Ofsteder singing full tenor. I'd change the name to "Oh, Miss Anna ..." and whisper it in her ear all soft and secret. She'd catch her breath, and tell me not to hold her so close, it was getting hot in there ...

"...Oh don't you cry for me ..."

My cousin Edmund watching us, ignoring sweet Helly who followed after him like a lapdog.

"... Miss Anna, don't you cry ..."

My foot alone in the air, the rest of me crunched under meat sacks of blood and excrement in what use to be the living, singing that song.

"Over here!!"

A voice boomed near by. I felt the pile jostle overhead and the pressure give way to a gunsmoke clouded sky. I thought maybe it was heaven.

I woke up again in a dungy hospital tent to some grizzled old man, smeared in blood, digging a horse needle into my chest

"Aaaaaggghhhhhh ....!!!

There was something in my mouth, I bit down hard, grateful for a place to revenge the pain. Someone splashed me with liquid, liquor by its smell, and then I was gone again until I came to much later in more pain then I knew anybody could have and live. I thought about Anna, she was what I was livin' for. The look on her face when I dragged my sorry ass back and walked her down the aisle of the reformed church we'd been worshipping at since we were children.

I lived for the soft of her skin, the memory of the warm wet between her thighs the one time she had let me in, when I'd told her I was heading off to war. How we'd repeat that bliss after making a pledge before the preacher and the rest, make us some sons and daughters ... there have always been Stokes in Cedarsville. The thought of Anna made me pray to live instead of wishing I was dead. Anna was worth living for.

It took longer than I'd hoped. Everytime I'd get near well enough to make the journey home, I'd push too soon, and land myself in some flop house nursing a fever and an abcess. A spinster lady took me in up in Maryland, or was it Delaware. Said she was only doin' it in the hopes that some other woman was doin' the same for her men folk on the road home from war. It took almost two years to make it back to Cedarsville, and when I rounded that bend down Schooner's Lane, named after the ship builder turned farmer who'd settled the land along with the Stokes men back around the time a Henry was king in England, by the time I turned that corner and saw the farmhouse, well, I thought my aching heart was like to burst with joy. I was finally home, almost to Anna ...

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

SADIE'S 1ST HOLIDAY ON THE FARM ...

2007-12-21T04:24:00.000-08:00

SLAP&TICKLE READING

2007-12-18T08:01:00.000-08:00

Twenty actors met us at the Atlantic Theatre studios yesterday for the first reading of "Slap&Tickle" our next project, Sophia's and mine. It was awesome! We invited members of our Racing Daylight crew who have already signed on for the next round, Stephen Harris, our d.p., Jamie Kirkpatrick, editor, and Michelle Baker, locations and on the producing staff, and of course Donn Gobin who is the best cheerleader exec. producer in the world! Ingrid Price will be returning as costume designer, Melanie Dimitri as key in makeup ... so reassuring to us, that so many have wanted to work with us again. Quality of life as hallmark.

The performers were so supportive of the quirky way we devise a screenplay reading which eschews the narrator and has the characters reading their own actions. Melissa Leo told me that the staged readings of Racing Daylight we did this way helped her get the charcter deeper into her bones. With small budget films rehearsal is all but nil so this method of reading seems to give us a bit of rehearsal we hadn't anticipated.

Slap&Tickle, unlike Racing Daylight, is a more traditional narrative in construct, and content, though there is a twist. The multi-generational and multi-racial nature of this depression era story surprised the cast and the small invited audience. They have never seen this movie before, with a family that looks less like the segregated stereotype of the Hollywood renderings, and more like America. This is the American family I know from the inside out.

Our potential investors and partners were smitten. YES!!! They laughed, they cried.

Racing Daylight has opened many doors. One in the can proves you can get it there I expect. I also suspect that moving on to the next project frees up the first from over-mothering. But lest you think I have forgotten this first in the excitement of the second, fear not, we are looking at some very interesting and cutting edge methods of distribution for our first love-child, RACING DAYLIGHT.

J.K ROWLING

2007-12-14T04:37:00.000-08:00

I think it's no surprise to anyone who knows me well that I'm a "Harry Potter" fan. Okay, maybe fan is mild, having read the series in its entirety more than four times, and individual books even more than that. Particularly the last, book 7, "The Deathly Hallows", where Ms. Rowling draws the threads together so satisfactorily, with so much attention to love and risk and hope in the tale of the boy wizard.

I started out life with a fascination for 'Peter Pan', and still believe that it is the story of a woman afraid of growing up to be a man. After all, the Peters on stage, at least in the productions I've seen, are always women. And certainly Peter was a female in the 2 productions of the play I mounted at the convent. One in the summer of grade 2 and again in grade 6. Of course I played Peter. I directed and cued lines from the stage, as I had memorized the play in its entirety when I was 4 or 5.

We all danced, but my brother was David Lichine's protege until junior high when tights in his locker brought unwanted abuse. David believed, in the Ballet Russe way, that dancers are actors who speak with their bodies. Acting classes were mandatory at the Lichine studio, and when Tian, my brother SabasTIAN, was 7 or 8 he was cast as Peter Pan. I helped him learn his lines. I was a capable sidekick, happy to parrot, especially the irreverance of a foundling.

We were all adopted, the children in my family, 3 of us, then 4, then 3 again. I was the youngest by 3months and 3 years respectively. Not knowing my genetic history has been a great creative spark for me. I learned to be whoever I wanted or needed to be to suit the time and occasion, having no pre-set default to minimize my options. But Peter Pan modeled something else, a self-sufficiency coupled with a disdain for the institutionalized family he so obviously craved and tried to recreate in Neverland amongst the lost boys.

There were the overt villains; Captain Hook and his pirate crew, and absurdities; Nana the nanny sheep dog; and terror in the crocodile with the ticking clock. But what I remember most was the conceit of mothers as those who 'bar the nursery window if you stay away too long'. There was no going back. No love was unconditional. Peter protected me from abandonment while I was growing up.

Harry has become my adult child. He's braver, less defensive than Peter. The kind of spirit which enabled me to conceive of and believe it possible to bring Racing Daylight from the page to life. Sophia, my producing partner, is also a self-professed Potter queen. We discovered this shared obsession deep into our working relationship and we find ourselves using Potterisms or quoting Dumbledore in relation to life issue questions. A dose of magic in this business of make-believe in which we dwell.

I have sent a dvd copy of Racing Daylight to Ms. Rowling, in care of her agent, in the hopes that our make believe will in some small measure pleasure her, as her world has captured me. Ours is an adult fairy story, worlds where anything is possible, if you believe. And I do believe in fairies.

THE INTERNET/WGA/TEASER

2007-12-11T10:11:00.000-08:00

We have been counseled to cut a new teaser. One which features the quirky funny side of the film. Jamie Kirkpatrick, beloved cutting genius, is fitting this into the schedule of his new feature.

Our present teaser is running on a couple of websites now besides our own:

There's YouTube, where we posted ourselves, and In The Trenches, a site by and for women over 40. We met them on the internet and Melissa Leo and I met up with COO, Debbie Zipp, and members of her team over lunch in Los Angeles. Debbie liked the film enough to support it with a teaser of it on her site. She also helped us get a script of Slap&Tickle, our next project, to the legendary Ruby Dee.

Thanks, Debbie.

__________________________

MotheringHeights.net
GriefBecomesMe.com
ChristineFugate.com

I met Christine Fugate at a Sundance producers weekend. She and Suzanne Jurva were my housemates there. Such a supportive pair ... of each other, of me, whom they'd only met the second before. So happy. Very motivating women. And now Chrisitine has posted us on her blog MotheringHeights which is witty, sage, and insightful advice irreverently proffered. I wish she'd been writing it when my kids were of an age. I have passed it on to those in need.

Visit her other sites as well to learn about christine the filmmaker. Thank you, Christine.

__________________

It's propaganda, the notion that 'the internet as new frontier' is so far away in producer spin, with regard to their position in the WGA strike. Ten years ago I got a script (Pretty Bird) to the American Zoetrope inner sanctum from an upload to the AZ website. I followed due process; reviewed four scripts on the site then I was eligible to post one of mine own for review. I posted one an agent had told me was "an embarassment" to me, and which at the time was my love child.

The script of Pretty Bird worked it's way up the food chain with good reviews, then it was read in house, and we exchanged several phone calls with regard to an option which was tanked when my then agent got into the picture and loaded my deal with a director and producer she represented, people I had never met but who liked the script but had not optioned it and ... you've got to love the way this system works, huh? Or run mad...

That was ten years ago. Levels of protected access have changed. It's easier then ever to reach people. I wrote to Mark Cuban directly. He got his company, HDNet, to read the script of Racing Daylight with an eye to finance. And if I had emailed them a pdf with something they felt they could market I would have sold it direct. That's my point. That's not what has happened for me, but then I know I'm not making films for mass consumption.

But please, make no mistake, I KNOW there is an audience for this film. They are not a small group, but diverse and hungry for product which makes them think, both morally and spiritually. They are men and women who are looking for a bit of whimsy in their everydays. I have sat in those audiences and listened to the women laughing at the foibles of Sadie, at themselves, and that awkward feeling which floods your body when near the person who gets your motor running. I have heard the pious moan, and seen them nod at Edmund and his karmic dilemmas. I have watched men, who are already surprised that it's not a 'chick flick', guffaw at the antics of Henry, as us, watching the strange woman discover herself, and him.

In this new digital age I can find people with whom to do business with greater ease and provide them with a product they want at a reasonable, no middle person, rate of return. And until the walls of protected access go up in this medium, opportunity is rife for the maverick who likes to pioneer.

We're arguing over the internet, the writers and the studios, as if it were an entity way in the distant future, when it's here now.

THOUGHTS ON DISTRIBUTION

2007-12-07T04:19:00.000-08:00

I keep getting the tower card in tarot readings related to 'Racing Daylight" and distribution. I think it's no secret that I steer by these arcane rudders; astrology, tarot .... I use to be embarassed by these rituals, hiding them away as secret practices. But after consideration I figure that these are centuries old systems which, when used as guidance tools rather than predictive ones, are as effective to analyze a set of circumstances as a 'blackle' search, and for me, infintely more satisfying. Once you crest certain age hurdles, odd predilictions change categorizing from frightening to eccentric, and one generally cares less about the opinions of others.

My mother gave me my first set of tarot cards when I was 14. She said I was 'ready to learn how to control my gifts', and that's all the guidance she gave me in this arena, except to offer me several books on the subject as companion to my deck. An interesting contrast to the Convent School where she sent me to be trained in other esoterica. I never thought to ask what those gifts were, I was a teenager then, and what could she possibly know or understand about me?

Rider-Waite, that was the brand of card she gave me. My mother had a very fancy gilt-edged, almost icon-like, deck of her own, which I never saw again after that day. Maybe I was supposed to carry on the tradition of card reading and she would retire hers, though I do remember her putting together juju and gris-gris bags in later years which were a bit darker in intention, but I had learned not to ask questions about her motives. I found a Rider-Waite deck, wrapped in silk, in her lingerie drawer when I cleared it out after she died.

The deck I use now was inherited from Barbara Lehmann, a close friend with whom I had attended U.C. Berkeley. She died when we were 37. Her passing changed my living. Barbabra had survived Hotckins disease at the age of 13 with huge doses of radiation administered at Stanford Medical Center. It seems the radiation which saved her would also give her the fist sized schwannoma at the base of her spine which caused her so much distress that she dropped dead. The cause of her suffering only diagnosed post mortem. She actually died of an arythmia, like a toruture victim who just shuts down when it all becomes too much.

Barbara haunted me for a short time after her passing. That was my first visit from someone who was dead that I actually knew, and that's when I knew for certain there was life beyond death, or, that I was truly insane. I have opted for the first interpretation.

But back to the tower card. I wasn't sure what it meant in relation to my issue. It is a frightening looking card with lightening bolts blasting a stone tower, an impenetrable fortress. The interpretation is always, old systems crashing down, fear of change, holding onto the past. I couldn't get my brain to fathom its meaning in relation to my questions and concerns.

But now, all of a sudden it makes a sense to me. The WGA strike has encouraged my understanding of how it all works and why we're all trying to divide up this new pie BEFORE it takes root and becomes the new system. The old way and models of distribution, the studio stronghold is the tower, and it's all about to change. The advent of this new electronic age when more control, responsibility, is given to the individual ... structures are scrambling for control of the new while still searching for the 'sure things' of the old model ... but they don't really work anymore. Change is imminent, is upon us, is an opportunity!

The tower card cautions one to release the old and encourages a willingness to embrace the new, or be crushed under the toppling stones. Such good and sound advice that. So our strategies are changing to accomodate the new and interesting and unknown. The digital. The new models are nebulous, there's an opportunity to be creative, to take it to the niche rather than asking them to find us. Exciting this!

They say, in tarot, that once you accept the 'hard' cards as opportunities, walking your path is easier. Onward!

SUNY ULSTER

2007-12-03T04:32:00.000-08:00

I LOVED this screening! For many reasons, not the least of which that we screened from tape and not dvd.

Since July when the Marbletown Democrats screened our film on dvd, it has been a nightmare to sit in the audience. The color calibrations are off and the technology, DVD, is unreliable projector to projector. Lots of skipping and poor color calibration and dirty sound heads have made for some pretty woeful viewings, nerve wracking too.

But wonderful Sophia, having been with me on the last two fiascos, where folks have still enjoyed the film and stayed despite the quality issues, was not going to have that experience again. The amazing woman contacted our local hero, Jason Martin, who hooked us up with his friend Kale to rent a mini-dv player. She contacted Anthony, a techno-wizard at UCCC and between them they plugged in our rented player to his perfectly calibrated projector and watched the film as it was intended to be seen with our incredible sound/music playing out of state-of-the-art speakers.

We will NEVER screen from a DVD again!

The audience were people I knew, many of them, in so many different areas of my life. People with whom I sit on the boards of the Library and its foundation, moms with whom I have sat on basketballl bleechers forever who are also intriquing and inspiring artists and individuals, members of our Actors&Writers audience, who have come because they like my work, and a woman I'm hoping will be our entertainment attorney, Jackie Borock, who is new to the area and a boon to our burgeoning film community.

This was an audience that came wanting to like this film, and they did. The questions were so insightful. so clearly steeped in the metaphors and the deeper meanings inherent in this quirky ramble. I am so excited by the human responses to what we have wrought. This film works! Repeatedly we see that it delights and it pays off. So funny and pleasing that. I've always thought of myself as so 'out there' conceptually, but I see from these screenings we're having across the country that I'm not so 'out-there' alone.

Thanks to Jaf Farkas, our art director and Sarah Plant, composer, for coming along as part of the home team. Onward!

MORE PRODUCTION

2007-11-29T14:40:00.000-08:00

Donn Gobin came to the set the day we filmed the skirmish. We'd talked on the phone briefly. He knew a few of the people on set, crew he'd worked with elsewhere. They knew he was looking to put some money into a movie that was going, and, we were already going, with recognizable actors, and the crew kept telling him that we were nice, and respectful. As if this was novel. Maybe it is. I have worked on some sets where there was a lot of yelling and major melt downs and drama. I want all of the drama in front of the camera please, and we were pretty successful at keeping it that way, I think. Anyway, it was because we were 'nice' that Donn wanted to visit our set.

Maybe he just wanted to see how our production was running and if it looked llike we'd get it in the can. Whatever the reason, Donn came to visit our set the day of the skirmish. He hung around overnight. Sophia got him a room at a lovely b&b, the local businesses were astoundingly generous and Sophia very resourceful, and he stayed through the next day, and I guess Donn liked what he saw. We brokered a deal and he wrote us a check. It was a wonderful act of faith from someone who'd heard about us less than 48 hours before. He's been a great partner for us.

Then there was Shaun Harkins. Shaun is the inventor of the Cabletrak Jib. It's a camera crane arm that can maneuver in small spaces and can also run offroad with a forty foot arm. Shaun has used his jib for the winter Olympics in Utah and "Good Morning America" concerts on the street and MSG and ... The use of such equipment was way outside the scope of our budget.

Shaun's son, John, and my son Jackson have played baseball together for years. At a game Shaun asked me if I was gonna need crane work. I told him it would be a dream but that I couldn't afford him.

"How do you know if you don't ask?"

"Okay...how much would 4 days of crane work cost me?"

"Two bucks."

"Two hundred? Two thousand? ..."

Here he holds up two fingers,

"One, two."

So I say, "That could work."

When Sophia tried to pay him those 2 dollars, he refused them, telling her in all seriousness that he'd drunk a couple of club sodas. That crane work, which he and Stephen choreographed so beautifully along with Randy Kovitz (fight coodinator) and Scott (A.D.), put about $50,000 we didn''t have right on the screen. Such a gift.

There were so many moments like this. We were working 12 hour days and trying to strictly honor that and make our day's work quota without sacrificing artistry. I'm generally not precious about my work. I'm a ruthless self editor as a writer, cutting out the fat, putting it in a drawer if it's worth saving, always trying to tell the story with the right blend of words ... to create tone, atmosphere, to support whatever themes are at play among the sentences...

I use to play that way with my kids when they were small. We'd build amazing structures out of blocks, try out daring concepts of engineering, daredevil inclines and floating precipices, and then we'd knock them down as part of the play. Why be precious about it, I mean, they're blocks right, toys...

I'd always admired the concept of the sand mandala, and I figure if you can live life that way, where none of the 'stuff' becomes so important that it impedes other areas of acquisition, then ... you get the idea. When Caitlin, my daughter, entered nursery school at age 3, we had been playing that way. Open House, as it was called, was a place that emphasized learning as "play" as opposed to the Montessori "work" method. I figured there was enough time in life to learn about work.

In her first week at Open House I got a phone call from the director of the school who asked if I could come to the school please, with an edge of urgency, though he assured me that nothing was wrong, he had something he wanted me to see. When I got there he brought me into her classroom and all but ta-da'd toward a large block structure supported by a block monolith. It looked like many others Cailtin had erected.

"Do you understand the math concepts inherent in this structure?!" I'm thinking to myself, 'dude, math? nah, I don't do math.' I'm a Convent girl with nuns and math-punishment stories after all.

When it was clear I wasn't gonna respond on the math level, he gets to what's really bothering him

"She wants to knock it down!" He's looking at me now with an 'is she crazy?' expression.

I say, 'Yeah, she does it all the time. I figure it 's better for her to learn not to hold on to the accomlishment cuz sometimes you get stuck on that being it, you know?"

He looked at me like I had three heads and each of them was speaking in tongues.

"She'll make another one..." I continue, "...and this way she won't be mad if someone else knocks it down, cuz she knows she can do it again ..."

He's incredulous at this line of thought, and her teacher, Sam, who looks like a lepruchan, is smiling and nodding, so I say to the director

"Maybe you want to take a picture of it?"

He does. One of the structure alone, and one with Caitlin standing next to it with an expression on her face that says, "What's the big deal?" We still have the photos.

Then she knocked it down. The next day she built another one with some other kids, and they knocked it down. The director stopped taking pictures and I learned about blocks and math concepts, making it less scary for me than numbers had been.

So I thought this approach would work the best on set. If something wasn't working maybe there was a simpler way to accomplish it. Knock it down and build it again. "Trust your gut." was my set mantra. It's usually right isn't it?

There are maybe two scenes where I wish I'd been able to get coverage, but they were days where the power on the mountain top went out and with one generator and ... we wanted to make our days and get everything we might need before David left, because there was no forseeable way of cranking this machine up again for reshoots.

There were days when we could feel the energy flagging. Bodies and minds were tired. One such day when the crew had schlepped a lot due to weather/country power ... Sophia and I could see that tempers were gonna flare ... That's when we went to my address book...Sophia called Sheila Demorest, a wonderful massage therapist, and asked if she could bring a table to the set the next day to give some needed adjustments and pampering to a tired cast/crew.

Sheila brought a friend, Kim, and between the 2 tables, everyone on set got to get away, even if only for a short while. It was reenergizing on so many levels. We build massage therapists into our next budget. You have to respect those moments, when a few minutes of change in the routine can provide so much renewed zest. Like the day we finally stopped paying the ice cream truck to go away and had the the cast/crew belly up to its windows for an ice cream break. Sounds silly when you read it like this, but it was a delightful change in the action that didn't cost us anything but the ice cream and improved moods. We made up the time in renewed focus.

PRODUCTION

2007-11-27T09:45:00.000-08:00

24 days. That's what we had, no more, no less. David came to us from a big budget set and would leave us for another 24 days later. It had rained torrentially the last 2 weeks of June. But July rolled in hot, and humid, with the creeks running. Always a good sign. It seems to me that things get stuck when the creeks run dry.

Those production days blurred by in a frenzy of questions and emotions ... everyone looking to me to set the tone. Now, I'm good in a crisis. I'll freak out after it's passed, sometimes, but normally I figure if you can breathe your way through labor and shove a 9 pound plus basketball out of your body and still smile when it wants to suck on you for a couple of years and ... well, you get the picture ... how hard could it be? Breathe. It's not war, nobody's gonna die.

People rushed at me with frenzied questions

"This color?!" "How much of the room do we see?" "Blood?" "What day is this in Sadie days?' "Are we in "Henry"?"

"This is directing?" I'd asked myself, having read several books on directing for single camera and being a staunch lover of those drawing room dramas and comedies that the Europeans do so well. If this answering questions and telling people what I like, but not being crazy in love with window dressing that's gonna cost too much and which does nothing to advance plot or deepen character, if this is directing, well, I can do that.

So I answered their questions as they set out to inflate the ideas I'd scratched on the page into a life-like make believe. I've always liked pretending and make believe. I have an assortment of accents and characters I regularly draw out to hide away the parts of myself who take it all too sensitively and seriously. I discovered as a child of color raised in a white finishing school world, that sometimes it's easier for people to comprehend me, and my lack of relation to general stereotyping, if I seem ... not American. It's that, and being adopted, where my history and antecedents are virtual unknowns, which for me meant I could be anything, no finites or absolutes of what is or was, but only what could be, that has allowed me the greatest creative freedom. It is a well excercised muscle.

But back to production and all of those incredible people who were helping me make Cedarsville and its quirky inhabitants come to life.

We shot the past first. That is the way we're taught that it happens. Okay, so I'm a quantum mechanics nut. Stephen Hawking has such a fuckable brain! Okay, that's what gets my engine running, abstract thought, conceptual, out of the box ... Anyway, the past came first for many reasons, not the least of which was facial hair. David had let Melanie (makeup) know that his beard took a bit of time to grow in, so if we were gonna need hair in the past we'd better start there. And we did.

Shooting the past first also served to establish the emotional stakes upon which the present day conflict hinged. We didn't plan that part, that was just another serendipity of the way this project came together.

We shot the love scenes the first days, and the Civil War battle and period garden party the first weekend. The love scenes are intentionally without nudity. Sometimes I'm so overwhelmed by the visual on screen I miss the emotional stakes, and this is a story about emotions that travel through time, so I wanted to make sure we knew they mattered.

Anyway, I remember the first day, that period vanity scene with Anna in Edmund's lap. It was a small room, Sophia and Jason's guest room which they alllowed us to trash, and for which I am forever grateful. I was asked earlier if it was going to be a closed set for the love scene. I thought for a second,

"No. It's not that kind of scene. It's female erotica."

To which Stepehn (dp), who'd been passing in the hall quipped

"Which means boring."

"Really?" I'd replied, "Is that what you think?"

Stephen chuckled, "Sometimes."

By the time we had arrived in the tiny little room with our actors and mostly young-male-close-to-camera-crew a demon had possessed me. It's a benign impish demon who knows me well and knows exactly when to crawl inside me and take control.

"Listen up..." I said taking focus. "...82% of those women surveyed agreed that nipple stimulation leads to greater frequency and duration of oragasm. So if you like your women wet, pay attention." I had read the statistic in a waiting room somewhere just a few days before, and clearly it had made an impact.

But back to the small set-room. There was a silence and an excitement. Suddenly the energy was very sexy. Just talking about sex makes it sexy. Most women I know know this. At any rate, shooting the scene was fun. Maybe five takes, the room was hot, but no one left. And when we finished that scene I heard one of the PAs saying to another,

"That was hot." and he wasn't talking about the temperature.

Melissa and David broke a table during their first love scene together. It was several takes in and quite steamy and intense, not hard to believe years of longing lost in a marriage to another ... and that period table he leans her over collapsed to the floor!

Laughter alerted us to the lack of injury and Scott (a.d.) and a screw gun made the table stronger than it had ever been and ...Melissa and David were back at it without hesitation, great actors, brilliant renderings of these characters who had lived in my head for so long, to become who they are without me, beyond me, stretched whole. Such magic.

The Civil War skirmish was a pivotal scene in the story. It's the event that changes everyone. In the script it was always a skirmish, small, a rag-tag group of soldiers on their way north through a meadow when they encounter a band of Confederates headed south across the same meadow. There's a moment when it could all be changed and they could pass on without engaging, and then one man charges and they must all engage in this new habit grown old.

They say it's expensive to do period, but I'd been watching Ken Burns Civil War series and the credits included reenactors as did the credis of the film "Glory".

So I traveled around to Civil War reenactments, steeping myself in authenticity, and looking for folks with their own uniforms and period clothing who might want to be extras while I also familiarized myself with a camera. I have a file with hundreds of releases from these expeditions and many hours of footage, and I learned that this is some of the best improvizational theater being done in our country. These people are steeped in their worlds, and it was an honor to learn from them, and also to pass muster in the accuracy of the time period we were trying to recreate.

When the time came to ask folks to come and play we luckily found folks who were not previously committed to any of the big encampments and who lived locally. Except for the CAMPTOWN SHAKERS. I met Renny, Dave, and King in a tent on the commercial strip of the Reenactment of the Battle at Neshimany. It was a huge event. Thousands of soldiers on foot, on horseback, with canons. Choreographed and authentic and performed with such gusto. I time travelled and taped many hours of folks living in this alternate reality, this other time.

But the Camptown Shakers I heard heading toward my car, camera and releases packed away with the prospect of a 4 hour drive ahead. But I heard the music and knew that no one was using electricity there, so the music had to be live. I followed the fiddle and the percussion, and the banjo strains to a small flapped tent where the three men played their beautiful music.

We had always planned to include the Camptown Shakers and in our original budget had made provision for their travel and lodging and ... when the money went away we alerted them to our situation and apologized. That's when they offered to come and camp out on my land. Which they did for 2 days. It was delightful! We ate Chinese food and laughed. They added so much to the feel of the film and the mood of the set. The Camptown shakers would just sit and play. Awesome!

Reenactors came from across the river to attend our garden party. Lovely women in such authentic hand sewn clothing. Costumes we could never have afforded given our circumstances. Amazing.

There was one gentleman who came and participated in the battle and also at the garden party playing 2 distinctly different characters. When he came to the screening at Rosendale, he found me afterward with an incredulous look on his face.

"Cedar Creek?! I didn't know it was Cedar Creek ...!"

I nodded knowing there was more he wanted to get out.

The character I played that day, the day of the battle...?"

He stares at me as if I should know the punchline, but I don't, though I suspect it will be more Racing Daylight WOO-WOO.

"..."I never read your script ... I didn't know it was Cedar Creek. But the character I played, that soldier died at Cedar Creek!"

I had only discovered myself when looking through the local history collections, thanks again Stone Ridge Library, for photographs to use in the credits, that there were indeed troops from the area who died at Cedar Creek. It was not intentional, but again ... serendipity.

We shared our excitement at this new link to the past Racing Daylight had brought together. But Cedar Creek would come into play again ... much later on...

DINNER WITH MARTA AND GLORIA

2007-11-27T03:31:00.000-08:00

I attended a dinner a few weeks ago hosted by Marta Kauffman (co-creator of "Friends"), Gloria Steinam and the Women's Media Center. There were about twenty of us, women in entertainment, in the room. Interesting women; Judith Aidoo, who learned to earn money from her mother who is from Ghana. Evidently it is women in Ghana who are the wheeler dealers. She made her money on Wall Street and is spending it in radio, owning several stations, on Broadway, backing the "Bridge and Tunnel' Broadway debut, and in film, where she has opened a studio and produced her first feature, "Blackout". Theresa McBride, a single mother from New Mexico who recently sold her technology company for 200 million. Her son is a d.p. who has worked on many worthy indie features, and she wondered why they weren't being seen. So she bought an online distribution venue and has now hooked up a deal with Regal Theatres and an as yet unamed tv network, to distribute the undistributed in a novel new way. Here's hoping "Racing Daylight" is one of the first to take advantage of this model. Fingers crossed.

Beth Fraikorn, a sales agent, Meridith Wagner of Lifetime, Melissa Silverstein, who runs several blog sites, Amy Schor Ferris, a writer, Rona Oberman was in advertising and is reinventing herself, Terry Lawler and Carey Graeber of NYWIFT, Cindy Kreager, in banking, Alysse Bezahler, a UPM, Chris Hegedus, an all around award winning filmmaker, as well as the WMC crew, Carol Jenkins, Glennda Testone, Kathy Vermazen, and Rebekah Spicuglia, all accomplished women before they came together to champion women in the media.

We were told that a similar event had been held in LA a few months earlier with the same mandate; for women to make back room deals just as men do.

Now I've got to say that when I received the invitation I thought I was being invited to listen to a panel of talking heads bandy about the woeful state of women in the entertainment industry. After all the women's movement came to a standstill about 10 years ago and the numbers on women in Hollywood have backslid, so clearly there's a lot to talk about. But as the day apporached and the emails grew more detailed I realized we were being called to a summit. And it was in fact several hours of constructive talk. Not complaining, but brainstorming over excellent food, wine, and service. We talked about our kids, our lives, and our work, and I felt, on the drive home, that something had shifted.

The immediate impact on my projects; "Racing Daylight" and the upcoming "Slap&Tickle" will be known in the coming weeks. But the drums are beating. The call to action has been made. It is time to empower ourselves, to stop waiting for the 'guys' to let us into the backroom. Thanks to all of these amazing women who have invited me into the 'new' backroom, which was a private dining room at the Four Seasons. May we rally to renew a sense of consciousness not only in our media, but in our lives.

Reprint: THELMA ADAMS ESSAY on RACING DAYLIGHT

2007-11-13T04:05:00.000-08:00

RACING DAYLIGHT

An essay by Thelma Adams,

Us Weekly film critic and New York Film Critics Circle member

When my six-year-old displayed dramatic tendencies, the actress Melissa Leo invited us to visit her on the set of Racing Daylight, The movie's title came to reflect my feelings on mothering: my daughter glows; I chase. And on that rare July afternoon, on a Catskills film set, I realized the limits of our time together. Elizabeth won't be this golden-haired girl riding shotgun in my life for long; this child will break out into the world and burn, baby, burn. And so I race.

At lunchtime, we approached the Big Blue Barn in Accord, our mom-mobile joining the aging sedans and trucks that packed the steep gravel drive. On the lawn, a folksy four-man band with an antebellum repertoire practiced amid black snaky cables On the patio, actors in period dress ate pasta salads, their laughter loud and thespian, unequal to their mild jokes and idle gossip.

Melissa emerged from a sliding glass door. The slender redhead best-knownas Benicio Del Toro's blowsy wife in 21 Grams skipped out to greet us in earth shoes and a cotton print skirt, welcoming Elizabeth like a VIP. When she introduced her to the producer, Elizabeth asked, with great seriousness: "Who's the second producer?" She's in the know.

"And who's the star?" Elizabeth asked. Melissa laughed and said slyly, "Me!" as if it was a joke she and Elizabeth sprung on the adults.

Melissa led us to Director Nicole Quinn, who shared a step with her husband. Nico, a fifty-plus African American, welcomed us on the set, eyes tired but happy, elbows on knees. She began apologizing for not vacuuming (it's actually her converted barn-home we're in), when a gangly assistant editor climbed past her on the stairs. She asked him if he ate, with a mother's concern, then dispatched him back downstairs for food.

With a rapt audience, Lizzy plunged in to pitching her movie. She will direct, she told Nicole, also produce and star. I, apparently, will write the screenplay. Then Elizabeth threaded her way down the hall, stopping to ask the production designer, the hair lady (who's stopped to ooh and aah over Elizabeth's Goldilocks ringlets), and Melissa, if they will work on her movie.

Having cast Melissa as her supporting actress, Elizabeth, who will also star, settled on the living room couch amid the wigs and the straw hats and a misplaced hammer and Giancarlo Esposito, whose scenes had wrapped for the day. Having never seen Esposito on Disney or Nick, Elizabeth ignored him; earnestly discussing with the producer whether her production should use real cats, which are hard to wrangle, or stuffed cats, or children dressed as cats. Apparently cats figure large in the movie.

After lunch, we went outside in the sticky heat. Elizabeth sat on a stump near the action, rapt, heavily doused with bug spray, and watched as, time after time, handsome Jason Downs solemnly approached a slightly flirtatious Sabrina Lloyd with her hair pulled back in a snood. They repeated the scene five, six times, Nicole pleasant and patient and encouraging; the snippy young sound man with shaved head and tats dissatisfied with the sound quality. He was the only drama queen on the set, except for a bee buzzing in the brush.

Next set-up, The Camptown Shakers played for the Victorian garden party scene. Despite the oppressive heat, banjo music and magic filled in the air. Nicole set the mood; she had the mellow attentiveness to detail of someone who's wrangled two children through infancy, childhood, adolescence, to successful high school careers and a bit beyond. She's a heaven-sent role model, no devil boss in Prada!

"Coffee, any one?" Melissa asked between takes, channeling her inner production assistant. She had a belly ring, and little five-pointed stars tattooed at various points on her body her ankle, hip, shoulder a constellation, she said. Then she laughed embarrassedly: she didn't want to be a bad influence on Elizabeth, who yearned to be Melissa right then.

As the heat rose, along with the mosquitoes, Elizabeth started to sag. We began to say our goodbyes then, as we crossed the lawn to our car, Nicole dispatched the Assistant Director. The stocky twentysomething with a Home Depot solidity asked Elizabeth if she wanted to be an extra. Suddenly, she had energy to burn!

The wardrobe lady whisked my daughter to the spare bedroom. She returned transformed to 19th century girliness in a calico pinafore and straw boater. Wild ringlets tumbled across the shoulders of her long-sleeved blouse. She was barefoot her feet too small for any stock shoes but it went with the summery feel of the lemonade day. She was ecstatic in that great game of dress-up: acting.

Elizabeth went to the front lawn. Nicole and her cameraman were setting the shot for a card game beneath a shady oak, where character actress Le Clanche Du Rand gossiped with the preacher and two others while playing bridge The sound man grumbled: the trees whispered.

After the extras and crew kvelled, and the actors ignored her, the assistant director led Elizabeth to her mark beyond the action. It was a lonely spot in the high grass where she waited until he lowered his hand. The plan was that after the actors began their dialog, she would run behind them, up the hill out of the frame, then circle around to the steps leading down to the camera placement. She would wait there silently for the A.D.'s signal to return to her mark.

Melissa and I positioned ourselves on a stone bench where we couldn¹t see the card players but had a perfect view of our star. Elizabeth, focused, paying strict attention to the A.D., ignored us. On her first try, her straw boater flew from her head, and she stumbled over the long skirt's ruffle. But she didn¹t stop or fuss, just gathered the skirt with one hand, picked up the hat with the other, placed it on her head where she held it securely and continued her uphill frolic.

Having gasped together when the hat flew, Melissa and I laughed to see how Elizabeth completely recovered, without a murmured darn, or a wasted motion. We covered our mouths to keep silent, wiped away tears, in awe of our girl and the day's assymetrical, unexpected enchantment. When Elizabeth came around to the stone steps, Melissa and I give her the thumbs-up. She smiled proudly, but swiftly, looking toward her A.D. to escort her back to her mark for the next take.

Elizabeth was an instant pro and Melissa couldn't help seeing herself in my daughter: the glow, the total concentration, the giddy feeling that when she was acting for a camera at the center of all that activity she was truly alive. And when Melissa returned at day¹s end to her quiet house, and the bills, and the what-next of it all, the magic evaporated. Maybe that was
why she lingered, dispensing coffee and joy, twirling in her cotton skirt, with her tattoo constellation.

We watched as Elizabeth prepared for each shot: grabbing her skirt; anchoring her hat. She stared at the stocky young man with unflagging concentration, ignoring Melissa and me. And then, the A.D. lowered his hand again, six more times. Each time, Elizabeth ran, all golden ringlets like summer sun, pinafore and pink legs and bare feet beneath the indigo ruffle, her straw hat a kite caught in a sapling.

Maybe, for Elizabeth, this was the beginning of a glorious career. Or maybe it was just the July day Mom made the magic happen. It doesn't matter what she wants to be when she grows up: vet, teacher, film critic, superstar. It's important to just be in the moment. She is the diva; I am her entourage. Let her lick the insides out of life's Oreo for the moment; it¹s one gift I can give her while I'm still picking up the check.

Thelma Adams is the Us Weekly film critic and a New York Film Critics Circle
member.

PRE-PRODUCTION - PANIC

2007-11-12T07:57:00.000-08:00

... June rolled around. We had assembled a crew and opened our production office and design departments financed by credit cards, investors, (my dad and long time friend, godmother to my daughter, Catherine Rush, had invested, Paul and I scratched together the rest), against the dates scheduled and the production company monies promised.

It was a very talented crew of professional film people, our first crew was. I always like foreshadowing in a story, so now you know that there were two entirely different crews for this film all within a 2 week period of time. That last month of pre-production, the time when they took away the net from under our highwire act, when we had to decide whether we were still gonna fly, seems almost a blur ... several magic highlights and a certainty I've seldom known, propelled us through that intensely foggy time. But back to the first crew.

Hardworking, brilliant, and married to a hieracrhical structure that works well in job capacity and hatefully as pecking order. Sophia and I, as the filmmakers on this crew with the least credits, began to to feel patronized by our employees. Never good. The situation wasn't comfortable, and it was of our own making. Here's where more magic happens. We lost our production company budget, for a variety of reasons which I have come to understand are de riguer in this indie arena. We had $x in the bank with no expectation of more, and it was but a small fraction of our existing budget. This was the moment of truth.

The first thing we did was contact the cast. I mean, let's be real, what's the point of going on if we were gonna have to reconceive the whole artistic side as well? It would mean a cut in pay for the actors from the already low SAG low budget agreement to the even lower ultra-low budget contract. David and Melissa held strong, and as long as we had them in our corner we knew we could make this movie.

We called the crew together and told them the reality of our situation, of our inability to proceed as originally negotiated. We had been counseled to start the engine without alerting the crew, and then scramble to re-fund, but it seemed dishonest to Sophia and myself to proceed this way. Anyone who could afford to take this risk with us should do so with full knowledge of the committment, not find, mid-shoot that they were fucked.

Many crew members went away wishing us well, wishing they could stay. One or two were angry with me. Angry that I called this reconceived idea 'more in keeping with our original plan'. A scaled down found set/costume kind of film where it's about the performances, the story, making something out of nothing and not something out of too much. I mean where's the magic in that?

There were a few people left in the room when the smoke cleared .. very few, but they were integral. We had many costumes built, and actors, and we had a production space which Sophia had artfully exapanded in skillful deals with the landlord to include both storefronts and the apartments upstairs. Yuval and Lisa Sterer (The Big Cheese, Rosendale) owned the garage across from our prodcution space in the all but empty town of Kerhonkson, and they had given it to us to use as our art department. I was the writer, after all, and knew what was integral to the story and what was just fluff. So I went home and rewrote, possessed. I honestly don't remember the rewrite. But when finished we had relocated all of the scenes to locations we owned and winnowed down the story to just the story. And it was a better script for it.

Sophia and I sat in my living room with the 2 remaining producers from the first crew, realizing that they too would be returning to the city. They were nice fellows, and they were worried for us, we two wee babes in movieland. They told us what we had in the bank would enable us to make, at best, a home movie in my backyard. Sophia tells me that it was here I said something about 'A deer came to my window this morning. Deer never come to my window. It's a sign.'. I do worry sometimes, especially when I say things like this and truly have no recognition of the logic which propels the words from my mouth with such certainty, such authority. They looked at each other, then Sophia and me with such pity. It was here Sophia piped in: "If we find ourselves alone in the production office on Monday ... what should we do?"

We were alone that Monday, but we had a list, and we set out to check things off of it. Each of us needed to find one key person in order to move on. Sophia needed a line-producer and I needed a d.p. We set to find both with little over a week to go. We posted the line producers and d.p jobs on the shooting people website. That's where we found Arthur, our line producer, who was willing to come up and work on this project at this late date. He came to work because of David and Melissa and Giancarlo, he came because he liked the script.

We'd started looking at reels for d.p.s in the 845 area code. We couldn't afford to house someone. It was magic, Stephen M. Harris's reel. I said "I want him!" on first viewing. There was a confidence in his style which would allow us to convey our esoteric material without hestitaion or apology. But Stephen had won awards for his shooting, Clios and statues from Cannes, for his commerical work. The old crew told me I was crazy, "There's no way he's gonna come and do this for no money..." But Sophia and I prevailed with our mantra "It can't hurt to ask ..."

Stephen told us to send him a script. He emailed me that night to say "I am good and well hooked. When do we meet?" We met the next day. We talked art, we talked about the story, the actors, and it's here we discover that he knows David and had assumed it was he who had recommneded him. As we delve a little deeper we discover that our children, his son and my daughter, are friends having attended the same small school which David's children had attended as well. It was meant to be. It was like coming home. This veteren shooter with a crystalline eye and such a flair was to become my partner in lifiting the story off the page. Magic.

Now that we had actors, this new script, free locations and costumes, it was time to re-crew. Here is where the reel (real) magic happens. We stopped asking people for money and started asking fillmmakers to come take a risk with us, and they came. Deferred and backend, they shared our dream.

There were the other last minute crises that came and went. We lost Mary Louise Wilson to a high paying movie shooting in California. I panicked for about 15 minutes before calling her and wishing her well, then setting out to recast. We asked Estelle Parsons and other venerable women of the theater all of whom had conflicts or no affinity for the role. It was getting close ... costumes needed to be rebuilt for someone ... I woke up in the middle of the night remembering LeClanche Durand.

LeClanche was a legend at U.C. Berkeley where I had been an undergrad and she a phd candidate in directing. She had cast me in a reading in Rhinebeck a few years earlier so I knew she was local, and I knew she was good. I looked her up in the phone book. She asked me to leave a script in her mail box. She phoned that night and said "It's quite a good part. What do we do next?" I asked her if she could make a costume fitting the next day and be prepared to shoot by the weekend. She said "Of course, dear." I broke the news to Melissa and David when they came in for fittings, and it came out that LeClanche had been standing-by in David's first Broadway play. So tragedy once again became serendipity.

As would our final casting crisis. Tim Guinee had been cast as Edmund/Billy the third of the love triangle. Shortly after the loss of Mary Louise, Tim was offered a role in a Tony Shaloub film. By now I had come to realize that these shake ups,if viewed in this light, were gifts. Each time the refit seemed equal to the loss. I wondered which direction I ought to search for Edmund, because I was certain that there was an Edmund close by. We had thus far not lost anything without its replacement being close at hand.

That's when Jason Downs emailed me. Jason's married to my producing partner, Sophia, father of her child. He's also a member of Actors&Writers, and we had toured in a Romeo&Juliet out of Bard College, directed by Shelley Wyant, for a couple of years, so I clearly knew his work. He told me Sophia would kill him if she knew he was asking to be considered for the part, I doubt that, but I set about consulting those for whom it would have the most impact; Melissa and Sophia.

Once we wrapped our brains around the age difference actually working for us, we all agreed that he was completely the right choice. and Jason became the missing puzzle piece. We were now ready ... and the shooting began.

Part 2 - PRE-PRODUCTION

2007-11-07T15:27:00.000-08:00

How did you do it? It's the most common question Sophia, producer, and I are asked. How did you push past nothing to something? It's hard to say when you know it's gonna really go. There are all of the false starts, the naivete. Those promises of financing which are really designed to bathe the giver and receiver in the glow of possibility until it comes time to write the check and you hear , "If you could push, we overbooked our slate and ...", "okay, but first we want to see a draft where you boost the love story and lose the three act structure and make her a babe and ..." and my personal favorite "can't you get one A-list star?". Hm... A-list? These actors were a huge part of what got this film made. The crew came to work with David and Melissa and Giancarlo. How did we do it? We walked off a cliff and found earth under our feet.

I saw Ted Hope on a panel talking about distribution, about the formula for breaking even. If you can make a really good movie, with recognizable actors, for less than (unspecified amount) ... Sophia will not let me give a figure as she suspects people value a film by its price tag, and there's merit to that. Let me just say well under a million. Ted Hope said that if you kept your costs low and had all the other elements there's no way you can't make the money back even in a straight to dvd sale. It made sense to me what he said. So I set out to raise $x.

I applied to the Sundance Producers Conference, figuring that getting in was a good sign to move forward. It cost a couple thousand dollars, which is a chunk out of a small budget. But I had formed Racing DaylihgtLLC and had a a couple of small investors, seed money from my father mostly, which I greatly appreciated. So I could afford the fee, which included lodging at a great house walking distance up a creeksided mountain road from the institute, beautiful art. My housemates were Suzanne Jurva and Christine Fugate, funny, irreverant, smart. Both doc filmmakers from LA. We were all moms away from our kids shepherding these other children, our ideas, into the world. It was a busy few days. Panels and screenings. Small group meetings with industry professionals, watering holes.

I listened. I watched. I pitched to the panel of packaging agents where I was scolded by one for being "too independent" and another who challenged my veracity "IF you had that cast, I'd be interested." I mostly learned that Gregory Goodell's book "Indepenedent Feature Film Production" is as comprehensive as it seems and does prepare one well for the road ahead. But there is a cache to brand identity.

Back in NY we set out to get David really locked in, make him an offer, get his dates, work around his schedule. David and Melissa were/are the hub of the film. Then "Goodnight and Good Luck" opened. No nominations by the time we got to him, but the tom-toms were beating, and we didn't know if he might lose interest in our kayak once the yachts started circling. He asked tough questions, put us through our paces to determine whether we were just mucking with his schedule, or if we could pull this off if he gave us his focus. His biggest questions were about food.

David had just come off an indie shoot where he was buying food for the crew out of pocket. We assured him that as women and mothers there was no way people wouldn't get fed on our watch. Now I know that whenever you ask someone who's crewed on any movie what the set was like, one of the first things they comment on is the food; "Food sucked!" "Food was okay, little too much starch ..." We wanted to be a "Food was great!" kind of set, and had already nabbed Sandi Zinaman, a woman with water-into-wine capabilitites who charged us less than cost, (oh I hope not), or so it seemed, and with donations from Bruce Davenport at Davenport's farmstand, and many other local concerns (listed on our website: http://www.racingdaylightthemovie.com), our crew ate as if they were at a country spa.

Once assured of our sincerity and food strategems, Strathairn set about working us into his post-award nomination schedule. It became evident that May's days were dwindling to the ocean liners on either side of us, and on the advice of David's manager, Madeleine Ryan, we agreed to push into July. A little more breathing room, or so we thought ...