cycle two

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Director – Malcolm Washington
Producer – Joenique Rose
Cinematographer – Caleb Heller
Editor – Rafael Nur
Production Designer – Alejandro Berron

We filmed in the same liquor store from Boyz n the Hood soooooo… Not trying to brag but squad is clearly Ice Cube approved.

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Film can be seen here:

Password: GOODKIDD

the new year

I don’t know if anyone still reads this, is subscribed to it, whatever – I thought I’d give this thing another shot. Stay in touch. That whole thing.

First week back at school –

le passe

Screening of ‘The Past’ with Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, with a Q&A afterwards. An incredibly interesting man, he’s running a masterclass for the AFI directors at the moment which I would love to audit but am just a lowly screenwriter so am unable.

We had a megasession yesterday, where the writers are split into two groups and from 9-5 we sit in a room with the three feature writing mentors, and discuss the screenplays we plan on writing this year. It was ok, you know. I don’t really know what to tell you people so if you have questions just ask me I suppose. The screenplay I’m writing is untitled, but it stars me and Common. We go on the run and kill a bunch of people, mainly Johnny AK, my arch-nemesis from Las Vegas. So that’s going to be great.

I guess what I’ll do now is update stuff from last year that I said I was going to do and never did.

“When I was 21, I left my hometown and moved to Hollywood to try and make it in showbiz. My exit off of the 101 was Sunset Boulevard. I shot my first film in Compton.”

No matter what happens from here on out, I’ll always be able to say the above to my kids. There’s something pretty satisfying about that.

I’m on a hot set on the last day of shooting my Cycle One short. Photos, stills and stories are coming soon.

Homesick pt 1

Mine is a family of pioneers.

We took to the seas and we did not return.

On those LA days where every individual atom in my body stabs for every individual millimetre between us – when my chest is the Pacific Ocean, drained empty, sprawled across the world – I find solidarity, if not solace, in the idea that perhaps being apart from my family is the way to be most like my family, and that if displacement is not genetic then perhaps these gypsy feet are.

Great great grandfathers, on ships from Greece and Ireland and England, letters in their back pockets, faces from home burning their eyelids.

Grandmother, pregnant and alone in Oklahoma, paints her nails as a distraction.

Grandmother, alone in Darwin, a family in Gloucester. She parties with girls who don’t look like her sisters.

My mother, standing still amongst gunfire and broken glass, her eyes closed, her hand in my father’s. I can see her face, and I’m sure it looks like mine. She is thinking of kookaburras calling. She is praying for a thunderstorm.

I sit alone with ghosts and stories of lonely bloodlines. Some days I wonder how they ever found a way to stop themselves from shouting at walls, from begging empty apartments to somehow send them home. Other days I know that they never did.

What happens daily is the struggle to push you from my mind. Sleep excites me – I put my head on pillows gladly, knowing that for at least a few hours, I can see your faces and your smiles and taste sea-salt and hear cicadas rustle and I won’t feel guilt for it, and I will wake up but keep my eyes closed, not yet knowing where I am, and sometimes for a whole minute I will truly believe that when I do get out of bed, I will find my brother sitting on the balcony with an unlit cigarette in his hand, waiting for me.

Then, LA creeps in – sunlight on my eyelids, sirens in my ears. I paint my nails and I reread letters from my back pocket. I party with girls and can never find my sister’s face amongst them. I think of kookaburras calling. I pray for a thunderstorm.

Crash course in Ghetto Livin.

In the words of the Kanye West –

“Courts suck me dry. I spend that bread. She need a daddy. Baby, please don’t let her grow up in that ghetto university”.

There are no lyrics that I can relate to more right now. There’s a smoke shop down the way from me, where I buy my tobacco. It’s as broken down as Theon Greyjoy. They don’t accept money there. They only barter. I needed a pouch and some papers. What was I supposed to do? So I did what I had to. I swapped a loaf, under the table. A whole goddamn loaf. It was that good 9 grain, too, sliced and all. But that’s what happens when you’re a product of Rakim. Lakim Shabazz. Tupac N. WA. Cube. Hey. Doc. Ren. Yella. Eazy. Thank you. They got Slim. Jims. At the tobacco store, I mean. They sell Slim Jims. You don’t even want to know how many bagels I had to trade for a box of Slim Jims.

I know that to a lot of you, this doesn’t look like a security measure, because all it takes is a credit card to get into my locked room. Which makes it the perfect security measure. No one has credit cards in the ghetto.

 

First Harold Lloyd Master Seminar

Just got home from a 13 hour day. 

It was worth it just for the three hours between 2-5. Because it was the first Harold Lloyd Master Seminar of the semester. 

Ed Zwick and Steven Rosenblum came by for a chat. 

For those of you who don’t know, Ed Zwick is an AFI graduate, and is the director of films such as Blood Diamond, The Last Samurai, Legends of the Fall, The Siege, Defiance, etc, etc. He also produced a bunch of great things like Traffic, I Am Sam, and Shakespeare In Love, which he won the Oscar for. Steven Rosenblum is also an AFI graduate – he’s been the editor on all of Ed Zwick’s films since the AFI days, as well as films such as X-Men, Pearl Harbour, and Notorious. 

So they have this new movie called Pawn Sacrifice, which is about the famous chess match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. It stars Tobey Maguire, Peter Sarsgaard, Leiv Schreiber, and Michael Stuhlbarg. Look it up, it’s a real cracker of a film. Here’s the best bit – Pawn Sacrifice hasn’t been released yet. It hasn’t even been shown yet. Today was the first ever showing of the film. Ever. EVERRRRRR. Which was pretty cool. 

So we got to kick back in the cinema and watch this dope movie that no one has seen yet probably not even Ed Zwick himself well idk about that bit but still no one else. Then, Ed (or Ed Zwick, as I like to call him) and Steven Rosenblum came out, sat down, and just answered our questions for about an hour and a half. I can’t even say how great it was. Such wisdom, about the industry and collaboration and working with famous people and all that sort of stuff. 

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The main thing I took from today was what a truly collaborative process making a film is. People give the credit to the director (and rightfully so), but they don’t realise how much the story finds itself within the script, the shooting, the cinematography, the editing – all of that behind the scenes biz. “Ed” (Ed Zwick) mentioned that some of the best shots came from the cinematographer playing around with Tobey Maguire, shots that weren’t even meant to be in the film. Steven discussed how the editing process brings out a plot line that was never discussed, but works perfectly. Zwicky told us that when it comes to studio notes from the producers, “having an opinion is different to having an idea”. We all laughed. Except the producing students. I discussed (in my mind) how Peter Sarsgaard is the hottest damn chess-playing priest I ever did see.  

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The film was inspiring. The conversation, enlightening. The chess… castle-to-knight-ing. Peter Sarsgaard in a priest outfit – spread thigh-ing. Someone teach me how to photoshop so I can put a love heart around this man’s face. Goddamn. 

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