HOW was loads of fun. I met some amazing folks, attended some great events, lost some posters, saw John Vanderslice and his new band (got to sing “Keep The Dream Alive”, just like these folks did in Orlando a couple years ago, but we had a flute, and more of the FLA folks seemed to know the song), went to Emo’s, . Of course, I picked up a few books: Zombie Haiku, Away We Go, and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

I wasn’t into the conference at first, but it grew on me. There were a number of talks about creativity, organization, and passion for what you do, and how you interact with the customers, projects, and people in your daily sphere. What there wasn’t a lot of was talk about understanding people, or even being understood, but that’s not something this conference was about.  That’s what I was there for, as a writer and a filmmaker first, and a graphic designer second, I felt a little out of place, or at least pushed myself away, and made it like that, comfortable not fitting in to the crowd.

As soon as I dropped the stigma of not being a wholly passionate graphic designer, I loosened up enough to realize I was surrounded by loads of creative people, who just wanted to be around other creative people. That’s all I wanted too. When I understood that, the conference opened up to me like the nearly cloudless sky above Texas.

A good friend of mine tipped me off to this a few days ago. Can’t say I’m too surprised, definitely sad, but still understanding.

At least I got a few trips to Seattle, some great friends, fantastic memories, and countless amounts of inspiration from you. You caught me on a wavelength at an awkward stage, but we traveled it together, in my CD player and in my car. I hope you know that. For a time I thought we were more like you and Elvis Costello, in that b-side of yours. Not true, not true. I have a confession: without you, my musical tastes wouldn’t be what they are, my films wouldn’t be what they are, and I wouldn’t be who I am.

That’s a lot of pressure to put onto you: a group of guys I’ve only met a few times, and never longer for a total of a few hours. You understand that too, don’t you? Thanks for all that you’ve done, for me, for all your other devoted fans.

Godspeed, good luck, and I’ll see you at the farewell show.

The 4th annual Immediate Music Festival© happened yesterday, in all of its immediate and semi-secretive glory.  The tracks need to be mixed down, so it’ll be about a week or so before the MP3’s get posted.  I’ll put a few of them up when they’re ready.

At the event, there was grilling, candy, a ton of beer, and six glorious tracks of immediately written music.  The songs written were of various topics, 2 involved robots, another John Voight, and a final one involved a prominent modern author who dressed like a milkman, while the others—though less referential—made us laugh out loud and cheer upon completion.  There were no zombies, but I’m not surprised.

All the cleaning and re-arranging unearthered an old notebook, which contained my pre-production information and report on the film. I knew I had it somewhere, and now I know where.  Busy busy busy, as Bokonon would say.

A friend of mine came up from Pittsburgh this past weekend, and we spent Saturday running around town, eating, drinking, and catching this band Crappy Dracula.  Their website reads with a little pretension, even after you’ve seen them live. As I suspect is the case with most bands, they were much better than their website.  I suggest navigating over to their MySpace page if you have a moment and get a listen.  They’re at once hilarious (a little too much I suspect for most folks), and equally sad, angry, and depressed at the same time. They reminded me ever so slightly of Kurt Vonnegut, if he never picked dead bodies out of Dresden and grew up listening to power pop and punk in the suburbs. So basically they reminded me of a slightly more death obsessed and funny Green Day. Did I mention they’re good, and that I had a fantastic time at the show? I just did. It only cost $5 and it went to Sugar City.  That’s winning.

(Edit: Although Sugar City itself doesn’t seem to be on the winning side of the City.)

I asked Pete the following question, with the others when I spoke to him last: Do you think there was some greater influence of Zombie Culture at work at the time you made this film?  I was really trying to find a connection that may not have been there, but I had seen a curious rise in Zombie movie production around the time we were making our respective films.

Pete’s response:
“Honestly, I’m not too sure about that. I was pretty ignorant of zombie culture (heck, the first draft of the script had the zombie speaking - that’s a no-no!). Really I was more influence by my friend Eric, who wrote several zombie scripts that I really enjoyed reading. It was something I was new to and wanted to try out.”

No harm in that.  But then a friend sent me this article and my Zombie movie conspiracy brain went into overdrive.  Were we at the early stages of a cultural movement to love Zombies?  I’m not sure.  I’d like to think we could ride a synchronicity wave that had nothing to do with Sting, but maybe that kind of stuff happens in film programs. Especially with hardcore fans like Eric.

Full disclosure: next weekend we’re holding an apocalypse movie party, zombies are encouraged.

Several days ago, my friend Pete Tarkulich, best known for his long-running, often hilarious, and always cookie-filled web comic Bardsworth,  got over some laziness, and posted a film that he made shortly after graduation called The Heart of Xmas. Little known to Pete, I had been tinkering with resurrecting (breathing new life? exhuming?) and dusting off my own early film “Gift of the Zombi”, just before he announced this new release. I was struck by the coincidence, and because it seemed like zombies were coming back from the dead, in the form of our old films.

When I was still in college, I used to have conversations about what I would do if I had the opportunity to teach a film class.  Getting jaded early, my suggestion was to burn everyone’s first project in front of them.  I imagined a large celluloid fire erupting in front of us, on the shore of the small lake behind the CFA.  There would be tears, probably complaints, but the lesson would be obvious and clear: your work is nothing, and it is no better than fuel for the fire.  I held onto this belief for the remaining days (at least two semesters) of study at the university.

“I think my film and video experiences altogether influenced me.  It trains to you think ahead and to think visually,” Pete explained to me when I asked him how this, and his other early films influenced his current work. It took a while to realize that you don’t learn much from a fire like that.  I agree with Pete, but I think there’s a little more to be dug up from those early films.  At least for me, the coincidental reoccurrence of our films speaks to a restlessness from beyond the depths where brains put the work we’re too disappointed, and/or embarrassed to accept.

Pete has been full going throttle with Bardsworth for a while now, doing a great job expanding his talents while doing something he loves. Its clear in the quality of the comic, that he’s enjoying this story, and that his devoted readers are too. I had to ask, however, if he would ever return to filmmaking.  “I’d like to someday, but on my terms,” he said. “I’d love to be a part of the independent scene and work with people who have a clue as to how human beings are supposed to act.”

I’ve kept Gift of the Zombi under lock and key showing it on rare occasions, mostly because I could not bring myself to burn what I considered an embarrassing piece of work. Something had made me a hypocrite to my determination as a younger man. As I’ve reviewed it, and slowly shown it to more people, I’m still seeing it as an embarrassing film. However, that embarrassment now drives me to grow, and make better films rather than just pretend the experience never happened. I thought creative work could be achieved without work. You need mistakes, and you need to make a lot of them, and the only way to do that is to make work, no matter what the quality. This was a revelation for me; gears clicked in my head and I realized why I got so many strange looks when I brought up my imagined syllabus years ago. If I taught a film class now, the only fire I’d hope to light, would be the one under everyone’s ass to get as much work done as they could, mistakes and all.

“Gift of the Zombi” will be on YouTube soon, and I’ll be tinkering with a special edition. I envision this to be a small book-like version, filled with notes, scripts, stills, and additional materials from the shoot. I’ll put it up on my shelf then, without fear of it demanding anymore from my brain.