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The Polishing of a Turd

Over a year ago I helped make a short film that I wrote as a favor to a film student.  My involvement was more than I had planned but ironically left me with little input.  And as it should be, right? The writer should stand back and watch the magic, not make it.  HAH!

Days before the shoot I found myself hastily casting, catering, propping,  and costuming the film because no one else was going to do it and my words were on the line. I knew I was saving a sinking boat and I resented it because I only wanted to be the writer.

Within an hour of arriving at our first/only shooting day, I discovered the photographer wasn’t going to use a clapper to match sound (a nightmare later in the editing room, hell they rarely even said “rolling”). With many issues to follow, it was at that moment I knew my boat and my dream of seeing my first bit of writing on “celluloid” crack. I kept my sadness firmly in check and plodded through the rest of the day trying to make it work, because that’s what a professional does.

This past year, with the help of my editor Devin Watson, I’ve been working slowly and in tandem to polish the biggest turd ever made. And it’s not even my turd, well the ‘funny when I wrote it’ script is still mine, but it’s not even “my project”. It’s this amalgamous stink pile now and I include my script in that globby mess because it’s not the story that was in my head anymore.

I loathe it now, every incarnation of it that digitally mushes its way through the editing process. Every lousy fucking second is torture and I’m reminded of feeling used. –With no bearing on my editor, mind you, his amazing work has taken this turd and made it into a shiny but brown marble.

But a turd is still a turd.

Toss it out, stop working on it, give it up because it won’t go anywhere and serves no purpose.  Hell No.

And you know why I say no?  A film is a story and a story must be told or it dies.

So this fecal three minute monstrosity, as shiny and as good as it can be will finally be done in the next couple of weeks and maybe,  just maybe, I’ll place it here for an arm punch and a laugh.

Because: I finish things….and the first thing you make is always crap anyway, right?

That’s all I wanted to say.

I finish shit.