DVD release of Lovely, Still
So… My movie comes out on DVD tomorrow. Strange feelings accompany it’s release. I am happy it is over. I’m happy it’s out. 3 years of traveling and fighting. Excitement and disappointment. Never quitting while others quit around me. Now it’s out and I need to feel like I haven’t failed. When part of me feels like I have. I am all together too ambitious and that is why when things don’t reach the level I want them too it makes me really question why my mind is made to set myself up in such pitfalls. Not that my brain cannot be re-programmed. It can. But being an over ambitious control freak really helps get shit done. But the problem is you can’t do everything by yourself and I’ve only met a handful of people who are willing to put up with me and travel the same path I travel. All I can do is work harder to not make the same mistakes. Learn from the hell, not burn in it.
I accomplished the task I set out to accomplish. But it wasn’t without extreme sacrifice. Such extreme highs and lows. I found a note I wrote to myself during the post production of Lovely, Still. Towards the end where I found myself on the phone – fighting and fighting and fighting for my film not to be taken away from me – Probably around 2008. Here is what I wrote:
I honestly can’t tell you why I direct films. There are so many horrible things that go along with it. If you ask me, I don’t have a clue why anyone would put up with it. I’m not kidding at all. I get put through hell. To direct means to love and to be asked at all times to judge the thing you love, rather than just love it. But if I were to think of one reason why I put myself through this… It is because even though when making a film I can feel angry, betrayed, bitter, lost, lonely, desperate, psychotic, empty… even though I go through all those feelings… At least I’m feeling something, and I suppose that is worth more to me than anything. Experience is the only true currency. At my end it won’t be how much I obtained while I lived… It will be how much I felt while here… To stake a claim to my experiences as a human. That’s why I choose to direct films. It is a passion and chase for a love that is not real… A love that must always be given away and remembered as just an experience and nothing more.
Pretty heavy. And now it is over. Now I move on to my next film. Or project. Whatever you want to call it. To again sacrifice the safe normality of comfort for the inspiration and experience of discomfort. Is this the role of the creator archetype? To give and give while suffering? Or is this the role of all conscious sentient beings? Breathe – except it. Love it. The way does not change – but the person moving can.
Any way you can buy it at Amazon.com tomorrow HERE. I’m gonna get a drink and pray the DVD art looks simple and elegant. We will see tomorrow.
This is a picture of me telling the story of how I was out in the wilderness living off nature, barfing and shitting at the exact same time. It sucked. But what an experience :-)