Last night we had a test screening of my new film, Melvin. 

Test screenings, by their very nature, are really tricky beasts to tangle with emotionally and intellectually.  But I really have to say, there is a MONUMENTAL difference between seeing the film all by your lonesome in a dark room — and sitting in a room watching the film, presented as a film, with other people watching it with you.  I felt hyper-aware and I felt like I could literally feel when the energy of the room was up or down or in between.  It’s an all together mind-bending sort of experience… and as I do them more and more in my filmmaking life, the feeling of hyper-awareness hasn’t gone away at all.

That all said, the feedback and comments were thought-provoking and helped solidify the what’s working and what needs a little more love kind of choices. I’m reminded of an article in Filmmaker Magazine awhile back that said, “Don’t make your festival premiere your first test screening.” I feel like we haven’t with Melvin — and as a result, we’re going to have a better film.

Many, many thanks to the folks who shared a couple of hours in a dark room watching Melvin and I on our journey.

THE HAPPY POET will play 3 times in Venice in the coming month — and Writer/Director/Lead Actor Paul Gordon and Producer David Hartstein will be in attendance.  This is the film’s INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE and a very, very exciting time for all the folks in our poet camp.

Screening Dates/Times:
Tuesday, August 31st, 2010 (Press Screening)
15:00 hours at Sala Volpi

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
18:15 hours at Sala Darsena

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010
22:00 hours at Sala Volpi

For more info, check out the Venice Days site.

The Happy Poet – Official Trailer from Chris Ohlson on Vimeo.

SCREAMING will screen as part of the closing night program, The Texas Show, at the 23rd Annual Dallas Videofest in Dallas, Texas on Sunday, September 26th.  Bart Weiss, the director of festival, has been gracious to enough to screen a lot of my work over the years.  And honestly, I am always excited to see what makes up The Texas Show, as Bart programs and sheds light on works from in and around Texas that I sometimes don’t hear about or stumble across on my own.

Here’s the official blurb about the Texas Show showcase:
Its been the closing night program for 23 years. We take all the shorts submitted that were made, directed or produced by Texans and have an independent jury select the best of Texas shorts. Usually a collection of dramas, comedies, documentaries, and experimental work it offers the diversity as big as… well you know.

And the official blurb about Videofest:
SEPT 23-26, 2010 Angelika Film Center, Mockingbird Station, Dallas
For twenty-three years The VideoFest been a celebration of vision and technology.  VideoFest has a long history of exhibiting work from outsiders.  Some of them have become more familiar then others over the years.  VideoFest special guests have been stars such as: Terry Gilliam(12 Monkeys), Paul Ruebens (Pee Wee), Robert Smigel (TV Fun House), Steve Allen (TV Host), Albert Maysles (Grey Gardens), just to name a few.

THE HAPPY POET will be playing in Austin, TX at the Alamo Drafthouse on Monday, August 30th at 7:00PM.  This is one of my all-time favorite places to see a film — and Fandango recently called the Alamo Drafthouse their “Best Overall Theatrical Experience” of 2010.  What else do you need to convince you?

Details on the Venue:
Alamo Drafthouse – The Ritz
320 East 6th Street
Austin, TX 78701
(512) 476-1320

Purchase tickets HERE.

As we put the finishing touches on MELVIN, we’re building out his online presence as well.  We hope you’ll follow him — and the film — on both Facebook and Twitter.   We promise to have some interesting, participatory kinds of things to share in the coming months.

I’m definitely guilty of writing only about films on this site, and more specifically, films that I’m somehow a part of — or promoting.  But that said, that WAS the original idea behind having this blog/website.  But, I do want to be better about sharing things of interest to me…  people or places, ideas or artistry, that I find wonderful – or intriguing – or humbling.

So here’s a new post with that in mind.

I decided to shine a light on a friend of mine, an incredibly talented photographer, Mr. James Rexroad.

I see James every once in awhile, not nearly enough — since he’s a world traveler and I find myself traveling all the time now.   Our paths rarely cross, but I keep up with him online and try and track the work he’s doing.  He’s the real deal.  He’s a helluva nice guy and somebody who has completely mastered his craft.   I urge you to wander around his site.

His bio (from his website):
James was born in Marcola, Oregon to Luella Rose Rexroad, his mother and inspiration, and has three brothers, David, Robert, and Thomas.  After developing an interest in photography at Powell’s City of Books, James started working as a newspaper photographer in Portland, Oregon.  James’ photographs have since appeared in a number of national and international newspapers and magazines.

I wanted to share some great news about Gregory Collins and his new film THOKOZANI.

Some quick backstory…  Gregory and I have been friends for years — and collaborators nearly the entire time.  We’ve helped out on each other’s short films, talked constantly about new projects, and sketched out a handful of upcoming feature scripts together.  Gregory is also one of the reasons that MELVIN was created — he helped kick it all off.  (and hell, we debated having him the play the lead character in MELVIN, for awhile)

So, I am incredibly happy to share, that his first feature film, THOKOZANI, will be the Opening Night Film of the 2nd Annual Malawi International Film Festival.   THOKOZANI will kickoff a 4-day event that describes itself as “Beyond Imagination.”

Gregory shot THOKOZANI in Malawi, literally pulling together a cast and crew from the community he was living among.   The film is truly ‘A Love Story From Malawi’ — and I couldn’t be happier that Gregory’s film will have its World Premiere in the country of its creation.  If you’d like to keep up with the film, jump on over to its facebook page.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Ryan Long from Screen Door Film asked me if I’d be up for answering some questions for a new installment of his “5 Questions with…”

I said, “Sure.”

And sure enough… HERE they are.

The Austin Film Society was wonderful enough to grant me a Texas Filmmakers’ Travel Grant, which helps with travel costs associated with attending prestigious film events or festivals — so that I could attend the IFP Labs with my new film MELVIN.

I wrote a festival dispatch about my experience… Please check it out on the Austin Film Society’s online journal, Persistence of Vision.  Read it here.

Thanks AFS!

About the Texas Filmmakers’ Travel Grant:
The program is intended to help offset travel costs for Texans whose work is invited to prestigious film festivals and events around the world.  Eligibility is based on the festival or event that the film has been invited to, not on the film itself, and you need not be a member of the Austin Film Society to apply.   More info about the program can be found here.

Recently, I wrote a guest blog post for Ted Hope’s wonderful site, Truly Free Film.   My post is called The Mentoring Mindset as A Key to Film Sustainability and it went live on his site this morning — you can check it out here.
 

Many thanks to Ted for letting me share some thoughts on his page — and to my two close friends, Gary Temple and Gregory Collins, who gave me some much needed writing/editing assistance.

THE HAPPY POET has got its International Premiere set — in Venice!  We’re incredibly excited to be able to screen the film for the very first time outside of the US.   The film will screen as part of Venice Days, which runs from September 1st through September 11th.

From the Official Press Release:
The Venice Film Festival’s independently run Venice Days section has unveiled its 12-title largely European lineup comprising nine world preems. Modelled on the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, the Lido’s Venice Days splinter section, now at its seventh edition, will feature works by name auteurs, including Oscar-winning Bosnian helmer Danis Tanovic, Gaul’s Bertrand Blier and Belgium’s Marion Hansel, alongside works by lesser known filmmakers, including four first works. The only U.S. entry unspooling is ultra-indie comedy “The Happy Poet” by Austin helmer Paul Gordon.

And if you’ve got access to the Variety site — you can read the announcement here as well.

I realize there are literally hundreds of film related Kickstarter Campaigns going right now — but I have to throw my arms — and support — around the campaign that Rooftop Films has launched.  Mark Rosenberg and Dan Nuxoll run an amazing summer series program (that EXPECTING, LOVERS OF HATE and THE HAPPY POET all played in last 12 months) and above all, at the end of the day, they’re great guys.

If you can give anything, in these tricky economic times, this is an organization incredibly worthy of every dollar you can give.  Follow the widget below (or this link) to help out Rooftop.

About Rooftop Films:
Rooftop Films is a New York based non-profit whose mission is to engage diverse communities by showing independent movies in outdoor locations, producing new films, coordinating youth media education, and renting equipment at low cost to artists.

Well, we’ve got a handful of screenings coming up in the next month… THE HAPPY POET is finding his way out there, for sure.  If you would, please forward this on to anyone you might know in these different cities… we’re covering a lot of ground in less than a month’s time, so we need all the help we can get in drumming up interest for the Poet!

San Antonio, TX — Saturday, July 24th, 2010 @ 8:00PM
San Antonio – Unit B Gallery
free screening, more info HERE

Traverse City, MI — Friday, July 30th, 2010 at 12:00PM
Traverse City Film Festival – Programmed by Michael Moore
July 27th-August 1st, 2010
tickets and more info HERE

Flagstaff, AZ — Opening Night Film, Monday, August 14th, 2010
Flagstaff Film Festival
August 9th-16th, 2010
tickets and more info HERE

Salt Lake City, UT — (our screening time is still TBD)
Salt Lake City Film Festival
August 12th-15th, 2010
tickets and more info HERE

It’s always a tricky balance of optimism and realism as you begin any new project… and films are no different.  I am excited to say that we have taken our first steps in the evolution of a new project I am helping bring to life.  Good friend and partner in numerous commercials and music videos over the years, Matt Muir, is directing a new project (that he also penned) called THANK YOU A LOT.  It’s a wonderful story that we’ve been talking about for the last couple of years… I’ll be at the producing helm — and the super-talented Blake DeLong will play the lead.

Needless to say, we’re far from having all of the pieces in place to go before the cameras, but we’re up and running and I’ve slowly been learning to better navigate the tricky time that is bringing a project to life.  We’ve got a couple of other great pieces of the puzzle in place, outside of Matt and Blake, but I can’t share those just yet.  That all said, I’m happy to say that THANK YOU A LOT has taken its first steps in the world.

Here’s a screengrab of Blake, taken during some script workshopping/rehearsal that we did a few weeks ago in West, Texas.

On Friday, July 30th, THE HAPPY POET will be playing as part of the 2010 Traverse City Film Festival.  The film plays at the Lars Hockstad Auditorium at 301 W. Seventh Street in Traverse City, Michigan on Friday, 7/30 at 12:00PM.  Both the writer/director/lead actor Paul Gordon and producer David Hartstein will be in attendance.

To visit the festival’s box office, follow this link.

About Traverse City:
The Traverse City Film Festival is a charitable and educational non-profit organization that holds an annual event in one of the most beautiful areas of the country — Traverse City, Michigan.  The festival is committed to showing “Just Great Movies” and helping to save one of America’s few indigenous art forms — the cinema.  The sixth annual Traverse City Film Festival will be held July 27 through August 1, 2010.

I’m late getting this out, as the date/time of the screening has shifted around a little bit…
But, I am happy to report that THE OVERBROOK BROTHERS is playing in San Francisco as part of LOL-SF: A Celebration of Comedy On Screen on Friday, July 9th at 9:30pm at the Vogue Theater (3290 Sacramento Street).

From the LOL-SF Press Release:
LOL-SF: A CELEBRATION OF COMEDY ON-SCREEN — July 8-15 at the Vogue Theatre!
A weeklong festival of funny films introduced and discussed by stand-up comedians.   If it doesn’t make you “laugh out loud”, it doesn’t belong in this festival! Featuring comedians Will Durst, Bob Sarlatte, Father Guido Sarducci and more!

Check out www.sfntf.org for more information or download the flyer below.

LOVERS OF HATE keeps on tearing it up out there in the world… and now, the film’s got a busy July ahead.  If you’re in 1 of these 4 cities, you owe it to yourself to get out and see the film that the New York Times calls, “Viciously Amusing.”

I am so very, very happy that the movie keeps finding its way to people/audiences — it’s been the ‘little movie that could’ from the get-go and I really think that that’s a testament to making a great film from what started as something great on the page.  It was a very well-written script by Mr. Bryan Poyser — that morphed into a very, very well made film.

Check out these screenings dates/venues and see if you can’t find your way to one of them:

San Francisco, CA — June 28th thru July 1st @ 9:30PM
Roxie Theater
tickets and more info HERE

Fort Worth, TX — July 22nd @ 7:00pm
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
tickets and more info HERE

Chicago, IL — July 23rd, 24th @ 8:00pm and July 29th @ 8:30pm
Gene Siskel Film Center
tickets and more info HERE

Austin, TX — July 25th @ 9:00pm
Cinema East
more info HERE

By all accounts, the screening this past Friday Night of THE HAPPY POET at Rooftop Films in NYC was an outstanding success.  (note – due to a very much last minute family emergency in Maine, where I am typing this entry from, I was not able to attend the screening at Rooftop, but was getting text updates throughout).

The total number in attendance for the screening of THE HAPPY POET was somewhere between 600 and 700 people.  Many, many thanks go out to Mark Rosenberg, Dan Nuxoll, and the whole Rooftop Films Team — as they continually and consistently have packed-house event-style screenings.  I give them a hell of a lot of credit, as it’s really difficult to get people to go out and see a small movie in a theatrical setting these days.  So again, many thanks have to be given to both Mark and Dan for all that they do…

And I might add that LOVERS OF HATE also had an amazing screening last weekend as part of the Rooftop Films Summer Series, on June 19th.

Keeping up with writer/director Bryan Poyser’s blog for the most up to date sort of info on LOVERS OF HATE — is a really, really good idea…  the film just keeps on truckin’ and he’s doing a much better job (than I am, for instance) of sharing upcoming screening and venue information.  So get on over there and get your fill of LOH info!

A few months ago, I had a handful of photos taken by a photographer named David Bornfriend.  I had happened across the amazing work he was doing with the wet plate collodion process…   And long story short, as I’ve been preparing all of the elements for the collection of short films I am going to release later this year, I realized that David was VERY MUCH doing the kind of photographic work that I wanted to include as some of the key art in my short film collection.

So, one meeting and a handful of phonecalls later, David was snapping photographs of me for the photo I wanted for the DVD.  Below is one of the photos WE AREN’T USING (as we are saving ‘the one’ for the DVD itself), but I am so very much impressed with David and his process, that I wanted to share one of the photos here, right away. (so with his permission, this is one of our outtakes).

And realize, this ‘ain’t no photoshop filter’ or anything like that… These are chemicals reacting and causing this look and feel. I credit David with his ability to pull off this very unwieldy process, as not only are there all the elements of ‘normal photography’ to contend with (like lighting, composition, exposure, focus, etc), he also has to be part-chemist and scientist mixing these ingredients at the right times while trying to not stain skin and inhale toxic fumes… an undertaking for sure… And tack on to that, each exposure was 8 seconds long — so the difficult part of ‘my job’ was standing perfectly still for 8 seconds at a time. I did this with varying degrees of success, I might add…

Here are a couple of photos I took, reciprocally, of David and his camera at work.

A great experience for sure — that yielded some amazing photographs for us to work with for my long in-the-works short film and video collection, currently titled RED KNOWLEDGE.

Like a lot of folks trying to get films made these days, it’s an incredibly difficult process.  And if you’re reading this blog, you probably read Ted Hope’s blog over at Truly Free Film…   for a lot of us, it’s a must read.

But on a slightly different note… I’ve been keeping this quote (from another of Ted’s blogs) on a post-it near my edit system as well as in a file right on my desktop.   It’s a simple reminder, but more than that, it’s help me to believe we’re doing a few things right with our new film, MELVIN.  The quote below — and the the link to the post, here.

When did American movies start trying to clarify absolutely everything? What is our national obsession with trying to provide a psychological explanation for all characters’ behavior? If you ask me, I think we have gone overboard. Way overboard. Time to leave that practice behind.

It’s refreshing to see a few films recently start to abandon this practice. Miyazaki’s PONYO did not try to explain the magic (at least in the version released Stateside). Neil Blomkamp’s DISTRICT 9 did not try to explain why the aliens landed here or how people learned their language.

It is fun for the viewer to come up with their own explanations, to discuss these possibilities with their friends. We certainly don’t know everything about our world and leaving some gaps in the narrative feels truer as a result.

TED HOPE

Thanks, Ted.