"What is Past is Prologue"

Architect John Russell Pope placed four monumental statues around the National Archives Building. Each was cut from a single block of limestone weighing 125 tons. Aitken's "The Future" sits on the Pennsylvania Avenue side of the building. The young woman lifts her eyes from the pages of an open book and gazes into the future. Its base is inscribed with a line inspired by Shakespeare’s play The Tempest: "What is Past is Prologue."

Three weeks of "Juju" completed, and we are taking off a week to regroup, figure out the pieces still left of the puzzle, and schedule our pick-up days. Looks like we can get the last of it hammered out by the end of next week.

I have met some great people and great contacts on this job. The Writer/Director, Boyce, is quite a character. He is a perfectionist and refuses to cut corners. Most of the time he seems very serious, but once in awhile he just cracks me up. He is Nigerian, and has this great accent. On the set, Michelle (DP) is constantly asking him if he is happy (with the picture on the monitor, before she shoots it. I have heard him say more than once, "Happy as a LAAHK." It just seems so funny, coming from this big, stoic man! I guess you have to be there, though.

Stayce, the Producer, is a blast. She is the Voice of Reason, but she is also hysterical, and we laugh all day long. Which is a good thing, because the two of us are the ones that really never can have a full day off as long as this thing is still in production. Dealing with payroll, scheduling, location issues, budget, script changes, personnel... it never ends.

The coolest thing so far in this whole experience, though, has been the rewrites. There have been a few scenes we needed to change drastically, and on the fly. I took the liberty of making changes to a couple scenes to expedite things, and printed them up for Boyce, as suggestions. I thought what I had written might at least help figure out how to streamline some scenes or make changes to keep continuity straight, but Boyce liked the pages and kept them as I wrote them, and we shot them. I was expecting the actors to grumble about having to learn new pages in a day or two, but they seemed to like them, too (or else they are just realy good actors!).

Watching this unfold before my eyes was very different than watching my words come to life on the set of my own movie. At first I couldn't figure out why it felt so different, or what it was that felt so different about it. But it is dawning on me, and I suppose what it comes down to is control. It WAS very cool to make my own film and do it exactly the way I wanted to. But I had full control of that project from beginning to end, so of course it was going to go pretty much as I had envisioned it. But this film, "Juju," is not my baby. It is someone else's. And they approved what I did and incorporated some pretty good-sized chunks of my writing into the body of this piece of work. They could have dismissed it, or used part of it, or used only the gist of it, but they used it intact, and it worked. It is a good feeling, and it gives me confidence that I will eventually do what I have set out to do in this business primarily - to write.

The overall experience of being Production Manager on this project has been great, and such an education. I have been at the same hotel management job for going on eleven years now, and in that business for two decades. Hotel management is often crisis management, but I could do it in my sleep. I know I can have a job in this industry for the rest of my life if I want it, and there is some security in that. But there is also INsecurity in that, when you have been doing something for so long, and you start to wonder if you will be restricted to doing that and only that for the rest of your life because you have been doing that and only that for so long. You (and by "you" I mean "I") don't really know anything else, and you don't want to start at the bottom in something else. Between filming "Charm City" and being PM for "Juju," I am reassured that my skills in crisis management have not diminished, and I have been happily surprised at how well the skills I honed in my first career are carrying over into my (hopefully) second. I didn't go to school for hospitality management, and I have worked with and trained a lot of people who also did not and went on to do great things in the business. Often they were (mistakenly) convinced that they would at some point need to get a degree in the field if they were to move up. But I always told them, in the hotel business, you can go pretty damn far if you have three things:

!. Common sense,
2. personality, and
3. a willingness to pay your dues, in advance. In other words, never letting the words, "That's not my job," pass over your lips.

The same rules apply to film production, though more specific aspects of the field (writing, directing, camera work) call for more specific skills. But every day my confidence increases that I can have a successful career in this industry, doing what I was meant to do all my life - to write.

For now, the hotel job pays the bills while I learn the ins and outs of production. Then, soon, hopefully the production jobs will keep rolling in to pay the bills while I get my foot in the door with writing. Once I get my whole LEG in the door, I'm going to kick some ASS.

Sliding Doors

Hmm, it is 1:04 a.m. and I can't sleep. That's because my body thinks it is 8:04p.m., which it would be, if I were home in Baltimore. Instead, I am at my other home, in London, at Matthew's.

I really do need to get some sleep. Tomorrow night is Awards Night, the annual awards program for Matthew's theatre (that's "theat-R-E on this side of the pond) training school, Songtime Theatre Arts. For the third year in a row, I will be presenting an award, and with a little luck, for the second year in a row, I will be accepting one, on behalf of the students of the theater department of the Baltimore School for the Arts.

It is a long story...the Reader's Digest Condensed Version is this...I met Matthew Chandler at a New Year's Eve party at his house in London five years ago. I told him I was on the Board of Directors at a theater in Baltimore, Baltimore Theater Project, and we should chat. Six weeks later, I was hosting Matthew and 8 of his best students, and they did a workshop at BTP. In September of 2005 Songtime Theatre Arts premiered their first international production, Willy Russell's "Stags & Hens" at BTP. At the suggestion of Anne Fulweiler, the Managing Director of BTP, we invited the theater students at Baltimore School for the Arts to a performance. And things took on a life of their own from there. It was apparent to Matthew, Donald Hicken (Department Head of the Theater Program at BSfA), and myself that the energy that happened when these two groups of kids collided was something special, and needed to continue. To shorten an even longer story - I am proud to say that the International Exchange Program between the Baltimore School for the Arts Theater Department and Songtime Theare Arts of London is entering its third amazingly successful year.

At last year's Awards Night, I was stunned to find myself on stage, choking back tears in front of over 500 people, accepting the award for Best Production, on behalf of the BSfA and STA, for their joint production of , "The Laramie Project." This year, the second joint production of the Exchange Program, "Elegies," is also up for Best Production. So keep your fingers crossed.

You might be wondering why I am writing about all this on the blog that is supposed to be for my film. Rightly so. But these things are all connected, creative forces bleed into one another. The situation just reminds me that you never know, you never know how the next person you meet may effect the rest of your life. I love introducing creative people that I know and love to each other and then standing back (or standing in the thick of it)and watching what cooks up. I have been witness to some pretty amazing collaborations. But so far, none as great as this.

I have accomplished a lot of things in my life that I am proud of, but being a part of this Exchange Program is simply...beyond words. I can't even talk about it without tearing up. To watch these young people step through doors and have experiences that they could not possibly prepare themselves for, to know that within a span of ten short days, they will come out on the other end a different person, with a cache of knowledge they could not have even known to long for before they absorbed it...I don't know what could be more incredible.

And I don't know if that feeling that I get when I am with these kids can be topped. But it does echo things that are going on with me, and with my film. I have some simply amazing friends that are helping me through this process, supporting me in ways that humble and astound me. And beyond that, I continue to meet new people, people who don't know me from Adam but for some reason are willing to spend time with me, give me their advice and counsel, offer their services and introduce me to more people within the business. So you just never know. Five years from now, perhaps one of these people will be among my closest friends, as Matthew is to me now.

I have never put myself in such a vulnerable position before. That is what is going on here, really. To expose my hopes, my ambitions, my self, to friends and strangers, to brace myself against rejection or even ridicule...only to be met with overwhelming support. I think I may be on to something here. I am so used to being the one trying to connect the dots for other people, it is a different feeling to be, somewhat, at the mercy of others, and find them opening doors for me. But I will happily walk through those doors, and happily thank them. And happily knock on the next one and hope for more of the same.