The Evangelist screenplay excerpt

I mentioned a couple posts back that Sean and I would be shooting a short film called The Evangelist in May, I've been working on polishing up the screenplay for the past week or so. Here's part of a longer monologue from the script, written by Sean and myself:

People have been searching for your

mouth. People in church every

Sunday. We have taken memberships

and dinners, bake sales. We have

forgotten why we are there. We

confine the church to the church.

You have come to tell us that you

are coming back into our homes.

Back to our families. We serve you

in our jobs, our marriages, through

our children. Being home schooled,

being the light, preaching your

word. Whatever your plan for us, it

has nothing to do with the Sunday

address, the words of the corrupt

and venal priests spitting impotent

venom on the dead-eyed.

Bryan Poyser's Lovers of Hate at Sundance

Most Austin folks are already well aware of this, but the Austin Film Society's Director of Artist Services (and accomplished filmmaker) Bryan Poyser will be premiering his new feature Lovers of Hate in competition at the Sundance Film Festival later this month.

This is very exciting for me, in part because I got to see an early cut of the film and it's really fucking good, but also because Bryan is such a cool fucking guy. Bryan was running TFPF when Sean and I got a grant for Corpus in 2007, and he was an invaluable resource throughout the production - helping to hook me up with a Super 8mm projector when mine broke down, and giving me an unbelievably honest and insightful critique once I'd completed a rough cut. The guy knows his stuff - I learned almost as much about filmmaking in an hour talking to him about Corpus as I did in four years of film school, except he didn't charge me a hundred thousand dollars.

So if you take my experience with Bryan and multiply it by every filmmaker in Austin who he's similarly helped out (he didn't get this for nothing), it's hard to think of someone more deserving of success as a filmmaker. I'm sure we'll be hearing much more about Bryan and LOH soon.....

To-Do List - First Half of 2010

I'm writing this down half for you and half for me - for you to know what I'm working on, for me to keep myself organized for the next six months. In rough chronological order:

1. Finish Moth Fight music video. Two thirds of it is shot, need to shoot the final third and then cut it all together. Possibly submit to the Austin Film Society's SXSW member showcase, if I finish it in time. I'm also in the planning stages of a video with Western Ghost House, although that likely won't shoot for a couple months or so.

2. Finish documentary short on forgotten Texas outlaw Austin Broadnax. I've shot about half of this, just need to get some more interviews with family members and some additional b-roll and it should be a pretty solid little documentary. I might also submit this to the AFS SXSW showcase, assuming I finish it in time. Here's what I have so far:

3. Shooting short film in Minneapolis with Sean in May. It's called The Evangelist, about a church janitor who tapes a televangelist program in his apartment. I'll be writing much more about this project soon.

4. Put together funding proposals for my next feature film Tyler. I've written a little about Tyler here. My goal right now is to put in a solid application for funding with the Texas Filmmakers Production Fund (I've had some success with this before). Hoping to get more money this time around, we'll see what happens.

5. Writing writing writing. I've got two finished first draft features that need some work: Hospital, a murder mystery set in New Orleans, and 1910, a Western that may or may not be inspired by The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. I'm also about five to ten pages in on three other features: Austin Broadnax, a biopic about the man discussed in item 2, The Demons, a political film about the war on terror, and a remake of Corpus. I've decided that the real problem with the original Corpus is that it wasn't self-indulgent enough, so I'm correcting that.

6. Hold down my new day job as Outreach Coordinator for Sunshine, a documentary broadcasting nationally on PBS Independent Lens in May.

Actually finishing all of the above by June-ish is only half of the battle - the second half is getting this stuff to an audience, which is a whole separate skill set I'm still very much learning. But I'll figure that out in due time - here's to a fun and productive 2010.