Welcome 2007

Welcome back, and a Happy New Year to everyone -- sorry it's been a little while before my last post but, as some of you might know, I've had a quite busy ten days or so, spending some time in Klosters, in Switzerland, skiing, sledging, sleeping in, and eating all sorts of fondues. The hotel only had Internet access in the Lesestubli downstairs, so I haven't been on the Internet much else than to check email, but I am now back to full-time 24/7 work, and will be on here every day or so, as planned and agreed. *spits in hand and holds it out for shake*

I've got a good feeling about 2007. I've got so much on my plate that I'm looking forward to every day more than I ever have before in my life -- I love the idea of getting up in the morning and taking small step after small step after small step all day, until the sun's down, and I know I've done so much progress and there's still so much progress left to be done. I can't wait for next Christmas to pull out my little Goals sheet and see how far I've gone.

Speaking of goals, I've added a new one during the holidays -- I have found a subject for a non-fiction book I'd like to write (other than my now-almost-a-year-in-the-works John Cazale biography), and I am going to spend at least a few hours every week working on it, to hopefully at least have an extended outline or first draft ready by Thanksgiving. It's got to do with film, it's got great potential, and I'm really really excited about it.

I hope everyone out there had a great holiday break -- I definitely did and it's all thanks to Mare's (the girlfriend's) family, who were kind enough to invite me to their yearly Klosters escape and made it an amazing, amazing, a-fucking-a-doodle-mazing experience. There was amazing skiing despite some iffy weather (and, even though I hadn't skied in five or six years until then, and had a couple fancy falls on the first day, it was great fun trying to keep up with them -- and now I'm looking forward to hopefully getting some early skiing mornings during Sundance). There was great, amazing meals, mostly with great, amazing people (I most memorably got to meet and listen to Charlie Beattie, former Olympic skier, now in his mid-60s). There were great pictures to be taken, walks to be walked...and like I said, it was all in terrific, warm, welcoming company. And there's really no best way to end one year and start a new one.

One of the great things about the holiday was also enjoying some of my Christmas gifts (hey, so I'm materialistic -- I want to be a film producer, remember?). One of them, which Mare got for me, was famous bestseller The Artist's Way, which I devoured in just two or three days, highlighting pretty much every other line down to the bone, and which I now consider one of my 2007 bibles (I feel there's another one coming). The book needs to be taken with a pinch of salt -- there's a lot of over-positive God mumbo jumbo -- but just reading it, without actually taking the time to do the exercises and follow the course, is, oddly, an incredibly empowering experience. It just spells out, in really simple terms, every single (EVERY single) block you could have as an artist, every single reticence, every single fear, and it just puts the decision and choices with how to deal with them in your hands, in the most straightforward, inspring way.

Mare and I have had conversations for a long time now because, since I left film school, my moods have quite frankly gone up and down -- I'm a workaholic, but there've been so many nights when I went to sleep and just dreaded having to wake up in the morning, and this despite having the most amazing girlfriend, a certain amount of financial security, and doing the thing I love. But that's because in me, I kind of focused too much on what the results might be or should be, instead of enjoying and having faith in the process itself. That's something I had lost, and reading the book (and having Mare help talk me through all those little things) suddenly made me find myself again, in a way. So it's been the perfect book to read, right at the start of a year that I feel is going to be incredibly important in trying to get a career rolling, and contacts up, and some credits down under that ol' belt.

Another thing that's notable with me recently: I've finally given in to what I used to call "that fucking pathetic self-involved stuff" and started both this blog (hurray to you for reading it) and a Facebook page -- with which, I'll admit, I'm having plenty of fun. I've already found some old friends, added some features and information, uploaded a roll of pictures, and started a group called The Ten Cent Adventurees, which I want to use as a little networking group I know for everyone involved in film, so we can all help each other out.

I've always been a fan of the idea of the Southern California Pack (that bunch of writers-directors in the 70s, most hailing from USC, including Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Walter Murch, Brian De Palma, Francis Ford Coppola and John Milius, who worked together and traded scripts and ideas like they were baseball cards), of the idea at the base of Zoetrope Pictures (which Francis Ford Coppola & George Lucas then started together, conceiving it as a haven independent studio built near San Francisco for young filmmakers to collaborate in in a free, encouraging environment), of United Artists (the old Chaplin-Pickford-Fairbanks one, not the Tom Cruise version), of Dreamworks (the original conception of it, three moguls in three different areas of entertainment working together), and even of that little group George Clooney, Brad Pitt & Co. have going now, all starring in films together, all producing films, all getting involved in other things, all, essentially, making both the most entertaining, and the most intelligent and daring, films out there.

And that's the kind of little endeavour I'd love Ten Cent Adventures to turn into. Something inspiring, motivating, something a tad elitist/work-and-vision-rewarding in the most American Dream kind of way, where the young (and older) filmmakers I respect and I can all work together, and help each other. I do very very strongly believe in the director's vision when it comes to film, but I also very strongly believe in how much of a collaborative medium it is -- and not just on the you-gotta-work-with-a-DP-and-sound-guy level. I think a writer puts something on the page, a director has a vision for it, and then there's a countless amount of "mirrors" of sorts (producer, creative talent, actors, people whose opinion you believe in and trust) who can, could and should help irrigate that vision, focus it, breathe more life into it, inspire it, and then help bring it to the screen. And that's what the ideal production company, to me, is -- not just a stamp on receipts and bills and a logo at the beginning of the feature.

There's obviously a bit of naive idealism in that, because it's hard to maintain financially -- hell, there's a reason pretty much all the companies and groups I've mentioned above have failed in some way, shape or form in the long run -- but I do think that if that kind of project is ever going to work, today is when. We've got so many different options in terms of money, marketing and distribution, from hedge funds to private investments to MySpace to YouTube to Netflix and so many other things, that I firmly believe that if you can keep your in-between-movies overhead down, produce the actual movies for the right budget and no more, and actually pull through with consistent quality (translatable both in terms of profit and critical respect), then I think you can actually build something that works, even in the very, very long run. And that's the goal. And in terms of networking, I like to think of my little foray into Facebooking today as a first baby step on that road. (And if you're looking for me on Facebook, just type Paul Fischer -- my name -- in there, and I'm the one with the black & white John Huston picture).

That's today's post -- I'll be back tomorrow with much more. I'll also be in England again in the morning (I'm currently in France), which is also exciting -- my Cineworld card and I meet again, in this world filled with Pan's Labyrinth, The Pursuit Of Happyness, Miss Potter, Apocalypto, Flags Of Our Fathers, Perfume: Story Of A Murderer and Employee Of The Month. It's gonna be an exciting week.

Cheers,

TenCents

PS: Someone very, very special, in every sense of the word, passed away yesterday, and even though that's something very personal, and has nothing to do with film work, or producing, per se, it had an effect on how I'm going to tackle this year. And so I think it's worth mentioning -- just in case anyone ever wants to read this, and make sense of it, that's something that's very important in my mind at the moment. So I wanted to mention it.