Thursday, November 08, 2007

Jake Gets Paid -- The final edit

i went to the tisch school of the arts screening room to see the final edit of jake gets paid, the movie i shot with ed durante in april. it was a nine day shoot -- every saturday and sunday that month -- and it was tight. there were moments when it felt like a massive impossibility but we all got through it. the finished product needs work here and there (they haven't fixed the sound, for example) but all in all, it was astonishingly good. especially the new ending, which kind of blew me away.

it's not that i ever doubted ed. it's obvious that he knows what he's doing. it's just that with film, you don't know what you have until you've edited it and it's up on the screen. while you're actually doing it, everything is all over the place. there's just no predicting it. it's pretty clear that ed is ambitious and aggressive with all this. he's going to follow through with the festival circuit and push as hard as he has to, to make something happen. it's his first feature. (and mine.)

with theater, you can read the script and know what you've got. and when all else fails, great acting can save bad direction. not so with film. it's all about the direction -- ed's vision, his ideas, they're all up there.

the fun part is, my nieces leslie and monique came out to see it, and leslie brought her husband ernest. leslie and ernest sat behind my friend and i, and i got to talk to them before the movie started to fill them in on my life and make faces at them and stuff after everything was underway. fun. and ralph was there. and stephen. and john and judtsna. it's like i got this moment to catch every one up on at least some part of what i've been up to this year. quite gratifying.

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