I had lunch with JD Walsh yesterday, the star of my indie film Breathing Room. I haven’t seen JD in years, except for the numerous TV and commercial roles that I see him in all the time. We met at the same Burbank Acapulco that Britney Spears went to a few weeks ago, so we were living the dream.
JD’s great and he’s now married and a father and runs an improv group. JD asked about the path I’ve been the past few years, so I told him - from making Breathing Room to doing stock footage and corporate video to teaching, living in Orlando and Austin, wandering the Pacific Northwest and then working at my current job for the last three years.
JD was very gracious and told me that he felt like he’d learned a lot from acting in BR, so if I wanted help on project he was there. But he told me he wanted to be honest and said that he didn’t think I should be putting any of my time into Breathing Room. I’d referred to Breathing Room as a ‘fixer upper’, like a house that had problems but the basic foundation was there. JD said a better analogy might be ‘marshland’.
What’s that sound people make when someone punches them in the stomach? Oomph?
JD wasn’t being mean. He was being honest and helpful. He has giving me his best advice. I guess I thought when he found out that I was doing work on BR that his reaction would be ‘Wow! Cool - that was a good little film that really needed to be finished!’ Instead, I realized that it was more like “Wow! Let that corpse stay buried!”
And - can’t emphasize this enough - JD said he’d do whatever I needed on the film. I told him a couple of the ideas that I had and he said I was clearly passionate about it, which I think is what I think they say to crazy people to calm them down.
I told my wife Lauren about my lunch conversation and how JD said he thought I should just move on. She was pretty quiet - what she did NOT say was, “Well, I think it’s a great film - whatever anyone says, keep going, honeychild!” But nobody really talks like that. Well, my Mom did, actually.
Then this morning, Lauren and I got in an argument about something else altogether and she got pissed off at me and said “…and JD is right, you ARE nuts about Breathing Room! It’s a bad film, it’s boring!”
What’s that sound people make when someone kicks them in the nuts? Ygeeeaaeii?
So, neither my film’s lead actor nor my wife are big fans of the movie. And here I am writing about it. Do I know publicity or what?
And still…I’m not giving up.
I like the film and I see the possibilities in fixing it. It’s too slow in some parts - boring, I guess - but I know how I’m going to fix that.I don’t plan to abandon the film for the exact same reason I don’t think you should abandon your kids. I know I’m overly optimistic and that’s gotten me in trouble sometimes in the past but on the other hand I MADE A FUCKING MOVIE and I’ll be damned if I’m not going to see it through to some sort of life outside of gathering dust on a shelf in my office.
Blogged with Flock
[...] I really felt like listening to that song (see my post on my site for Breathing Room for more) and the YouTube gods delivered it right up to me. [...]
Follow That Dream
November 6th, 2007