got cancer? take heart - it's a growth industry

Congratulations. You have the disease of the millennium. The good news is most cancers are treatable. On the other hand some are not. But as a consolation you can take pride knowing that your cancer treatment, regardless of outcome, suffering or death, is feeding the American economy (or lack thereof). Yes caner is a major multibillion dollar industry in America. You can invest with confidence in this growth industry.

No wonder American cancer research and technology is so advanced and amazingly curing more and more people every day. Sure we had a few bumps in the road. Many people died horrible prolonged suffering deaths along the way (and some still do). But less and less people have to die now. Now you can often simply endure painful life draining hairless chemo or radiation treatments for a few months to a few years, at the bargain basement price tag of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Just think of all the hospital administrative staff and insurance adjusters than your cancer treatment supports.  Not to mention the wonderful profit potential and earnings of top tier industries in the DOW. What's it up to now?

Yes, cancer is money. And you may be wondering how we've been so successful in America at sustaining this lucrative disease. Well, there's 7-11, McDonald's, Burger King, Carl's Junior, and Starbucks. Walk into any cancer treatment center and what do you see? McDonald's and Starbucks, of course. Two of the biggest cancer industry supporters. Some of these even have state mandated disclaimers on their store fronts, warning of the carcinogenic dangers of eating there. But we are Americans! We don't pussy out at a few warning labels. Hell just look at the tobacco industry. This is what made America (or at least the top 0.001 percent who remain in the black). Be a man. Suck it up. Die for your country (or at least the bank rollers thereof).

And did I mention GMOs? Yes, the food industries that proliferate modified foods all over America make it virtually impossible to find real food anywhere. And if that's not enough, we have fluoride poured into our drinking water supplies. Most Americans don't know this, but in fact fluoride is known in some circles to be a major cause of most cancers. GMOs are outlawed in many other countries. But not here in America where we pride ourselves on corporate profits. After all the working girls on Wall Street need your support. And I have to admit, I do whatever I can to help the working girl. How about you?

got healthcare?, an Obamacare Documentary to Screen in Iran

Out in the Street Films is pleased to announce the documentary 'got healthcare?' will screen on December 16, 2013 at 9:30 in the Felestin theatre.at the Cinema Verite Film Festival in Tehran, an Iran international film festival. 'got healthcare?' covers the events in Congress and in American streets that lead to much debate and a formulation of the ACA (Affordable Care Act), also known as Obamacare. The film contains interviews with over 65 doctors, nurses and activists, as well as street and Congressional protests.

Locations include numerous town hall meetings, street rallies, and Presidential speeches. Director-Producer Jon Raymond attempted to show different sides of the issues by getting responses to questions from one interviewee and posing them to another, making for a stream of conversation style film. He found the experience enlightening to facts about American health care he was unaware of. Executive post producer, Maureen Cruise was initially filmed as a street protester and later became an involuntary sort of narrator with her eloquent and comprehensive interview, used throughout the film, to explain the failing state of American healthcare, where over 120 citizens die daily for lack of care, or the money to pay for it. You can see more about the film at the official website at gothealthcaremovie.com.
 

A better Mouse Trap

I made a feature doc for the cost of camera, sound and editing equipment ($3K) . Of course I also invested 3 years of sweat. But more and more this is possible. As technology advances, it is happening. Look at Adobe Suite CC, available for a monthly fee; or the Flycam or MoVI, to easily add high end production value for cheap. Look at the success of social media and crowd funding to get funds independently even before shooting. This is all happening now. Build interest, gather an audience, fund the film. It is becoming more and more as cheap as music.



There are basically 10 or 15 film genres we ever hear of (Colin Brown, Filmonomics: Thinking in Genres; Hope for Film 10/11/2013). Why? Is it because people are only interested in these genres? Is it because filmmakers only want to work in these genres? No. It's because the tradition of a high budget studio [ec]centric market has dictated these few genres and discounts anything outside the "corporate norm." So filmmakers are convinced (wrongly so) that they must stick to these genres to be budgeted.

Compare this to music with 50 to 100 genres easily. Why? Because music is artist driven, not studio driven, and not budget driven. Five guys or girls get together in a garage and invent rock, or punk, or new wave or a new genre pretty much at least every generation.

Enter digital filmmaking giving filmmakers the same power that musicians always had. Musicians generate their own audience and followers; there own genre sometimes. Filmmakers are now doing the same with social media. Guess what happens next?

Bottom line: indie filmmakers need to spend a few years to generate their audience instead of trying to fit their polygonal genre-less peg into a corporate square genre hole.

All that filmmakers have to do is to ignore such generalized genre classifications and find their own audience. If they can't do that, then yes, they may need to go back and do something that will gain an audience. And in that case, I would agree, genre may be a starting point at the very onset of writing or re-writing. But not as the target for what the film will be. Audiences aren't looking for genre. They're looking for what moves them, and that goes back to human DNA. 

This genre model is based on what a corporate movie industry wants to invest in, not what audiences want to buy. The thinking is backwards and obsolete. Even if filmmakers fit into genres, they are better off with a lottery ticket in terms of making a living at this model, unless they are willing to succumb to corporate dictation, in which case they become just another wage slave working for the man.

As to Colin Brown's article on genre (here on Hope for Film or here on Slated), probably most indie films fit into the 12 listed genres and like DNA they can all be tied back to one of the few genres that the corporate film dictators so know and love.

The Colin Brown post lists the rules associated with those genres. Are you kidding me? Rules? Who is this guy? The genre police? And yet if you study those rules, you can see they are not really about adhering to a genre. They are more about finding an audience.

Forget genre. Just take all those rules and lump them together , and then use them to find your audience. This idea of having to label everything is moronic. It serves no purpose. You can't measure artistic endeavor with scientific methods, just as you can't effectively measure any abstract concept (like art, love, or God for example) with science (StoryAlity; Dr. JT Velikovsky). Velikovsky has been making these measurements for years and yet we're still in "the dark ages" in terms of understanding this scientifically, in Velikovsky's own words. What's the point of scientific research then?

I don't think the problem indie filmmakers face is that they work outside of established genres. The problem is the opposite. Filmmakers force their ideas into established genres based on fear generated by posts like Brown's. If musicians did that there would be no rock, no grunge, no new wave, no hip hop, no rap, no punk. And what would you call Madonna, Miley, or Gaga? EDM? That wouldn't exist either.

The successes of these artists is their originality, uniqueness, individuality, and pure balls to go against the grain. My point is that filmmakers have to grow a pair and do what musicians do. Filmmakers should strive to be rock stars, not corporate yes men. The reason they fail financially isn't because they don't fit into established markets. It is because they do fit into them and can't compete with studios. But they can't sell films if they don't have a following of people to sell to (regardless of genre or not), because if they did, they would not need the markets. The technology exists for filmmakers to sell direct and cut out the middle market.

In this fast paced world of evolving technology where things become obsolete within two years, I find it hard to attach much relevance to years of research, despite whatever doctorate scholars are involved. Any empirical data more than a year old is obsolete. Any data recorded now will be obsolete in a year.
 
This isn't about research and analysis. You can't research a moving target. This is about logic, common sense, and the historical precedent of a medium like music that's been successful in hundreds of genres, beginning at least 400 years ago with the classics. It's about art.  Is all modern art categorized into genres? Would you tell an artist that to be successful they have to create only inside a certain genre and by certain genre rules? That is deadly advice.


I'm on a project now, and really my only expense is paying people. So I can do this one scene at a time. But if I could find collaborators willing to sweat with me, without pay, this film would easily be done.

If you make a Facebook movie page and get 500K+ followers, not only will you get the attention of the traditional industry, you'll have an audience to sell to directly and to bypass the distribution middlemen. Forget Hulu. I can make $14 per DVD sale on Amazon. I would have to sell 77 rentals on Hulu to make the same amount. Even if I sell digital rentals directly, for $5 a pop, that's still 27 times my Hulu take. Direct sales from your own website is the way indie filmmakers can make out. But the audience is the crucial element, not the genre.

You may say millions come out to Hulu or iTunes. But they still will have to find your film when they get there among the thousands others. If you have to drive people to a website, why Hulu? Why not your own, where the take is 100%?

If you build a better mouse trap, the world will beat a path to your door (Ralph Waldo Emerson).

Do you want to see us make this movie for you?

Credit Risk is a crime thriller about Jack, a bank IT guy, who wants to be a full time actor, but has to provide for his wife and two kids, while getting involved with a friend and former porn star, Jenny, who is raped by Jack’s twin brother Will, which implicates Jack for the crime, who is now pursued by own his sister-in-law detective, and two other cops, who are actually more interested in surveillance of Jenny the famous porn star.

Credit Risk is like Pretty Woman, but not as pretty, not as Cinderella fantasy, not as rich, more down to earth, more complicated, real world dangerous, about real people, and in the street instead of a penthouse. It’s about a former porn star, not a call girl.

But they are both about the stigma towards women of certain professions. They are both about women and men looking to live in a better place than where they are. They are both about taking risks for money. They are both about finding love as redemption. And they are both about finding a way out, and finding a way to beat the odds.

I wrote this story, based on true events. I was, and still am, an IT guy, and that means I go through periods of unemployment when companies decide to outsource or restructure. I also have a family with three children. So I’ve been in challenging financial situations for years, and yet I’ve always had a love for making movies and acting. I’ve had my car nearly repossessed until I locked it in a garage. I’ve had times where it was challenging just to get a few dollars together to buy a loaf of bread for my kids to make peanut butter sandwiches. I never knew a porn star. But I can understand the financial binds that cause people to get into that business where it can be easy to make a lot of money fast.

I did make a short film with a bedroom scene once, and my grade school aged children somehow got the impression that there were naked actors in our house. There was no nudity. But their teachers got wind of this and we had some explaining to do. I think a tasteful love scene can be beautiful. And they do help to sell a movie.

Financial binds are hard on a marriage. And my wife was never too happy with my unpaid acting jobs. Other actors out there are much like me, striving to keep their head above water so they can take acting classes and try to get some decent roles. So all of these experiences contributed to the writing of this screenplay.

I also like thrillers where someone is running to stay alive. The threat of death or pain is a great character motivation. It can carry you all the way through a story, until the threat is neutralized.  In this film Will is the evil twin rapist, and yet I think every bad guy has a good side and every good guy has a bad side. So while Will was wrong to rape Jenny at the start of the story, you have to understand that it started out as mutual sex and just got too rough. [trailer]

The light gets broken and goes out. Jenny gets cut with blood coming down her legs and it looks horrific. But really, what happens is that Will, in the process of picking up glass in the dark tries to grab Jenny and cuts her leg, making it look worse than it really is. Or did he maybe try to rape her with a chard of glass?

In any case, Jenny is in shock and in fear for her life. All she knows it that the room went dark and she felt pain.  So her instinct is to run away from Will. And yet Will is a bad guy looking to get over by implicating his brother in his crimes. So the danger persists as Will worms his way into Jenny’s confidence and gets close to her. In the end he attempts to attack her again, but this time she’s ready and turns the tables on him.  Finally Jack is implicated and due to the identical DNA that they share, Will and Jack are exonerated. But Will also has a predator after him.

So it’s not a lot of violence. It’s more of a cat and mouse game with dangerous predators, mistaken identity, and two people in the face of danger, trying to scratch and claw their way into the kind of life they want to live.  Everybody deserves a good life. You deserve a good life.  Just like Jenny shouldn’t have to do porn to survive, neither should any of us have to do jobs hat we hate, just to eat. So it’s a story about all of us really.

Now, we need to fund our development phase even to be considered by distributors and investors as a serious project. We need to complete this short film version of the project to demonstrate our potential to deliver. We want to take advantage of the recent section 181 laws that allows investors to claim 100% of their film investment as deductible on their taxes. We want to offer not just perks, but investment opportunities online as the new Jobs Act has now allowed. For these things we need to register as a company, we need to hire a lawyer for the duration, and we need to have a professional film budget and shooting schedule done by a production manager. We may need to interest a co-producer with an established production company that can crew the film. We need to apply for state tax incentives. We need to print pitch materials like posters, maintain a website, go to film markets. All of this comes to around at least $50,000. And that would put us in the game to make this film.

And we’ll take this one step at a time. We’ll do continual research, tweak the script if necessary, rethink casting options, locations, and so on. Once we get the development stage funded we’ll pitch the project to distributors, and investors, and show them a trailer and scenes from our short film.

We do have a preliminary cursory budget of about $750,000 for the project. We could probably make the film for that amount without stars. But I think if we can get even half that amount together we will have the leverage to attract a few stars like Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Jessica Chastain, Michelle Williams, or maybe Michael Shannon or Jennifer Lawrence. And I like all those actors a lot. Ok, they sound expensive. But they’re known to consider passion projects if they like the script. And we have to be funded for them to take us seriously. Just their interest alone would then attract additional funding to give us a bigger budget. We can do this.

So do you want to see us make this movie for you?

Credit Risk: Hot Mess Opening featuring Hot Mess by Charlotte Rich

Check out our new trailer for Credit Risk.

Militarized Law: An Internal Terroism of Student Incarceration

At what point does the militarization of law enforcement become domestic terrorism? My kids were "locked down" in their high school for over *five hours due to a "threat". "Lock Down" is a term associated with prisons and incarceration. This is not the first time this has happened. Over 3,000 kids were locked into their classrooms, with no ability to even use a bathroom. Students were forced to urinate in trash cans in the same classroom with other students, while armed officers patrolled the school. This is a prison.

Meanwhile a SWAT team swings into action looking for a threat that does not exist. When was the last time a SWAT team stopped a school shooting? It is rare. The usual case is that police show up after the fact when it's too late. SWAT is a reaction. It is not protection.

Is there not a better way to handle this situation? Is it really necessary to subject innocent children to this terrorizing health threatening incarceration?

'The lock down was lifted after about three hours. But many students still had to wait another two hours for the processing to be completed. My kids were not freed until around 8PM from a lock down that began at around 3PM.

The Canyons: A Cool 60s Grindhouse Thowback Mirror of Hollywood

It doesn't take place in the 60s. It's modern day. But the style of the film is totally retro. It's grindhouse. I'd love to hear Tarantino's take on it. And if he hates it, I still love it.  We see Deen's character arc from bad to worse. And Lindsay's from scared to petrified. We see a world of people who live for money.  There is back stabbing, cruelty, cheating, and perversion. Yet there is love and romance amidst it all. But in the end the bad stuff extinguishes the good. This is true Hollywood with a true real Hollywood end. It's not the fairy tale people want to be lulled into complacency by.

And the music is great. Son of Perdition (featuring Rob James) sounds like a 60s Lee Hazelwood. The rest of Brendan Canning & me&john's soundtrack is great and hits that undercurrent of decayed Hollywood theaters, and decayed Hollywood people; topped of with classic Dum Dum Girls' Coming Down.

Yes, there are technical flaws, maybe. Or maybe it's just a casual style. There's stuff that an experienced contemporary filmmaker would look at and say, it's terrible, it's amateur. But is it really flawed or is it just that the viewer is so accustomed to homogenized perfect Barbie world tripe?  And that's part of the nostalgia. 60's films were like that; grungy, less than perfect. People didn't care. They just wanted to see the film, or maybe take their sex-mate to a drive in and get it on . And when was the last time a major Hollywood film was actually X rated? Today's world is so conservatively annal retentive about being political, fashionably, and financially perfect.

When I watch this movie I look past all that perfection crap and I look at the meat of the matter, and I'm not talking about James Deen's wad or Lindsay's naked breasts. I'm talking about the story and the quality of the basic cinematic story aspects. Get past where you think the lighting isn't right, or there's something distracting in the background. That kind of critical thinking is based on what you expect a  movie to be. It's a perception,  based on media hype about what a film should look like. But that definition of is only technical excellence. You may like the Hangover series. They are technically perfect. I think they suck ass. The Canyons is an unusual film about the decay of Hollywood. Not just the physical decay of abandoned movie theaters.  But the decay of the people who make films who stoop to personal fulfillment over some kind of selfless contribution to film (In case you're from Hollywood, selfless means you don't care about your self, over some kind of greater good).

I think the plethora of critics coming out in droves with hate and disdain for this movie, actually fear what they see in the mirror. Do any of them find anything good to say? Obviously none of them were brought up to stay silent unless you have something nice to say to people (neither was I). And that's why this movie is their mirror. If you believe something is bad and you tell others it's bad, then it's perceived as bad.

Acting is not Easy: You are Robert De Niro

Adrian Brody in The Pianist

When Adrian Brody took on the role of The Pianist, he first spent six months living in a tiny one room apartment where he starved himself. Would you go to this length to prepare for a role? How about if you were offered a few million to do it? What would you do for a role if you have that kind of money in return?

I think it was my acting teacher who said that Meryl Streep  never goes with her first choice in doing a role. She always goes back to look for other choices and that's one way that she comes up with the great work she does.

So now if you are just doing indie roles or low budget projects and you get paid nothing or next to nothing, or even scale, do you just blow off the role and don't put mush effort into it? Maybe you do spend some time to go over it and try a few things and then you're ready to go, right? It's not like it's a big production. But you know that this is not going to get you there. You know that to get the big roles you need to first have the ability to come across like you can do them. You need to go through the process of considering second and third choices.  Maybe spending six months in a tiny apartment is what you need to do. Maybe you already live in those conditions anyway.

So how about if you're playing an adult entertainer? Would you try to land a part time job doing some pole dancing? Would you go out and try to get some work doing internet porn or even just soft porn to advertise internet porn? That would put you in touch with the role, wouldn't it?

Okay, so you won't do porn or pole dancing. But you do have Google. You could spend an hour a day for a few weeks to research the role. Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to go to some lengths to take your performance to a new level?

I've heard it said that some actors, like Robert De Niro, don't bother much with this kind of extensive prep. They just show up and do the role. Maybe that works for them. After all they're Robert De Niro. Are you at that point? Maybe you are. But what does it hurt to do some reseach and consider other choices?

My acting teacher once said to try and read through your lines with different emotions. Read through them all laughing. Then again crying. Then again angry or sad or happy. You'll find a lot of choices that way that you hadn't thought of.  Every character is the lead in their own life. You character is a lead. Every character has complexities. They are sometimes good, sometimes bad. They go through things. Think about what kind of crap your character has had to go through. Everybody has problems. You character has to have problems.  So what are they? You character has secrets. There are things you would prefer that no one else knows about you. Maybe you do share things with some intimate friends. How about your character? They do the same things.

Then again you don't want to get nerved racked over what choices to do. You don't want to show up
at a performance as a bundle of nerves. A little nervous energy may be good. But it's most important to be completely relaxed and at ease before you go on. It's great to do the prep and consider all the choices and work out ways to do it. You may show up with the ability to perform the role a number of different ways. You can show that off. But at the moment you go on, you have to forget everything. At that moment you are now that character. Forget the choices. All that is in your head and decided before. Now you simply become the character and you react as that character. It's maybe a bit crazy, skitzo. You are not expecting your partner's lines. You just react. You have to let everything go. At that point the prep is over and you are Robert De Niro.

Acting is not easy.

Mother's Day: A day for peace

Julia Ward  Howe- 1870, lest we forget, wrote this in the original Mother's Day proclamation:  

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Change for the Sake of Change

Change for the sake of change is a foul concept, or so my high school English teacher said to me when I would talk about how things need to change.  She didn’t get that I wasn’t suggesting “change for the sake of change,” as she suggested was my meaning. No. I was suggesting change for the sake of reason. The most unreasonable thing is consistency for the sake of consistency, or as I used to say, tradition for the sake of tradition. But that’s exactly what tradition is. It has no reason. Why do we follow tradition?

Cowardice.  Those who follow tradition only because of tradition itself, and not for a reason other than that, have no balls. But worse than that they have no mind, no soul, no thought, no reasoning, and no purpose. Tradition is not a purpose. In fact tradition is not even a thing. The word is not a noun. It’s an adjective, even if you say it’s a noun, even if Websters says it’s a noun. 

Can you see a tradition? Can you feel it? Oh you may say, well it’s abstract, like love or God. Really? Tradition is in the same realm as abstract concepts? In that case, it’s completely subjective and can only have meaning is a personal context. So any given tradition, like love or God, has a completely different meaning in the context it is used and by whom. 

You can say the very same things about change. But I don’t suggest change for the sake of change. I suggest it for reason. Is tradition suggested for reason? I don’t think so. You could stretch that to say tradition is for the purpose of pleasing those who honor tradition. But that’s just the same as saying that tradition is for the sake of tradition, which, for me at least, has absolutely no merit.  

You wouldn’t suggest that change has merit when it for the sake of those who honor change. That sounds ludicrous. So why doesn’t the same hold for tradition? Well, it does. Tradition for the sake of tradition is ludicrous, and if you suggest that tradition can be for some other valid reason, then it’s no longer tradition. It’s now a suggestion for a purpose of reason, and a purpose of reason cannot be a tradition, even though it may happen to be considered so.

Change for reason also cannot be change for the sake of change, for it is for a reason. Only concepts of reason can have merit and the reason of tradition cannot be a reason, because tradition has circulatory meaning and refers back only to itself, rendering it meaningless. And when it does mean something else, it’s not tradition, it’s now change.

It’s no stretch to substitute the word religion for tradition in the above. Religion also is meaningless and has circulatory meaning. The big argument for religion is faith, which is nothing more than to say the reason for religion is religion itself, for faith and religion are interchangeable and mean the same thing.

But tradition like religion allows people to feel secure in knowing how things are. But really that’s a lie. We can never know how things are. If we did there would be no such thing as change or surprise. If you believe in tradition you are a fallacy. You are deluded into thinking you know something. In reality you cannot know what you think you know. Surprise and change are inevitable and whatever it is you think you know eventually dissolves in the face of change. So you can only know things temporarily. But even then, not with any certainty. At any moment something could change unexpectedly.

For example. This could end and you might not have any clue as to why you bothered to read it. But the reason you read it is because you believe in change. You read anything and any story to find out what’s next and that is the act of seeking change. Everything changes constantly. There is no tradition. It is a myth.

Politics is tradition, is a lie, is meaningless, and in fact presumes lack of change. Otherwise we don't need politicians to argue for changes. Those in politics play with the word “change” like it’s a basketball. Politicians are steeped in tradition. They live and die for the sake of tradition, which amounts to nothing. All they can do is to suggest a change or two to give the appearance of life. But since they are well paid and use the opportunity to line their own pockets, it in fact amounts to self-preservation, greed, and profit. This suggests that the only value of tradition is for the sake of self-preservation of those who honor its existence. The only change that traditionalists want is the change that accumulates in their pockets. But we all knew that. So why do we bother to honor politics with the time of day? There can be only one reason: tradition.

The Truths of Narratives over Documentaries

We are in pre-production on a short romantic thriller, Credit Risk.  This is a 10 minute version of a feature length project.  We intend to use the short to assist with funding the bigger project.

With elements similar to Banshee and True Romance, a bank IT guy, seeking escape to an acting career, runs into an ex-porn star friend, unknowingly stalked by a serial rapist, who resembles him. Now he is pursued in mistaken identity by his own sister in-law detective, her FBI agent husband, and two beat detectives that are actually more interested in surveillance photos of the porn star they recognize from her past work.

The short film basically covers the opening of the feature and then a fast resolution, consolidating the climax and ending.  The premise of the feature film is the dilemma many people find themselves in with the current economy.  Job loss, tight finances, and having to support a family make for highly tense situations where things get crazy.  In the feature, the protagonist is married but wants to pursue an acting career.  He gets fired from his job at a bank, and the stress on his marriage and finances lead him to have his car repossessed and his wife throw him out when she finds out he still pursues acting and hangs out with a former pron star acting friend.

Another project we are looking to fund is Lost Love.   In the vein of Homeland and The English Patient, this is the story of a downed fighter pilot faced with a family destroyed by his missiles, and lost in regret of the love he left behind.  It is a pertinent war story that reflects the dilemma many troops and veterans have found themselves in, having to balance doing their job to kill, with a sense of morality.  This is what leads many of them to psychological stress, chronic depression. PTSD, and even suicide.  10,000 have taken their own lives since 9/11, twice the number killed in action.  So you can se how a narrative can be very pertinent to personal, political and societal issues.

After completion of got healthcare?, a documentary on healthcare reform, you may wonder why I would be interested in romantic thrillers.  To me, any film can address important issues.  Documentaries are considered to be a reflection of truth or reality.  In fact they are the filmmakers

Who really are these people?

vision.  In this regard, narrative films can be even more accurate and truthful in reflecting reality.  In a narrative we can get into the characters' heads.  We can see them perform in various situations and watch them doing things that real people would be very uncomfortable to have depicted in a documentary.  We can portray perhaps, global truths, and get right down to the points we want to bring home. So narratives actually have a huge advantage over documentaries in these story telling terms.

I've always had a knack and interest for writing romantic thrillers.  Romance takes you right into the characters' hearts and lets you find out exactly who they are.  How do they balance love with other interests in their lives?  What do they risk for love?  What do they risk without it?