Tallest Giraffe Productions

My new film project

2008-09-21T13:52:00.000-07:00

People have asked me what this film is about, and my first answer was "sharing the Gomez love." But I suppose it is more about sharing my own Gomez love. Not just my admiration and respect for the band but also my enthusiasm for the community surrounding them, the folks I've been interacting with on the message board for the last few years. We've been talking about making a film about this for a while, and the upcoming show in Chicago was the impetus I needed, since hardly anyone from the list came to the most recent shows in my neck of the woods.

So what is it I want to see through the lens of my camera? What visual evidence might I find supporting my film idea? It's a long shot, one that pans across a music-mad woman, a few people close to her who she's hauled aboard the Gomez bandwagon, and the message board community. Other materials on hand: the interview (audio only, sadly) I did of them a few years back, messages from the message boards, my "fan fiction" (Gomez figures in one of my novels)... but I'm getting away from the visual here. I have to find a way to do this on film, and that is one of my goals for the next week-and-a-half. The other is to prepare technically, so I get decent sound quality and images when it's time.

I'm really hoping to meet some of the Poi Dog folks on my journey, too. Think they'd enjoy a Gomez show?

Film camps galore

2008-04-15T07:35:00.000-07:00

Notes from watching a few of the ShootOut Boulder films at the library last fall, just after making our own first attempt at a film:

Great shot of a shadowed guy opening a sliding metal door. (I said so in the interlude and they were so grateful. "Yeah, we worked really hard to get that shot," one of the filmmakers said.)

Many concepts in the stories were funny ("I lost my balls in a dice game," "Jords," -- wtf?) but ran out of steam by the end (perhaps because of not having a script or not editing the script?).

Loved the locations we locals know spliced together in impossible ways -- simply hilarious!

Great title: "Waffles at Noon."

Having seen a bunch of these valiant efforts, I still believe a little "outtakes" section in the credits would be a great opportunity for a unique close.

Having a solid, rehearsed story and script is key. (Or maybe if the actors really clicked or you had improv artists run with a storyline... oooh, you could recruit improv folks specifically. That would be a hoot! They would love the publicity, and the experience, and ...it's April -- that gives improv folks plenty of time to plan a film production into their schedules for this October, right? Hmmm....)

Sound engineering -- it's worth doing this right up front.

Next time I make a little film, I will give the kids/people all the jobs they like. They loved that. The more, the better. The collective enterprise thing really works for a film -- everyone wants to see the end result.

Shoot-In Boulder

2007-10-04T12:55:00.000-07:00

You read it here second, perhaps, but the news is on the street: I am going to make a movie. I want to toss some of these ideas out there and see what we can come up with. There will be a list of required elements (specific locations, items, scene requirements, for example). But we will have to (or I will, depending on whether anyone is game) come up with the script, the story, the actors, the scenes, the fun. I think it would be cool to make a tiny trailer up front for the film, and then make the remaining six minutes of film like a soap opera scene that catches you up on everything. I see the good-bad-guy split along the lines of the patients and doctors at a hospital against the drug companies who are pushing their toxic products (and secret military experiments) on the doctors. That's a lot to pull off in seven minutes, but we could make it look like one of those long, breathless trailers for some huge melodrama, all in great-quality black-and-white with technicolor titles like back in the 'forties. We have lots of kids on the block, maybe they'll want to participate, too. Would it be cute or terrible to enact all this with child actors? I can't wait to see what happens next.

Excerpt

2006-12-13T08:16:00.000-08:00

Here's a bit I wrote today. The working title of my novel is Mix Tapes for Boys and Girls, but that title doesn't get the foodie-thriller concept across. Is foodie thriller officially a new genre yet?

Sarah is one of two sisters whose parents recently died in an auto accident. The sisters have inherited their parents' wildly successful restaurant in Sonoma. The younger sister, Sarah, has always been in the restaurant business and is trying to decide how or whether to continue what her parents started.

Now it was chocolate pasta. Sarah had these obesssions and had to follow them where they led her. For a ravioli made with sheets of fresh cocoa pasta she wanted more than the toothsome, rich pasta she had so far. She'd added coconut oil and a spot of vanilla to the egg, cocoa, flour, and sugar dough before kneading it and letting it rest in the refrigerator. The coconut oil made the sheets of pasta seem even richer and more chocolaty. Now Sarah was after a filling with softness and crunch or firmness. The filling had to be something special. Something like passion fruit cooked in the style of a lemon bar, cockaigne, with the crunchy sugary-eggy crust on top a good batch of brownies has, stuffed with a small lump of very melty chocolate. She would serve a pitcher of warm chocolate sauce alongside, a dish of icy-cold whipped cream, and a bowl of toasted almonds, peeled, like eggs in a nest.

Eggs reminded Sarah of the pastries she loved at dim sum restaurants: rice-flour buns (like pork bow) but filled instead with a sweet yellow paste that was somewhere between custard and pudding. Maybe she could stuff her chocolate ravioli with multiple treasures: a firm lemon curd, or a gelatin, meringue, and cream “ice-cream cake” flavored with vanilla or rum or bourbon. If the center were cold enough, it wouldn’t melt in the boiling process. She would poach them gently in coconut and rum and water; as the chocolate wrapper bloomed in the simmering bath the filling would retain its shape and chill on the inside.

Sarah would serve the dark, rich pasta in heated bowls with chocolate sauce, their center fillings a cool and firm surprise and the cold crème Chantilly harmonizing. the warm alkaline darkness of the pasta. That was it: four of the ravioli would have a firm, cool filling, but one would explode like a warm egg. She’d serve five, each different, just two inches square so there wasn’t too much to eat (and just enough to share and still be satisfied). And one of the five would be the egg surprise. Two inches square would be just enough for any of the foodies to be able to pop onto their tongues and chomp down on if they didn't feel like sharing and did feel like showing off. And then they’d play the guessing game with the non-egg ones, which were all different: “Mine’s ginger, with candied, toasted black sesame seeds,” “Mine’s orange blossom honey,” “I can’t pin it down: it’s some kind of cognac, I think.” “Oooh, mint chocolate chip. My favorite!”

It would become the thing to do that fall in Sonoma. People would love Sarah’s creations, and here she saw a glimmer of a new possibility: a dessert place. Never mind trying to compete at dinner: she could have a happening dessert place, café, and lounge (with the camera obscura for entertainment, as well as the occasional live band). Free wifi, outlets eveyrwhere, open from 8am to midnight, and you could eat any meal of the day there. And she'd serve food that was satisfying. People who like fish for breakfast could be happy, as could the ones who would want the oatmeal bread pudding or coffee and a plain croissant with raspberry jam on the side. For lunches there would be sweet caramelized onion pies and purees of roasted vegetables baked in timbales with more roasted vegetables as a garnish; everything at once among the sweetest and most savory foods they had ever tasted. That rice, mango, and coconut cream dish like the one at The Slanted Door in San Francisco would be perfect. Every time people ate there, they wouldn’t be able to help commenting on how it was a dessert café, yet they wouldn’t feel at all limited in their choices, ever, the way they do when they sit down to look at a menu at a family restaurant and realize that the restaurant no longer offers the food from the breakfast menu. Or the way they do when they dutifully eat their entire dinners but never leave room for dessert but always wish they had.

I could call it Life’s Too-Short Café, Sarah chuckled to herself. Here her thoughts swung back to her mother, whom Sarah missed so badly it took her breath away. Her mother reminded her of toast and Ovaltine. I could make it a real menu item, she smiled. Always have it on the menu, with the trademark R in a circle after the name and everything. People might come in and say they like Horlicks better, or Hershey’s syrup or something, but toast and Ovaltine would always be on the menu in memory of my mother. Sarah made a mental note to demo how much butter to put on the toast to the staff: it had to be a lot.

2006-12-12T11:46:00.000-08:00

Soundtrack: kd lang singing "I Want It All" on All You Can Eat. That's the album with the picture of a sew-on patch that says "My parents went to Los Angeles and all I got was this lousy patch."

Nanowrimo Day 2

2006-11-02T10:00:00.000-08:00

And another couple of thousand words posted. My master document is 5100 words long, 17 double-spaced pages of 12-pt. text (12 of 10-pt. text). And it feels like a story is starting to take shape! I like my title, although I can't decide whether it's Mix Tapes for Boys and Girls or Making Mix Tapes for Boys and Girls.

I'm writing a novel!

2006-11-01T16:40:00.000-08:00

When I logged my first bit of my novel on the Nanowrimo site today, I counted about 2100 words. They counted 3400. I wonder why. They seem to be overwhelmed with traffic today.

A theory with no name is still a theory

2006-10-05T08:46:00.000-07:00

I suppose if I have some big theory I must find a way to test it.

Today's conviction is that altering my identity is a key to my identity. I believe there's a personality type no one has singled out yet:
- Immersing/forgetting self in music, singing, dancing, exercise, reading fiction and nonfiction
- Always seeking out peak experiences
- Interested in gender and other identity choices (goths, or the 25- or 30-year-old guy who works at the rec center and wears the uniform they all wear but has a bright red mohawk and shaved head on either side. He's just as nice as he can be -- his hair isn't a statement that he has a bad attitude. Fascinating, no?)
- Wanting to perform, act, speak out, try on other's identities (see above)
- Trying on clothing for the sake of costuming more often than for the purpose of buying needed clothing

For example: Yesterday I was exercising and listening to music, and I wanted to wire my feet and dance on the elliptical machine, so that drum sounds connected with my various foot taps: toe - cymbal, ball - mid-range, heel - bass, etc. I heard Blind Faith's "Can't Find My Way Home" and imagined being able to tap out some of the many beautiful rhythms that weave through this song. And then "Ping One Down" came on and made me want to be Olly Peacock. Again.

Huh. How do I find the other people like this? What is the unifying idea?

It's your world; I'm just redesigning it

2006-07-27T21:08:00.000-07:00

I have recently conceived of a comedy act, a one-woman show. I keep thinking of bits, riffs, gags, that sort of thing:

One is a series of people driving around Boulder in their cars saying, "Who me? I wouldn't dream of riding a bicycle on bike-to-work day. Bikes are for losers."
"Yeah, that's why God gave me a job and a car. So I don't have to bike anymore."
Or: "Lopez girls [here an elegant strum of long fingernails] don't do bicycles."
Or even the more banal: "But I'm meeting so-and-so for lunch and have to pick up the groceries on the way home."
"I don't want to put a helmet on my hair."
"I'll drive to the gym at lunch today. Really."

We've just discovered the joys of riding together as a family. I'm so happy my daughter is ready to ride out into the world together, on streets and everything. But Boulder's funny: I spend a surprising number of thought cycles on whether what I'm doing is harmful to the environment. I don't even like going to Denver very often if I can help it. And yet I was noticing how I drive to east Boulder County far more than I ever did. If I didn't go out to Erie once a week or Lafayette or Westminster from time to time, our car wouldn't have exactly 100K miles on it.

I've heard that some people see the hand of God in everything, but some other people just see the finger.

"And when I complain I get thrown out of the restaurant"
-Neil and Tim Finn

I remember getting quoted in a newspaper article saying, "Not having a car makes it easier to not use a car." This was at my most idealistic time, when I was strongly influenced by my lack of a car. I considered for ten minutes the possibility of starting a catering business after I made some party snacks for a woman for whom a friend and I had done some organizing. But not having a car put the kibosh on that in a hurry. The day I had to do my shopping to cook for the event, it snowed 20 inches. It was just about impossible to get around, but I went out and bought my groceries, waited endlessly for a cab that never came, and then trudged home through the slush with my 40 pounds of groceries. This was long before the time of the ubiquitous cell phone.

Haven't you noticed that just about all the conversations on cell phones -- I'm talking ninety-five percent or so -- contain information about where the person is, as if they just can't resist telling you they're calling you from a place where they wouldn't have been able to call you before cell phones (or BCP, as in "Pong was popular about 30 years BCP. Pokemon came along about 10 years BCP."). And people today find it easier to say BCP than "Fin de siecle," or even "turn of the century." [sorry -- that last was a bit of Douglas-Coupland channeling. I'm just making it all up; I can't help it. I'm reading jPod. I love his books. :-)]

Do you ever think about whether you're fashionable? Would you carry a copy of The DaVinci Code on the subway (or is the subway "for losers"?)? Would you have carried a copy of The DaVinci Code two years ago?

Speaking of Coupland's latest literary work, it just occurred to me Monday that with alarming rapidity I am seeing Subway sandwich shops proliferating where other businesses have failed to thrive. I walked through a little town not too far from my own city at 2 pm one hot afternoon and found all the cute, family-owned joints empty and silent, but four people milling about in the Subway shop. They're like the Wal-Mart of fast food -- surprise! it wasn't Mickey D's after all! And it occurred to me at that moment that in just about every new development, I see a Subway. It's like moving back to California and remembering fleas. They're everywhere. You can't escape until you move away. I don't know where you could go anymore.

Close with Billie Holliday singing "God Bless the Child That's Got His Own"

but wait; there will be more

Out from under the shadow

2006-06-06T08:28:00.000-07:00

I have started realizing lately that I am a good person to know. I know a lot of people and keep my ear to the ground and help people connect and pass along interesting information. It's like when I met D.B. and wondered if I would ever feel that confident that I was bringing the fun with me to the party, that I could be the party. He's really good at that. And I'm starting to feel it myself.

Filming myself has been interesting because it shows me how much I try not to let out. I was practicing singing yesterday (listening to the ipod and singing through the amp), and I heard right away how much better it sounds if you sing out the notes, all the way to their ends, rather than damping or swallowing any of them. I am shedding that old skin as fast as I recognize it on me, I swear.

An uphill climb

2006-05-05T09:51:00.000-07:00

Not only is the work hard, but the persuasion is hard. I often feel I have burned a lot of my bridges by taking on new projects and not following through on any one. So every time I have a new idea (like The Madonna Effect), people mostly say, "Yeah, right. We're as likely to see this happen as we were to see you become a musician or a dress designer." So now I have something to prove to myself: that I am ready for the work.

My exponentially expanding world

2006-05-04T08:07:00.000-07:00

I've been having a blast ever since I changed my career path from magazine writer to documentary filmmaker on the subject of music, specifically the potential for interactions between fans and band to be a positive force in both of their lives (as opposed to just a source of anxiety about stalkers and nutters).

Meanwhile, I have been churning over how I am going to raise money to make a film. My first idea was to be the cereal lady (the Cereal Cinematographer, bringing cereal and milk and spoons to festivals and beaches and parks all summer). But buying cereal in single-serve packages turns out to be spendy, so I'd have to charge high prices ("$4 for a bowl of cereal? I don't think so!"). And then I'd have to start including rice and soy milks and getting licensed to serve food. So I had another idea: I saw a book cover in my mind’s eye: The Madonna Legacy. So that’s what I’ve started. The idea is that people have the opportunity to reinvent themselves for the first time ever in a way they never did. It is in part a gift of feminism and it is in part a gift of popular musicians, like Madonna. It is a gift that was intended for women and spilled into the gay community and now represents opportunity for everyone. I’ll write and talk about self-expression and feminism, music, reinvention, why boho chic and the Beauty School of Kabul are all good things, and I’ll raise money for my film.

Also, I believe music is one of the best ways to get people together for good and it's such a visual as well as aural experience. We've gotten so accustomed to this one-way viewing of pop stars and the truly famous. We listen to their CDs over and over or watch their videos, and a rare few of us go listen to them live if they come to the area for a performance. But the interactions between fans and musicians are truly such a potential source of big joy for people that I want to share some of that energy and remind people that life is more than about choreographed MTV videos played over and over. That people get energy from these encounters and things happen as a result of them. Hey, it's working for me!

And, let's face it, I want to show people why Gomez are so much more fun than all those dreary-assed Wilco and Death Cab for Cutie guys. Others I'd love to film: Michael Franti (hip hop ain't all about gangstas, homey), the madcap Moxy Fruvous, Frank Orrall, Ben Harper -- interesting people. Wish I'd seen Leonard Bernstein when he was alive. I definitely had a crush on him. And Bill Graham, even if I didn't necessarily like him so much.

Plus, my own journey is inspiring the hell out of me. Who knows what I can do? I haven’t even gotten started yet! This is absolutely thrilling to be living here and now, and I need to find a way to share the wealth, spread it far and wide, like my favorite artists do. It makes me want to reach. The world is exploding exponentially and I am in it!

Telling tales

2006-05-03T08:57:00.000-07:00

In delving into disclosure and storytelling territory, I find that reaching out to others is a good thing, and almost never yields what I would expect. But I know that the more I do and the more I put my own ideas out there, the better. I have to believe that, anyway, or what would be the point? I need to do something, and it can be something that has meaning to me and I hope touches others. And the theme keeps circling back to music: the inspiration that provides the texture and drama for the things I want to do, that makes it okay to continue yearning for more experiences and reading between the lines for more meanings.

*

Here are today's ideas, brewed up on Wonderland Lake trail this morning (until I saw a mountain lion print and turned myself right around and went back down the trail -- my daughter is right to be afraid of those big cats):

1. I got to wondering, what does the waste stream at a place like Outlast or any of the cutting edge fabric manufacturers look like? The ones who make the amazing fabric the skiers wear to protect themselves from impact at high speeds and breathe just the right amount for any conditions. Are there pieces big enough to use for making clothing for police and emts in North Dakota? Because it's nice that rich people can afford this stuff, and super-athletes, but what about the rest of us? Is there a way to divert some of the waste stream where it could really do some good? Making protective clothing for someone I haven't thought of yet.

2. I keep thinking about that film where someone has impressions of what the other person is thinking (or has experienced) and how to represent that. c/b Mickey's series of stills. Time to go back and watch Wings of Desire, find how the person's consciousness rises to the top of the angel's awareness through sound and image.

ttfn.

Why filmmaking?

2006-04-26T12:12:00.000-07:00

I come to this from loving film and music from way back, and just recently deciding I want to put them together. I also was writing stories about rock bands but there is this artificial divide where the only subject was them, the bands, and I kept feeling that there were stories on both sides that weren't getting traded because of this sort of hierarchical treatment of reporter and subject.

So when I read about that beastie boys movie where they handed people cameras and patched all their shots together to make a film I thought that was a great idea. Only I'd want to do it not just while the band was playing but before the show -- follow a bunch of women who are going together, or a guy who wanders in off the street or people from this board. Because I think there's something about reversing the flow a little to balance things out between band and audience, something that brings something from the people who are most moved by the band's music back to the band.

And it could turn out silly or weird or annoying if people just get all skittish on camera -- or people might get used to the cameras sometimes and say interesting things. As far as I can see, Gomez and their fans are my tribe, often the kind of people who share some random love of music and expression and shared experience, and I have a love for the idea of showing how positive some of that influence and energy is in people's lives. Like my own, for example. I feel some days like I'm living a dream. Makes me want to spread that around. And Gomez seem to keep making the best possible soundtrack for all this, don't they?

So what's on your mind?

Gomez Listening Party invitation

2006-04-25T11:35:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Tallest Giraffe Productions, your source of information about upcoming film events and filmmaking projects.

We at TGP hope you'll join us for our first event:

The first-ever Boulder Gomez listening party, to celebrate in advance of the release of their new album How We Operate on ATO Records.

Cheers,
vanillagrrl