It’s a rare film that sends me straight to the keyboard to sing its praises and search for its flaws, but that’s what La Promesse has done. I finished watching it for the first time not more than thirty minutes ago, and the movie impressed me more and more with each passing second. It’s no […]



The internet is not the truth, but sometimes it exhibits a common grace. A sampling of websites and forums, for example, will teach a writer the proper form of address for a female superior officer. (If you don’t know, it’s ma’am.) If instead you relied on television writers, you would think sir was proper. I […]


I have worked as a journalist and a documentarian, and I can attest the worst thing either can do is to approach a story with an agendum*. I can also attest that this is exactly what the majority of journalists and documentarians do. Agenda have worked well for Barbara Kopple and Michael Moore, but journalists […]


“Comparison is the thief of joy” – attributed to Theodore Roosevelt I’m writing a book. It started as a screenplay, but on draft three, I realized it bore a fundamental flaw that wrecked the entire story. So I started writing in prose form the thoughts and observations of the various characters in order to get […]


For the first five films, click here. The Son and The Child (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne) The Belgian Daredenne brothers, who made Kid with a Bike, also crafted these two movies with similar titles. The Son (Le Fils) is about a man (Olivier Gourmet in a masterful performance) who ends up tutoring the youth who murdered his young child years ago. Who […]


I have written that many elements of The Judgment of Parrish derive from my own experience as a dad. I love my two sons, and I populated the character of Parrish with some of their quirks, sensitivities, and challenges. I also found it easy to “method-write” the father character of Paul, with all his impatience, self-importance, and, eventually, […]


I’m sitting in the Grandin CoLab working on a rewrite of Judgment of Parrish, guided by some editor notes and my own scribblings. This is the stage where writing becomes real work and, honestly, not as much fun. That’s why I’m breaking to write this entry. Plus it’s almost lunch time. When I’m done with this […]


This is a film site, not a politics site. I have no intention of making it such. Nevertheless, I did not know where else to post this. I found myself gripped by anger while listening to news of the Paris attacks — more even than on 9/11, when shock and numbness ruled. But now, I […]


I returned from vacation to find my hard drive has crashed. After a quick spin through the Kübler-Ross roundabout, I realized this wasn’t such a bad thing. In fact, I was surprised how quickly I moved from denial to acceptance, despite losing several years worth of notes and drafts. (Finished drafts reside comfortably on a cloud […]


I want very much to succeed in the world with what I want to do… I am so discouraged about my work… Mediocrity is a hard word to apply to oneself; yet I see myself so equal with it that it is impossible not to throw it at myself . . . I have nothing […]
