In 2008, I made a little movie called Election Day. It’s about a political campaign in which a murder is revealed. I didn’t think it was very good. I watched it again, and it’s not bad. The acting and photography are professional caliber. My direction isn’t half-bad. The “mystery” is the weakest part—the little “blank […]
Well, I lied. I did indeed let a year go by without a post, but it wasn’t 2020. I published chapters of a serial novel that year, plus posted a short story I’d written back in 2001. I have since removed those posts because I am working on expanded, improved versions of both those stories. […]
Behold, squires! The mighty music of John Winn, finally digitized for the 21st century! For musings on Beyond Expectations, see my last post. Theme from Beyond Expectations Time for Cake Gina and Rennie Gina and Rennie (Wedding Mix) Just Walk Away Penny and P.J. Chapter 1: The Way Things Are Penny and P.J. Chapter 2: Penny […]
Listen to “Finding Someone Else” Two decades ago, I made a feature film called Beyond Expectations (you can see a production still in my main page slider). It played at a few festivals and was a decent hit with 20-somethings. But it was a rough piece of work. Shot on 16mm film, I look at […]
The best characters are little people with outsized ideas of where they should be. East Side Sushi, a small, low-budget indie, is populated with them. But the scale and proportionality is important – these are not people who aim to be astronauts, CEOs or leaders of the free world. A job with health benefits will […]
Sunday marked the death of Idrissa Ouédraogo, Burkina Faso’s most renowned filmmaker. If you haven’t heard of him, that’s okay. Most people haven’t heard of Burkina Faso. I wouldn’t know Ouédraogo’s work either if not for a free film series I attended faithfully when I lived in Richmond. Even though my degree is in film […]
I sent this to my (occasional) writing partner in California, as we often parrot these cliches in jest: 35 Most Overused Lines of Dialogue in Screenplays Just because.
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 […]