cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Exactly where I'm at. Again. This film that I am producing looks like an actual movie now. I have a long list of things that need to be fixed, and minutes 5 through 25 are boring as fuck and full of talking heads, but the bulk of this feature-length documentary film is fucking great ad we have ways of correcting all of these things. The cut that we show at the film festival in 3 weeks or less is going to be pretty fucking good. Without really knowing what the fuck I am doing, and having no formal qualifications for any of it, I have authored two books, dozens of features for The W@shington Post and the New Y0rk Times, probably hundreds of articles for Sm1th0nian Magazine, guested on a lot of TV shows, produced a few TV series that are still stuck in development hell, hosted or guested on around a hundred radio shows, had a feature documentary film made about me, and now I've made a feature film. Oh, I'm still poor as fuck. I still don't have a reasonable place to live or a reliable car. But I've been just about all over the media map. I've been briefly famous five fucking million times over. Now a movie. You know what I definitely should not expect? For that movie to go anywhere. Because 99% of all documentary films that show up in festivals go nowhere. There's this little bit of hope because we've got a documentary about August 12th in my hometown of Ch@rlottesville ready to go way the fuck sooner than anyone else will have anything. And there is that bit of chance that Netflix or Hulu will pick it up because people want to watch something about that while it is still on their minds. I've never had a day to stop and think about what happened to me that day, and what happened to the people I saw and knew. Every day, GO GO GO. More work, more reporting, more writing. I watch parts of my own movie and I feel like I got kicked in the throat and I have to act like everything is ok. I have this whole thing going right now that probably cannot last. An intelligence network, with weekly meetings in a goth rock night club with Ant1fa sources and exchanges of information, and a law enforcement source who has his own agenda, and lawyers and other journalists and politicians and also I happen to be in the midst of a secret legal battle to take out the Governor of Virginia, who also happens to think that he might be the next President of the United States. This can't last but so long, because Ch@rlottesville will cease to be news after some point. Meanwhile, I'm actually making a better living for the last few months than I ever have in years. A very attractive, red-headed polyamorous woman approached me a few weeks ago. Kerri. This is not what I am looking for at all. I want a wife. But after a year of being single and really fucking responsible and hardly having flings at all, I can't take it any more. So I've let her in. We seem to be dating, though we haven't had sex yet. That will happen tomorrow night unless something goes horribly wrong. She is married. I don't need that shit. But again, painfully single for a long time. I'm her weird vacation. I'm the crazy film producer and journalist who runs from breaking news to watching a rough cut to Andr3w Zimmern asking for my reel to taking her out for drinks with musicians and artists. I'm fun for a few months before her sense of self and ordinary life get drowned out by news and publicity and constant work. It is a bad idea for me to date a regular person. Let alone one who has that comfortable world of a country club and the late-model Audi her husband pays for, just waiting for her to come back to when my shit gets too weird. Oh, there's that whole other thing. Last week Andr3w Zimmern's production company asked for the sizzle made for a show with me last year. Back to that whole world of my being a god of the hunt, with my credentials as a serious science journalist added to the mix. It feels so important. But I've been through this shit again and again. 95% chance that it goes nowhere. Kerri doesn't know that. I've told her, but she hasn't been through it. To her, it's like I'm about to have a TV show and be famous. To me, this is just the millionth time going around in circles for nothing. If it all has a useful end-game to me, it would be just to contact Helenah. I don't want to try again until I'm an un-questioned success, with enough money and agency to exist as I please and to go where I please. But I don't expect this to end with that. I expect the detante with Zimmern's production company to piss away at least 6 months and then to go nowhere. I have no idea what I am going to do with my life after the V1rginia Film Festival when my movie launches. My co-producer wants to take it to other festivals, which would mean fucking around for a year and I don't know how I pay the bills during that time. I'd just as soon go straight to shopping the film to universities all around the US, with a talk-back afterwards, and I could make a decent living on that for a few years. But that would wait a foolishly long time to start if we're doing the film festival thing. I tell myself I'll look for a normal job. But what would that be, here? I can't get a normal job here. Not with my resume, instantly-google-able and weird, complete with movies and articles and videos running down pigeons on camera for Prevention M@gazine. What's life going to look like a month from now? I have no idea. I had to give up my gig at Smiths0nian M@gazine in order to make this film. I have no obvious freelance to retreat into. Except for this thing with Natalie. There are a number of legal cases resulting from the 12th that could use this enormous vault of video that we put together while working on the film. We will have some amount of work acting as experts and zeroing in on footage from that for them. But I don't think that this is going to be a ton of money or work. Not the kind of stuff that you establish $5k retainers for. This is a weird fucking job that I have. And I'd like it to stop. I would like a normal, salaried job doing something of value to some established organization. Meanwhile, I have this shit. And I don't even know who I am anymore. 1:00 a.m. - 2017-10-21 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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