So the other day, I did something I rarely do. I went to Hulu and watched a show that my good friend Troy Romeo recommended called The Booth at the End, a web series about a guy who sits in a diner and helps people get what they want. I watched the first episode and I was hooked. That night, I watched the remaining four episodes, and for the first time in a long time, I can’t wait for season two of something. This same sort of thing happened once before when I finally made time to watch another web series, The Mercury Men, a short sci-fi series that was eventually picked up by SyFy, about men from the planet Mercury trying to destroy the Earth in the 1950s and shot in a campy, Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon style (only with much better special effects, I must say.)

Sci-fi fans, past and present, will get a kick out of The Mercury Men.

Now those who know me well know that I do not watch TV. This is partially because I don’t subscribe to Cable or DirecTV, but also because I haven’t found anything on TV or the web that can keep me engaged past than the first episode. I tried a few recent shows like HBO’s True Blood during my research for my feature-length vampire script A Beautiful Unlife and the first episode of Californication at the request of an acquaintance; both of these programs had absolutely nothing to keep me wanting to watch.

Then I thought back to when I was a happy, healthy little boy going to grammar and eventually high school, coming home and doing my homework with much interest in every subject, then spending the remainder of my day with my head tucked into A Tale of Two Cities and Madame Bovary. Then right before bed I would read an act of Coriolanus or whatever work of Shakespeare I could take out from the local library (for fun, of course).

Wait––! That’s not how it was. Not. At. All.

I was a happy, healthy kid, that much is true. But everyday I would rush home from school and finish my homework with Flash-swiftness I could so I could adjust the rabbit ears and tune my eyes to Channel 11 for two action-quacked hours of DuckTales, Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers, TaleSpin, and Darkwing Duck. The tops of my mornings through the late 1980s up until 1992 started off with some Looney Tunes, The Jetsons, and the first ten minutes of Conan the Adventurer before I’d journey up the hill toward Weehawken High.

Classic. 'Nuff said.

It’s strange even for me to think that I don’t watch any TV today when, looking back, I watched a lot of TV throughout my entire life. With a television set in every room of our apartment (except the bathroom, of course), I suppose it was easy. I started out much the same as kids today, only instead of Barney and Friends I was taught my A-B-Cs by Cookie Monster and my 1-2-3s by The Count. And even now I can easily recall some of the many cartoons that lit up my living room most –– The Flintstones, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Transformers and G.I. Joe; I watched this last show not for the “Real American Heroes,” sadly (Duke and the gang were kind of boring), but for the villains: Cobra Commander and Destro hidden behind their masks, Zartan and his sun-blued flesh, and those strange twins Tomax and Xamot (and let’s not forget about Serpentor!)

Totally bad-ass, 1980s-style!

Saturday morning cartoons have always held an extra special place inside. On certain Saturdays, when my Dad would drop me off at my Yiya’s apartment (yiya is “grandmother” in Greek) whenever he’d have to work the early shift at the diner, I would spend those mornings happily sipping a Nestle Quik chocolate milk from a bendy straw and watching Superfriends, Dungeons and Dragons, Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies and Captain N: The Game Master, plus the occasional episode of The Smurfs, Fraggle Rock, and yes, Pee-wee’s Playhouse.

Eventually, I moved onto live-action TV programming. Early on, my shows of choice were game shows (well, not my choice, as my Dad was master of the remote, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy them.) Mornings in summertime meant watching classics like The Price is Right (Bob Barker is the only host of this show, by the way), Family Feud with Ray Combs and The Newlywed Game with Bob Eubanks, back in the days when we kids didn’t know what “making whoopee” meant. At dinnertime, my Dad and I found ourselves so immersed in the fist-to-jaw escapades of action shows like Knight Rider, The A-Team and Baywatch, that once the smoke cleared from the explosion right before a commercial break, the smoke rising from our dinner plates had cleared as well.

The original KITT, which inspired so many of my sci-fi tendencies today.

Around the same time I discovered sitcoms, as well. The ones I enjoyed most were Family Ties, Growing Pains, and Small Wonder, but later on I would start staying up extra late in my Dad’s bedroom (he had a better TV in his room than I had in mine) and watch reruns of 1970s classics like All in the Family and Taxi. On many occasions, my Dad and I would sit in the kitchen chuckling away at The Cosby Show, Cheers, Perfect Strangers, Who’s the Boss? and especially Three’s Company. Later on, I would take a peculiar liking to The Wonder Years, Doogie Howser, M.D. and other situational dramedies. But perhaps the only two shows I remember ever making me laugh out loud with every episode were Married with Children and Seinfeld.

When my sister lived in Union City, only a few blocks away from my apartment, I’d visit more frequently and she’d cook us up some chicken cutlets and we’d  watch Law & Order (or CSI –– I can’t tell the difference to this day between any of those crime dramas; even then, I didn’t care for them, but it was about quality time; that, and the chicken cutlet). On weekends, I went through a brief stint in which I sat up with my sister-in-law Patti watching classic programming that originally aired in the late 1950s through the early 1980s on Nick At Nite. Shows like Leave it to Beaver, Bewitched, I Love Lucy, The Munsters and Gilligan’s Island, and even a few episodes of Mork & Mindy and Laverne & Shirley, bounced splashes of grey and eventually Technicolor all along the living room walls until I couldn’t laugh anymore and fell asleep.

And after ten or twelve years watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles battle Shredder and Krang while Jason Priestley and Shannen Doherty tried to fit themselves into Beverly Hills, 90210, plus late nights on the edge of my seat as Dr. Sam Beckett tried desperately to find his way home in Quantum Leap, I got hooked on what would become the very last TV serial ever to leave an indelible mark (or two) on me –– Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Vampires and Sarah Michelle Gellar? 1997 - 2003 were good years.

As you can probably see from the thirty-something titles listed, I’ve spent an enormous amount of my own wonder years situated in front of the tube transmitting images, stories, humor, adventure and even personality into my very being.

Today, there are no shows I feel an all-encompassing kinship with, none that might inspire me with the sudden urge to speed home, sit in front of a flat screen and get my fix. No stories being told in today’s digital TV universe have moved me to that sort of zealous devotion to any one title or writer or story arc. The only show I do “follow” with some interest is The Walking Dead, but even that’s not enough to make me pull together a “boy’s night in” with Doritos and red wine to watch each episode as it happens; I’ll catch up with season two when it’s on Netflix. And while I have a subtle curiosity about HBO’s Bored to Death, mainly because of Jason Schwartzman, it’s remained in the same position on my queue for months. I have no care to play catch-up on Lost, Breaking Bad, Rescue Me, Mad Men, It’s Always Sunny in Philidelphia or any of the other shows that win Emmy Awards for writing or “Best Original Series.” The truth is, TV writing is not what it was when I grew up with television, and no story is original (quirky, yes, but not original.) As a matter of fact, the only shows I will watch whenever I can catch them are food reality TV shows (of all things!) like Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and especially Man v. Food.

By far the most fun I've had in front of a flat screen to date!

I’ve watched enough television to help me shape, mold and constantly recreate the person I am today: My fascination with vampires comes not only from Hammer Films and Joss Whedon’s Buffy franchise, but from late nights spent with Dracula: The Series and Forever Knight; my penchant for sci-fi stems from following Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century and catching a few Twilight Zone marathons on New Year’s Eves past; my predilection for duality and parallelism comes from watching Beauty and the Beast and random episodes of Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

So instead of spending any more of my time sitting on a couch or kitchen chair with a remote control in hand surfing for something to sustain my attention, I’d rather spend that same amount of time and energy creating something that will make others give me the benefit of their attention for a change. This is not a trashing of contemporary TV programming, nor is it a song of praise for the shows of all my seasons past; it’s a prelude of things to come, a glimpse into what all those years spent watching TV can create in us, if we choose to let it, that is.

In the epic battle between Man and Tube, this one goes to Tube…and to Man.

*          *          *

What are some classic (or contemporary) TV shows that have made a long-lasting impression on who YOU are?

So needless to say it’s a bit difficult to pull together a “Top Ten” list when you’ve only seen eight movies in total through the course of a whole year. And even though I spent an entire week in Cannes during the Festival du Cannes with my short film Cerise, I didn’t even get to see one film while I was there. Not one!

But out of what I did see in theaters during 2011, here’s how they rank up:

8: Green Lantern –– Okay, it was “Boys Day Out” and my buddy Dave and I saw this in 3-D and afterwards compared the movie to all the Green Lantern comics we’d ever read, and concluded that this isn’t really the best interpretation of GL.

7. Captain America: The First Avenger –– It’s been a heavy year for comic-related movies and me, and although I’m not much a fan of Marvel Comics or even Captain America and the Avengers for that matter, I found this movie to be entertaining at best, and quite ridiculous at worst.

6. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo –– This was the last movie I saw in 2011, and while it was very well-done with great performances by both Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, it’s really nothing more than a straight remake of the superior Swedish version (and not the best testament to any skill David Fincher may have as a director).

5. The Greatest Movie Ever Sold –– The only doc I saw this year, and a humorous and informative one at that! I definitely recommend this one.

4. X-Men: First Class –– Entertainment at its best. I thoroughly enjoyed this installment of the X-Franchise, with wonderful performances by both James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender as the conflicting “brothers” Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr (Magneto).

3. Source Code –– A semi-brainy film for sure (Oh, how I love anything dealing with parallel worlds and other Michio Kaku-like stuff!) in the guise of an action drama. A fun ride which offered up a few minutes of heady conversation at the diner afterwards.

2. Rise of the Planet of the Apes –– By far the most entertaining action film I’ve seen in a long time, and although the CGIed apes could be a bit distracting (mainly at the beginning), my enjoyment wasn’t all that hindered. This experience was enhanced by the fact that I saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes in an AMC Dine-In Theater in Menlo Park, NJ (there’s something to be said about watching a movie like this over a juicy burger, crisp fries, and a Blue Moon fast at your side!)

1. Midnight in Paris –– An absolutely beautiful film and (in my opinion) Woody Allen’s best work to date (but that could also be because it caters to every fiber in my being as a writer and aficionado of classic literature!) This experience, of course, was made even more special because I saw it with my Lady Marinell in Paris (around the midnight hour, too) with French subtitles. Viva la Paris!

As an added bonus, here’s a proper Top Ten List of Films I Wanted to See (But Didn’t) in 2011:

1. L’Artiste
2. The Flowers of War
3. Anonymous
4. Melancholia
5. Another Earth
6. The Skin I Live In
7. The Adjustment Bureau
8. Coriolanus
9. Sleeping Beauty
10. Win Win

Most of these are on my Netflix, and once I’m done with my brief James Bond phase, I’ll start catching up on these 2011 films.

That’s all for now, folks. It’s been a superb year for blog writing, poetry writing, classic movies, and book writing for me, and I’m hoping 2012 continues this tradition tenfold.

Happy New Year everyone, and thanks for reading!

That little boy isn't me, but it may as well have been; I loved that play set!

I grew up (somewhat) and learned the value of a dollar and the importance of a dream during weekends selling French fries and stirring egg cream sodas at flea markets, street fairs and carnivals. I finished high school with long hair and a four-year scholarship to NJCU, finished college in five years as a B student with a batch of poems under my arm ready for grad school, and I completed my term at Brooklyn College in two years still sporting a B average but with a better batch of poems bound in customary Master’s Thesis fashion.

Then I grew up some more (sort of), going on to be a Renaissance man of sorts –– published poet, DIY filmmaker, one-time guitarist, part-time blogger, rabid social networker and freelance professor drifting between various universities across New Jersey. Overall, I consider myself pretty fortunate to be living this particular life without anyone telling me otherwise; whenever I wanted to be different, and ultimately when I needed to be myself, I’ve always had a solid limb on the tree of my being out on which I could perch and sing freely, and this limb is my family, which has supported me in everything I’ve done, from tracing comic book covers for some extra pre-teen spending cash to going away to London for a summer to study Shakespearean theater and acting at the Globe to making films today.

But sometimes there are other branches helping to hold you up that you may not have noticed, or perhaps you may never have been aware of.

This year marks the fifth anniversary of my Dad’s death as well as the first anniversary of my discovery of new family members on my Dad’s side. Actually, it’s more accurate to say these hitherto unknown branches of my family tree reached out and discovered me.

Thanksgiving, 2010, with Marinell Montales, Andrea Bertos Quintaglie, me, and Danny Androutsos.

I never knew much about my Dad’s side of the family because whenever he would tell me stories about his past, I would be more interested in drawing Ninja Turtles or making up intricate stories starring my Super Powers action figures; I was too young to appreciate them. Instead, I recollect only brief bits: My grandfather John owning a coffee shop in Athens and drawing when business was slow and my Dad crying as a boy whenever school was closed are little more than vestiges now. The story I remember most tells of how my Dad was marooned in New Orleans because of a stomach virus, and his fellow Merchant Marines had to sail back out to sea and couldn’t wait for him to recover. The reason I remember this one is because I wrote up a story about my Dad for my feature writing class when I was a journalism major at NJCU. That tape-recorded interview I did with him captured the last remnants of his voice before the cancer left behind only a whisper.

The only other thing I remembered was that my Dad had a cousin who lived in Florida named Chris Bertos. That’s how I met Andrea Bertos Quintaglie. She reached out to me through a Facebook message with the subject heading “looking for” and a message that read:

Hi John…I’m looking for a John Trigonis who would be my second cousin on my dad’s side (Chris Bertos) This John’s dad’s name was Teddy and has since passed away. I was just thinking of this person & wanted to make the connection…so if you are the right John (because 3 John Trigonis came up) and you would like to connect with your dad’s family respond…Thanx, Andrea

After I let Andrea know that I was in fact the right John Trigonis, we exchanged a bunch of Facebook messages, and I learned so much about a part of my family tree I hadn’t even known existed. Apparently, I not only now had newfound family members here in the U.S., but there’s a whole flock of second and third cousins living in New Zealand, many of whom knew my Dad. And through Andrea, I was able to make the acquaintance of Nina Bertos Androutsos, Nina Bertos Papadopoulos, and many more of our Kiwi cousins whom she had connected with through Facebook and some serious Sherlock Holmes detective work.

Last year, Andrea held a truly splendid and emotional Thanksgiving celebration, and I finally got to meet her, as well as many other cousins of mine, many of whom proceeded to spin some interesting stories about my Dad; many of them recalled instances when he would come to family gatherings, dance, drink and be merry; others reminisced a tale or two that’d been passed down through the years about how the two dads would get into all sorts of trouble when they were younger.

My Dad, a troublemaker?! Well, blow me down!

At this festive gathering of newfound family, I also had the pleasure of meeting a cousin of mine from New Zealand, Danny Androutsos, whom I found to be a kindred spirit; he’s a musician who happened to be on a world tour –– something Kiwi men do as a rite of passage. It felt as though all the years removed between the two of us were stitched up in the few hours we spent together that Thanksgiving, as well as the couple of nights we spent running around New York City with wine, tasty food, and plenty of catch-up conversation.

What’s more, Andrea and the family attended the Big Apple Preview of Cerise back in December, 2010, which made the event even more special for me because not only was I showcasing my latest short film to my friends, supporters, funders and family, but I was also able to introduce my brother, sister and family to Andrea, Danny, and my other cousins, and it was a heartwarming spectacle to see them all interacting throughout the evening.

My cousin Danny rockin' out at Bar Medusa in Wellington, New Zealand.

I grew up with a large family from my mother’s side; my brother Walter and sister Renee, as well as my brother’s family –– my family –– not only make up the bulk of the branches of my family tree, but they have also been the trunk, never moving, always there, for good moments like graduating college or not-so-good; when my Dad died on December 14th, 2006, my brother and sister were there for me at three in the morning to let me know that it’ll be alright. Perhaps I’d always taken the idea of family for granted, and now, having had some new dots connected on a part of my Dad’s bloodline I’d known little to nothing about has added more balance to my identity as a Trigonis.

I’ve always been proud of my Greek ancestry even though I still know very little about where I come from; I’m especially fond of my surname; Trigonis (Tρυγώνια) means “bird” or more accurately, “turtledove,” and, interestingly enough, is most famous for its use in the old Greek proverb “Μ’ένα σμπάρο, δυο τρυγώνια,” or “One shot, two birds.” I started thinking about identity and ancestry a while back when a man named Vasilis Trigonis reached out to me on Facebook asking if he and I might be related. What’s more interesting is that he’s from Thessaloniki, Greece, and according to him, in the nearby city of Veria there’s a high concentration of people with our same surname. But I’ll leave this story for another time.

Interesting fact: The mythological Phoenix is the natural life partner of the τρυγώνια...

But perhaps Vasilis was right when he wrote that he’s “quite sure that soon or later we’ll discover the story of our ancestors.” And in my case, along came Andrea, and because of her, I’m a few layers deeper to discovering my roots. It never really mattered so much to me when I was a kid, or even when I emerged from grad school with my MFA in poetry. But now, to know that for all these years I’ve been supported by the family I’ve known and loved all my life and a family that has only recently been unearthed but has been there all along gives me a strangely mystical feeling, one that makes me proud of the little I’ve accomplished in this short span of life, and unravels a reason as to why I’ve been able to safely land on any limb I choose without having my song’s get muffled or lost in the leaves. The stronger the limb, the stronger the support for this turtledove to sing from any height.

And if there’s a Facebook in the Great Hereafter, I only hope my Dad might look down past the cosmos this Christmas, 2011, to give this, my latest status update, a “Like.”

My Dad and me, circa 1982, maybe. I've since traded in my pistol for a pen; I'm sure I've made him proud.

Checking off chapters and counting pages on my table of contents.

So what have I learned so far traversing this uncharted terrain of my personal writer’s journey? First and foremost, writing is hard! It’s funny because that’s usually the first thing I tell my writing students at each of the universities where I teach, but I never fully understood how true a statement it is. As a poet for most of my writing life, I’d become very used to waiting for inspiration to strike, for my faithful muse’s hand to brush the back of my neck, the way Doris Dowling’s does to Ray Milland’s in The Lost Weekend, and leave behind a fresh idea in the airy form of a mysterious scent that lingers long after her touch.

But once you get to writing an actual book, whether it’s nonfiction like mine or the great American novel or even a feature-length screenplay, you really can’t sit up waiting for inspiration to come strolling in any ol’ time she likes; you have to inspire yourself, and that’s been the single most challenging part for me while writing The Tao of Crowdfunding for Filmmakers so far. Writing about a topic like this, and in such a short span of time as six short months, I’ve been relying heavily on myself, not my muse, to conjure up the magic words necessary to concoct an informative, entertaining and inspiring bit of literary thaumaturgy.

And I have been fortunate so far. I’m working my way through these white unlined trenches because I’m writing about my own crowdfunding success with Cerise on IndieGoGo, as well as detailing the success stories of many other campaigns as examples to further illustrate my points. Plus, I’m incorporating a bit of the Tao Te Ching into each chunk I churn out, and this reinvigorates me whenever I fall into a spell of writing very straightforward, factual information, since it’s a philosophy I subscribe to in every aspect of my life. After all, when you write what you know, you’re able to flow.

Doris Dowling, muse to Ray Milland's tormented writer in The Lost Weekend.

Then, something wonderful happens. Once I work myself into that “Zone,” at about an hour or so into the key tap and space bar hustle, my muse will occasionally sneak over to my writing desk and massage my creased temples, help me find a way to elevate a rather insipid concept of crowdfunding up into the ranks of the almost poetic. The other day, for instance, I waxed metaphoric my concept of eliciting versus soliciting funds which I first brought up in my second Tao of Crowdfunding post “A Practical Guide to Crowdfunder Etiquette” by comparing it to a steak dinner:

Here’s the difference in a more practical setting: You see your friend going to town on a piece of steak, cooked just the way you like it. It’s dripping with juices and smells unbearably delicious. So you ask him, “Can I have a piece of your steak?” to which your friend now has the option to say yay or nay. They have the power over you. Now, if you look at that steak and salivate over it –– well, that won’t work either ‘cause that’s just sad. But if you look up from that magnificent bit of medium well goodness and say to your friend something along the lines of “Man, that steak looks and smells delicious!” as a statement, you will elicit a reaction from your friend, which will most likely be “It is… (wait for it) “…Do you want to try a piece?” Now you’ve got the power and soon after, a tasty piece of steak.

I was in “The Zone” and then this chunk of elaboration flowed seamlessly out of my fingertips. It was inspiration’s finger sliding across the back of my neck; all I had to do was keep up with the flow of words flooding into my mind and write.

It took me a full three weeks to build up the discipline and get into the swing of what it means to be an actual working writer (and receiving my first check in the mail from MWP made that realization all the more solid, of course). To be perfectly honest, being a writer is something I didn’t really think I could do. I realized that I had too many misconceptions about it, all of them fabrications with no real footing in the real world. For years I believed that if I wrote something that wasn’t necessarily as creative as my poetry or as high concept as my screenplays, I simply wouldn’t enjoy it, and in turn, it would become the worst thing writing could ever become to me: A job.

Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do symbol, reflecting the everlasting flow of yin and yang.

My over thinking this for all these years has worked against what the universe had written down in the penmanship of the stars as in my best interest, and I know as well as anyone that when you work with the universe, all is right. Taoist sage Lao Tzu calls this wei wu wei, or “doing without doing.” By not over thinking something, everything gets done. In that way, The Tao of Crowdfunding for Filmmakers is meant to be written, and I’m the one who’s meant to write it.

I’m going with the flow now, like a stream flowing in one direction: forward. When a stone stands in my way, I simply stream around it and discover new ways to say something on my own because when you’re a working writer, you can’t wait for your muse to saunter in at whatever hour of the day or night she pleases (deadlines be damned!) to inspire every sentence you write. You must rely on your own flow, and trust that your own words will be the right words.

But, of course, it doesn’t hurt to leave the porch light on, too.

Based on my blog series of the same title, this book will be centered around practical tips that DIY filmmakers can use to lead them to the same success I had when I crowdfunded $6,300 on IndieGoGo for the award-winning short film Cerise in 2009.

Shortly after, I wrote “Read Me Up Before You (Indie)GoGo,” in which I offered some advice on what I’d learned during my three month crowdfunding campaign. Then I decided to write a few more posts, and when my first Tao of Crowdfunding blog post “The Three Ps for a Successful Film Campaign” came out, it was very well received by the indie film community, so much that IndieWIRE printed a short write-up about the post, which emphasizes personalization in one’s pitch, perks, and promotion as the key to crowdfunding success, and sites examples from projects of indie film friends who’ve raised substantial amounts of money either on IndieGoGo or Kickstarter. There’ve been two other blog posts so far, “A Practical Guide to Crowdfunder Etiquette” and “Twitter Tips for Crowdfunders,” the latter of which appeared on indie film icon Ted Hope’s IndieWIRE blog Hope for Film.

Since then, I’ve lent a hand to over a dozen IndieGoGo and Kickstarter campaigns, but I thought it was time to up the ante a bit and put all my insights into an affordable book that’d fit nicely on ever filmmakers shelf, right between other MWP books like Psychology for Screenwriters and Film Directing: Shot By Shot. So I wrote up a proposal and sent it away, and after a few email exchanges, a inspiring phone conversation with MWP Vice President Ken Lee and a revision of my table of contents to reflect that of a 200-page book––well, here we are.

And what’s really awesome is that amongst all the other books about crowdfunding that are currently in circulation, The Tao of Crowdfunding for Filmmakers would be the first one dedicated to crowdfunding for something other than start up businesses, and it would be written by a filmmaker for other filmmakers.

My book will follow the same conventions as my blog posts––it will serve up practical advice backed up by screen grabs and Taoist wisdom. It will also feature a “Trignosis” of several successful projects and why they were successful (so many of my closest crowdfunding friends on Twitter and Facebook will be hearing from me soon about that––hint, hint Phil Holbrook, Gary King, and Brendon Fogle, to name a few…)

I’ve given myself six months to research, write, rewrite and deliver my complete manuscript to Michael Wiese Productions, one of the two most well-known filmmaking book publishers out there. It’s definitely a bit of a challenge, especially with my current teaching schedule and Mating Dome editing, but crowdfunding is a hot topic that evolves extremely fast, which means I’ve got to move twice as fast.

So while it looks like I’ll be taking a brief hiatus from my own filmmaking endeavors to write The Tao of Crowdfunding for Filmmakers, which is scheduled for either a 2012 or 2013 launch, I’ll be applying my writing talent and crowdfunding insights and experiences to my first major publishing credit, one that will be certain to help many indie filmmakers like me successfully finance the road to their dreams, one dollar at a time.

This past weekend I had the honor of sharing the set with an exceptionally gifted cast and a host of crackerjack crew members who brought to life my good friend, actor and Mating Dome writer Joe Whelski’s darkly comedic vision of a future where dating has been reduced to moment-to-moment trysts in an endless labyrinth of lust.

The shoot itself went exceptionally well, and as always, I walked away from the experience with a few bits of insight for directors and auteurs alike:

Trust in Your Crew
Mating Dome marks the first film I’ve ever shot in which an actual set had to be built. We transformed a large photo studio at Neo Studios in SoHo into a truly fantastical set. One of those sets was a lounge of sorts with a lit up bar, which we eventually used in other scenes in the film. I am by no means a handyman––I’m more like Tim Allen in Home Improvement––so I had to trust in our set designer Lucia Snyder and our crew to create this futuristic bar, as well as in our costume designer Sophie Philips to make the fashion-forward “towels” which our actors would be wearing throughout the film. I had given them both a basic idea of what I wanted and allowed them to run with it. I was not disappointed.

This futuristic, lit-up bar makes an appearance three times in Mating Dome.

The Script Will Always Change
As with every other film I’ve ever shot, Joe’s script for Mating Dome went through a bit of a “reconfiguration” of its own as the words and actions on the page turned into shots and sequences. Even some of the ideas that I’d implemented into the script as director didn’t make it into many of the shots in the film for various reasons. But I’ve learned that this is fine, because other concepts and visionary elements will work their way into each shot and compensate for any “losses,” and as a director, you simply have to roll with it. I did.

Keep (Some) Control Over the Creative Spirit of Collaboration
I’ve always said I’m not one to collaborate on the page, but on set, I rely heavily on collaboration to help generate a more dynamic look to my original vision. It worked with Cerise, my most recent short film. But as I learned on the set of Mating Dome, as director, you still have to maintain a certain level of control over however much creative freedom you allow your main crew members. If something that your set designer suggests doesn’t work as part of the vision in your mind, don’t do it. If you’re not sure whether it’ll work or not, try it. (Ah! The beauty of shooting in HD.) The bottom line is that a director should be open to suggestions, but hold a firm enough grasp on your vision so the compromise (and there’ll always be compromise) is not a drastic one.

Find Solutions, Not Further Problems
Admittedly, I’m not very good at finding solutions quickly. I know when a problem can be resolved, but very often I don’t know how to resolve them. My best friend, long-time collaborator and Mating Dome’s cinematographer Alain Aguilar is much better at it than I, and Mating Dome’s producer Ruben Rodas, I can say with utmost certainty, is a “Master Solutionist” (okay, so “solutionist” is not a word, but it should be!) A few times on set we came upon some stumbling blocks––or rather I came upon them––and as soon as I’d open my mouth about the problem, there was Ruben with a solution. So this is something that, as a director, I will either work on improving or simply rely even more on people like Ruben and Alain to solve them for me (I’ll try the former, but if I fall off that tightrope, I’ve always got the latter net to land on!)

Believe in “Happy Accidents” and All Will Be Well
Joe introduced me to this concept on the first day of shooting when he took me aside and said he had to make an “executive decision” (he is also Mating Dome’s Executive Producer) which scared the heck out of me. It seemed the towel that was made for him wasn’t fitting very well, and he had no other choice but to don an actual bath towel around his waist. I was a bit upset, truth be told, but it made sense, as Joe (the character) is the “average Joe” in a world populated with men and women who’ve radically “reconfigured” their bodies; it would only be right that Joe isn’t given a futuristic “real man’s towel” but rather a “little boy’s towel” because he doesn’t accept his world. I do believe everything happens for a reason, and that reason is always good and right, though sometimes I lose sight of that basic Taoist truth. So thanks for bringing it back home, Whelski!

Joe Whelski in his bath towel across from a Venus of the future.

Overall, the Mating Dome shoot this past weekend was yet another curve on the freeway to filmmaking knowledge, and one thing I’m always thankful for is being able to work with a crew that knows what its doing, moves and breathes as one being and helps me improve what I’m doing and strengthen me as a director, as well as a talented cast––and the cast of Mating Dome is not only talented but smokin’ hot and includes such personalities as Samantha Karlin, who’s starred in TV’s From Mate to Date, and Key of Awesome! superstar Lauren Francesca!

Lauren Francesca, YouTube sensation and one of our Mating Dome Ladies.

To see photos of our entire sultry cast of Venuses and Adonises, head on over to Mating Dome’s Facebook page (and “Like” it while you’re at it, ‘cause if those pics don’t make you wish there was a “Super Like” button, then I don’t know. I just don’t know…)

In the meantime, I’ll be getting my razor tool sharpened and ready for cutting these scenes together into a quick bit of cinema that will make everyone under the Mating Dome proud to have been a part of this quirky, witty, sexy and wholly original short film.

Until then, live long, and prosper. Or something like that.

However, on Wednesday, after working on a shot list for my next short film with Alain Aguilar, the film’s cinematographer and my best friend of over twelve years, I was ready to head off to Midtown Comics Downtown and attend my very first book signing; my favorite writer Scott Snyder (of American Vampire fame) was going to be signing copies of the much anticipated Batman #1.

My very first signing caught in camera (that's Scott Snyder on the right)

I was about to go on my merry, solitary way when Alain decided he’d join me. He’d never been much of a comic book reader (he wasn’t one at all, actually), and as we got off the A train at Fulton Street, he asked me what the deal was with this whole Batman #1 signing. So I explained to him the basic ideology behind DC’s “New 52”––how the company is starting from scratch with all new first issues and brand new story lines that they hope will appeal to longtime and new readers since these stories would, in the case of Action Comics, Justice League and most others, start way at the beginning of superherodom.

Then something happened. In all the years I’ve ever spoken to Alain about comic books, yammering off about how superb a read All Star Superman is or how important costumes and color psychology are in The Boy Wonder’s evolution from Robin to Nightwing, never have I seen him so spellbound as I did that day––a glimmer in his eyes of the child who’d always wanted to pick up a comic book and read it, but for some reason or another never did, and never asked why, until that moment.

So we entered Midtown Comics, and I proceeded to the racks and picked up Batman #1 along with a small stack of other titles I was interested in trying on for size, such as Wonder Woman and Legion of Super-Heroes. “I’ll take one, too,” Alain said suddenly, and he reached out and snatched a copy. And he didn’t stop there! After asking for some recommendations, he also picked up copies of Action Comics #1, Nightwing #1 (‘cause he knows how awesome Dick Grayson is from hearing me talk about him over the years) and Catwoman #1 (by far the most interesting anti-heroine out there.) As we waited on line to pay for our books, he told me that he’d been wanting to get into some new material for a while, and to delve into new stories and good storytelling, and he’d avoided comics for all these years because he thought it’d be difficult to keep up with all that’s going on. But now that comics have started from the beginning again, he could finally get into them from the beginning with little chance of getting too lost.

So I guess DC’s “New 52” is doing some good after all. I mean, just look at how happy Al looks with his signed copy of Batman #1 and Certificate of Authenticity:

All smiles!

So although the days of old-school superheroes may be dead and gone, I’m happier now to see firsthand how younger and older generations will benefit from the joy of picking up a comic book for the first time and being pulled into a story from splash to final page and its inevitable “To Be Continued…” that hints at what’s to come so our inner children can feel once more (or for the first time) how slowly a month can pass by.

And me? I’ll be walking the Middle Road with comic books as with everything else in my life and spend my free time paging the “New 8” DC Comics titles (so far) that have caught my attention when not hunched over the $1 boxes at St. Mark’s Comics regaling in a simpler time of spandex and tinsel.

One of my favorite Jim Lee images from Batman: Hush.

Since then, I’ve only really kept up with DC Comics, and though I missed out on a few major events like Final Crisis and Blackest Night due to the financial constraints commonly associated with keeping up-to-speed with the world’s greatest superheroes, I try to keep a keen eye on what’s ahead by frequenting websites like Geeks of Doom and Gotham Spoilers. But I was happy that I finally had a hobby again, one that was (a little) cheaper than making short films. In short, I was happy. My inner child was licking away innocently at his soft-serve vanilla ice cream.

And then I read Justice League #1, the launch pad for DC’s controversial “New 52” campaign in which they’re “starting over from #1″ on their entire line of titles. It was as though my inner child had been abducted. And me? Well, page after page of Justice League #1, I just couldn’t shake the feeling that the comic book heroes I’d grown up with were officially dead and gone.

Okay, so it’s not that serious. I know they’re not gone for good. They’re simply evolving, stretching their ripped and rock solid legs into tomorrow. I get that. I do. But what the heck happened to all the spandex––a staple of superherodom since its inception?

And what the hell kinds of costumes are these?!

No further comment.

Like many of us, I grew up during a time when superheroes wore spandex stretching around their bulked up bodies, their brightly colored underwear on the outside and which matched the color of their boots which stretched up to the knees and maintained the absolute mystery of how they ever managed to stay up. There’s a certain element childishness to a superhero who wears such an zany outfit out in public, it’s true, but there’s also an element of self-assurance, too. Superman, for instance, would never need to wear suit made of Kevlar or thin metal or whatever his new costume is made of; the guy chews bullets like they were Bubbalicious!

The Superman I grew up with is a Boy Scout and a Republican, not some wannabe hipster with a cocky attitude (as in Action Comics #1). And the Batman I grew up with is dark and brooding and doesn’t smile (that’s what Robin’s for––but don’t even get me started on Damian Wayne taking up the mantle of my all-time favorite character; I only hope DC’s planning on pulling a “Jason Todd” on this one!) not this rational human being who’d rather begin celebrating his parents’ wedding anniversary instead of laying two roses down on the crime ridden alley where they were killed and the Dark Knight was born (as in Batman and Robin #1).

I know, I know. Like the Pearl Jam song says “It’s evolution, baby!” I get it. I really do. But my inner little guy’s still crying ‘cause the ice cream I just bought him is melting in the lamp light on the sidewalk where Martha and Thomas Wayne were murdered.

I don't know...if Bruce can get over that, his Bat-Days are numbered!

The new costumes are one pet peeve of mine. The other aspect of DC’s New 52 I’m not at all happy with is how young some of my favorite heroes look. Granted, time and age are magically suspended in the world between the panels and speech bubbles, but honestly, this new Superman looks more like Superboy and seems to act just as childish and cocky from the little I’ve gathered so far from the last page of Justice League #1 and throughout Action Comics #1. I’m most worried about Nightwing #1––any titles featuring former Boy Wonder Dick Grayson has always been a favorite comic of mine. But I do take solace in the fact that DC seems to be keeping the Batman family and its history (somewhat) in tact and only marginally altered. We’ll see about that in a couple days.

The red Nightwing emblem (and matching eyes) make me uncomfortable.

Now, despite my initial disdain for these first couple of weeks of new number ones, I’m definitely intrigued by what’s going on (hence the reason I’m actually spending money on a few of these 52 titles that seem most interesting to me), especially where costumes are concerned. In fact, in a brief stint with nonfiction writing, I wrote a proposal and about eighty pages of a book called Darkening Knights about the various Boy Wonders and the many changes to their costumes through the years since Detective Comics #38 introduced Robin in 1940.

That said, I have a great appreciation for superheroes and their costumes as extensions of who they are, and while these new streamlined costumes are not as hokey as their spandex counterparts, they are too “real world” for me. I mean, Robin’s original costume was a bit outlandish, true, but even when it was redesigned in the ‘90s for Tim Drake to fill Dick’s pixies, it still retained a major elements that kept the integrity of the original model in tact without the addition of what seems to be shiny plates of sheet metal for added protection in the battlefield (though DC did upgrade Robin’s footwear from pixie boots to jika-tabi style boots (more practical, I think).

By far my favorite Robin costume of them all.

I suppose it’s just a changing of the guard of sorts. I mean, it’s no secret that comic book stores today are filled with more adults in suits than children wearing red capes with a Sharpie “S” drawn on them; so it seems that DC Comics is perhaps trying to rescue the comic “book” industry from extinction––I mean, if you’re a kid these days, why read comics when you can see your favorite heroes like (gulp!) Green Lantern or Captain America on the big screen, and in 3-D to boot? And yes, I feel like an old fogey (there, I said it!) for writing this, but what’s a guy like me supposed to do, spend the remainder of his days hunched over the $1 boxes at St. Mark’s Comics? I suppose so.

Or I guess I simply have to buy into it all. And I will (at least for certain titles) because everyone needs a little super in his or her life, after all.

OMAC, one of the "b-heroes" whose first issue gave me enjoyment.

On a positive note, I’m very excited to continue reading OMAC; the first issue was a fun one indeed. Swamp Thing #1 is superbly written by Scott Snyder. Batwing and Batwoman are series I plan to follow for a bit, as well, and I’m also looking forward to Justice League Dark and Aquaman. (Based on this list of titles, it seems I’ll be opting for the b-side superheroes from now on.) But I will also give a the first issue of Teen Titans a chance just because Robin, Superboy, Kid Flash and the gang have given me hours of reading pleasure in the past.

Ahhh! There’s my inner kid standing next to Bruce Wayne and licking happily away at a brand new ice creat cone, anxious to get his hands on a copy of Batman #1 and get it signed by his favorite writer this Wednesday.

I guess it is true what this guy who works at The Joker’s Child in Fairlawn said to me in a brief conversation about the New 52: “We comic fans, we’re a hopeful bunch.”

Yes, we are. But I wonder if Marvel’s superheroes still sport their spandex…!

*          *          *

So…what are YOUR thoughts on DC Comics and their “New 52″ line? What titles should I add to my list of must reads?

This phase of film watching is partly for further research on Caput, my feature-length hit man screenplay, which I’ll be rewriting within the next month or so. Before that, I spent a few solid months watching a ton of Humphrey Bogart classics like In a Lonely Place, To Have and Have Not, Casablanca (of course!) and The Roaring Twenties, in which I discovered Cagney and all his tough guy glory to come.

The plaque (L) that's attached to the building where Cagney lived (R).

Now you might not guess it by looking at me, but when I was a younger man, the only movies I ever watched were action movies. If you asked me to name the top actors, the “Holy Trinity” would’ve been Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steven Segal and Jean-Claude Van Damme. Kickboxer, Out for Justice, Commando­­––if you can name it, I most likely watched it (dozens of times, too, on account of my Dad and our first VCR). Stir in a bit of Return of the Jedi and Back to the Future, Part II and that about rounded out my “eclectic” taste in movies back in the day. Then the American Beauty drama bug bit me in 1999, and the virus spread on with Requiem for a Dream so that by the time Donnie Darko nailed my brain, there was no hope for remedy. This virus crescendoed when Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind edged me on towards a decent into the madness of foreign films from Italy, France, Japan, Hong Kong and beyond. I was ready for renaissance.

But today, I find myself lost in classical Hollywood, circa 1920 to 1950, and rediscovering the lure of the anti-hero while most filmmakers are busy finding new ways to exploit their R-rated comedies. More so, I’m taking on tough guy tales because in many cases they are much deeper character studies into basic human behavior than most people might give them credit for. They’re not shallow reprisals of stories told over and again to supplement an “explosions quota” or the underscore of some grisly killing by demon or devil. The films of Cagney are films about characters who have faults and attempt to overcome them. They’re rooted in the ancient Greek tradition of the tragic hero, and through evolution they’ve worked their magic into the postmodern world.

Even now, I’m still fascinated how I could be so empathetic to big time baddies Tom Powers and Cody Jarrett when they get their just deserts at the end of The Public Enemy and White Heat, two of his very best films. Or even poor Eddie Bartlett sprawled dead on the steps in The Roaring Twenties. These are hard-wired gangsters who made their way in the world loaded with lead, and of course, the bulk of these characters are the basis for most of the anti- and Byronic-heroes that populate today’s more indie films and TV shows.

Original poster art for City for Conquest.

One of Cagney’s films in particular had more of a profound impact on me than I ever had expected––the 1940 film City for Conquest, beautifully directed by Anatole Litvak. In a nutshell, City for Conquest tells of a trio of street tough Irish kids growing up on Forsyth and Delancey in New York City, each determined to get out and make something of his or her life. Eddie Kenny dreams of playing a dark symphony in a city spellbound by swing; Peggy Nash wants to see her name in Broadway lights as a famous dancer; and Danny Kenny (Cagney)? Well, he has no aspirations whatsoever. He’s content with his girl Peggy and his job driving a truck until his brother Eddie comes up short for his payments to study music at school. That’s when Danny launches a career in boxing––until then something he did only for exercise––all the while longing to be back home with his girl, who spends her time tripping the light fantastic with dance hall celebrity Murray Burns, masterfully played by Anthony Quinn.

Perhaps what struck me most about Danny’s character is how all-too-human he really is. Through the film’s second act, Danny wins match upon match, and there’s a wonderful nugget of a moment when an “old timer” mentions to a crowd listening to the match that perhaps Danny wins every match because he doesn’t care whether he wins or loses, and that perhaps if he did want to win, he’d end up losing. The men to whom the hobo speaks crook their heads at him like confused puppies, as would anyone today, more than 70 years later.

You see, in today’s world, in any city up for conquest, this is a difficult sentiment to maintain since the very idea of “not caring” surely insinuates that what you’re doing is not important. But I find that’s simply not so. There are dreamers who give their all, there are those who fall asleep, and there are also those who stand somewhere in the middle. And there are those, like me, who don’t dream or do but simply are. Surely I’ve attained my one and only dream since I was a kid––being a published poet. But did I ever dream I’d be an indie filmmaker? Never. Did I ever do anything to learn how to be an indie filmmaker? Not once. But here I am, an indie filmmaker with a short film like Cerise, which has been putting smiles on lots of people’s faces, and another movie on the way, a music video in between, two feature-length scripts in the works and plenty more ideas to breathe life into.

Being successful, I find, is all about going with the flow. Perhaps it’s all that Douglas Adams I’ve been reading, but if you go in the direction the universe is pushing you, you can’t ever steer yourself wrong. In City for Conquest, Danny becomes a boxer because he simply boxes. Sure, it’s his decision, partly motivated by the need to pay for his brother’s schooling, but boxing has always been there, waiting for him all along. Like acting had been for Cagney. Like making films has been for me. Like who knows what else further down the road…

James Cagney in one of his finest (tough guy) roles ever.

Granted, Danny from City for Conquest is much more of a serious role for Cagney than, say, Danny Kean in Picture Snatcher or Dan Quigley in Lady Killer, but this Danny is still a tough guy who gets around by way of his fists, a hot-headed little Irishmen who by the end learns that his toughness can only get him so far, but consequently it elevates his spirit to the heights of Sainthood (and that’s all I’ll say about that––I don’t wanna spoil the end of the movie for you!) That’s what I found so uplifting that I was moved to tears by the final frame of the film––a character who at the beginning of the film has no motivation for anything ends up motivating others simply by being who he is through his whole life, and ultimately that is all the motivation he ever really needed. In a world where identity changes as often as a pair of socks, that says a lot about toughness; you’ve gotta be tough to trust in what you’re doing and not think about the end result.

Though a majority of Cagney’s famous roles (Frank Ross in Each Dawn I Die and “Brick” Davis in “G”Men) are less complicated than City for Conquest’s Danny Kenny and mostly motivated by money, greed, power, or revenge, I’d like Teddy Caputo, the protagonist in Caput, to be one who’s carved out of the same stock of emotions that makes audiences connect with a cold-blooded robber like Cody Jarrett and a straight and narrow guy like Danny. And to achieve that, it means more hours in front of my midnight tube lighting up my eyes with classic Hollywood noir, and I’m excited to carry the black and white torch of my journey deeper into the soul of the anti-hero that began with Bogie and continues with Cagney, and lights on the directors that helped these two titans of the silver screen endure through the decades.

What are some noir films that have left an strong impression on YOU? List ‘em in the “Comments” section!

All those weekends spent at my brother’s house watching Headbanger’s Ball and being disturbed by the visual tales told alongside the sounds of Tool, Nine Inch Nails, and Alice in Chains actually paid off. Thank you MTV (when you actually lived up to your name.)

This past weekend I shot my first music video for faux-folk singer/songwriter Pepper Coat. Those of you who know me will know that I’m not much of a music video guy; the last one I’d ever really enjoyed was for Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” back in the ‘90s. But because I enjoy Pepper Coat’s folky tunes I decided to come on board and help him stretch his nostalgic soul deeper into the Internet.

One of my favorite shots from the Pepper Coat shoot.

The storyline of Pepper Coat’s latest single “She’s Gone and I’m Here” is pretty standard and summed up in the title, which is a benchmark of all great songs that stand the test of time. The nonlinear storyline of the video itself, however, which I wrote, is a bit more complex: The character of Pepper Coat is lost in his brooding mind which is haunted by memories of girlfriends past that don’t want to be forgotten. But Pepper Coat can’t move on unless he exorcises those apparitions so that he might find a special someone at the café next door.

Pepper Coat gave me free reign to tell whatever story I wanted, and although my first draft was “cliché” (his word…and eventually mine), I then rewrote the script, taking his only suggestion: “How about many women?” That’s what the story needed, and so it became an amalgam of my short film Perfekt (similar storyline of one guy with many women) and Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (alternating those women within various scenes).

The only other criteria Edmund Lawrence Kasubinski III (the man behind the music) gave was for him to be in a tuxedo and to have a scene in a graveyard. Done and done all thanks to a marvel of a producer, Marinell Montales, who single-handedly put her first production together on a below micro budget. Of course, the video was shot with Alain Aguilar, my best friend and brother behind the moving images in Perfekt and Cerise.

The visual story had been pretty straightforward on paper until Alain, Marinell and I went location scouting a few days prior to shooting. Until then, I never fully understood the importance of a location scout, but I now see how it can change a few elements, and always for the better. With Alain’s guidance as my trusted friend and cinematographer, we were able to create shots that were a bit more conceptual in nature, and a lot more like a music video, something that proved a bit challenging for me as a more linear storyteller.

Shooting this music video was, for me, like opening a door into a new world of ideas and themes I want to address in future productions, like plastification, which I explore in the video in the form of mimicking Edward Hopper paintings, will also be a prevalent motif in my next production Mating Dome and the idea of memories as ghosts which I’ll give further shape to in the short films that make up my “Memory Trilogy.”

Edward Hopper's mood and tone is prevalent in the Pepper Coat video.

I have to say that I was very happy with every shot Alain and I set up, and would like to thank the wonderful cast and crew who worked without pay and who went into overtime each day just so we could put together a music video we’d all be proud to include in our portfolios, reels and shelves. So a big thanks to our crew (Alain, Beth Drenning, Joe Lomas, Tatsuro Nishimura, and our amazing make-up artist Vanessa Brun), all our leading ladies (Uvannie Enriquez, Loarina Gonzalez, Jennivere Lee, Cat Migliaccio, Jessica I. Silvestre, Kate Young, and Mariana Vily), our leading man Pepper Coat and of course, our producer Marinell!

And, of course, a special thanks to Walter Enders and Two Guys Pizza and Grill for donating some tasty food to keep the cast and crew smiling the whole way through!

Aside from writing and directing the music video for Pepper Coat’s “She’s Gone and I’m Here” (and recovering from the poison ivy I got from our first shooting day at the Jersey City Cemetery!), I’m also editing it and I’m hoping to have something to unveil in September, so stay tuned, folks!