SO. How are you? Good golly, miss molly, it has been some time since I posted any kind of update. Thanks for sticking by, and having a glance every now and then to see what’s going on. And although all may have seemed to come to somewhat of a stand still at SHOTGUN! HQ, we have been busy, busy, working away at developing the script, meeting with people (some of the LateNite team were over in the USA with their short film FALLOUT!!).

What can I say? I am sincerely sorry that it’s taken me this long to get back to writing in this god forsaken blog. At least Chris will now be happy. To be honest, there’s not a heap to report from my end. Since the last time I posted, fuck, I can’t even remember what that was. I probably should have looked before I started to write. I believe it was somewhere around the time we had submitted the script to Hopscotch and were waiting to hear back.

Since then, well, it’s been tough. Christmas and New Years hit and everything begins to slooooow down. Then the momentum gets lost. Then you feel the weight of expectations that you placed on yourself. You promised you’d have this done by then and that done by then, but because the momentum has gone, you become even more critical of yourself and of your creative process. I feel like a lazy mother fucker, so I sit in front of the blank Final Draft screen, watching the cursor click, just to placate my own ego. Then, of course, alt-tab to facebook to procrastinate.

It’s not to say I haven’t been doing work, but without the momentum, it all seems soooo much harder. Also, I haven’t done as much as I could have & thus production gets pushed back yet again. I suppose you’re wondering if anything happened with Hopscotch? Well, unfortunately, SHOTGUN! was not a film for them. But fear not, for I am meeting with another producer tomorrow (if this fucking flu clears up) who may be interested & have some very interesting ideas about self-distribution (an idea that LateNite likes very much).

And as for the project itself, well, what can I say. I will endeavor to you updated as regularly as I can. I have got a lot of ideas that I think can make it from a good script into a great script, but I have said that a billion times before now, so who knows if this time it’s actually true. The most important thing, I think, about the next draft, is that it’s going to be a heck of a lot more personal. My biggest problem thus far has been catering my rewrites to what other people want. Be that friends, colleagues, producers or even just some random person who happened to read the script. BULLSHIT! It has to, and can only ever come from me. I have to love the script and everything about it before anyone else can or will. I believe it was Joss Whedon who said “Write as you would if no one was watching”, and it is so true. The greatest writers, directors, actors, musicians, painters, poets and eBay sellers put their souls on display. Their very essence. Because otherwise, it’s just like everything and everyone else. Which is not particularly interesting. You might say it’s all just average.

I had an experience over the summer where I was fortunate enough to work with an extraordinary acting coach (Ivana Chubbock). I enrolled in her 4 day masterclass, thinking it was going to be an amazing experience. What I didn’t expect, however, was that it would devastate me to a level I hadn’t experienced in a long time, before bringing me to quite a profound realization and state of mind. Those 4 days with her taught me something very profound about art, that you cannot learn from a book, or from a teacher, or a course. I hate to sound like a wanker, but it’s really something that you must learn on your own.

Through my experience with her, trying to cater my work to her, trying to get gold stars, trying to be the top of the class student, to be perfect so that I would be loved and adored by her, by the auditors, by my peers – I fell flat on my face. I tried to find excuse wherever I could, blaming all other elements, even blaming myself. But the TRUTH was that I had wanted to shine so much, I was so set on trying to give the perfect performance (even though it was a workshop environment), that I had failed to put my very essence into the character. I had failed to embrace all of myself, my neurosis, my good habits & bad, I had forgotten, much like with SHOTGUN!, to ask myself “what do you want to explore”….

I can’t help but feel as though I will always be so close to being finished. But it’s about choosing the right time to say “fuck it, I’m close enough”.

On another note, I just found out today that I have been accepted into a Spring Intensive at the Lee Strasberg Theater & Film Institute (an acting course) over in NYC. I plan to keep up my personal blog here, if you have any interest in keeping up to date with my 9 week journey.

Thanks for having us back into your lives :)

AL.