Back to mother nature

I know you're dying to know what will become of my garden! I haven't even had a chance to post about its progress and it's been seven weeks since I planted it. I started out with a lasagna garden but ended up hacking back the bamboo and making the garden bigger. I dug into the earth and pulled out pounds of debris - broken glass, rusted nails, old saw blades! I amended the soil with compost and manure and planted even more plants. I love digging out there, it's so relaxing.


San Francisco is chilly so my plants don't get enough consistent warmth and sun to really produce the way the seed packages promised. My mom's garden in So Cal, by comparison, runs wild and they can barely keep up. I will enjoy giving it some love and eating the fruits of my labor but will also miss my little city garden.


I returned a derelict patch of dirt filled with debris back to mother earth and there's an enormous amount of satisfaction in watching the cycle of life happening in the garden. I found this photo of what a dreary scene it was when I moved in.


I just hope that someone who loves vegetables moves in here and takes over. I won't have been here long enough to reap the full harvest of this garden:


I've been eating lettuce, arugula, fresh herbs, cilantro and radishes from it for weeks and there just might be summer squash before I hit the road.


A butterfly has been visiting me for the last week, flying around me as I water and pull weeds. It's the first time I've ever seen a beautiful creature back there and I believe it's because the garden is a happy place now. I did that.

Bohemian like me

When I was a girl, I used to wish that I had the kind of family that played musical instruments and recited poetry at parties, that would sit around talking about books they'd read and travel all over the world. I imagined animals in the house. A dog running excitedly after children, barking with delight, birds twittering in a cage and a cat slinking around a chair. Eclectic people would drop by for enlightening conversation; professors and travelers, visitors from other countries. We'd have a library full of books and all kinds of instruments sitting around like telescopes. I can see it so clearly, even now. It was probably from a movie I saw.

What I didn't realize then is that I actually had a pretty eclectic family, compared to most people I knew. We grew our own food and eschewed traditional medicine. We went for long hikes and bike rides together and to museums and historical sites. We drove cross country twice. My parents took us to Europe several times. I climbed the Eiffel Tower and stayed in a French country house. We toured Neuschwanstein Castle and picnicked in the Black Forest. We drove all over England and Wales and my brother and I danced all night at The Hacienda in Manchester. At home, we didn't watch TV, instead our favorites were The Marx Brothers and Alfred Hitchcock movies. I knew movies from the sixties better than any from the eighties. Exchange students from Japan, Germany and Sweden stayed at our house for a year at a time and my best friends in school were usually from other countries.

Instead of artists or professors, though, my parents were engineers and didn't care much for the arts. My dad was strict and controlling, not the kind sympathetic father that Gidget had. My friends didn't like being at my house (no TV, no junk food!) and I wasn't allowed to stay at anyone else's house. We rarely had animals and spent years sneaking cats into the house before my dad gave up protesting. Even though my parents had friends, they rarely came over and most of them weren't the kind that belonged in my bohemian household. The elements missing were art, chaos and wacky but genuine love and affection. I still dream of that household even though I'm unmarried, have no pets and keep a pretty tidy house.

In recent weeks, however, I've noticed myself frequently commenting (to myself, of course) that I have so many cool friends! The kind of friends that I imagined dropping by my dream family's house. Max was on Charlie Rose talking about his book, Adam is making a feature and writes a biting political blog, Annmarie is educating people on native nutrition and making all of her own food from scratch, Ross' first feature premieres next month, Steve is putting investor's packages together for a soon-to-be Broadway musical and Addi plays a balloon bass in Unpopable, now available on iTunes. They have a fantastic video that really sums up that wackiness that feels like home to me. I guess it's not surprising that I've become the bohemian I always wanted to be.

Exactly what I needed

Saturday, the day after I was wetting my pants over my complicated life, I got exactly what I needed: someone to challenge me. In yoga the day before, the teacher was asking us to be grateful for those people who challenge our choices, our life, our words, everything. You know who they are, sometimes our friends, our family or just people we meet in the laundromat. I had a friend coming over and she was going to spend the night on my couch. I rushed across the street to wash some sheets and towels for her impending arrival.

In the laundromat, there was a guy looking at me. He was very striking looking: Tall, white hair, tanned skin, bright blue eyes, in his 50's or 60's. I could tell by the way he was watching me that he was going to butt into my life. I quickly put my clothes in the washer and headed back home. 25 minutes later I was back to put them in the dryer. Now the man was sitting outside on a bench talking to another guy. He looked at me again, as I went inside. Oh brother! I put my clothes in the dryer and then read my National Geographic while I waited. He came in as I was checking my clothes and saw the magazine. "National Geographic? Do you get that regularly?" I said yes and he asked me if I actually read it or just looked at the pictures. It took me a minute so he told me that he was making that old joke about the naked breasts on African women. Charming. I assured him that I did, in fact, read it and that I didn't think they showed tits anymore. They must be cracking down.

As I folded my clothes, he proceeded to ask me a hundred questions about where I live, what I do for work, etc, etc. I should have kept my mouth shut but he had a nice face and sounded like John Wayne. I told him about my plan to move back to L.A. and start my own business. Next thing you know, the guy is telling me that L.A. is awful and I don't want to live there, that San Francisco is the best place on earth, that before I go I should look for a job with the city. They, apparently, give lifetime health care after you work there five years, but they're changing it soon to twenty years. "You should be buying a house," he said, "with first time homeowners, you could buy a house with $10 grand." He added I should at least try that before I ran home to live with mommy. It's funny because in the moment, I was actually interested in what he had to say. We talked about how abysmal health care is in this country and I said that I thought the government was taking plenty of our money, they just weren't spending it on the things that are important to us. I also said that I think people rely too much on "health care" instead of just being healthy.

I told him my plan is to stay healthy and not get hit by a bus. It sounded ridiculous, but then again, so did his plan. Honestly, five years as a civil servant? Could you imagine? I felt like I was dying in a corporate environment for crying out loud. Buy a house, in the Bay Area? I've been laid off twice in a year, there's no security in a job and what happens when I have that huge mortgage payment and no job? It was in the hours later that I realized I am designing my own life, my own freedom, my own security. The encounter with this stranger, who iterated all of my own counter arguments to me, in person, made me defend my plan, face my doubts and realize that I'm doing exactly the right thing for me, right now.

"Oh agony, aaa-GO-KNEEEEE!"

One of the things that has always made me a really good project manager is my ability to make decisions. I can assess a situation and instantly make a call, settle a dispute or change course to accommodate bumps in the road. Other people fret and worry over minute details for weeks, flap their arms wondering what to do when something goes wrong, or just spend hours complaining about how everything is screwed up. I just say "this is what we're going to do" and it's done and everyone is happy. Yet in my own life, I find that kind of decision making to be painfully difficult. I agonize over every detail and feeling and possible outcome, I worry about potential missed opportunities and future problems and about whether making these changes makes me a quitter, a flake or just a crazy person.

So here I am, less than a week away from the day that I have to give notice to leave this apartment and I've just been scheduled for another round of interviews at one of the places I last interviewed at. I'm still being considered for the other one as well, it's just that these companies take forever to actually hire a person. Seriously, like months. It's not that I really want this job but it's thrown me for a bit of a loop. I thought I had correctly deduced that they were not that interested in me and my big ideas but maybe I was wrong. I ask myself, what does it mean that I've still got these people after me when I've decided to do my own thing?

Maybe it's a test. If I was leaving San Francisco because I was broke and couldn't find a job, then surely getting one of these would mean that I could stay. If I was going to live at home because I was hurt and disillusioned then surely still being in the running for a job that seems to embrace my thinking would make me feel compelled to stay and take the job. If, however, my conviction to start my own company is strong, and I know that it's what I want to do, then no job is going to change my mind. Maybe it's just a reminder that there will always be jobs for me. They may take longer to get sometimes and it may not be easy to find one that interests me but they are out there. If I don't succeed in this new venture, surely I won't be any less qualified than I am now. That was what I told myself when I quit my career to go act. "If at the end of it, I need a job, I can always get one." And I was right.

The truth is, I have never been more excited about a JOB than I was about the job I moved up here for and yet it never came close to fulfilling the promise that it held. It became obvious that it would never yield the results I had imagined. What are the chances that one of these jobs will? And what about what I really want to do? How long will I make myself wait to finally be brave enough to try a second time? It is very scary to try something new, it took me two years to do it the first time and, actually, about two years the second time. Certainly, it's easier to make a change when one is miserable or down and out and the glimmer of a shiny new job is just the kind of lure that could divert attention from the bigger catch.

I have a plan

My friend Natalie called me yesterday, distraught. "You're leaving San Francisco?!" It was only an hour and a half after posting my blog. I had already told most of the people here and many people in Los Angeles that I was thinking about it but not everyone knew.

"Yes," I said, "but I'm moving back to L.A., I thought you'd be happy. Why are you upset?"

"Because San Francisco is just so YOU!" she said.

I laughed. "Well, San Francisco isn't going anywhere, I can come back anytime!" Of course I love it here, of course I'd love to stay but I need to make a transition right now and can't do it while I'm paying $1,885/mo. rent. It's an expensive place to live. I could live more cheaply and have roommates but I don't want to. I was willing to do that when I lived in L.A. because I was pursuing something I was passionate about. That's the problem. In order to stay, I have to get a job that pays enough to afford the lifestyle of a single person in the city and with the money running out, I don't have the luxury of time to find the right opportunity.

Today, while on this call, I realized that none of these jobs will allow me to do what I enjoy. I also understood why I keep being drawn to marketing but find myself constantly disappointed by the jobs I've had. This morning I wrote down all the aspects of marketing that I like. Amazingly, they're all the reasons that I love filmmaking! I like telling a story, creative problem solving, collaboration and tapping into something that is meaningful to people. I love organizing information, research, using logic and intuition to come up with a strategy, testing my theories, seeing them work and making them better. No job is going to let me do all that. Even if companies SAY they want a person to do those things, in reality the job will be waiting for projects to start or be approved, fighting to keep a project from being ruined by the short-sightedness of other people, maintaining the lame status quo, putting together Powerpoint presentations that fabricate the effectiveness of the project or spending money in useless but high-profile ways.

See, I want to make an impact. The reason I like volunteering is because the people I'm working for need me. They WANT strategic marketing and they're willing to let me do what I'm good at. The fact is, I assured Natalie, I have a plan. I'm launching a company that provides a service to small businesses that will make a real and immediate impact for a relatively low cost. This is a simple, down-to-earth idea that provides a necessity. No bullshit, no fluff, no ego, or waste of time and money for something "cool" that means nothing. This is a company that I'm uniquely qualified to run, working for companies that I feel passionate about. I'm so excited about it. It started to come to me over the last few months when I found myself pitching and selling this idea in my interviews, more effectively than I was selling myself! While on the phone with Natalie, it all came pouring out of me, clear as day. Of course! I even thought, maybe I should write a book about it: "My year at mom's."

It's official

This has been a difficult blog post to write. After three weeks of deliberation and two weeks of drafts on this post, I've decided to leave to San Francisco. There are so many things about this city that I love, I am very sad to leave it. It's a culturally vibrant, cosmopolitan city with liberal sensibilities, incredible food and a kick-ass public transit system. Masses of people commute by bicycle. On every doorstep there are plants in pots: exotic flowers, fruit trees, vegetables and even grapevines!


I remember a friend of mine who bought a house in Silverlake, Los Angeles, and within a few days, the potted plants she put on her porch were stolen. In San Francisco, the streets are clean, Europeans love to visit it, the air is fresh and it's surrounded by the ocean, a bay, mountains and redwood forests. Yes, I will miss it. I will miss my local farmer's market, walking to visit my friend Sharon in Hayes Valley, eating amazing food in little hole-in-the-wall restaurants like the vegetarian Japanese place Cha-Ya, getting to museums downtown in twenty minutes on the BART, picking up my freshly roasted and freshly ground coffee at Ritual Coffee and the cute boys who ride by on bicycles. The only things I won't miss are the fire trucks that scream by my apartment five times a day and freezing year-round.


A year ago, when I left L.A., I was contemplating the same decision I'm making now. I was unemployed and looking for a job. I didn't want any of the jobs I was qualified for and didn't even want most the ones I wasn't qualified for. I wondered what was wrong with me. Was I afraid? Lazy? Unambitious? The fact is, I had stopped pursuing acting, something I spent five years on, but didn't really have the opportunity to figure out what was next. What was next? Now, a year later, I'm fighting the same problem. I've been out of work for over three months. I've applied for jobs, I've worked my contacts, I've finessed the resume, I've gone to interviews and prepared presentations but still at the end of the day, I know that I'm not working very hard for it. I don't REALLY want these jobs and more and more I feel my life slipping away.

If I have a job, it's not that difficult to keep on keepin' on and just do the job. In fact, I care about my work, I enjoy work and I don't have a problem getting up and going but being out of work suddenly challenges me. Devoting a day to pursuing a job I don't want is ten times more difficult than just doing the job I don't want. Instead my interests have taken over and I've found the bulk of my time being spent planting a garden, taking photos, making a music video with a collaborator, making a video for Amnesty International, writing copy and developing strategy for a non-profit, volunteering for Taproot, uploading my video clips to YouTube and watching documentaries on Netflix. It turns out, I enjoy marketing much more when I'm volunteering my time. Why? Because it's my time to give, no one owns me.

I know that I am one of the privileged of the world, a person who has choices. Even when I've felt myself under stress, confused and sometimes depressed, I still know that I am happier, more optimistic and more capable than so many other people. At times, I have let the guilt of wanting more keep me from being what I want, from doing what I want. It has always been easy for me to say what I don't want. Maybe it's a because my father was controlling but I could always say "no": quit, leave, break up and take off, anytime. Embarking on a path towards doing something though, saying "yes" has always been extremely difficult. So that's where I am now. It's not the leaving that I'm afraid of, it's what comes after.

The truth is, I'm afraid. Afraid of not knowing what I want, afraid of failing to achieve what I want, afraid of disappointing the people I love, afraid of wasting my life. It's taken me several years to come to this decision, a decision to figure out what's next. What can I put my heart towards that will sustain me, financially and emotionally? That is the question I am embarking on a journey to answer. For the time being, I will move in with my mom. I'll stay with her as long as I need to find my path, launch a business, make a film, write a script or whatever it is I'm meant to do. I will reconcile myself to the fact that I'll be living at home with mom when I got to my 20th high school reunion later this year. I have to let go of my pride, banish fear and embrace my own potential. That journey begins now.

I just finished watching the first season of Mad Men and there's a great quote by Peggy, the secretary who finds herself taking on a career as a copywriter, something unheard for a woman in the ad world. She's on a date with a boy from "back home" and when he snips that "those people" in Manhattan aren't better than us she says: “Those people in Manhattan? “They are better than us. They want things they haven’t seen.”

How do you say Paul in Chinglish?

When I was in England, my relatives were constantly correcting my and my mother's English. It was really annoying; it's not like these people are speaking the Queen's English, they're just regular folk with their own accents and mispronunciations. Finally I said to my cousin, "Isn't it weird? It's almost like we're from another country!" I mean, get over it. You speak your English and we speak ours. I know in theory there has to be a "right way" that we all aspire to but American English is a recognized language.

Eventually, I figured we were in their country and we can make an effort to say things the way they do. We didn't ask anyone where the restroom or the bathroom but every one of my relatives brought it up anyway. "RESTroom?" they'd say, "who's doing any RESTING in there?" "BATHroom? How ridiculous, there's no BATH in there!" Yes, we'd say, shaking our heads in agreement at how stupid our language (and presumably, our country) is, "I know." Forget trying to explain that for whatever reason, in America we don't like to talk about the toilet because we consider it to be dirty and disgusting and it's much more polite, say at dinner, to ask the waiter where the restroom is. Come to think of it, it used to be called a washroom which might be more accurate. The difference, of course, is that in England, the toilets in the old houses were in their own room (hence, the water closet or WC) and the sink is in the same room as the shower. But I digress.

I was ready to forgive them for making me feel like I don't have the right to my own language when, while at my hair salon, I had a similar interaction with a Brit here in San Francisco. While I was paying, a guy came in. My hairdresser, looking at the appointment book, asked him how to pronounce his name.

"Paul," he replied.

"Oh, it says B-A-U-L in the book!" she said and we both laughed.

I remembered a good friend of mine named Paul who once complained about having such a common name and I lightly remarked, "I bet that's never happened before!"

"Actually," he said, "only about four times per day."

Huh? You see, British Paul refuses to pronounce his name is a way that any American would understand.

"Oh," I said, because you say "Paul" (pronouncing his name in my best British accent).

"Paul" he replied, correcting me.

"That's what I said."

"No," he said without a shred of humor, "it isn't."

Unbelievable! This guy would rather walk around his life in San Francisco with a stick up his ass about his name, correcting all of us stupid and ignorant Americans who can't speak, than just have a friendly interaction with a couple of nice and (actually) interesting women. I thought it about it all the way home. My name is French but I've never insisted that people pronounce it so. I don't particularly want it truncated but that's a different story. When I go to Italy, I introduce myself as "An-JEL-ica." To Spanish speakers, even in the U.S., I'm happy to be called "An-HELL-ica." Some Europeans pronounce it the French way and I love that. I see nothing wrong with people changing it to suit their language, especially in their own country.

Would Paul chastise people in Italy if they called him Paolo? Or in Spain for calling him Pablo? Or is it just because we speak English here that he thinks we should pronounce it HIS way, the ENGLISH way, the CORRECT way? I find it hard to believe that even in England, everyone would say it to his satisfaction. And what about in Australia? Same story or is it just us Americans that they are so disgusted with? According to a YouGov poll for the Daily Telegraph in May, 35% of the British think the United States is a "force for evil." I suppose because of our president's bad speech, they assume the two go hand in hand. I wonder how they'll feel in 2020 when, according to Wired, only 15% of English speakers will be native to the language. The Chinese are quickly eclipsing the rest of the world in English speakers and are inventing their own version of it as we speak. I'd love to be a fly on the wall when Paul gets his English corrected by a Chinese non-native speaker!

Beauty products you can eat

I just got my hair cut, and yes it's super short again. I let it grow for three months, hoping to retain some length, but no one does what I want them to. This lady cut it and it looked cute and still didn't look too short. Then she shampooed it and brought me back and let it dry. She put product in it, I liked it! Then she showed me the back but the whole time I was looking in the mirror she was chopping away at the front! Then she used the blow dryer to get the pieces off. It was starting to look short but I thought she was done. Nope, snipping away at the sides at the speed of light, she asked me what I thought of the back. More product. More snipping! By the time I was done, it was only slightly less short than the last time. I guess I won't bother waiting three months next time.

Anyway, she washed my hair with shampoo and used styling product from this new line of beauty products, John Masters Organics. The packaging is biodegradable yet stylish and the products have enticing names and delicious smells. Everything is edible and organic and produced in an environmentally friendly and human friendly way. I love the way they made my hair look and feel and they have absolutely no chemicals! For salon quality products, they're really reasonably priced and much better than Aveda, whose products I never liked and were never all natural. He makes pet products too, endorsed by PETA if you can believe it. Check out his mission statement and video.


See, if you eat chemicals, your body has an army of protections working to save you before they reaches your bloodstream. When you put products on your skin and lips and hair, the chemicals in those products soak right into your bloodstream. It's more dangerous to put chemicals ON your body than it is to put them IN your body yet the FDA has much more lenient restrictions chemicals in beauty products than they do for our food. My friend blogged about this and mentioned a company called Terressentials, which I haven't tried. Either way, not only it is much better for us to stop polluting our bodies with chemicals, when you shower those chemicals go down the drain and into our water supply passing them on for someone else to drink or shower with.

Who cares what I have to say

Last time I talked to my dad, I was recapping the last round of interviews I've had. I told him about the one company, looking to me to run an established film festival, that asked me to make a presentation of ideas. I spent three days on it, and it was twice as long as they'd asked for but I had done an incredible amount of research and thinking about this brand. I had something to say and I was really excited about it. My presentation was totally positive, enthusiastic and I spoke as a representative of the brand. I stated my excitement for the festival and the brand throughout.

This was the second meeting but the first was a phone interview, with the woman who would be my boss. She was there with an HR gal and a "half person" that supports the role. I got the feeling throughout the presentation that they weren't impressed, or more that they just weren't responding at all, like maybe they didn't get it. It was a pretty big idea. Basically I said that they had enough reach, they'd already done a lot of the things I thought of. Their problem isn’t exposure; it's their message. The tagline is limiting and uninspired, their pitch doesn't do the festival justice and the website was not a destination that communicated the uniqueness of this event. I presented a number of solutions and that would take their brand (and festival) to the next level.

This is a presentation I could have charged a lot of money for if I was a strategic consultant. Yet at the end, I got blank faces and dumb questions that had already been asked or just seemed irrelevant after showing them how uniquely interested and qualified I was for this job. "Why do you want to work here?" "Why do you think you're a good fit for this job?" "How would you expand the festival?" I had already said expansion is not the problem; that they aren't expanding because their story is too hard to tell. I said, make it a fun and easy story and people will tell it for you. Bloggers will write about it, people will tell their friends.

That's when the HR lady asked me how, when there were SO many blogs, could I possibly choose which ones to target? I don't know why that struck me as a particularly stupid question. Maybe because it was coming from the HR gal who later told me she used to teach classes at the company gym before getting into human resources. Or maybe because it epitomized the point that they were missing. I was talking big picture and a holistic approach where you change something that will affect everything. What they wanted was logistics. Some magical formula for selling tickets. Like buying a third-party email list, printing posters to put in coffee shops, handing out postcards at Whole Foods, or buying those flags that hang from the lampposts on major streets. Is that what they wanted from me? I think it is.

Anyway, while telling my dad this story, he suddenly says "I don't even know what a blog is. It's just someone's opinion right?" Before I can even answer he continues on this opinionated rant. He says there's a guy on the finance channel that's always talking about his blog, someone he obviously doesn't like. "What makes a person so egotistical that they think their opinion is so important? Do they really think people want to read what they have to say?" Then, even more disturbing, he said something about how if it was really important, it would be on the TV. He completely misses the point that the Internet is by the people, for the people and the TV is run by the corporations for the people who are too dumb to know otherwise.

It was so shocking. I mean, he was so upset about something he doesn't even understand. Which is probably the point. He's looking for a job right now too. He's been independent for ten years but with the economy slowing down thought he'd be better off with a job. It's not going well for him either. Hearing his daughter talk about things he doesn't know about probably makes him insecure about his age and looking for a job after being out of the loop. Knowing that the whole world is blogging is probably upsetting. It made me grateful that I never told him about this one. I never wanted to argue about post he read, some topic I wouldn't choose to talk with him about. He also comes from a generation of people that don't talk about themselves.

Calmly, I explained that a blog was like a diary, or could be more like a book or a column in a magazine. I gave him examples: a mother wanting to share the details of bringing up her children for other mothers, or for family and friends to follow along; a lady who grows a garden in the Bay Area and records her trials and tribulations, photos of what she's growing and maybe even what she's cooking with her harvest. I couldn't tell him that people harass me if I don't keep up the blog regularly and that people really do want to hear what I have to say.

Then I told him that he could keep a blog. A diary of his progress in building houses. He could share things that he's learned only after building his third house, tricks of the trade, and establish himself as an expert. I said that people are very interested in getting information from someone they can identify with, not just some guy on the TV. He was very quiet and shook his head a little. He might even have been thinking that I had a good point about starting a blog. I'm going to send him a few examples and the Blogger link to get started. I really think he'd take to it like a duck to water.

Crazy about Wall-E

Over a couple bottles of Cherry Lambic the other night, two friends and I had a serious discussion about WALL-E. Every since I saw the 15 second teaser for the film, I've been driving by billboards saying "Waa-AH-lee!" My friend who is a designer loved the beautiful simplicity of Eve; her elegant shape, articulated hands and Japanese inspired eye expressions. She remarked on the fact that Eve is the first woman, the character is shaped like an egg and she puts the plant, a living being, inside of her. Our male friend wondered why Eve was so focused on her directive while Wall-E abandoned his the moment she arrived and never went back to it. We wondered if it was because he had outlived all the other Wall-Es and had seen the futility of his work. Or because he was just a much older robot who realized there were more important things in life than work. Eve, on the other hand, is young and eager to please. She doesn't even know she can defy her directive until the second or third time it threatens to overtake her consciousness.


My dad, a week ago, remarked on the statement it makes about the uselessness of what we do for "work" on this planet and how what's truly meaningful in this world is our interactions with other people, and love. We chatted about the comment it makes on how we've cut ourselves off from those interactions in our roles as consumers of product and entertainment. I couldn't help thinking it probably will take us destroying the planet, 700 years and a couple of robots to finally realize how incredible and beautiful life (other than us) on this planet is. But will we really just be able to come back and start over?

I saw it as a film about a character who has a simple dream, and even in the complete absence of possibility that it will ever come true, continues to dream it. The dream, I venture to guess, is what made him live longer than all the other Wall-Es. It's what makes him special. When an opportunity arrives for him to fulfill his dream, he seizes it and he never lets go. He doesn't look back and never questions his mission. He just, with blind and enduring passion, follows that dream. Eventually, Eve decides that she wants it too and must make her own sacrifice to have it. No matter how you slice it, it's a special film, like so many of the Pixar movies.

I rented the silent film, The General, after my dad suggested that Wall-E was similar to Buster Keaton. I don't really see the resemblance in the character but the story, of a man who continues to pursue something even when the odds are stacked against him, is very like Wall-E. I like the idea, though, that the character of a robot who doesn't speak and doesn't look human, would communicate the way a silent film actor does. My friends and I said that we loved the way that through one word, said in dozens of different ways, Wall-E's emotions are brought to life. After the Lambic, we walked home saying "Eee-EEE-vah?" and "Waa-AH-lee" and giggling like little kids. Then we saw a bus stop with a poster of the movie and took pictures of it. When can you remember seeing a movie that provoked both serious discussion and childlike glee?

This is what I love about San Francisco

Today, some friends and I hit five sidewalk sales while walking off our brunch. We didn't have to park the car because we were on foot and all five sales were within a few blocks of each other. None of them were hosted by flea-market professionals disguised as regular people, there were no customers scooping up all the good stuff in the first hour to resell at their swanky overpriced vintage store, and everyone was nice and gave us things for free or for cheaper than they were listed, just because. This is the cool, fun bounty I brought home for a total of $35 and a relaxing afternoon:

Wicker basket $2
Lucky Brand scarf $1
1950's Gund Woolie Lammi $10
Brass bell $1.50
Painted wood frame $1
Vintage rabbit tapestry $7
Gold metal Italian bag $2
1976 series "Children of the World" mug $1
Two neckscarves $1.50
Four Cerve Italian glasses $8

Five years and no pay day

The writer of my short film has just had his first feature made. He almost got screwed out of a credit and had to take the directors to arbitration, twice, but at least he got shared credit. It went to Sundance and got rave reviews and now is being released on a thousand screens in August. The trailer is really good and you can watch it here and read a bit about the film. I read this script a couple of times and made suggestions to develop the characters and story, so I was a big fan. The directors, of course, took out the good stuff and made it Hollywood bland but they got the job because they were able to cast name actors like Alan Rickman and Bill Pullman.

See, the studios still control distribution and still rely on theatrical to develop a buzz. They figure it takes $20 million to market a movie and that is the sole determinant for whether to distribute one. Is it worth $20 million? If there are no name actors, the answer is no. If the actors are recognizable but not bankable, like a movie my friend Steve is in called Plumm Summer with William Baldwin and Henry Winkler, the answer is still no. Sure, people know who they are but they won't go to the theaters to see them. It's to the point where no matter what the film or the budget, you better have at least one bankable name in the film or no one wants it, not even for cable.

What happens, then, is independent filmmakers can't make a film without a star in it, shunning their friends - fantastic actors who may have even originated the role - and other talent struggling for exposure. To attract top talent, it can't just be a fun romp, the script has to be really good or different or the characters have to be really interesting; requirements that no Hollywood film has to fulfill. And, the journey is a grueling five years for a movie made with independent financing; Little Miss Sunshine being the pinnacle of success.

Over the fourth, I met a couple - an actress/producer and a writer - who just finished making an independent film. They both spent five years on it and were involved in every detail of production and independent distribution. In the end, it sold and the investors almost broke even but they got no major distribution and didn't make a dime on it. It got rave reviews at festivals and in the press but it doesn't have any bankable talent in it. Now they're talking contingency plans and day jobs and these are two people that, to most of the struggling talent in Hollywood, are "making it." Stories like these make it very difficult to motivate oneself to make a feature.

We've all seen what's happened to film since the acceleration of visual effects. Basically it's all that films are about these days. People going to the theater expect to see something pretty spectacular. You can watch a good story on TV or get a laugh on YouTube but the cinema experience has to be eye-popping and better have one or more big stars. I expected that with On Demand and digital distribution, the field would have expanded. Instead it has contracted. Because all the Hollywood movies are soulless, empty effects extravaganzas, the name talent are starving for more substantive roles. They take the indie parts and push lesser known talent out of the running but still don't guarantee success of the film or the filmmaker. Filmmakers and investors are so worried about making their money back that they don't take risks that might make a better movie.

I know there's a huge demand for independent film. My mom will buy or rent a film from Blockbuster because she likes the cover and the title, even if she's never heard of or recognizes any of the actors. Some of them, she really likes. I read an article recently about how the record industry was digging out all these out-of-print recordings to distribute on iTunes. It said that the low cost of digitizing music made it possible to sell music that is obscure or rare and might have a small audience but they are sales they wouldn't otherwise be making. I was really excited by that; it sounded like the entertainment executives were finally realizing that there is big money in niche audiences. Just like Chris Anderson says that the way to make money on the Internet is to target a meganiche, because point one percent of Internet users is still a million, I think there is money to be made in film from the meganiche audience. So far, though, no one has tapped that potential because the greed and ego in the business has everyone stalking big game instead of catching the thousands of smaller animals running around. Too much work they say.

Imagine something like a game console with a sophisticated interface designed just for this: an On Demand platform just for independent film. Not the Sundance variety of stars in "small" 15-25 million dollar films, but real independent films. We could program our interests, rate films, browse titles, watch trailers, read synopses and get recommendations: It's like Xbox and Tivo met Netflix and Apple Trailers for a cocktail and they got crazy. These films could be $.99 instead of $3.99 On Demand charges for the Hollywood titles. If you don't like it, you could just turn it off. It's only ninety-nine cents! Or if you liked a film by a certain director, you could easily find more. The database would match talent too. If you enjoyed the guy in one film, you could watch everything he's in and rate him.

People think that the reason we don't already have this is because of some technical limitation. It's not true. 2 million people all over the world are playing massive multiplayer online roleplaying games, together, on XBox Live. On Demand is already bringing instant titles to people's TVs and Netflix to their computers. You can only watch one film at a time, so the selection does not slow down the system. The selection is limited because it is controlled by the studios. They don't want you to have more choices, they want you watch their third-rate film that bombed in the theater and they honestly don't care what you want.

If filmmakers could make movies without worrying about name talent and studio distribution, there would be many more stories to watch. They could make movies that some people will love without trying to please everyone. As it is, we're all watching the films that make the biggest box office, movies made for the slow moving masses. I hear people sigh and say that the entertainment industry is a business and that's just the way it is (and that I should stop complaining). But this business, like every other business in this country, is actually operating as a monopoly; the big guys work together to squeeze the little guys out by making it impossible for them to make a living doing it and then force feed us their mediocre product. In some countries, film is considered vital to freedom of expression and subsidized by the government. In this country, we shrug our shoulders and shell out $13 to see the latest superhero movie.

This makes sense

Twenty flavors of Coffee Mate and only two presidential candidates?


I consistently find American's "choices" to be bizarrely inappropriate. On the one hand, some choices are severely limited even to the point of prohibiting things that should be ours to choose. On the other, it takes an hour to buy anything from the store because we are overwhelmed by choice. I didn't take a photo but there were also about fifteen flavors of rice cakes from the same brand. The only thing I could say was, "If it was real food it wouldn't need a flavor, it would just taste like food."