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:)
Hanging out at the cabin over the Thanksgiving break with the family and some (rare) time on my hands, I got inspired to draw this one panel gag by reading an old comic book by my favorite illustrator Ernie Bushmiller; I imagine if he were around today he might have had some interesting things to say about the times we live in.
Enjoy!
william
For Thanksgiving, it seems only fitting to give thanks to the wonderful crew of characters who worked on the production of my latest Wonderful film project - the feature film "Disconnect" which was shot in the vicinity of New York City this Fall.
Often, all of the recognition a film gets goes to its stars, occasionally to its director.
As Ray Bradbury once said "people who write screenplays are forgotten at the very instant the film appears. Nobody can recall the screenwriters who wrote Gone With The Wind, Rebecca, or The Age of Innocence."
More neglected still are the hard working team "below-the-line", so it is nice to have a blog where I can give all of these talented collaborators the shout out they deserve on this day of giving thanks.
Scott Ferguson was our talented line producer (pictured here with Larry Kaplan on the left).
Ken Seng, here doing his best Foster Brooks impersonation, was our cinematographer.
Our wizard of a camera operator was Gerard Sava.
Dina Goldman designed the production. We both went to Wesleyan, but not at the same time.
Jennifer Dehghan was our very artistic art director. Even her haircut was a work of art.
Catherine George was a Belfast punk rocker before she became an amazing costume designer.
Katalina Iturralde came all the way from Puerto Rico to be our on-set costumer.
Chris Surgent (pictured here with 2nd 2nd assistant director Patrick McDonald) was such a great First Assistant Director that it was impossible for me to hold it against him that he also happened to be a Giants fan. Plus he works on all of Marty Scorcese's films, so we were lucky to have someone of his experience on the team.
Chris' right hand man was 2nd assistant director and jazz fan Taka Kawakami.
Damon Gordon found all of our locations. And even more impressively, got us in and out in one piece.
His assistant location manager Erin Hallbauer claimed to be from Chicago, which got her major props in my book, but she turned out to be from Hinsdale. Not quite as cool, but she more than made up for it as her work ethic, dance moves, good spirits and sense of humor were definitely "Chicago style"!
Propmaster can be one of the harder unsung jobs on any film. A lousy one can kill you, and a good one's work more often than not goes unnoticed. Dan Fisher did a great job - you won't notice it, but we did!
Nicki Lederman was our key make up artist, always keeping a chill mood in the sanctum of her make-up trailer, and making all the actors look almost as pretty as she is.
Her partner in crime was our hair stylist Mia Neal whose weekly gig on Saturday NIght Live must have contributed to the good humor she always brought to our show.
The wonderful thing about having a lilting Irish accent is you can give someone really bad news and it is impossible for anyone (even a Teamster!) to ever really get mad at you. Which made assistant Production Manager Gabrielle Mahon our secret weapon whenever we had to negotiate our way out of a jam!
Anne Nevin was our production coordinator, always making the trains and everything else run on time. She looks pretty chill here - probably a result of never having to be on set with us!
Beth Rosenblatt is our music supervisor. Her big job on the film is mostly yet to come, as the score and songs find their way into the editing room and get woven into the fabric of the movie.
If you read or hear anything about our movie, it is probably a result of the good work of my old pal and wonderful unit publicist Larry Kaplan. Larry and I have worked in many far flung corners of the world, so I was confidant traveling with him to the jungles of Manhattan.
The artist Jorge Colombo, an old friend of mine from Chicago days, came to pay us a visit. He wasn't a crew member but we made him an honorary one in exchange for his creating some of his amazing hand drawn digital artwork impressions of our film, which as you can see he somehow paints right on his small iPhone screen!
There are a hundred other people to thank, most of whom I never got a chance to record with my Diana camera and aren't featured here, but all of whom put in long hours and good karma and all of the intangibles that go into making a movie.
On this thanksgiving day, on this blog, it is their turn to take a bow!
Enjoy!
william
Growing up, before I ever traveled there in person, my formative impressions of the New York City of my imagination were shaped by three things:
The gangs, graffiti, drugs and gunplay of movies like West Side Story, and later Superfly or Serpico; novels of the gritty urban experience of '60's ghetto life like "Down These Mean Streets" by Piri Thomas, who passed away just recently; and music by bards of the street like The Last Poets and Gil-Scott Heron who in spoken words and minimal harmonies described the dark core of the Big Apple.
Watching the massive march of a Halloween parade that passed by my apartment on its way up the Avenue of the Americas this Fall, and the lo-fi imagery I was able to capture with my Diana camera of these denizens of the dark, brought back nightmarish memories of this earlier era, when urban legends of LSD-laced candy and razor blades hidden in apples put the trick in trick-or-treat.
Could anything be scarier than....
...a gang of Smurfs?
Enjoy (sort of)!
william
One consequence of the economic collapse of 2008 was the emptying out of some prime office space in lower Manhattan which had formerly played home to myriad tenants engaged in keeping the wheels of financial enterprise greased and turning.
Being opportunists, independent film productions have more recently taken advantage of the plethora of low-rent vacancies of this prime space, so our production office for "Disconnect" had a wonderful view of both the brass bull sculpture that is the symbol of Wall Street out our front door, and the New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty that symbolizes an earlier centuries view of American opportunity.
In an odd coincidence, the occupation of Zuccoti Park just a short block from our production offices started up on September 17th, just two days before we started principal photography of our movie, and was provocatively ended by the middle-of-the-night raid by the police only a few days after we finished shooting.
As a result, I only got down to the office and visited the park this last weekend with my brother-in-law Alex. It was a dense thicket with the outward appearance of a refugee camp, with the most surprising structure being a large library home to an extensive collection of progressive and revolutionary literature.
Knowing nothing of the raid and forced evacuation of Zucotti, I was surprised yesterday to walk outside the apartment I have been renting here during the shoot to find the movement, temporarily, encamped in another park, the large vacant lot on Canal Street between Varick and 6th.
With the usual circus of helicopters circling overhead, news vans and reporters parked on the perimeter, and a huge police presence, it seemed as if the new home of OWS might be right outside my front door. But when I returned from work a few hours later, the whole shebang had moved on once again; the vacant lot bore no trace of the lively scene that took place there all morning.
But you can't erase an idea, and the voices of protest against the massive corruption and inequity of the contemporary American politic will return and grow - a welcome development after a decade of seeming apathy in the face of wave after wave of assaults on the constitution, the rule of law, the elderly, the poor, the middle class, our children's education, our health, our environment, and the very idea of common good and a shared sense of society.
Enjoy!
william
...but with the film wrapped I finally made it to the Mecca of Jazz tonight. Elsa's brother and his wife are in town, and on our last night together we caught the subway to Christopher Street and walked up 7th Avenue to one of the few remaining fabled jazz venues in Manhattan - The Village Vanguard!
Being a Monday night, it was Big Band night, and the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, successor to the long-time Thad Jones-Mel Lewis band that blew the roof off of this tiny basement club for decades.
The good news is the apple hasn't fallen too far from the tree - even in The Big Apple - and the traditional Thad Jones sound and many of his arrangements were featured in the set we saw - alongside a superbly harmonious arrangement of a Jimi Hendrix track including a bass trombone solo!
The Vanguard was smaller than the room I carried in my imagination all these years, but the intimate space was steeped in so much history that you could almost feel the ghosts of Lydian chromatic scales past soaring over the walking bass lines of all the improvised solos that have been played in that
hallowed space.
I know it won't take me another 52 years to get back. If I lived in New York, I think you'd know where you could find me on any given Monday evening!
Enjoy!
william
