Kissing Jessica Stein and filmmaking

posted by Jeff | Thursday, December 30, 2004, 12:27 AM | comments: 0

We watched Kissing Jessica Stein again today, I guess for the first time since we first got it and watched it. If you're not familiar, it's about two girls, one a conservative, neurotic, Jewish woman (Jessica), the other a free spirit that runs an art gallery (Helen). Both are 30ish and disenchanted with dating and relationships, so Helen places a personal ad, and Jessica answers it. This is not, however, a "gay movie."

I admit that the reason I wanted to see the movie was that I knew two chicks would hook-up, but while it is an interesting twist to a relationship movie, it's still, first and foremost, a relationship movie. The thing is that it's one of the best I've seen. It conveys a lot of real, genuine moments between interesting characters. The porch scene between Jessica and her mom is brilliant and unexpected.

Jennifer Westfeldt and Heather Juergensen not only starred in it as Jessica and Helen, respectively, but they also wrote and produced it. That takes a lot of balls and confidence to believe enough in what you're doing to put your entire career on the line like that. Both have since done a little acting, but they haven't written anything else. That's a bummer. I'd go see anything they decided to write.

Of course this got me to thinking about filmmaking again. It's yet another thing I want to do, but I just don't know how to make the time. I wrote a screenplay, and while Robert Rodriguez says you should just make whatever you write, my screenplay is barely a draft. It's certainly no movie.

Recently I started to think about doing some very short films, maybe five minutes a piece, with a fairly ridiculous premise. They'd be pretty easy to shoot, and I think easy to write.

The problem is time. There are so many things I want to do, and I can't find the time. I just submitted another book proposal, I've got software to write, volleyball gets hardcore as of next week, and I generally spend too much time in between fucking around.

The thing that makes me hopeful that I can write, shoot and cut something this year (considering I've had Avid for years and cut nothing more complex than a wedding), is that a year ago I never thought I'd write a book. Well, it'll be on the shelf in less than three months. Weirder shit has happened!


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