OPEN TRENCH
Paying Attention, with Don Cummings
Don Cummings
WWW.DONCUMMINGS.NET
BOX: FOUR DAYS LEFT
http://www.indiegogo.com/box
http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/04/28/box-the-cast-7/
Posted by Don Cummings at 8:53 PM 0 comments
Labels: Write-Paint-Score
BOX Principal Photography Begins on FRIDAY!
www.indiegogo.com/box
Hello great friends,
Keeping you updated and also, this is our last plea for the final truth:
Principal photography begins on Friday and this movie is going to cost $25,000.
We have little time left to raise cash on IndieGoGo, so this is what we are suggesting to everyone we've been badgering, requesting from, looking deep into their eyes and wallets:
POST THIS LINK anywhere you can: www.indiegogo.com/box
and then/or
Never read another one of my blog posts again?
Going to raise 9,000 more American greenbacks before Wednesday.
We can do it. (Or we can go get jobs at Chase Manhattan Bank--)
So here we are. Humbly asking you. One little more time. Give, Post, Block, Repeat.
And now, The BOX NEWS:
First of all, the little town of Highland Falls has gotten into the movie madness and they are going to put on their parking meter socks so we can have a load of free street parking at our warehouse.
It's cute there.
But even better, we have an amazing cast for BOX and here they are:
Marsha Dietlein Bennett, Dylan Chalfy, Lou Liberatore, Mink Stole and Alfred Damm
See the wonderful faces of these great talents, here:
134 of you, to be exact, have already donated to the making of BOX, along with our Corporate Angel, SONY. We are so grateful. Thank you so much!
And now for Camera news:
With much aid from our extremely talented Director of photography, we have acquired the use of the SONY F65 camera! Along with a camera package (lenses, etc.), that requires a truck to haul the many cases. Our DP is so respected and admired that she and Sony have partnered and Sony will be using footage from BOX to promote this camera, along with making a behind-the-scenes movie of the making-of-the-movie. We are one of the earliest short films to be given this opportunity. Mr. M. Night Shyamalan is shooting his current feature film on the Sony F65 right now. Increased depth of field and many new features will make the Sony F65 the industry standard for digital movie making. (Until something else comes along, one imagines…)
http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/show-highend/resource.solutions.bbsccms-assets-show-highend-F65.shtml
This movie got kinda buzzy and we could not scrimp on staff nor design…and we are not. The top notch crew is working for peanuts. But those allergens add up…25,000 dollars worth of them to be exact.
BOX is a short film about people craving intimacy. How they suffer when intimacy is lost. How they succeed when they live inside of it. And how, possibly, the ones who are good at it can help the ones who are not so good.
Zak and Paula are married but they barely understand each other. Zak has an appointment with Peter, a man in a gender neutral outfit, who attempts to help him.
Helen works with Peter to help Zak find his way and lends her special magic to all she encounters. Will Helen and Peter's simple gift of a Box reveal a new way forward for Paula? Maybe…
All in eleven minutes at three locations. (A kitchen, a warehouse and a beautiful Seventeenth Century Dutch Stone Farmhouse on Five Acres with a pond and gardens.)
A shout of gratitude to Mink Stole of John Waters fame and Lou Liberatore from the original Broadway cast of Burn This who are playing Helen and Peter. To our leads, Marsha Dietlein Bennett and Dylan Chalfy, who are playing Paula and Zak, a wildly talented pair. To extremely talented newcomer, Andreas Damm. To Jendra Jarnagin, our wonderful Director of Photography, Sony darling, whose work can be seen in the above video. Chrissy Conant, installation artist and painter, will be our production designer. Micah Bloomberg, the fantastic Indie Film Sound King (Frozen River, Martha Marcy May Marlene) has joined our crew. Mark Repasky, editor at large at Showtime, will pull it all together in post. As Associate Producer, Rebecca Israel is going to keep us all on track the days of the shoot, the first week of May along with Co-Producer Matthew Weiner and Assistant Director, Darren Bartlett. And, you! We want you to be a part of this process.
This budget will cover:
Five Actors
CoProducer
First Assistant Camera
Second Assistant Camera
Gaffer (lights)
Grip (muscle)
Swing (Gaffer and Grip helper)
3 PA's
Two Set Dressers/Props
Rental space for Casting
Sets-Props
Hair-Makeup
D.I.T. (Digital management)
Transportation (Passenger Van, Cube truck)
DVD copies
And SOME festival fees
(Feel free to use this list to make your own movie!)
Everyone involved is a full career level professional who is joining this project based on the script and on us.
Movies can't make themselves. Come in. Get Close. Open your Box.
May you have everything you desire.
Chris and Don
CONTRIBUTE HERE:
or POST this Link:
www.boxthemovie.wordpress.com
www.facebook.com/boxthemovie
www.twitter.com/boxthemovie
Posted by Don Cummings at 11:27 PM 0 comments
ANDREAS DAMM JOINS BOX
http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/welcome-andreas-damm-as-alfred-in-box-4/
WHO is IN the BOX?
To Mink Stole and Lou Liberatore, just add:
http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/dylan-chalfy-stars-in-box/
http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/marsha-dietlein-bennett-stars-in-box/
And one kid, almost chosen,
And you have the CAST of BOX.
Ten Days Left---I know, I know. Dig Deep BOX
http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/last-call-heading-toward-19k-free-state-of-the-art-sony-camera/
Check out this link.
I knew we were all living on the quantum foam---I just didn't realize how small it was.
Get down to it!
The Scale of the Universe
And then go in the opposite direction.
Who needs marijuana after something like this?
Physics. Poetry. Your days before the birth canal. Your nights of worry.
Labels: Momma Earth
Friends: We're getting there. Jump on. Contribute. Link. Help. FREE NEW SONY CAM!
So many of you have been so generous, it is rather ridiculous. THANK YOU! 113 of you, to be exact, have donated to the making of Box, along with our Corporate Angel, SONY. We are so grateful.
OUR COSTS have ballooned to 19K because of some great news. We have acquired from Sony the use of the SONY F65 camera! And a camera package (lenses, etc.). It's kinda nuts-lucky. Our Director of Photography is so respected and admired, that she and Sony have partnered and Sony will be using footage from BOX to promote this camera. We are one of the earliest short films to be given this opportunity. Mr. M. Night Shyamalan is shooting his current feature film on the Sony F65 right now. Increased depth of field and many new features will make the Sony F65 the industry standard for digital movie making. (Until something else comes along, one imagines…)
So, we can't scrimp on staff and design…and we are not. The crew is top notch and everyone is working for peanuts. But those allergens add up…and it has become clear, with our actualized budget, that we need 19,000 dollars worth of those peanuts.
We are two weeks away from closing out this successful campaign, but we still need help getting there.
Many of you have contributed already. So thank you again! Perhaps you would consider forwarding this email to a few fun friends or post this link on one of your many cool social sites:
Or send another five bucks.
Some of you are feeling the pinch of these silly economic times…and we totally get it and we thank you for being so positive and supportive in your enthusiasm for our movie. Would you please post this link on one of your many cool social sites?
And those of you who have considered contributing but have not gotten around to it yet, please jump on and push us toward that 19K mark. We need you!
Is this link getting repetitive? :
What We Need & What You Get
is to shoot this movie with great artistic integrity. To that end, we are surrounding ourselves with professional talent of the highest caliber, from actors to the director of photography. To pay everyone, down to the newest PA who has just arrived in town. To submit to festivals. And to develop and produce more films with intelligence and sensitivity.
Short movies do not get made by studios. They get made by people like you. By people like us. We need your help.
We have a full crew and the beginnings of a great cast. A shout of gratitude to Mink Stole of John Waters fame and Lou Liberatore from the original Broadway cast of Burn This (with John Malkovich and Joan Allen), who are playing Helen and Peter. To Cindi Rush, casting director, who is working on offers to name talent for Zak and Paula. To Jendra Jarnagin, our wonderful Director of Photography, Sony darling, whose work can be seen in the above video. Chrissy Conant, installation artist and painter, will be our production designer. Micah Bloomberg, the fantastic Indie Film Sound King (Frozen River, Martha Marcy May Marlene) has joined our crew. Mark Repasky, editor at large at Showtime, will pull it all together in post. As Associate Producer, Rebecca Israel is going to keep us all on track the days of the shoot, the first week of May. And, you! We want you to be a part of this process.
Set Dresser and Props
Everyone involved is a full career level professional who is joining this project based on the script and on us. Your money will be stretched, paying 1970s fees (the golden age of cinema) for a present day movie.
Funny Pages: Park Slope, Thursday Night. Another Great Reason to Visit Brooklyn
Thursday April 19, 2012, 8PM
Brooklyn Reading Works presents
A Night of Humor
Curated by Marian Fontana
At the Old Stone House
Author Marian Fontana knows funny and she is bringing together a great group of comic writers for this night of hilarity with Don Cummings, Blair Fell, Ellen Ferguson, Billy Frolick, Gianna Messina & Marian Fontana
BIOS OF THE PERFORMERS:
DON CUMMINGS' critically acclaimed plays have been produced on both coasts: His play, The Fat of the Land was a semifinalist for the Kaufman & Hart Award for new American comedy. A Good Smoke was a semifinalist for the Eugene O'Neill theater conference. It had a reading at The Public Theater in New York starring Meryl Streep and Debra Monk and has been optioned for Broadway. Piss Play is about Minorities so it's Really Important was produced in the Summer Cringe Festival of 2009 where it received the Golden Pineapple award for best play. His latest play, Live Work Space, opens soon in Los Angeles. His collection of nonfiction essays are loosely held together in his yet-to-be-published memoir, Open Trench, named after his blog. He has acted in a lot of plays and been on a lot of sitcoms and writes movies and TV shows. Mr. Cummings is a graduate of Tufts University, The Neighborhood Playhouse and a member of The Dramatists Guild and the Ensemble Studio Theater Writer's Unit. www.doncummings.net
I WILL BE READING "The Front Row"---a story about choosing the wrong best friends out of convenience.
BLAIR FELL has written for the television series Queer As Folk, and the emmy-award winning Public Television show California Connected. His plays Naked Will, The Tragic and Horrible Life of the Singing Nun, From The Hip, Bargains and Blood, The Ballad of Little Girl Jesus et al have been performed around the world and have received numerous
awards. He has written charity and award show speeches for hundreds of celebrities, as well as the GLAAD Awards, Vimeo Awards and The Trevor Project. Along with writing for a number of pop culture websites, he writes a fiction blog called subwaysaints.com and the web series Burninghabits.com. His work can also be seen on blairfell.com.
ELLEN FERGUSON writes the "Diversity in the News" column for McSweeney's, and her nonfiction has also been published in Diversity Prep, Publisher's Weekly, and SPY. Her McSweeney's column has been widely reprinted online. Her poetry can be found online on identitytheory and the Brooklyn Reading Works, and in print in Long Island Quarterly. Before she started teaching English, Satire and Nonfiction in New Jersey and New Hampshire, she worked at The New Yorker Magazine and SPY.
MARIAN FONTANA has been a writer and performer for over 20 years. Her articles have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and most recently in the Guardian and on Salon.com. Her memoir, A Widows Walk published in 2005 by Simon and Schuster, was chosen as the Top Ten Great Reads of 2005 by People magazine and the Washington Post's Book Raves of 2005. She most recently completedher second memoir, The Middle of the Bed. Her essays have appeared in the anthologies Money Changes Everything and The Time of My Life for Random House. She is currently collaborating on a musical.
BILLY FROLICK'S screenwriting credits include DreamWorks Animation's MADAGASCAR. He has written for The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times and Salon.com, and is the author of four book-length parodies, including The Ditches of Edison County, a national bestseller.
GIANNA MESSINA is a writer, producer and comedian who got her start as a baby model. Her work has appeared in Dossier and Atlanta Style & Design magazine. She has performed stand-up at the Punchline in Atlanta and at the Metropolitan Room in New York and co-hosted the No Rules radio show with comedian Stu Levine. She is a graduate of Syracuse University Crouse College of Art and the High School for the Performing Arts where she majored in Drama. Gianna lives with her cat Clementine in Brooklyn in order to be closer to good bread and cannoli. She is gluten-free intolerant, enjoys the 3rdperson format of biographies and blogging on giannamessina.com.
EXPERIENCE Brooklyn Reading Works, the reading series that has been called "The best place to chase fiction with a bit of history" by Conde Nast Traveler. "Once a month you can hear writers discuss themes ranging from "Make Mine a Double" - on women and drinking - to books by war veterans."
BRW is a great night out for anyone who wants to be entertained and enlightened by acclaimed and emerging authors, and meet others who enjoy the same.
A $5 donation includes refreshments and wine.
The Old Stone House
336 Third Street
Between Fifth and Fourth Avenues
Park Slope, Brooklyn NY 11215
Due to construction in the park, enter from the Fourth Avenue side of the house.
Labels: Stage and Screen
Seminar, the play by Theresa Rebeck, that I finally went to see---is trite but well acted and funny at times.
It is both a screed against the vanity of writers and a celebration of their spirit.
There is not much going on in this play. But I do like the use of language.
A choice was made to not hear any of the writing being talked about. Too bad. So much could have been written on the written-but-never-read pages that would have revealed character.
I think this play wants to be profound. However, it has the soul of a sitcom.
On the other hand, it is intelligent enough to be better than a lot of other things we are forced to sit through in midtown.
Jeff Goldblum is good. So are Jerry O'Connell, Justin Long, Zoe Lister-Jones and Hettienne Park.
Sam Gold directs it very clearly and very well.
Scene transitions were weak. Not dark enough and the actors were not still enough for the comic quick lights up bumps to work.
In the end, there is a happy ending. Too bad. It gets so soft, one realizes there was nothing hard there to begin with, even though it pretended to be so.
A bunny in tarantula's clothing.
Of course, I'm jealous. But isn't the root of all criticism competition?
I want to sauerkraut wrestle with Theresa Rebeck. But I'd let her win. Because she's a girl. (I think she'd get this joke…)
Funded but yet not...
http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/funded-but-yet-not-7/
We saw it.
We loved it.
We watched him die and then rise from the dead.
Singing the whole time.
Look---
It was the night before Easter and all through the house
Not a savior was stirring, I just have to grouse,
The eggs were not dyed, nor was ham in the air,
We went and got twofers, at the booth in Times Square…
I'll stop now because it is 3AM and I have to drag my tired lapsed ass to bed.
(Can something that never really was be lapsed?)
Okay, I have to drag my familial historical Catholic ass to bed.
But before I do, let me say this—
These wacky talented Canadians, via La Jolla Playhouse, directed by Des McAnuff, most of them making their Broadway debuts, were frigging fabulous.
The set was like the inside of a black and silver Motorola Android phone. Big on the Superstar part. Jesus countdown news crawling across a horizontal crawler (in lights, you know, like news)…fun as hell. (As heaven?)
Jesus played it all caged animal-like.
Judas was played by the understudy. Amazing voice.
Jesus, too---amazing singer.
Mary M, not as well.
I loved this music as a kid and I still do. It's modern chords, with rock music and it's sort of nasty good crucifixion fun.
As Joan Didion penned, "We tell ourselves stories in order to live."
At the end of the play, the words of the Gospels, lit up, crawled all over the set, moving across so you could almost read them, filling the walls. Like, this Jesus death set the tongue waggers on fire. It was powerful, moving. Not just for the Gospels but because, fundamentally, people must write and say so much stuff in order to craft their way out of the madness.
But moving away from Joan and Jesus, really---it's about the music. Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber (Who once asked a friend, "Why do people take an immediate dislike to me?" and the friend answered, "Because it saves time.")—Sir A.L.W., in my opinion, wrote his best music here, mostly because the chords here are closer and the rhythm structures more contrapuntal than in anything else he has put together.
Jesus be damned, I like a good rock opera. Ann Margaret rolling in beans, what-have-you…
http://www.superstaronbroadway.com/
Posted by Don Cummings at 12:24 AM 0 comments
Tis the Season to Eat Brisket, Fa la la la la la la la la
May your Easters, Passovers, Full Moons, Tulip Worshiping Days be full of color and surprising shenanigans.
I, for one, am not eating peeps nor waiting around for Easter Bunnies. Though we are going to a Seder where the dress code is "barnyard animal attire."
Thank goodness I have a closet full of moo-moos.
May Christ rise over your house and drop a bucket of money on it.
And remember: though there are a myriad of belief systems, they all boil down to one thing: Brisket.
Except for the Islamic Peoples. But that could change.
Labels: Home n Hearth
We saw ONCE tonight.
http://oncemusical.com/
Deal is, we love the movie. The simplicity. And they did not muck it up beyond atrocious. Though, they did change the "Girl" role into a plucky pixie savior in a much more obvious way than the movie did. Like Santorum, the powers-that-be mucked with the integrity of the woman more than the man.
Remember when you used to say, "I loved the book. The movie wasn't as good?"
Now it's, "I loved the movie. But I didn't like the musical as much."
The play grew on me by the middle of Act II. It's always fantastic to hear extremely talented musicians musish.
The actors on stage played all the instruments, and well. Steve Kazee and Cristin Milioti as the leads were lovely, if not really in any way that hot for each other.
The new musical arrangements worked well for a live audience. I did not enjoy the silly dancing here and there…part River Dance, part Spring Awakening.
Is it worth seeing? I don't know… It's slow. Maybe a little too slow. I actually would not have minded the slowness had the director and writers brought out more of the true dilemma of these two…which would be real vulnerability in a tough world and the tough situation they have with each other, not being available for relationship while falling in love. The writers (producers?) forced gag lines into the first act, pandering to the audience, which did not help to develop the tone they needed to make this truly effective. Sad, that.
There were some really bad jokes about potatoes and other Irishy stuff. Too bad. Wasn't needed at all.
But I don't go to musicals for the play or for the acting, both of which are often cartoonish. It's about the music. And in this case, the music is pretty superb so I am glad I went.
And since I am 3/8 Irish, I feel these sorts of things in a real way. At least I feel about 3/8 of it.
Ultimately, the movie was better. But you knew that even before you started reading this.
Big Oil is neither Big nor Oil.
Greetings from Pleasant Florida
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