Writing with regularity

It's nearly the end of January and I find myself suffering from a lack of completion. At least where my writing is concerned. Sure, I've managed to write and direct a three-minute film and work on 12 of my classmates' films (yes, I CAN tell you what a gaffer actually does), but my writing has suffered. I have notebooks and notebooks of ideas, but nothing concrete, just lots of story outlines and snippets of dialogue and the first pages of much longer ideas.

My best friend Karin thinks I should write a book about going to Columbia called "The Narrative Year," all about my efforts to try and be a narrative filmmaker rather than an experimental filmmaker, which I find far more intuitive. But how could I even start such a project when I can't even keep up on writing a blog?

One of the fun things about film school is appearing in classmates' films. So far this semester I've played a slut who is cheating with her best friend's boyfriend, an insane professor, a bisexual who is cheating on her girlfriend and is stabbed to death, a girl who steals $100 from her roommate to buy a Christmas tree, a bitch girlfriend who is mad at her boyfriend for losing tickets to the Nutcracker, someone who is randomly making out with her boyfriend at the library, the girlfriend of a hustler, and tomorrow I get to do my first nude scene! Okay, not really. But when my friend Lisa asked me to be in her film, the first thing I asked her jokingly was, "Do I get to be naked?" And her response? "Yeah, how did you know?" Actually, the film is about a one night stand and I am the girl in bed. So I don't REALLY get to be naked, just naked from the shoulders up. Right about now is when I wish I had a tube top.

I wonder why I am often cast as the slutty girlfriend. I asked Proferes, my directing professor last semester, why and he said, "Well, as [Elia] Kazan always said to me, 'you can't hire someone as an actor unless they have already lived part of the role.'" To which I replied, "So what are you saying, Nick? That I'm a slut?" And his response, "Well, if the shoe fits..." Yes, it seems I came to Columbia to be insulted by my professors.

So, for the three of you who read my blog, I thought I'd attach a couple of YouTube links so you can get an idea of the kind of films I am working on these days. They're crappy and made pretty quickly, but they'll give you an idea.


This is my film noir that I shot entirely out of sequence in 3 hours. I like my production design MUCH better than the performances.


This was the first short film I made at Columbia. It was also the first time I used a digital camera, worked with actors or edited on Final Cut Pro. The soundtrack is a Nouvelle Vague cover of Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough."

Eventually, I'll get the film I made over Christmas holiday up here too.