It's Christmas.

Yes, I am aware of the fact that all of you can read a calendar too. But such a festive occasion as the 25th of December should not be relegated to the status of a mere unstated understanding. No, let us proclaim loudly and boldly, in home, church, store, and office, the Yuletide news: CHRISTMAS IS HERE!

I have left the sunny shores of Malibu and returned to the heart of these United States to spend a few weeks in quiet reflection over my first semester in film school. It has been, in the words of W. Somerset Maugham, a doozy.

I begin an ambitious screenplay, my very first drama piece, centered around the tragic romance between a poor Ecuadorian woman and a young American studying abroad. I still regard the idea as a solid concept, but it was not met with great enthusiasm. After four months of struggle, I've decided to set the story aside and search for more fertile, cinematic material.

Likewise, my History of American Cinema and Television Writing opened up new wellsprings of knowledge, but unfortunately also left me a little disillusioned with writers who have come before. In our course, we studied early female great Frances Marion, the versatile writer-director Billy Wilder, television legend and firebrand Paddy Chayefsky, and finally the popular, but ever enigmatic William Goldman, who famously coined the term "nobody knows nothing". All writers won multiple Academy Awards and are considered to be among the best ever to work in the craft. In all honesty, however, I did not find myself particularly gripped by their works or materials. For some reason, I've always felt more drawn towards director-writers, such as Akira Kurosawa, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Terence Malick.

I've learned a lot this first semester, mainly through failures. However, as a wise mentor once advised me, "Do not be afraid of failing. Only be afraid of quitting." And I don't intend to quit. Next semester, I will take three courses: feature film writing, animation writing, and film theory. It will be a jammed-packed semester, as I will also working as a TA for Pepperdine's General Humanities course and trying to ref some soccer games on the side. In all likelihood, I will kill myself, but hey, that's what film school is for.

Now, as previously promised, I've uploaded some photos from my school's Fall Literary Arts Festival, which featured the diverse talents of the students in the graduate program. Some read from their scripts and others acted them out; some showcased short films and still others presented poetry. As for myself, I read an essay regarding a very difficult experience in Ecuador.

Enjoy the pictures; I will upload my essays later in the week.


Myself, reading a story of Ecuador

 

The jovial John Burd and many-talented Kimberly Aronoff



Comedy Instructor Dick Blassuci, John Burd, and our resident Texan, Trey Selman




Subtle genius Michael Costner and my dear friend Christine Pechera




Three actors in preparation (classmates Karl and Blaine sit center and right)




The inspiration and caretaker of our program, the lovely Doctor Leslie Kreiner Wilson.

Right now, I am sitting in the lounge of the International Studies and Languages division at Pepperdine. It is overcast and raining outside (2nd time in my first four months), with a decidedly un-Californian chill upon the air. And I love it. Oh Missouri, I miss your clime!

I am writing this update because I have finally wrapped up work on the first draft of my first screenplay here at Pepperdine. It has been a long, arduous, and mistaken-ridden trek through this first semester of graduate school. I've learned a lot of things along the way: most importantly, that nobody wants to work a 9-5, and then give your two hours of free time and a slice of their hard-earned check just to watch you regurgitate your own emotional musings. In hindsight, this I really got carried away with being the next Krzysztof Kieslowski.



First filmakers' dictum: Movies must be entertaining.

I wish I'd gotten that into my head before I embarked upon my current project. It is a story I care about and have invested a lot of time into, but that in and of itself does not make for a good screenplay. At the very least, a semester of wallowing in structure and plot points has hammered home the fact that movies need to move.

Anyway, I've learned my lesson. In another couple of weeks, I'll return to Missouri for a respite and research for my next project. I will be developing an action-adventure script next semester, along with taking courses in animation and film theory. Hopefully, I've sweated the artiste bug out of my system and can now honestly make stories in the mold of my real, all-time favorite filmmaker:

Mr. Blockbuster himself.

I am entering the final stretch of my first semester in film school at Pepperdine University. Before Christmas break, my screenwriting class handed in the first act of our screenplay. Tomorrow (Thursday), I will turn in my submission to the Fall Literary Arts Festival (FLAF), an annual campus event where writing students from various programs will present portions of their work. I am going to present an essay I wrote about my time studying abroad in Ecuador.

I will post that essay and pictures from FLAF next week. As a little foretaste, however, I am present you with a poem I composed for the 64th anniversary of attack on Hiroshima.


Remembering Hiroshima


I went to Hiroshima on a bullet train,
to see where our bomb fell.
I went with Nobu, my Japanese
friend, brother,
whose island Little Boy scourged.
We laid flowers before the Cenotaph;
Nobu said a prayer, but I surprised myself:
I cried
over 80,000 names I did not know.

They were babies, brothers, sisters, mothers,
paying for sins of fathers,
of generals and politicians, the ones
who always start
what is finished with their people.
Tell me Harry, was this the way it had to be?
Grandmothers, shopkeepers, schoolchildren,
burned like incense on the altar of Peace,
to atone,
to purify,
to cleanse
this island of her sins?

Nobu and I left Hiroshima on a bullet train.
We talked all the way to Tokyo.
We talked of soccer and movies,
of God and politics,
of sushi and cherry blossoms soon to bloom.
We talked for 80,000 who could not,
but we never talked of them.

Today, I shot myself in the crotch with a nail gun.



I'm still not entirely sure how it happened. I flew from LA to Denver yesterday, thankful but in a zombie-state after sleeping seven hours in the previous two days. I stayed up late several nights laboring on the first act of my screenplay; I even continued tweaking it up until an hour before class on Monday. And even when those pages were finally turned in and class concluded, I found myself at home around midnight still needing to pack. Oh, and I had to leave for the airport about 5:00 am. . .

But I made it to Denver by Tuesday afternoon. Today, I went to go work on their house. For those of you who don't know, that home (which my father and grandfather built together in the late seventies) burned to the ground in March. Undeterred even at the age of eighty-eight, my grandfather and uncle began reconstruction in September. Now the house is framed and undergoing finer building inside.

So that was my location when the shooting occurred. I'd been given a circular saw, some 2x4's to cut, and a brief introductory to a pneumatic nail gun. I loaded the ammo and started firing. I got so good, and confident, that I even bent over a crossbeam on the floor and put nails in coming back toward me. Bang, bang, bang, bang...

... whoof.

I fired too close to the edge of the board. The nail ricocheted off, and flew it my leg. In the time it took me to think "wh-", I shouted "ouch" and heard the ping of a nail landing on the other side of the room. Then I felt a sharp pain along the inner part of my leg, where the projectile had been deflected.

All I want to say is thank God for jeans.

I recently had the privilege of attending the Chicago International Children's Film Festival with some students and faculty from my school. It was an amazing experience, not only to get to hang around Chicago for a weekend but to watch a boat-load of short films (and a few features, too). There was plenty there that I considered sub-par in terms of quality of execution; even some pieces I was shocked made it into the festival. But there were also some real gems in the mix.

This was one of the gems, and probably my favorite film from the whole four-day venture. It's called "Lost and Found", made by the up-and-coming London based Studio Aka. The characters, sets, colors, and lighting are all gorgeous, which is impressive considering the more simplistic look of the film (and the budget used to produce it; minuscule compared to what it would have cost Pixar or Dreamworks). But the story is really what sets this film off from just about every other 3D short I've seen. Based on a book by Oliver Jeffers, this 25 minute adaptation tells the story of a young boy who finds a penguin on his doorstep, and sets out on a journey to bring it back to its home. The whole thing is wonderfully told by Jim Broadbent with just the right amount of narration without being too overbearing. I won't give anything further away; I'll simply say that film is truly an all-around brilliant piece which had me near tears at the end. Watch it.

Trailer on Youtube:


-Jesse

I am sitting in a public library right now, staring out at another sunny California noonday. Children are running around me, laughing and pulling books off shelves. I can't keep myself from a sigh and a smile.

It is good to be around kids.

Four years I spent in Orange City, Iowa at a liberal arts college. It was one of the best times of my life, studying, eating and living with over a thousand peers. I developed many deep friendships that I know will last a lifetime. But it was good to graduate, because I realized over those four years I was living in a bubble. Thirteen hundred 18-22 year olds on a campus is artificial.

Now I am back in a similar situation. Although I do not live in Malibu (got no Daddy Warbucks to foot the bill), I do spend an inordinate amount of time among other young people, especially fellow cinemaphiles. The community is rich and rewarding, but sitting here in this library I know that circle of friends is also artificial. How many average members of society spend their nights studying the films of Francis Truffaut or wondering about the sociological impact of Captain Kangaroo?

Not so in a public library. Book here people actually want to read; the clerks have a high school diploma, not a masters in library science; and best of all, children feel no inhibition to shout and run and leave mini-disasters in their wake. Right now, I am feeling energized. And I am missing home.

Funny the things a public library can do.

I intend to post another full-length, action-packed, enticing blog tomorrow, but for now I'll throw a delicious morsel to all my faithful readers. Below is a video our MFA program produced for a healthy spot of self-promotion. I am featured in the middle.

Please enjoy!