All these wonderful things

Sundance 2006: It's Brokeback, Bitch

It's very late at night (early morning) on my first day in Park City and I'm in the hot tub with two of my condo-mates. Inside the condo are five guys, strangers all, two of whom were invited by other condo-mates for purposes of commingling, three of whom have tagged along for purposes only they can truly know (other hot chicks? free booze? all-night party?) - imagine their surprise that it's just the six of us and a single bottle of scotch. Finally, one of the three non-invited guests can take it no more and begins to put the full-on move on one of the girls - his shirt is off, his hands deep inside her jeans - and she shimmies and grooves her way away from him.

Finally, something draws this guy out onto the deck and he talks to those of us in the condo for the first time.

"It's Brokeback, bitch."

We inaudibly voice a collective, "huh?"

Third Round of Shoot Pictures

Starting to get re-organized enough that I could post a few of the photos from last week's (and the week before) shoot:

Wyatt and I in Seattle's Gas Works Park, setting up a time lapse shot of evening arriving over Lake Union.

Wyatt and Charles during our shooting in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood.

Seattle & Olympia, Day Fifteen

Spent Tuesday waiting for the weather to clear. But more about that in a second.

The second round of shooting went extremely smoothly, despite some concerns that our way of working (shoot, move, shoot, move) would be more difficult in the city environs of Seattle. While this was true to an extent (parking seeming to be a constant discussion), everyone on the crew was in such a groove that we were able to make the transition.

It was interesting to shoot the film sequentially as we have, starting in Aberdeen, before moving to Olympia and, finally, Seattle, and to pay attention to how there are certain elements that repeat and others that morph and change. The sense of these three places as characters in their own right is a big part of this film, and I feel like we were able to capture a true sense of that in our work and travels.

Second Round of Shoot Pictures

This week, we begin the second part of our shoot in Seattle. Here are some more pictures from the first round in Aberdeen and Olympia:

Gearing up for a steadicam shot at Aberdeen High School.

Producer Shirley Moyers in the Aberdeen High School gymnasium making calls.

Charles Peterson photographs two Aberdonians outside the episcopal church on Sunday morning.

Wyatt, with camera, on a boat on the Wishkah River.

Our faithful crew - Ian, Greg, Neil and Bob - standing by at the Little River Mill outside Hoquiam.

Production assistants Raphael and Cole at the Little River Mill.

On a ridge as you enter town overlooking the soon-to-be-closed Weyerhaeuser Mill.

Kendl, Joe & Judd from the Pasties with me at the practice space in Olympia.

First Round of Shoot Pictures

Our intrepid production assistant (and all-around documentarian) Eddie sent me some of the photos that he took on the shoot the past couple weeks. I hope he won't mind if I post some of them here. More from my own collection and others will be forthcoming.

Sunday morning in a bit of rain with coffee and very little sleep, shooting portraiture shots with Charles Peterson.

Charles Peterson, far left, and myself in downtown Aberdeen.

Seattle, Day Nine

More of a half day really. Some of the shots we were hoping to get this morning had to be pushed to our next shoot, as the fog and low visibility made shooting impossible, but we did get some stuff this afternoon, including footage on the Seattle-Bremerton ferry. (One passenger informed us "(Kurt) was never in Bremerton. At least no one told me about it.")

Did some driving around earlier today with Shirley and Wyatt and Forest looking at locations for the Seattle portion of the shoot, and will work with Heather, my location manager, tomorrow. Then it's back to Los Angeles for a couple of weeks to regroup and attempt to re-calibrate.

Pretty exhausted tonight, fairly incapable of composing complete thoughts. The past two weeks are such a blur at this point, and my various trips to Seattle are running together in my brain.

Aberdeen, Day Six

Yesterday (Thursday) concluded the Aberdeen portion of our shoot, and while we might be back for pick-ups early next year, we feel really good about what we've been able to capture over the past six days.

We've attempted to show the places that had some influence on Kurt Cobain's life, while at the same time trying to show the place that Aberdeen is right now, all facets, and what it is to live and grow up there. One of the cool things that happened was that we found this guy Cole who grew up in Aberdeen (and still lives there) who participated in our first shoot day at the high school - he's now joined our crew and has been an indispensable help to us. We thought at first that he'd just help out a few days in Aberdeen, but he's coming along to help us this weekend in Olympia.

Mid-day yesterday the local Aberdeen paper, the Daily World, ran a great article about the production. There's a nice photo of Wyatt and Forest and me lining up a shot in the library. It was nice to see it, mostly because it further enforces the notion that this is actually happening - that may sound strange, but when you've thought about a project for as many years/months as I have, you love to see any "proof" that you're doing it (as if the crew, trucks and cameras weren't enough).

Aberdeen, Day Five

The last couple of days have been really great. We are starting to get into the zone of production where six hours of sleep feels like plenty and the mornings go fast and suddenly it's sundown.

Yesterday, we began our day on a boat traveling the rivers around Aberdeen. Even though it had been in the mid-50s the two previous days and the weatherman was predicting more of the same, it ended up being in the high-20s as Wyatt and Forest (our assistant cameraman) and I traveled with our excellent guide and pilot Damon up the Chehalis River.

Later in the day, we arrived at the last house Kurt lived in in Aberdeen, the same house that Nirvana officially calls "the birthplace of Nirvana" according to the recent box set. The house is owned by a very nice guy who lives up in British Columbia and he came down so that we could film inside. Seems the house has been vacant for a while and has been boarded up - in that period squatters have come in and pretty much wrecked the interior. Based on Kurt's own descriptions of the house at the time he lived there (among other things he called it a very smelly, odorous place), you didn't know whether to feel sad or feel that it was appropriate that the house was in bad shape, with trash and fetid matter all over the floor.

Already Started

Returned home to Los Angeles after a five-day location scout/test shoot in Washington State. We flew up to Seattle on Tuesday (flying out of the Burbank airport, which would be ground zero for the big news story a day later) and got settled in with our 14 cases of camera equipment. Having previously been self-contained to my carry-on bag and single camera case, this was a new logistical puzzle to contemplate on nearly every move.

On Wednesday, we all loaded into a couple of vehicles and drove south to Olympia, where we wandered the downtown streets, shot a bit of test footage and generally tried to get our bearings. First days often seem like this, it takes time just to get yourself into the proper rhythm. Also, for me, figuring out the proper coffee schedule was key - too much in the AM and I'd crash by 3, too little and I'd crash by 11. But once the systems were coordinated, we were off, and we were officially rolling film. It wasn't until later the following day that I realized that this was a moment to celebrate.

Pairing Down/Gearing Up

While I haven't written about it very much, the past few weeks have been intensely devoted to working on my upcoming Kurt Cobain documentary. Following my advance scout of Aberdeen, Olympia and Seattle in July, I spent much of the month combing through Michael Azerrad's audio interviews with Kurt, more than 24 hours in total, trying to pair the material down to feature film length. After meeting me in Seattle last weekend to scout locations and meet with the composers, Michael joined me here in Los Angeles and together we came up with a rough track that runs about an hour and forty minutes. I will work to shave 10 or more minutes from that, and will likely move things around and add some new stuff in.

This part of the process can be really frustrating. On Gigantic, trying to get down to our final hour and forty minute run time was excruciating. Not because the material was so fantastic and we couldn't figure out what to cut, but because it was so difficult to see the material clearly after working with it for such a long period of time. But working with Michael, and also my having more experience doing this, has made this time really enjoyable and streamlined for me.