Twelve years later...

So that was Niki and I walking down the isle twelve years ago this past Sunday, December 28th.

"Just Married..." as they say.

Funny thing is, we still feel that way.  We spent our anniversary with our babies for the first half of the day, then Niki's Mom came over to watch the kids so Nik and I could have the afternoon to ourselves.

We went out for lunch at a pub.  We bought her some Lulu pants and got mine hemmed.  We walked the streets of downtown Oakville.  Bought a bottle of our favorite wine.  Went grocery shopping.  Had a wonderful time.

Like a couple of old married folk.

As we drove I asked her to hit me with some of her favorite memories from the past twelve years.  She talked about the babies, our first place with Gord and Michelle, our early vacations, all the traveling we did in our twenties, setting up all our different houses, mentioned that she still feels like she's "playing house".

I talked about planting our Church and the first Sunday we cracked 200 and I knew we were going to be okay, my favorite chair in our first place and all the books I read sitting there with her, the first seven minutes into the first screening of my first feature-film and feeling that the audience was 'there' with us, our many trips together, dinners outside, and just sitting in our Muskoka (Adirondack) chairs together in the warm season.

So many memories.

She mentioned that in some ways it feels like we've been together forever and at other times she feels like it was just yesterday.

Like she's losing track of time.

I hooked on that for her anniversary card.  Remember what they say about time?  They say it flies when you're having fun.

Like us.

How is this applicable to you?

Well if you're thinking about getting married, or wondering why you got married, or just feeling a bit tired of the journey may we (gently) remind you that marriage can be a wonderful thing.  If you work at it, cultivate it, pour your heart and soul and dreams and body into it, it can turn out just fine.

Keep your wife the zenith of your desire and you'll be alright.  Orient your life around each other and you'll do fine.  Pursue the 'death of self' and the life of her and you'll survive.  Keep grabbing at her and showering with her and talking to her and dating her and making her breakfast and doing the things she likes to do and you just might thrive.

The point is that perseverance is everything.  Focus.  Training your entire life to the betterment of an other.

That's marriage.

It only works if you do it like that.

If you don't, you'll probably hate your life.

If you do build your life with that kind of focus you'll find yourself alive and well.

Needless to say (for this forum) that same kind of devotion 'plays' in your work as a Church Planter or a Movie Maker or a _____________ .  

Make a habit of self-examination.  Check your attitude each day, check your passion, check your focus, check your work ethic.  Make sure you're pouring yourself into your partner and into your offspring (if applicable) and into you work.

The whole deal with this 'life less ordinary thing' is that it's lots of hard work.

But, we're here to remind you (twelve years later) that there is a payoff.

Big time.

(should'a seen how good she looked later that night...)

Happy Anniversary.

Todd and Niki Cantelon

xo

T

For unto us...

Well, Merry Christmas blog readers.

Every time I check this site I'm amazed to see where all you readers are coming from.  I find myself wondering who you are, what your life's about, how you found SFS and what, in each particular case, you 'get' from your visits.

I was reading my first post recently and it's quite the thing to see the progression.  What's most interesting (for me) is to watch the comments start appearing and then the visitors arriving by ones and twos.  I remember being told in first-year marketing that 'word of mouth' is the best kind of marketing and that most of us promptly forget that fact the second we find ourselves with something to market.  Just over a thousand of you stop by each month so somebody must be talking to somebody...

I started writing this here blog right in the middle of what was, at the time, the most difficult phase of my personal/professional life that'd I'd ever endured.  I realize that can sound melodramatic, but from my perspective things were looking pretty bleak.

I'd resigned from my Church (a Church my wife and I had planted in January 2001) and found myself, all of a sudden, with no audience, no outlet for my 'communicative urge' and very few prospects of that vacuum every correcting itself.  Sure, I was working as a Director but there's a big difference between speaking to a thousand or so people (cumulative) each month and working on one piece of communication over the course of two years.

(to say nothing of the fact that my salary was a big fat goose-egg...)

Just not the 'rate of return' I'd been used to.

Anyway, I was driven to start writing by an almost physical urge to communicate something to someone.

I felt like my 'something' was a strange fusion of pulpit and screen and that this blog might be an honest chronicle of my struggles (personally and professionally) as I fought to find meaning in life and a way to encapsulate said meaning in the things I produced.

Things have changed somewhat since I started writing.  For one thing there are now 102 posts where, at first, there were none (they're worth visiting sometime...) For another, my life has filled up considerably with work that--strangely enough--is all about communicating meaning and hope for the screen.

(and--thank God--my salary's not currently a goose-egg...)

2009 looks like a very interesting year both in TV and feature-film making for me and those with whom I work.  I'm looking forward to continuing to share that process with you and I will continue to hope that you 'get' something out of your visits.

The above shot is last night at our house.  Niki and I were just about to hit the sack, our babies already asleep waiting for Santa.  I figured I'd snap a quick shot, naturally lit, to commemorate Christmas 2008, a Christmas where, against all odds, my wife and I had the means to buy gifts and food for our babies who slept peacefully in a house we can afford to own and heat and light.

A photo that says in less than a thousand words that we have been provided for, are being provided for, and shall be provided for.

"For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulders and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace..."

The Provider.

Happy Christmas everybody.

With love and respect.

T

Where I work...

Thought some of you might like this.  A shot of the neighborhood in Vancouver (Yaletown) where I spend most of my time.  Our 'studio' (a tiny, very humble, glorified 'office' really) is just up the street from where I took this shot.

I took this while on a walk with my wife and babies back in October.  It was a lovely Saturday morning and the light was just right.

I figured I should post a little peace and happiness after my last harangue.  

'Cause sometimes you're stuck on a plane next to two hacking men (and their cold feels like it's starting to catch on in my throat just now...) but sometimes...

You're walking with your loved ones in the sun.

Life's not all one thing.

It's an assembly.

(and, of course, an 'assembly' is what you call the first cut of a film and a '[sacred] assembly' is what a Church service is sometimes called, so the analogy fits our focus here at SFS...)

Piece by piece, you stick at it and--eventually--end up seeing something beautiful built in the midst of it.

So, if you're a little on the 'bleak' side of things today, take a second to notice the light in that shot and then take a moment to find the light within you.

It's there.  I guarantee it.

Just search.

T

All I can smell is humanity...

So the blog's been dormant for a couple days.

Sorry 'bout that.

Here's why...

Thursday last, I had to fly to Calgary to interview Preston Manning, founder of Canada's Reform Party, which today has morphed into our governing party.

For three days previous I'm busting my hump to try and book flights.  Impossible.  Sure, I can find flights there, but back to Toronto, days before Christmas?  No chance.  

The interview with Preston is for a special we're shooting Jan 10th called 'Right is Right' that'll explore the impact the 'religious right' has had on the Canadian political scene.  The idea is to see if the RR's influence is waxing or waning.

Anyway, Preston will be the key guest.

So, we HAD to get there.

Ended up booking my Director and I there on WestJet direct, first thing in the morning.  Our crew flew out from Vancouver to meet us.  No worries.  The way back though required that I fly my Director, business class, back through Winnipeg to Toronto.  I got to fly economy through Chicago to Toronto so that we could save $800.  My Director HAD to be back as early as possible to get some last-minute editing done before the Christmas break and the business class flight got him home earlier in the day so we ate the $800 for him 'cause it was one of two available seats.  I got the other one, through Chicago.

Anyway...

We're getting ready to shoot the Manning interview.  All our gear's ready to go and our DP gets a text from Air Canada on her iPhone saying that if you're planning to fly east Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday you'd better go tonight or else.

And they were going to switch you for free so long as there was space on the planes.

So, we rush out of there, fighting our way through Calgary rush hour (minus 25 degrees outside, roads still snow covered a week after a storm 'cause they don't bother salting the roads when it's that cold outside...) and get to the airport 31 minutes before our flight.  Turns out they DID have space.

Karl, my Director, got 3A in business class.  I got 21E in steerage, wedged between two dudes. Two dudes who coughed and hacked the whole five hours to Montreal.

Yes, Montreal.

(I was not a happy camper...)

We were supposed to arrive at 11:30pm but, because it was Air Canada (who I've refused to fly for nearly eight years 'cause they suck so bad...) we didn't arrive 'till 1:15am.

Lovely.

We get our luggage, head back up to departures to try and check in for our 5:00am flight to Toronto.  Yup, 5:00am.  There are three people in front of us waiting to check in.  The first person finishes.  The attendants pack up and leave.  

"Sorry, we don't do 24-hour check in, you'll have to come back at 3:30am..."

Friggin' french people.

That's how I felt, for real.

So instead of the 'comfy' carpets and waiting lounge chairs at the gate we got to wander the concrete wasteland of Trudeau airport for half and hour 'till we found a corner to crash.  Tried to sleep for a couple hours.  Kept getting woken up by arriving crew and...

Two thousand Quebecers flying to Cuba.

Seriously.

3:00am, we get up, and are surrounded by a howling mass of humanity trying to get checked in for their southbound flights.

We head back to the Air Canada counter.  No one's there.  Wait a half-hour 'till they arrive to check us in then head to clear security.  No-one's there either.  We have to wait in line for an hour ('till 4:30am) or face losing our place in line to the Cuban hordes.  

4:45am they let us through security.  5:00am we board, but because it's Air Canada, we don't lift off 'till 6:00am and we're supposed to be in Toronto by 6:15am.

You can see where this is going.

We arrive in Toronto, and because it's Air Canada, they can't get the gate to the plane so we hang out for another thirty minutes--or maybe it was the Montreal flight that happened on.

At least they didn't lose my luggage.

(Oh wait, I only had carry-on 'cause damned if I'm THAT stupid.  It was eight years ago, but I haven't forgotten...)

By the time I got home I'd been awake and on the road for 30 hours!

Merry Christmas.

But, Chicago is still shut down.  If I hadn't endured the 30-hour trip home, I'd likely still be cooling my heels in Chi-town instead of happily ensconced at home with my family and the nearly three feet of snow that's fallen since the morning I got back.

All for Preston.

All for the show.

All for the career.

All for the family.

The SFS point being that sometimes you just gotta' knuckle down and do what you need to do to get the thing done so that you can keep moving forward regardless of how difficult or distasteful that 'thing' is.  And that kind of tenacity is almost a requirement if you want to operate at a level that's anything past the mundane.  As if 'discomfort' just goes with the territory.

Suck it up Todd.  Suck it up.

I did tell my Executive Producer we have to give some serious thought to business class next time though because...

All I could smell was humanity.

T

My conversation with an Icon...

Thought some of you (or your grandparents) might get a kick out of this one.  The show won't air for some weeks, but what's the point of showrunning your own series if you can't post some bootleg footage on your personal blog?

That's Dr. Robert Schuller, founder of 'The Crystal Cathedral' right there.  For those of you who are, perhaps, less saturated in the 'faith market', Robert Schuller is, after Billy Graham, probably the best-known, most influential TV Preacher in modern history.

He is to the faith-based market, what Stephen Spielberg is to film.

I read his biography when I was a teenager and his story of entrepreneurial spirit mixed with a spiritual motivation and the desire to make a positive impact on people living in a dark World had a HUGE impact on me, and my journey.

It was a thrill to interview him.

I hope I don't come across as starstruck (on-camera) as I felt in-person.

Enjoy.

T

need a lift?

Peep this.

T

the simplicity of it all...

No joke, one of the most important tools for the 'stay at home' filmmaker/preacher.

I'm currently listening to Nichole Nordeman's 'THIS MYSTERY' on the above FANTASTIC headphones, a Christmas gift from my Executive Producer/Business Partner and friend, the ever so lovely Mr. Tore Stautland (thanks Tore...) and, seeing as I'm fresh off John Mayer and Kanye's blogs I figured I'd post a 'thing' of my own that I'm currently thankful for.

Bose earphones.

The backstory on these is that I've wanted a pair for five years and haven't bought 'em.  I have circled the Bose store and Best Buy like an addict circling a fix, never actually closing the deal.

"Why don't you just buy 'em?"

Kinda' like my wife telling me I should just go out and BUY a friggin' flat screen TV already.

Yes, I'm a filmmaker, with an old-and-busted Toshiba 36inch tube set that just kicked the bucket (that we bought used for $150).  We tried for three or four weeks to watch the thing with no remote (the 'universal' one we bought didn't work too well--"...Sorry, this TV is SEVEN YEARS OLD, none of our codes will work...") but seeing as you can't manually switch to TSN (Canada's version of ESPN--and 'hello' to my Australian and East Asian readers...) and seeing as it's December in the NFL and seeing as both Sunday night football and Monday night football are on TSN we just couldn't have that, now could we?

So I was circling flat screens last month.

Couldn't bring myself to buy one though.

Part of the problem is that we're waiting to be renewed for 2009 on two of the TV series I produce which means any capital expenditure is strictly forbidden right now and part of it is I don't want to buy something of that magnitude unless I really LOVE it and that means a SAMSUNG 52inch Series 7 120hz model and that means I not only need a renewal but a RAISE.

'Cause the $800 Zenith at COSTCO just wouldn't cut it long-term.

So, instead of buying something just for the sake of buying it, I drove to my in-law's and 'borrowed' their ten year old 27inch SONY tube set.  Thing's so heavy, I could barely get it to the car then into our house.

Great picture and awesome sound though AND it pulled in TSN.

The point here is not consumerism.

The point is I'm turning into my GRANDPARENTS.

I was at my brother in-law's house this past weekend in Montreal wearing a sweater he gave me ten years ago.  He can't believe I still have it and wear it.  It's a great sweater, why should I replace it?  Then I looked at our 13 year old coffee grinder this morning, still happily ensconced in it's original cardboard packaging.  I thought to myself, looking at it, that Niki and I might still have that same grinder when we're as old as my grandparents.  Then I took out our 12 year old african coffee mugs and thought about the flashy new Christmas ones I didn't buy for my wife at my local Vancouver Starbucks last month and I realized...

That I'm turning into my GRANDPARENTS.

They kept everything.  Seemed  to always be content with what they had (both grandfathers were car freaks who treated their K-Car and Buick [respectively] as if they were Bentleys. Never saw nicer specimens of either...) never got rid of something that worked just 'cause they were bored with it and didn't have more than three dressy outfits.  I still remember my grandma's reaction when grandpa bought her a real fur coat.  Her one unrestrained luxury.

Seeing as grandma just turned 100 and, therefore, isn't 'out' too much, the coat has gone to my mom.  She came by in it the other day, had had it cleaned and repaired a bit, and the thing looked like a million bucks.

Just like it did on my missionary grandma.

And I'm realizing as I write this that we might all be better off to be a bit more like our Zenith-watching grandparents.

"Credit crunch?  What credit crunch?  You don't by it unless you can afford to pay cash for it."

That's what they'd say.

Maybe we should all be more like our grandparents.  

Do your grandparents grow their own veggies?  My wife's Nonna and Nonno do.  Do your grandparents read their Bibles more than they watch Desperate Housewives?  My Grammie and Poppa do.  Did your grandparents build a cottage with their own hands?  Is it still standing?  (yup)  When was the last time you built something with your hands?

The other point is that I don't think you should settle.

In life, as with flat screen TV's, you should do (get) the thing you know you should do.  That means you must always STRIVE for what you know is right.

(and an eye to the inner-life to make sure one is not lusting after the wrong TV is also good...)

And I'm not advocating becoming some stupid perfectionistic dick who's never satisfied, or an out of control 'artist' or a tyrannical 'super-pastor' or an impossible boss.  I'm just thinking that you shouldn't connect your happiness or satisfaction to an outside event.

You should know what's right and that should be enough.

Don't buy mugs 'cause you're lonely.  Think of your wife and hurry home.  Don't buy a Zenith 'cause you have room on your card.  Save for the Samsung.  Don't rush the scene to make your day but don't force an extra run of fussy coverage into it either.  Never (NEVER) shortchange an exegetical pass but make it so that your audience doesn't notice the work you did.

It's about humility.

Not the kind that most people think of (the 'oh I'm so meek and mild, might as well call me Mary...' kind) the kind that isn't fussy.  The kind that knows good from bad, that doesn't care about flash and pomp. The kind that rightly assesses personal value in self and others.

The kind that thinks of self (no matter how impressive your credits) as 'Just one of God's water boys...' as my Dad used to say.

The kind of humility that recognizes that we don't DESERVE anything, that everything is gift.

That K-Car?  A gift.  That ten year old coffee grinder?  Gift.  The money to pay for cable so I can watch Monday Night Football with my boys?  Gift.

Whether I watch the game on a flat screen or not is not going to change the scent wafting upwards from my son's freshly washed hair, nor improve the performance on the field, nor make my wife any more sexy after.  Plus I could afford to buy red wine for after.  Remember when $36 meant six hours (on a Saturday) life guarding?  

Gift.  Gift.  Gift.

It's Christmas season right?

Here's my vote for the simplicity of our forebears in our approach to Noel this year.

Here's to JM's blog being all about baking with his loved ones.

Here's to Kanye remembering his own line ('Cribs' vs 'Kids') from his new album.

Here's to "It's a Wonderful Life" on my simple, used, borrowed, tube TV.

Here's to a wife, some kids, and love for the Maker this Christmas.

Here's to you doing what you do with simplicity, humility, and a thankful heart.

You want some Christmas Spirit?  It's already in you, waiting...

T

Hold my hand...

We're often quick to share our victories and slow when it comes to the defeats.

The whole purpose of this blog is to be transparent about my journey as I exchange the pulpit for the screen, a journey fraught with difficulty, sorrow, challenge, triumph, excitement and joy in the hopes that said transparency might 'speak' into your life, your journey, your difficulties, sorrows, challenges, triumphs, excitements and joys.

So lemme' tell you about my pitch meeting today.

I didn't sleep well last night, as is typically the case when I've got an important meeting.  My Executive Producer picked me up and we got downtown on time--no problem.  We met with the team at the post-production facility to make sure everything was working and seamless. No problem there either.

The network bosses arrived ten minutes late (which is 'on time' in our industry) settled in, got a quick tour, and we rolled the 8-minute reel we'd assembled.  It seemed to connect with them.

Then one of the executives started with her questions.

And I knew, almost right away, that I'd failed to 'make the connection' in the way I was hoping.  

Her eyes weren't alight, she wasn't 'vibing' with me.  I could've called it there and gone home.  I didn't though.  We retired to the boardroom where I had a bunch of snazzy folios done and a cheese plate and some fruit and ice water and...

Network bosses who didn't appear to be feeling the love.

It's hard, this business of peddling dreams.

So, we saw it all the way through, talked it around, shook hands, walked down to the car and my Executive Producer hit me with it...

"Well, that went great didn't it?"  (!)

And he laughed, and I sat there for the next forty-five minutes, deeply glum and feeling like I suck, have no talent and am in the wrong business.

It took me 'till about 4:30pm today to shake it off.

Then things got worse, as staff issues reared their ugly head, and I got the first edit of the new shows we just shot in the new studio, and though they look great, there are audio problems.

Audio problems.

Sigh.  Sigh.  Siiiiigggghhhh...

And so here I sit with the wife, having drowned some sorrow in pralines and cream ice cream with a starbucks oat fudge bar split in two and some egg nog with a wee touch 'o rum in it and the Bears are playing the Saints and we keep reminding ourselves that we need to "Keep Moving Forward..."

We toasted to that.

Keep Moving Forward.

'Cause not every pitch, not ever sermon, not every idea, not every relationship is going to be a slam dunk.

But those who keep at it and keep at it and keep it generally turn out okay.

Here's hopin'...

T

ps: plus COREY FELDMAN is the feature guest on my show this Sunday night and THAT'S pretty cool regardless of how crappy my pitch was...

After effects...

There I am, on-set, filling in the slate, getting ready to shoot take "Only God knows the number we're on..." last week.

It was exhausting.

I try to not be too much of a whiner when it comes to workload etc.  I remember hitting the level where everyone was tired all of the time because they were hustling their butts off trying to find a way to 'make it' in this crazy industry and I just realized that I should stop commenting on my fatigue level.

So I just say, "I'm well..." when I'm alright and "I believe I shall be well..." when things are looking bleak.

Then you have a day like yesterday, where your philosophy/faith butts up against the requirements of your body.  

I got home Sunday, chilled with the family Monday, then yesterday I was supposed to go right back to work.  So we did breakfast, did our coffee, then I came downstairs and tried to start working.  I got through my email and crashed.  Seriously.  I had to stop, walk upstairs and lay down on the couch.  I fell immediately asleep for an hour or so.  

I did that three times yesterday.

Just couldn't go on any longer.

Strange to feel that kind of weakness.  Like at the end of a battle or something.

And that's what the last two weeks have been like for me.  Principally, the issue was shifting our studios.  See, for the past year on the main show I produce we've been shooting at a fabulous mainstream studio in the heart of downtown Vancouver.  It's a pro place full of pro people and pro gear.  You basically walk in, they've already got our set in place, we get the hosts dressed and made up and off we go.

Simple.

And expensive.

Yes we had a great deal.  Yes, the team there were a wonderful bunch (and we do miss them...) but, at the end of the day [as my EP loves to say] we just couldn't afford it.

We had known for some time that a cash crunch was going to hit us later this year and we'd been exploring various options all year long, trying to find the best way through it.  Eventually, my EP and I had a sit down at his office (while our wives and kids hung out upstairs) where we crunched the 'actuals' budget in real time and I did my best to estimate the 'moving forward' budget and we realized that we had to act NOW.

Here's where it gets miraculous (or strange--depending on your worldview...)

So, I get home that night, and while Niki and I are sitting on the couch watching CNN and she's surfing Facebook, I'm on Craigslist looking for office space rentals.  I find like ten of 'em that look like they might work.  Email all ten.

Next day.  I get one response.  The guy sounds nice and his space, in the perfect location, is still available.  BOOM, I book a flight, fly in and out in the same day--see the space and spend the evening working on a mock trailer with my Vancouver editor.

Oh yeah, on the way to the space, I walk through the neighborhood where it looks like we're going to live for the first few months of 2009, just checking it out on-foot to make sure it's 'suitable for the wife', and it turns out to be as awesome as we'd hoped.  

So, I get downtown, to the prospective space.  Meet the owner.  Walk into the space.  Look at it for ten seconds.  Tell him we'll take it.  "What just like that?"  Yeah, just like that.  "But how can you be so sure so quickly?"

When you know, you know.

(and that's near miraculous, finding the 'perfect space' just like that, with one call...)

Fast forward to last week.

I arrive on the Saturday.  Sunday the race begins.  Turning an empty space, with walls in all the wrong places, into a space we can actually use.  Then I find out our set (from the studio) won't fit.  Actually, I find that out AS the movers arrive (I'd been worrying about it all week though). They call me downstairs to see for myself and I'm standing there, in the rain, with a thousand other things [like figuring out how to shoot this...] going on at once all around me, and I have to improvise.

Think, Todd.

So I ask the movers if they can keep the set in storage for a day or so.  They say sure.  I tell my guys to bring in everything that will fit.  They do.  I talk with my associate producer (the brilliant Karl Richter) about the issue, we spitball some solutions, I keep working on getting the space set.  That night he calls me.  

"Yo', it's done."  What do you mean 'done'?  And he proceeds to explain that our Toronto-based Production Designer is going to have one of his west coast guys go to the mover's, take the set apart, pack it, deliver it then rebuild it in our space.

Just like that.

And that's how it went down.

The set came in, got rebuilt, and ended up looking great.

Thanks Jer.  Thanks Karl.

But that's just one of the several dozen crises I had to deal with all week.  Never mind that I had to re-shoot my stand up sequences for 14 of the shows we shot in L.A over the course of two days and never mind that the two days following I had to direct 100 segments for 25 new episodes of the main show I produce and never mind that we were shooting it film style and switching to shooting it ALL in HD (can you say 'render time'?) and introducing two new assistant editors into the mix and a new DP and new shooters...

See, a film set and a TV studio are two different beasts.

To borrow 'preacher speak', a TV set is like a Church building.  It's there, it works, it looks good and does exactly what you need it to do.  You just show up and do your thing.  A film set is like a Church Plant except worse.  You bring everything you're going to need with you, you set it up in a blank space, turning it into the kind of space you're going to need, then when you're done you tear it all down again.

It's crazy.

And you can imagine the things that can go wrong.  Everything you can imagine does, in fact, go wrong, and then some, and as the guy in charge you've got to make sure that the train keeps rolling 'cause not doing it is not an option.

So you push through and you get it done, then you come home and you crash and you feel silly and 'weak' for crashing.

I guess the only SFS 'applicability-oriented' thing I've got to say is:

If you want to do something difficult with your life, remember that it is going to be difficult. Remember to leverage your relationships in such a way that they're going to help you do that difficult thing.  Don't expect your life to be 'normal', 'cause it won't be.  Push yourself as hard as you can when it counts, then listen to your body when you're done, in case you need to take a nap.

'Cause you don't want to push so hard that you push yourself right over the edge.

T

New shizz...

Sittin' in my (our) new studio (it's super tiny and humble), with my Editor to my left and one of my hosts to my right. The set you see is right in front of me.

Four days ago this was a big empty room.

I've been shooting for four days straight at this point.  I'm so burnt that this morning, I was scarfing down an egg sandwich while catching the last few minutes of 'Jerry Maguire' and my wife called.

I was so moved (and so sleep deprived) that I started sobbing--uncontrollably.  I had to tell Niki to give me five minutes and call me back.

That's the cost of show biz-ness my man.

Missing your wife to the point that you dang near lose yo' mind...

I'll post a detailed retrospective in the next couple days.

Peace,

T

Living life in ten-minute increments...

So this is the building that houses our new studio.  You're looking at the corner of Richards and Smithe in downtown Vancouver.  The neighborhood we're in is called 'Yaletown' and is considered one of the best urban neighborhoods anywhere.  The location is totally central to everything and will be a five minute bike ride downhill from our new house.  Pretty neat.

As is always the case, however, nothing is ever easy and our space required a lot of work (that's still ongoing) to get it ready to shoot.  The above shot has our contractor (Stephen--the man--Goldman on the left) arguing with our director (Karl--THE KARL--Richter on the right) while I (in the background) field one of the hundred phone calls I got that day, putting out some fire, working some magic, doing whatever it takes to keep things rolling so that we'd have somewhere to shoot.

Then the crew arrived and we began working to set up for the first round of shooting.  The white wall on your left was one of seven walls that had to be removed.  The black walls are the white walls you see in the second shot. Since the contractor wasn't going to be able to remove them until Thursday morning, we just had to find a way to shoot around them on Wednesday.

And here's the end result.  Me, on-set, having just wrapped the first day.  I'll try to post a little web video for you here so you can see what the real 'end result' looks like.

The thing to realize in all this is the crazy level of madness that we're living through right now. My Executive Producer called me this morning to ask how it was going and my response was, "Well, it's varying degrees of mass mayhem and planet-wide panic..."  Then he freaked out a bit 'cause for me to say it that way means it must be really bad.  I told him to calm down 'cause though it's certainly crazy here, it's a controlled crazy.  Like running a military campaign.

I like that analogy.  If you don't keep moving forward you die.

And that's relevant for you.  

If you don't keep moving forward you die.

So no matter how hard it gets for you today, try to do your best to just keep moving from moment to moment.  I've seriously been living in ten-minute increments this week.  From one ten-minute segment to the next.  Not thinking too far ahead, just focusing on the immediate task at hand, doing what it takes to survive long enough to get to the next ten minutes.

If you do that, almost no matter how hectic the scenario, you'll probably end up being alright.

Take it from me, I'm livin' through it right now.

T

I'm having to pay for it for a really long time...

Okay, so I'm an inveterate pop-culture guy.

Yes I am.

And I like Britney Spears.

So I watched her bio-flick tonight, an hour and a half of it.  What struck me about it was her loneliness and sense of isolation.  Very interesting to see her comment on how long it's taking her to 'pay off' her bad-times-debt.

I feel a deep sense of empathy and compassion for her.

As I walked to the bathroom during a commercial break, here's what struck me.  She had expressed a deep desire for 'normalcy'.  She said that the things she really wants are the little things, "To be part of the people..."  To be able to go for a fall walk.

So two points for us to consider.

1) Once you've got more money than you can ever spend, your desire, sense of need, will transition to whatever it is that you don't have.  We must recognize that a certain 'emptiness' is part and parcel of the human condition.  Recognize what will fill it and what won't.  Remember to keep the things that won't fill it in their proper place and don't allow yourself to move from fixation to fixation.

2) She wants a fall walk.  You get to go for fall walks.  Be thankful for the small graces you have.  Truly, deeply, deliriously thankful for all the little beauties in your life.

She said her fantasy is an island getaway with her babies and a man.

A man.

We're all looking for someone to love us and to love.

If you have found that person, remember to hold hard to them.  Resist your selfish impulses. Stop being a dick.  Love her.  She's glorious.  She could be gone in a flash.  Millionairesses want what you have.

Love her.

Remember that the people around you, those you pass on the street each day, are suffering just like Ms. Spears.  Sure in different ways.  Sure on a different scale.  But pain is pain and the World around you is full of it.

So, if you get to preach next week, remember that pain and remember to find and preach (from your heart) an answer to it and for it.

If you're writing, producing, directing a story, remember that pain and address it.  Show it, speak to it, deal with it, kill it, bring your audience through to the light.

'Cause 'aint nobody as wants to stay sad.

No you, not me, not our girl Britney.

T

The life of a (mini) mogul...

So that's about what my night's looking like...

NFL football in the background, some 'two bite' desserts in the foreground, and a bottle of australian shiraz in the middle of it all.

(no I'm not going to drink the whole bottle tonight)

All I need now is my wife...

Problem is, every time you combine my wife and I with a bottle of vino rosso, you end up with:

Four o' them rats right there.

Yes, I'm back in Vancouver, getting our new studio set up.  That's right, 'our' studio.  We've moved out of our digs at Shaw (and lasting love and respect and thanks go out to the ENTIRE team out there...) to a new spot in the heart of Yaletown, the coolest neighborhood in downtown Vancouver.  

I'll take some shots of it this week and post 'em for you to see.

There are a couple of things that are interesting about this transition that are, I think, SFS worthy.

First, the whole thing of our 'own' space is a 'trip' in and of itself.  For so long (nearly ten years) we've been way on the beggars end of the 'beggars can't be choosers...' spectrum.  We've been living and working in borrowed space on what seemed like borrowed time.  The very 'permanence' of a space that we've leased is a whole other level that I've often thought about but, now that it's here, feels weird.

Part of that is due to the fact that with the space comes a whole host of new headaches (like re-building it, re-powering it, figuring out how to light it, realizing that our set probably won't fit into it, etc...) and that goes to prove to us all, once again, that you never truly 'arrive'--there is no 'OZ' there is no light at the end of the tunnel.  Just another hill to climb.

Granted, said hill is in 'new territory' and that's exiting, but a hill is--after all--still a hill.

Second, whenever you do something for what you think are the right reasons you add heartache to the mix.  What's funny is that we've been working this whole studio angle to SAVE money but, I'm guessing that the very nature of our 'own' space has the people I work with suddenly thinking they can jockey for more money.  It's as if they psychically think that since we're getting our own space we MUST have more money somewhere we're not telling them about that they're determined to get their hands on.

Seriously, I've been fielding non-stop requests for more cash from my people for the past few weeks.  And what gets me down about that (and, some of them read this blog, so it's clearly not a point of 'personal' contention or something that I don't want out in the open) is that I don't have any more to give.  And the issue with that is that it's hard to keep people feeling happy and valued when your tangible ability to give them anything actual is severely limited.

The thing for all of us to consider here is that, ultimately, all the people around us see life ONLY from their own perspective.  And that's not something that ever changes.  Most people (all of us by times) are functioning on the level of 'self-interest' most of the time.  Sure, sometimes we do the right thing just for the sake of doing the right thing but, my sense of it (and, granted, my sense is limited...) is that we do the right thing mostly because we think it will help us out.

And it's okay (or maybe not 'okay' but natural...) to feel like we need to help ourselves because life is hard and we feel scared much of the time as we stare the urge to survive right in the face.

But, man, facing all that self-interest (in myself also) gets tiring and can make you very jaded very quickly and jadedness ultimately leads to loneliness because you feel like it's you against everybody else.

And if you let an adversarial attitude creep in you're in trouble.

The only thing I keep thinking of is that I need to try and stay humble and to give others the benefit of the doubt and to trust the process and (full disclosure) the Lord of the process who (I hope) is leading us in the right direction through it all.

The thing that I've learned sixteen years later (yes, I started doing this when I was 18) is that there's no point stressing too much about all the little things you can't control.  When it comes to showbiz and the business of building a Church or a life or a career the 'thing' you're working towards will generally happen because is HAS to.  If you just keep showing up, keep putting in the hours, keep bringing your talent to bear on the task at hand, keep doing your best in every given situation to do what you know in your heart (and with your mind) is the right thing, you'll generally be okay and the thing you need to have happen will, generally, happen.

It really does come down to hanging around long enough that it just starts happening.

Of course, nobody's going to let you hang around very long if you suck at the thing you're trying to do, but--assuming you're not totally useless--if you can stick it out long enough, you'll generally find yourself advancing as each year goes by.  Looking back you'll find that you know more, have experienced more, have suffered and survived more, have met more people who can positively impact your life and from whom you can learn, and generally you'll find yourself better equipped to do that thing that you've been built to do.

So long as you keep at it.

And keep at it.

And keep at it.

T

Such a hell of a day...

No, not that day.  That day was good.  That's why I'm putting the shot up here.  To remind me. That some days are better than others.  You do actually have a good day once in a while.

Yesterday was not one of those days.

Not a good one.

In fact, it was a hell of a day.  Really.

See, I forget that we're 'cursed'.  "Cursed?  What do you mean cursed?"  Well, I'm referring to the 'Eden Narrative' where our first parents, Adam and Eve, 'fell' into rebellion and were 'cursed' as a result.  All of a sudden, childbirth became much more painful and the Earth would conspire to yield thorns and rocks instead of compliant crops for Adam the farmer.

Basically a God-sized can 'o whup-yo-ass got opened on our parents and things have stayed that way ever since.

Even if you don't believe the old stories (which is totally fine, I'd be less than worth my salt if this blog was read only by people who all believe in a certain way...) you've got to admit that, most of the time, life seems to be much more difficult than we 'feel'--deep down in the guts of us--it ought to be.

It's just so damn hard sometimes.

Like yesterday.

It started out great, I had a wonderful post audio session with my composer putting sound to the pitch video for 'DEATH'S DOOR', the dramatic TV series we hope will be our next big narrative project.  The pitch is going to be powerful.  I'd be very surprised if it didn't make a strong impact on the Network we're pitching.

So I drove home on a cloud then descended to my basement office.

Might as well have been walking down into the abyss.  'Cause all hell's (literally) breaking loose in my talk-TV world.

See, here's the thing, (and these are 'trade secrets') every year around this time my Executive Producer and I get into our 'once a year fight'.  It's typically about money.  The reason is that it's this time of year that we're facing utter destruction on the one hand and an increase in our productivity on the other.

We, literally, might be ten-times busier in 2009 than we were in 2008, and that'd be great and terrifying at the same time.  There's also a chance--and figuring out how great a chance is a constant mind-game--that everything we're doing will fall-through leaving us, essentially unemployed next year.  And I have to plan--actually plan--for both eventualities.  

We all love planning for success, but how about planning for your utter demise?  How'd you like to spend your days doing that?

So You Think You Want To Be A Producer, Canada?

I mean, it's almost ridiculous to think that we could have done all the work we've done this past year to come up with a big 'ol goose egg in return.

Right?

But the thing is.  It's possible.  I remember the garden and that we're cursed.  I think about entropy and the fact that most things never seem to go your way.  I think about all the people out there who'd love to see me take a fall and wonder why they feel that way and shudder to think that I'm the kind of guy who might elicit that kind of reaction in people.  I think about God and His supposed goodness.  I say 'supposed' to let you in on my honest-to-goodness state of mind yesterday.  I'm sitting there, facing it, thinking to myself "Well, you know, really you've got no guarantees.  God didn't promise you a job.  God didn't promise you ease.  And, anyway, you might be deluded with this whole 'God-thing' anyway."

(I don't really think I am, but want to be 100% transparent in this forum re: my internal dialogue)

So I sit there really troubled and concerned.

And the trick is to get past it and get back to work.

You sit with your wife and watch 'So You Think You Can Dance Canada' and you eat some cereal with blueberries and you drink some red wine then you go to bed.  When your baby daughter wakes up at 2:30am you pick her up and carry her to Mommy then leave your bed to the both of them and crawl into the bottom bunk in your older daughter's room and spend a good half-hour trying to stop thinking about all the things you need to do and all the things that seem to be going wrong and all the things that might still go wrong and you, eventually, fall asleep.

Then you wake up troubled.  Not quite grumpy, but very pensive and afraid.  You make breakfast, clean up from it, have a second cup of coffee with your wife then go back down into the abyss to see if you can find some light in the midst of the darkness.

You work your way through in faith.

Believing in something you can't see.

Believing that you've been given what it takes to do the thing you've been given to do.

Believing that, in spite of how bleak everything looks, there will come a day again when the sun shines and the sky blues and the mountains look fake they look so good and you smile crookedly 'cause you know it's good now but probably won't be forever.

And that's life.

Woooo...saahhh...

T

Always learning...

So I'm always learning.

Today I'll be scouring the above book as I prepare for 1) a story meeting tonight 2) a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday of feverish writing 3) a post-audio session Tuesday night and 4) a Network pitch Friday.

The book is all about creating dramatic TV series'.  This next step (providing it actually 'happens'...) is an interesting one for me since most of my 'show business' work has been in talk television series production with one produced feature film under my belt.

So with this new project I'll be mixing my years in talk-TV with my love for the narrative form.

I was reading an online resource the other day, one of those sites that claims to help writers 'make it' in TV, and noticed something about the 'checklist' they'd provided re: the steps necessary to getting your own TV series on the air.

Among the 'must-haves' listed:

1) Strong, long-standing, working relationship with the Network you're pitching to.

2) A proven track-record.

3) A great, or at least 'catchy' concept.

4) An infectious passion for the project.

And the thing that struck me was that I have all those things.  Very strange to find myself in that position.  I remember, like it was yesterday, deciding in 2002 that I was going to start writing for the screen.  I remember buying Syd Field's 'THE SCREENWRITER'S WORKBOOK' and reading it once like a book, a second time with a pen taking furious notes, and a third time doing the exercises and, like he said, I ended up with my first screenplay by the time I'd finished actually working my way through the book.

The script was called 'THREE NIGHTS AT SEA'.  I'll try to post a shot of it for you.

I also remember, Summer 2004, saying to my Dad that I thought it was time to make my break into directing.  Two winters later (Feb 2006) I was on-set directing my first feature-film from a script I'd written.  By that point, 'THE STORM' was the sixth or seventh feature-length screenplay I'd written.

Two years after that, just last month in L.A, I sat in a distribution meeting on said film and I may have some interesting news to report on that front very soon.

The Network that I'm pitching on Friday is one I've had a working relationship with, off and on, for ten full years.  It's only now that I'm in the position, after all of the above, where I have even a snow ball's chance in Cabo of this pitch being anything other than a colossal waste of time.

I was reading on Wordplayer, a wonderful screenwriting community, another post on how 'hard' it is to break into screenwriting.  Terry Rossio (genius screenwriter of 'Alladin', the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' franchise among so many others along with his writing partner Ted Elliot) was, again, saying that if you ever want to actually see your story made you basically need to become a director.

I believed that ten years ago.  It's very funny to be in the place today where it looks like that's starting, just starting mind-you and very tenuously at best, for me.

And that got me thinking, as it often does, about you.

What do you want to do?

Do you already 'know' the gatekeepers in your industry?  Have you been 'part' of their mix for a certain number of years?  If the answer is 'no' then you need to put yourself in that position now so that a few years from now you'll be able to answer 'yes' at which point you'll need to be sure that you...

Have the track-record to back your dreams up.  This doesn't mean you need to have done what you're looking to do, at the highest level, 'cause if you'd already done it you wouldn't be knocking on that door now would you?  So don't assume you need to be a 'pro' to get that gig. You do, however, need to be able to demonstrate that you have the proven ability to follow-through.  One of the problems with 'dream making' is that almost anyone can have a dream that they're passionate about.  Very few people have the ability to stick with and to that dream for a decade or more to see it birthed.  The gatekeepers will need to know they can trust you to follow through on whatever tangible investment it is that you're hoping they're going to make in you and they're only going to even start considering giving you that investment if...

Your concept is catchy.  This means you have to have something they want.  Something that's similar to what they know (historically) 'works' in their arena but still different or unique enough that they feel it'll have a chance to punch through all the pop-cultural 'noise' out there. You'll know your concept is catchy when you can't sleep at night 'cause the ideas keep coming and when everyone you tell it to responds with a 'Wow!  When can I see it?  That sounds GREAT!'  When even your classically taciturn business partner gets excited about it (something he NEVER does...) you'll know you're onto something.  Your final test is your wife.  If she thinks the thing's got legs (and mine still thinks it's a bit confusing but worth pursuing...) then you're good.

And if you get that far you'll have demonstrated that you have an infectious passion for the thing 'cause you'll have gotten all the above people excited about the thing you're thinking of birthing.

Needless to say, all of the above is true of launching a TV series or making a movie or planting a Church or starting a business or launching a new venture at work or taking that new job, whatever.

It's just important to realize that we're involved, here, in a process and that process is really the whole point.  Whether the pitch is picked up or not, whether your idea gets off the ground or not, the process you have to go through to get to the point of acceptance OR rejection is a process that will leave you the richer (as a person) for it and more able to impact those around you in a way that's hopefully a couple of degrees up from vacuous.

You get 'depth' or 'weight' as a person by doing the things you're dreaming of.  There is no such thing as wasted effort.

T

The proof is in the picture...

Figured I'd throw a still from the trailer I finished yesterday up here for you to see.

This is from the 'mock-trailer' for 'DEATH'S DOOR' a new dramatic TV series we're pitching later this month.  I've blogged a bit about it in earlier posts.

I'm feeling the great nervousness that always comes from getting ready to put your heart out there to get stomped on.  It's such a weird deal.  You do your best to put the best of you into the work you're doing and then you put that work out there in front of people who've put nothing into it and you wait to see how they'll react.

It's like torture.

There's always a very real chance that they won't love it and that you'll have to take that rejection and turn it into motivation.

Then again, there's the slight chance they'll LOVE it and you'll get to turn your imagination into a piece of 'reality' that will fire up other people's imaginations, inspire them to dream, etc.

And that off-chance is worth the rejection.

And that's true in my life as a producer and in your life as a _________.

Just because she might say 'no' doesn't mean you shouldn't ask her out on that date.  She might say 'yes'.  Just because they might think your idea is 'dumb' doesn't mean you shouldn't put it forward at that next board meeting.  Just because your family will think you're 'crazy' for quitting your job to pursue your passion doesn't mean that you actually will have lost your mind.  

But if you don't take the leap you just might lose your dream.

Which would you rather have?

T

The process...

Looks like I live my life surrounded by screens, right?

You wouldn't be half wrong.

Maybe we divide it into thirds.  A third of my life on airplanes.  A third on-set somewhere shooting something, a third of it in an edit suite somewhere surrounded by screens.

Or quarters...

1/4 airplane + 1/4 on-set + 1/4 edit suite + 1/4 with my wife and kids and our friends and family or in my office getting ready to go do the other 3/4's and you get a pretty accurate picture of what my life as a Producer/Director/Performer is like.

Sorry the above one's so lousy.  I took it on my iSight camera and, since it was taken in a darkened edit suite, it turned out grainy as all-heck.

But you get the idea.

*****

Tuesday.  Up at 4:00am, drive to the airport, fly to Vancouver, scout the neighborhood we'll be moving to for Jan-April 2009 and time the walk to the shopping district for my wife, visit the ocean and the sailboats 'cause I'm me, take the water taxi across the water, eat lunch, walk to the Hotel, settle in, walk to a building in the heart of downtown where we're hoping to put a production and post-production facility, meet the owner, see the space, tell him within ten seconds of being there that we'll take it.  Meet my editor, cut a mock-trailer for 'DEATH'S DOOR'  a new dramatic TV series we're pitching.  Finish by 10:30pm PST (one thirty for me) walk to the Hotel, sleep.

Wednesday.  Get up.  Taxi to the airport.  Ten degrees and sunny.  Arrive Toronto, minus five and snowing.  Sit in the traffic jam to end all traffic jams because it's the first snowstorm of the season turning what's usually a 35 minute drive into a two and a half hour ordeal.  Get home. Kiss my babies, put 'em to bed, have some Thai with Niki, try to work but can't 'cause I'm so fried.  Sleep.

Thursday.  Get up.  Drive downtown to Optix.  Sit down with my colorist/online editor Mark Driver (pictured above), import all the files from Tuesday into the system, order lunch, start working, eat lunch (they bring it to you on nice plates all heated up and out of it's delivery packaging) take a picture for you.

*****

So by the end of today I'll have the entire visual presentation for 'DEATH'S DOOR' done in high-definition and ready to have sound put to it.  "Putting sound to it" will entail spending a session with (more screens and) my composer, first laying down a voiceover track, then mixing it and adding in sound effects to 'thicken' the whole thing up.  Once that's done the soundtrack will be laid back over the final picture giving me what I like to call...

"The Six Million Dollar Pitch".

And it was hilarious the reaction I got from my Executive Producer the first time I laid that title on him--he got all nervous, like 'What do you mean six million dollars?'--and I told him, 'No man, like we show this to them and they give us six million dollars.'

He sighed then said--like any good EP would--'Yeah right and good luck with that'.

But that's the business I'm in.

(and once they give me six million dollars I'll give you the most smokin', awesome, scary, uplifting, redemptive, honest, authentic, supernatural TV series ever--coming Fall 2009 [DV]...)

See, I come up with, construct, then tell stories that, hopefully, move people to action.

(first the execs give me money, then hundreds of collaborators bust their butts for a year or more, then the thing hits TV and, hoping beyond hope here, millions of people like you watch the thing and the truths of it sink down into their hearts and start changing things for them from the inside...)

Same thing when you're preaching.  You construct then tell a story based on an original work and hope that your interpretation is applicable in your audience's life to the point that they up and change something in their actual life.

Same thing when you're building your life.  You come to an 'image' of what you want your life to be and, whether it's just you or you and a partner or you and a family, you 'tell' that story to yourself (at least mentally) and share the reality of that story with those around you hoping that, as you think on it and begin living it, it actually starts coming alive in your actual life.

A friend of mine puts it's this way: "You don't get what you wish for.  You get what you picture."

And I think he's kinda' onto something there.

Which leads me to ask you...

What are you picturing?  What kind of marriage?  What kind of sex-life?  What kind of kids? What kind of job?  What kind of legacy?  What kind of home? What kind of God? What kind of boat? What kind of ice-cream for later tonight?

Yes, we are in fact, that mix of mundane and magical; thoughts of God and butterscotch ripple all rolled into one.  Dust and Divinity.

And that beautiful mix--which is sometimes a mess--is the hallmark of what it means to be human.

And that's the stuff of our lives.  The stuff of our myths and legends.  The stuff of our scriptures. The stuff of faith and story.

The stuff worth shouting from a pulpit.  The stuff worth putting on a screen.  The stuff worth putting into your life.

T

The light at the end of the tunnel...

Can I just give a 'shout out' for a minute?

(No, not to Neal Stephenson and his latest novel 'Anathem' from which the above shot is bit, though you should check the book for real...)

To the creative process.

Yes, a shout out to the muse, The Spirit, that divine spark.

So, I spend the last two days basically farting around.  Part of that is due to extreme (borderline burnout) fatigue and general transitional-listlessness and another part is because I need to be creative.  Of course, anyone who does any kind of consistently-creative work knows that you can't really manufacture creativity.  Sure, you can cultivate work-ethic, you can invite the muse (see 'The War of Art' shout out of Jeff C. Kelly on that one...) but, at the baseline, you can't really force the muse to do anything for you.  

Then, two hours ago, I sit down and SLAM out two huge, new, life-changing, multi-hundred thousand dollar impacting treatments in twenty minutes flat.

The Spirit does what The Spirit will.

And we're just along for the ride.

So you are likely to spend several days at a time, maybe longer, feeling like your life is going nowhere and, depending on the relative (in)security of your life, you'll feel like your inaction is slowly dooming you to a rapid demise.

I'm here to remind you to 'chill out and trust the process.

I just said to my wife that I'm amazed to have been working with myself for all these years and to still find myself uncomfortable with and scared by the creative process in my life.

I think it comes down to a general unease with the lack of control that is assumed in any creative pursuit.

If you can't make it happen, you can't make it happen.

You can work, you can put yourself in the position to work, you can listen and be sensitive but you can't make it happen.

Remember that it will.

Happen.

So, don't rush into writing that script.  Until you can 'see' the thing--fully formed--in your head, wait.  Until that proposal fair 'sings' with passion and urgency in your mind, don't pitch it to your boss.  Wait.  Don't pop the question yet.  Wait.  Don't force it.  Wait.  Don't fret about it either.  Just wait.  Read the passage and wait for it to sing to you.  Wait to see what The Spirit is saying to His Church...

If there is a Creator and/or if our creative impulses are rooted in a greater creativity than is ours alone you must assume that the very nature of sometime-creativity suggests that creativity is and that means that creativity will come to you.

As you wait.

T

The Tree of Life...

It haunts my dreams.  A tree in the depths of a garden.  A tree that, if you eat from it, will allow you to live with the Master, forever...

If you believe the stories, our first father and mother were banished from the garden because the Master feared we'd reach out and take from the tree and live, in our rebellion, forever.

So we were cast out.

And have been wanderers since.

Longing to go home.

That's a central theme (maybe THE central theme) in a new TV series I'm developing.  The idea that we all want to go home.  We may not even be sure where home is but we have this bone-deep sense that home is and is out there somewhere or somewhen. 

And we must find it.

I often think that my constant missing of wife and babies is echo of a greater missing.  I was so lonely for home on my recent trip that I cracked open the ubiquitous Gideon Bible in my hotel room and rekindled my long-time pastor habit of spending time in the NT, OT and Psalms each day.

T'was like balm for the soul.

Funny, you know, I've preached about it dozens of times and have even mentioned how easy it is to forget, but I still forget the simple truth that, through spending time with those ancient stories and in worship (however structured or non-structured) the person of the Master touches me.

And I find comfort in that, because that touch is the touch of 'Daddy' and where He is, is home.

That deep sense of longing is what gets me in entertainment.

And I'm quite the sap.  Took my kids to see 'High School Musical 3' and cried my way through parts of it.  "Man, this guys a sissy..." or this man's a guy in touch with a longing for home.  I feel frequently disconnected from the garden where it all began where (if you believe the stories) they say the Master used to walk with our first father and mother in the cool of the day.

An evening stroll.

My cells miss that stroll.

And so, whenever love or longing or belonging or the search are portrayed with honesty on the screen, it gets to me 'cause it reminds me of the tree in the heart of the garden where we used to be...

At home.

Put that longing back in your sermons friends.  Put it in your stories.  Salve it with reading the story and rediscovering worship in the midst of the mundanity of your ordinary life.

'Cause you were meant for more than just this.

T

A new world...

Oh man, I miss my wife...

It's the nighttime that's the worst.

So here are those concept art pieces I said I'd post...

That's the catacombs beneath Central Park where the Angels have carved holes in the walls to keep the scrolls they've been writing since the fall.  They write the scrolls because, in the fall, their memories were damaged.  They have no clear recollection of what happened to them. They're trying to piece cosmic history back together so that they can learn what happened and in the hopes that they might figure out their destiny 'cause some of them still hope for redemption...
He's planting a sapling he took from the outskirts of Eden in the wilderness that will one day become the North American continent.  The sapling is the first tree in what will one day be Central Park in the heart of New York City.

Pretty cool.  Can't wait to pitch it.  Hope they'll want it and that, before too long, I'll find myself on a green-screened soundstage with a desert foreground and fans and billowing sand and an actor about to plant a tree in it.

I hope.

T

The bridge to somewhere...

So that's how my life feels these days...

You're looking at the Capilano Suspension Bridge in North Vancouver, a beloved tourist destination in the city and, apparently, a World favorite.

My wife nearly lost her breakfast crossing it.

Seriously, she had to summon deep reserves of courage to get across.  Never mind that the thing's suspended hundreds of feet above a rocky canyon.  Never mind that there were dozens of people on the bridge with us at the same time.  It was the twisting and pitching that got her. It really did feel like it was going to twist and flip at any second and the whole 'Temple of Doom' sequence playing in our minds as we crossed didn't help either.

She made it though and continued to force herself into bravery as we did the 'tree tops tour' and our babies kept their eyes peeled for the Ewoks.

And here's the thing...

Life is scary.  Like crossing that bridge. 

Right now I've got multiple deals pending for next year plus two series that are hanging on the edge of breakdown--because we've added complexity, which in the long-run will be a good thing but which is nearly killing my stretched-to-the-limit staff--and because we're fighting for our lives trying to get the ratings we need while fighting off haters and politricktians (fugess) and the realities of putting together the number of shows we have to deliver each month.

In addition I've got a friend with whom I was developing a project who's right pissed at me right now over a delay in payment to him on my part.  The reasons seem reasonable to me and his anger seems reasonable to him and the upshot of it is I've got chest pain.  I feel very badly that I've let things get this bad and the honest reason for it is I had a deal fall through that I was counting on to help me with payment and when it fell through I got spooked and bailed and he's, rightly, angry with me about it.

It's a real mess.

So when I get home on Tuesday (I'm in Vancouver today through Monday) I'm going to put it right.  'Till then I've got this chest pain to fight through.  It sucks.

Added to that it looks like I'm going to have to move my family to Vancouver--which is a good thing 'cause it means all the ass-busting we've done production-wise this year has been 'worth it'--but the actual details of moving a family of six from a middle class neighborhood in southwestern Ontario (Toronto area) to downtown (or as near to is as possible 'cause the suburban traffic out here is NUTS!) Vancouver is twisty as all heck.  The costs alone are enough to push you to the edges of your faith.

Then I've got a network that I'm pitching on November 17th (on the Angel's concept...see my post below) with our first dramatic TV series.  Apparently they're quite hot on it (my Executive Producer had a good meeting on it yesterday) and that's even before I pitch 'em.  I'll try to post a concept-art shot for you a little later.  The thing is, if we get that deal, my life will go from it's current craziness to a whole other level.

Even if I get across the bridge I'm going to have all sorts of new heights to scale and new bridges to cross.

Just like my wife did on the Capilano...

The bridge is scary.  Chances are you've spent some time, or are spending some time, just staring at that chasm in your life thinking, "There's no way I can get across that."  I totally feel you.  You have three choices.  1) Walk away and live your life knowing that you couldn't/didn't face it.  2) Stand at that chasm thinking about it and wasting days/months/years of your life.  3) Cross it and see what happens.

Then, when you're on it, you'll find dozens of others there with you.  You'll be watching them, wondering about them, worrying they've got something you don't, some secret they know that they're withholding from you that's going to give them a leg up that'll help them 'beat' you.  You need to forget about them and focus on you.  Focus on your journey across the chasm, it's not about them, it's about you and what you've been called to do.

Then, you're going to freak 'cause, even though you've braved yourself onto the bridge, it's going to feel like it could flip you over at any second.  Well, you're right it might, but that's just the reality.  So, to mitigate against that you're going to want to rush across the chasm but, the reality is, some of the most beautiful things can only be seen while crossing above the chasm.  So, make sure that, in your fear, you don't miss out on all the little beautiful things that are yours to see along the way.

Then, when you get to the other side you're going to find out that you haven't 'arrived', instead, you're going to find out that you've got twenty more bridges to cross, these ones suspended between three hundred foot tall trees.

And you'll feel tired and scared and unsure of whether or not you've got what it takes to make it and you'll think you've already spent all your mojo and bravery but the second you start walking forward again you'll find that you do, in fact, have the strength to continue.  Plus you've already crossed the bridge so there's no turning back now.

Put yourself in the situation where faith is your only option.

Oh man, oh man, oh man.

Beats factory work though...

T