I loved watching movies in the living room as a kid.

Movies simultaneously reflected life and defied it. I would lose myself completely and then find myself all over by the end credits of a good movie. I watched them repeatedly until I eventually memorized every beat, line, music cue, and shot. Star Wars, Mighty Ducks, Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire, Heavyweights, The Rocketeer, It’s a Gift… these were tapes to be treasured and cherished because they reminded you that you were alive. They shone a light and winked at you and took you on an adventure.

When I was eleven or so I saved up and bought a VHS shoulder-mounted camcorder and started making some movies of my own starring my dog, my family, and my best friends. It was really fun, challenging, a testament to sharing – shooting and watching together, a declaration of close relationships and ambition. In high school, I quit drumline to free up my schedule so I could take Video Production class, which I took over and over. That was where I met Brandon, my best friend in high school.

Filmmaking felt so natural and so neccessary, even back then.

We went on some road trips and got paid to shoot an ill-fated documentary in Thailand. He went to Chapman University, I went to Brooks Institute… college was everything they said it would be and we we made films the whole time. Family was there through it all. My grandfather gave me his old Charlie Chaplin tapes before he passed. My mom called and worried about my general health and safety. My grandfather in Colorado passed away. I got poison oak on my face from rolling around in it shooting Somewhere Else and got a shot of penicillin and a much bigger rash, over my whole body (discovering you’re allergic=kodak moment). My Dad froze a lot of money on a credit card so I could rent a set of Zeiss lenses for Relentless, my thesis film. My sister kept in touch from the other side of America.

After graduating from Brooks, I moved in with Brandon and his roommate from college, Alex. We lived in Anaheim. Brandon and Alex had just dropped out of school and every night at 8 o’clock we heard the fireworks shooting off over Disneyland. It was a confusing time. Anaheim is a city of trickery, candlight, and dissapointed immigrants. We shot Young Again. The whole time I was driving to Sunset Blvd. to and fro working as a development intern, covering scripts. Most of the scripts were bad. The few good ones never saw the light of day because no one could sell them. I wore a lot of black, drank Red Bull on the long car rides, listened to reprehensible talk radio, and read about neuro-linguistic programming and Myers-Briggs typology and wondered if I could find the key. It sounds like the movie Pi but thankfully I didn’t drill a hole in my head.

I moved to North Carolina for a change and worked at a summer camp for nine months. How one works at a summer camp for nine months is a story for another time but I would recommend it to anyone.

More trials and tribulations in the family as loved ones are taken away once more… Meanwhile, Alex and Brandon had experienced some sort of epiphany and started asking me if I was interested in moving back to the West Coast to make films and be a part of something new and exciting that had something to do with free market economics, re-signification, and justice and freedom for all. Alex had been helping his sister Melody structure her first feature screenplay The Last Days of Summer for some time now.

Alex and I had sort of avoided each other in the past. He was threatening because it seemed he had replaced me as the best friend / filmmaker buddy in Brandon’s life… we kept it cordial (we did watch Deadwood together, after all)… but those early cross-country calls quickly forged a basic mutual understanding. I was about finished up with my time at the camp. I ditched my plans to join the Peace Corps and moved to Las Vegas, where The Last Days of Summer was set.

You take one long drive across the U.S. for me. You add a pinch of doubt and excitement, a nearly fatal car crash for Brandon, and for Alex – the sight of his car slamming into a rock wall in the middle of the night. Mix in desires, fears and testosterone, pour into a blender and liquify on high.

Hazy period follows… trial by fire, calls to arms, refusals to back down. I get a job. Start writing the new way. Frustration. Unfuifillment. Aspiration. Plans. Failed blogs. Mistakes and dishonesty called out. Torrential storm of arguments, misunderstandings, dreams, epiphanies, failures, over-commitments, realizations, broken hearts… Melody and Josh arrive. Writing meetings. Connections made. Steps backward, steps forward. Leases signed. Tuffy Jones. The Last Days of Summer screenplay is finished. Apologies, forgiveness. Water under the bridge. Some came and some went. Lines were drawn. We grew closer. I helped one guy get hired as a watch repairer… he was from New York and got fired. Daniel moved in. A television was purchased. We started meeting regularly and started making concrete decisions and actions… out of desperation, clarity, or boredom, I could not say. We worked on the budget, the schedule of the shoot, the business plan, came up with a name. I keep writing a screenplay about a knight named Goodheart. We start the blog.

And I think about my friends in LA, and my family on both coasts, and my friends in Oklahoma, and New Mexico, and Denmark, and who knows where else. On down days I wonder if I made a mistake by coming here… because I miss them and I have a picture in my idea of a different life but I know I must let these feelings go. There are things to be thankful for. There are things to be excited and scared about. There is art and there is family and there is God, and an understanding that times like this should not be shied away from.

-Max

“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to live the life that is waiting for us.”
E. M. Foster

“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
Winston Churchill