the Idiot: a trailer

Filmstack Monthly Challenge Numero 8

1.

I’m Alex, I’m an actor and a filmmaker-with-training-wheels-on. On Alex Rollins Berg’s encouragement, I made a trailer for my newsletter the Idiot. I really love these challenges.

I plan to use the Idiot to catalogue making a film next year along with anything else that I find entertaining to write about.

2.

I spent the first 15 years of my career relying on getting picked by the right people. That seemed to me to be the best way of doing things. It doesn’t feel right anymore. And I’m bored of doing it like that.

I spent the first 20 years of my adult life believing that I am not a creative person, making things (rather than interpreting them) is for other people, true artists. But I see now that I was just giving up too soon. I’m bored of that too.

I spent the first 35 years of my time on this planet going from not being in existence to sitting here, in front of this computer, writing this sentence about existence. 36 years ago I would not have believed that was possible. And I don’t find that boring at all.

I’m here to make things. Things that make things better for at least one other person, who’s not me. Eventually I’d like to do so in an economically sustainable way. And every single time I come onto Filmstack there is someone encouraging (e.g. Sara's Soliloquies) or some inspirational idea (e.g.g. Courtney Romano’s Nondē 50) or some helpful list (o.m.e.l.e.t.t.e. Ted Hope’s Hope For Film), that whooshes me forward towards that end.

The hope is to build up enough speed that the training wheels fall away like Forest’s leg braces.

3.

The trailer is a composite of a stop motion short I made during the pandemic, some calligraphy I had to learn for a job I did in Paris before I had my daughter and one of my favourite songs (Plays John Cassavetes 2 by Ekkehard Ehlers) as well as some fundamental beliefs about my life.

If i was looking at it from a marketing perspective I would shake my head and say, Come on Al, what is your newsletter really about? or Who’s your target audience?

The truth is I don’t really know and I don’t really know. And I am okay with that right now. I write a weekly newsletter (off of SS) for actors who want to earn more money without selling their souls, and I get a great amount of satisfaction from providing something relatively specific to a relatively specific (and inspiring) group of people.

But I think this, the Idiot, seems to be taking the form of something more personal, a place where I can spin around one of my first loves - movies and films, as well as attempt to express how I feel about this bonkers portion of time you and I can both claim to be ourtime.

I’d love for you to join me along the way. I’d also love to go on your journey if you’d have me, to see how you see the world and how you make your things.

Whoosh.

Life is absurd. Try not to feel alone for too much of it.

A x

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