docublog

The Making Of... the blog

I'm so glad I've set up a Typepad blog before, for Percy Adlon's Bagdad Cafe The Musical site.  I will try to squeeze as much tweaked code into the templates as possible, to arrive somewhere close to Someguy's design for the 1000 Journals Project website. So, sometime soon you'll see a "customized" header, and an "about" page with news, get involved items, and more...

I've written below journal entries during our East Coast trip 2005, to test whether I even have the time and energy to keep this up while we're on location. I think I can, and I hope I have anything interesting to say...

Vero Beach, Florida (2)

That's it, folks, for now we're wrapping up this road show, and are flying back to Los Angeles. Landing gear problems, tornados and hurricanes don't really make the skies a safe place, but as I cannot wait to log our footage we have to get back to the editing table ASAP. We will be back on the roads soon, first in and around Los Angeles, then as of January 30th 2006, in Australia and Asia.

On the way to the airport, Ralph said hello to one of the brave astronauts left behind at the Kennedy Space Center. Then we checked out the rockets, but honestly, I'd much rather board a prop rocket in Hollywood. It's hard to believe they made it to the moon in these things.

Vero Beach, Florida

The last hotel on this trip, the last time checking in, checking out, hoping the wireless internet works, hoping the room is clean and doesn't go up in smoke -- which happened to me in Chesapeake; when we came back from dinner, my room 118 was filled with dark smoke, probably caused by some kind of electrical melt down inside the walls. Now that was scary! Lovely "Rita", this week's hurricane, is painting the skies in most dramatic colors. It's stormy, hot, and the humidity must be some 95%. Vero Beach, like most towns in Florida, offers "mature living choices": Secure, guarded colonies, plenty of doctor's offices and pharmacies, happy hour specials for the early bird diners, extra wide parking spaces... Yesterday, we filmed a few of the souvenirs left behind by the hurricanes of 2004: condemned buildings in various stages of renovation, or much rather, reconstruction, whole parcels that seemed to have been erased off the landscape… As Rita, Ophelia, and Katrina were threatening to make landfall around here, lots of the boats are lifted out of the jetties, and a few houses are boarded up. People go about their business, and if need be, will evacuate once again, come back and rebuild. What would we do if the big one strikes Los Angeles? Stay and start over? Hard to tell. We'll be picking up another journal here, the second recovery on this trip. I was hoping to get two more, but their keeper, who most likely displaced them, bailed out, despite my countless calls and emails. We drove by his city, and if he would have given me his address, you can be sure I would have knocked on his door…

Bars... Speeding... Action.

Chesapeake, Virginia (2)

I feel really tired this morning. Is it because my mind/body clock knows it's nearly time to go home, is it because I'm in fact physically and mentally exhausted, or both? We've got lost here more often than not. The city is young (43 years) and seems to not have any kind of comprehensible center. Landmarks are pretty much restricted to malls and the usual chain stores. Everything is linked by freeways, which are drawing large interconnecting circles. Each of the autobahns is numbered and named in several ways, thus throwing off the traveler. It is impossible to walk here. "Around the corner" is at least about 7 miles and two freeway exits away. We found Lisa in a cute neighborhood, a pocket of houses, trees, straight streets with mail boxes neatly lined up, all the way to the horizon. Hurricane Isabel caused a bit of havoc here in 2003, but all has been cleaned up now. Wherever you go you'll find "hurricane evacuation road" signs leading you to higher grounds, away from the Atlantic. And now we are traveling toward Rita, who will send our way a few thunderstorms. In the local paper is a three-part story about erosion, rising sea levels, and men's attempts to widen the beaches for both tourism, and protection. "Global Warming" is mentioned in every other paragraph. "Kyoto" isn't.

When I woke up I was worrying about a scene I wanted to film but missed: A scene in a mall, for which I even had a filming permit, for which we had brought extra equipment… and extra people. I wrecked my brains what this could have been, until I realized it most likely was just another dream, like the one about someone I scheduled for an interview but forgot to include into our plans. I'm still not really convinced it was just a dream; I have to ask Ralph if I mentioned a mall scene. One of my main worries is "coverage" - do we get everything we need to tell a full, fleshed out story? We'll only really know when we edit, and until then, I'll have to chew on my fingernails… and try to sleep through those dreams!

The extra wide beach of Virginia Beach.

A fisherman told me that the storm is pushing all sorts of fish to the shores -- this kid caught a turtle! He was instantly surrounded by people who took snap shots with their cell phone cameras.

Chesapeake, Virginia

Taking a journal's path and knocking at the door of a stranger… We've communicated via email, we've spoken on the phone, but each time I arrive at someone's doorstep, it is amazing and full of surprises. Yesterday, right from the get-go, we stepped into a family situation with three beautiful children, and I was tempted to switch on the camera right then and there, before the first hello. Lots and lots of ideas for scenes we could film were flying around in my mind, but I opted for saying hello first, taking it slowly, making sure everyone is comfortable and knows what we're doing: documenting 1000 Journals Project participants, adding a face, a voice, an environment to entries in the journal and on the website, one person at a time, in their own space… finding a balanced mix of observing and "directing". Wendy (in Syracuse) asked me to "lead" her. Hollie (in Middletown) wanted the opposite. There's no one "right" way here; each time is a new situation, presents new challenges and opportunities, and that's what's so very fascinating.

Setting up for Lisa (journal 525) in Chesapeake.

Charlottesville, Virginia

Mary (in Massachusetts) was yelling at me: "I'm sure I will hate to see how I'm unpacking those boxes, I will hate it so much, please take it out of the film!" Then she yelled something else, which I can't remember because I woke up from all that yelling. I feel like besides my own worries, I'm also picking up on the nervousness and fear of others, and so, at just past 4:00 AM, I feel a bit under-rested this morning in beautiful Virginia (which is For Lovers! Let's don't even think of THAT!). We were looking for protestors in D.C. and all we found was an 80s style Peace Camp, with tepees, hippies, reflexology massage beds, and (I hope I'm not offending anyone here) a truly obnoxious singer who tried to get people to dance in the perfect circle, screaming her step-by-step instructions over the PA system -- I just wanted to rip that mic out of her hands! We gave journal 172 to a Lakota medicine woman who made a beautiful entry. She was traveling with a German woman who, as it turned out, was working as an intern in my film company in Munich nearly 20 years ago. The world… small.

My former intern...

Aberdeen, Maryland, about 50 miles east of Washington D.C.

Our day off, but I can't help it and woke up at 6:00 AM. Echoes from the past days, a weird dream about a team of "buyers" for a TV network, who complained there was no line item in the budget for costumes. I listened to what they had to say for a while, then got really annoyed: who are you, who are you representing, are you even programming docs like ours, and how successfully do they play on your network? And why the hell should we budget for costumes? We're making a film about people as they are, we want them as they are! Strange stuff. We met Nathan yesterday in New Jersey, making our way to him through NYC commuter traffic, an Ophelia thunderstorm, we got a short glimpse of the Manhattan skyline, then ended up in Carlstadt, NJ suburbia. Back on the road toward VA, we got into L.A. like bumper to bumper traffic because of an accident on the other side of the NJ turnpike. It's hard to not take a good look at someone's road accident, but isn't it amazing that traffic is backing up for over 50 miles and comes to a standstill because of us peeping Toms? We stopped for the night in Aberdeen, MD, and will pay a short visit to D.C. this morning. Then on to VA.

Not this time... We'll be back, and filming in Manhattan from around March 11, 2006.

Middletown, Connecticut

Tony is waiting to be interviewed, while Hollie pampers journal 526 with yet another entry. She's the one who returned the first journal! If you ever come to Middletown, CT, you have to try the great coffee she serves at Klekolo.