I called the line producer: no answer. I called the producer: no answer. I called some other people that work at our office: no answer. I called my translator: no answer. I would have called the 1st AD, but we fired him yesterday. There was no one in sight. Did I land in some alternate universe where my crew no longer existed? (Perhaps an episode of “Dr. Who” from the previous evening precipitated that thought.)

After my driver and I made countless phone calls to anyone we could think of, I finally managed to rouse the producer (who wasn’t meant to be on set) and get the office key. Slowly by slowly, after getting in touch with the line producer, our crew started to straggle into the office, between 7:45 and 8:30. Shyama, my translator, AND the gaffer apologized personally to me for being late.

What’s wrong with this picture?

This was, in fact, the first true “Bengali day” in three days of shooting in Bangladesh. Generally, this is the way things work: you set a call time, people straggle in between 1 and 2 hours after call time, and you begin your day in fits and starts about 4 hours after you thought you would. No one apologizes, or really even notices. It’s a true novelty to even hear them apologize! And this was the first of THREE shooting days on which I was the first person to set. The previous two days, impressive in their timeliness, ran long but productive, in spite of a 1st AD who consistently showed up late and did little. Complete with the various hiccups, turf wars, actor dramas and circuit breaker failures that comprise a normal shooting day, our first two days had run remarkably like “set” in America. But today was a regular Bengali day. After the initial delay, we spent 1.5 hours moving from location A to location B, and waited at location B for everything from dramatic make-up failures to a Muslim actor who held us up for 20 minutes while she bowed towards Mecca and said her prayers.

But if that’s all I have to complain about, I’d say we’re doing remarkably well.

Today I’ve been transcoding  footage, which requires an awful lot of waiting and very little do-ing. In this meantime, I meant to spice this post up with some photos, but my technical know-how has apparently been spent on the transcoding because I can’t figure out how to make you see the photos I’m trying to upload on here. Thus, I’ll go with the old-fashioned way and link you to my album here:

Voila! It’s movies in the Desh!

Check out this Traditional Korean Cultural Experience Zone in the middle of Icheon International Airport!

I found a cheap hostel on the Korean tourism website so that I had a general direction in which to aim, and made my way to the bus stop. After about a 45 minute bus ride and another hour and a half of walking (I never found that particular hostel, but the one I’m at is great — more on that later), I’m making a quick survey of first impressions about Seoul before I head off to catch a few hours of sleep before my early morning wake-up call.

So far, this is my defining statement about Seoul: it is both more and less Asian than I thought it would be.

Funny how non-descriptive that sounds. I had thought of Seoul as a big, hulking, modern, sleek, Singapore-like city where everything is clean, green and pristine; yet everybody thinks exactly the opposite of you. Kind of a mash-up between Tokyo (bustling, bright lights, non-stop) and Singapore (modern, un-adventerous, ruthlessly ordered).

So: how is it “more Asian”?

Fighting!!

First, the street food! While I know that any vibrant culture has its own version of street food, from the food trucks of NY and LA to the crepe-maker in a little hut on Parisian streets, this is not the kind of street food I’m taking about in Seoul. I had expected the bright, modern, corporate-looking coffee houses and upscale “dessert boutiques” (with which I have become recently acquainted) but I didn’t expect that right in front of them, out in the street (not the sidewalk, mind you, but the street!) there would be little plastic tents with tables and what looks like a pop-up kitchen that could be assembled and dissembled in a matter of minutes. Some have seating, and others are just a little hut made of plastic for the vendor to stand in; they all have what looks like delicious variations of fish cakes on sticks, vegetable and dough balls, kimbap and a variety of other unidentifiable substances that put me right back in Cambodia, Thailand, Bangladesh — THAT kind of street food. Not that it would stop me from eating any of those things, if I had had cash on me. But this level of hygiene-neutral eating “establishments” seemed SO Southeast Asian. Not the modern, developed way I think of Seoul.

And less Asian? Well, for one, there’s the quietness. In the heart of the city, when everything is open and everyone is out for a night, the neon is the loudest sound on the street. Even the buses manage to seem abnormally quiet. No honking, no yelling, no ads or music blaring from the retailers. No noise at all, really. I felt like it was that post-bar quietness, after everyone has gone home, even though it was only 9pm. I definitely hadn’t expected that.

And how is it exactly the high-tech, Eastern world I expected? Well, the neon for one. A world of neon is always the way to my heart. And the little touches of design and comfort, like sandals for inside the hostel room, and the heated floor. Yes, HEATED FLOOR!!

Neon: an homage

I guess I will have to continue my observations when I get back in three and a half weeks. For now, it’s back to the airport and on to the next adventure, the soul of Seoul still undiscovered.

Not so dis-similar to the stakes for the movie. Doing the scene itself cost  the bulk of the money we raised on our Kickstarter campaign in  November. The purpose of completing a scene like this, along with an  atmospheric scene from each of the other storylines (one in “rural  Japan,” or my Northern California interpretation of it; the other — later  this month — in Bangladesh) is to create a “trailer” of sorts for investors  and producers to see. At this point, with the scene completed, money spent  and the style and tone completely committed to, we’ve shot our wad. Everything is out there, on the table. There is no way to change what we’ve done, and no way to say “but you don’t understand,” or “it’s not what we’re trying to do”; it’s all out there. And it’s now that we’ve got to get that full and total commitment from “the other side.”

Somehow, I’m both nervous and confident about it: nervous because I’m not so good at asking for things, but confident because I think what I’ve directed is complete and substantial. I think the actors’ performances are raw and authentic. I think the camera moves effortlessly and the set and lighting draw an eerily romantic mood. I think it dovetails with the Japanese scene nicely and that the beauty, drama and emotion will seduce an audience willing to go to a movie and go on a real journey with the characters.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what draws me into drama, and why it punches me in the gut when it’s done well (in the way all lovers of a good drama are somehow masochistic, which is worthy of a separate psychological appraisal). What draws me in, first of all, is people who are different from me. This is probably a carry-over from my inner cultural anthropologist and philosopher. What makes people tick? What cultural references cause them to tick differently? How can values and core beliefs be so deeply ingrained by culture? And what causes all of us who are so different to be the same? It’s quite interesting that faith (both in the ‘organized religion’ sense and at the deeper spiritual/moral/philosophical level) unites us, even though sometimes theology can be divisive. For me, good drama will bring me into a completely different world or lifestyle but then give me something familiar to hold onto there: something that is a deep, enduring and truly universal need expressed in a specific, culturally relevant way. Perhaps a way I didn’t see, because it wasn’t taught to me by my culture. Maybe that need is even mediated in some way by the culture at large.

By way of my over-thought definition of “drama”, it’s probably not hard to see now why I seem to exist at the intersection between theology and art: both uncover our deepest secrets and fulfill our greatest needs.  They bring into focus the central paradox of life, crystalized in any good drama: if humanity shares a common thread of inter-connectedness, why do we spend all of our time hurting each other in all of the ways we do? And, more urgently, how do we get back to the Garden? If not you and me, perhaps our characters can.

New year, new mountains to climb.

Luckily, it’s also that time of year when we set our sights on the coming one: that great white eve of expectation and hope for future fulfillment. In Christian circles, we call this season Advent, when we participate in the hopeful expectation leading to the birth of Christ. That expectation starts with the messiah promised to Adam and Eve, works its way through the history of Judaism through hope, silence and promise; and finally nestles its way into the home of young Mary, a Jewish girl visited by an angel and told of an immaculate conception, an unconventional pre-marital arrangement and an incarnated God. From this point on, the nine months of waiting for the baby to arrive are represented by a mere week in the Advent calendar: it’s a small number of days to wait for an event that’s been building through the course of recorded time.  And finally, when the Savior arrives, tiny and fragile, new life begins. And as that life is lived, a plan that has been foretold across centuries comes slowly into clearer focus.

Today, that’s not only the foundation of our faith, but it’s an incredible symbolism to carry across the Christmas and New Years holidays; one which helps us enter into hope, participate in expectation and begin a new story that brings our purpose into clearer focus as we start the new year. As the old year’s final days wane, I’m trying this year not to set resolutions or have expectations; I simply want to live into the new life I’ve been given. Forget “trying” to move on, move out, move up; living into my purpose is something I can do every day, and I need to think as though I’m expecting to do it, not as though I’m going to make a promise out of it.

Check out this great episode of @planetmoney.

@bout how long has it been since I composed an e-thought of more than 140 characters?

Over the past few months, I’ve been trying to re-establish my presence on Twitter. The reasons for this are twofold: first, I wanted to re-establish contact with some of the great people I started meeting in my first phase of tweeting, a few years go; secondly, I’m trying to promote a Kickstarter campaign for my film, Transnationals, and word on the street is, Twittville is the place to be.

Now, there are certainly great things about Twitter. It is definitely a “community” space where people can share their thoughts, give and get advice, promote their stuff — all without that creepy chat-room feel. (Why no creepy chat-room feel? I’m still not sure.) But it’s also a massive time-waster that fosters this “keep up with the Joneses” mentality that almost necessitates that you keep checking, keep tweeting, keep responding — keep on keeping on in the spotlight. That’s probably why there are nearly as many “how to get more Twitter followers” tweets as there are Twitter users!  That’s the part of Twitter that just makes it feel like one big giant narcissistic PR campaign.

Oh, and the fact that most of your thoughts must be truncated, oddly spelled (to save characters, of course) and re-purposed into catchy soundbites  with mass marketing appeal. I really don’t dig that.

So why do I persist with Twitter? Can I persist beyond the threshhold of 3 or 4 months? Will I continue to tweet once I don’t “need” Twitter’s much-touted marketing help? Only time will tell. But, as with too much of ANY good thing, right now I just feel like it’s bad. Really, really bad. Poor Twitter. You once held such promise….

I love the city of Los Angeles, specifically, but I also just really love cities. On Sunday in church, the message was about cities, and how they are the “cultural and economic crossroads of the world,” which causes the most creative, industrious and cunning creatures to flock to them. And that number keeps growing and growing: In 1800, 3% of the world lived in cities. In 1900, it was 14%. Today, over 50% of the world lives in cities.

Do we really have that many culture-makers out there? Or do we just seek connection with those that are at the same time just like us, and utterly different from us?

And, because of the experience of alike-but-different, we create culture. We create technology. We create industry. We create. Or we participate in someone else’s creation. Or, ultimately, we follow and consume, when something that celebrates diversity and connects universally is created. After all, we are people, and it’s this alike-but-different that moves us and causes us to do what we do. Maybe I shouldn’t speak for all of “us” though.

My one-time landlord in San Francisco told me an interesting thing about America’s three greatest culture-making cities: “Smart people go to San Francisco. Ambitious people go to New York. But smart and ambitious people flock to Los Angeles.”

Hmmmm…

But I’m trudging along. Today, I launched Transnationals on Facebook. I’m on Twitter too, despite not having any followers. It’s Kickstarter tomorrow (link to follow) and any day now, you can go to www.transnationals-movie.com and the website will be up and about! There is something very unclean about this. It seems untoward and selfish to seek out all of this attention, yet this is the culture we’ve created. “He who screams the loudest is heard.” The web can be a cruel place for those not aggressive enough to preach their own gospel. That’s always been my problem, whether I’m launching a short film, a story, a blog or anything else I’ve worked on. I’m too afraid to ask for a pat on the back, and I squeeze my eyes shut, tense my muscles and wait for the storm to pass when I put my work out there (once and for all) for all of my friends. Then I’m back to hiding in my own little corner, working on the next thing, while I hope and pray that the world has forgotten all about me.

Except that I don’t want it to. I want them to come back. I want to produce more and more, so they don’t have to be told to come back.

Such is the artist’s paradox: we do our art for no one, but in order to keep doing it, we must appeal to someone – anyone, or even everyone. Even though we are all just social caterpillars.

Sound familiar? If you happen to know me, or if you nurture a similar preoccupation with Soren Kierkegaard, this material might sound like it came straight from the ficticious forward of Kierkegaard’s first work, Either/Or, or from the screenplay of that same name that I wrote, based on the book. But in fact, the film Lila, Lila does not  pay tribute to Kierkegaard (or to me, sadly) but to a German author by the name of  Martin Suter. Clearly lifting the original premise from Kierkegaard’s work, Suter wrote a clever book that has been adapted, rather smartly, into this concise, subtle, clever, funny, moving film starring one of my favorite German actors, Daniel Brul.

With mixed emotions I watched as Brul took a fateful journey from unknown waiter to literary sensation when he claimed the pages as his own to impress a girl. The girl promptly turns the manuscript over to a publisher, and Brul’s new life as jet-setting author, mobbed by fans, commences. But as the shy, unassuming young fellow finds his lies to the girl, now his girlfriend, increasingly unnerving, things take an even worse turn when the author himself shows up in his life. The real author is a down-on-his-luck alcoholic and bum. Poaching money off the freshly-minted new literary sensation seems to keep him quite happy to keep quiet, but as “the real author” becomes increasingly manic and unruly, it causes young Brul’s life to spin wildly out of control and his romance to develop much like the events of his “book.”

As things began to unravel, I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat, in complete suspense. How would the young would-be author resolve his situation? Would he live to write a “second” book? And most of all, would this bloody movie turn my own Either/Or into an impossible dream?!

No.

The beautiful thing about the movie is that, although the premise is similar, it’s not about Either/Or at all; it’s not really even about philosophy. It’s about a young man who doesn’t know who he is, finding his identity by stealing someone else’s. On the contrary, Kierkegaard’s work is about two ways of living, embodied by two different characters, but usually melded into one incongruous, messy, hypocritical self: all of us. I’m not sure if Kierkegaard’s book actually makes a film at all. It may just make a nice piece of philosophical pie. And I think that’s what I love about this movie: it’s not trying to be something, or do something (in the way that I am when I write about Kierkegaard): it’s just a simple love story, boiled down to its basic elements, and it happens to unravel in a fresh, exciting, interesting way.

Hail to the Germans!

Take, for instance, The Korean! , a witty, insightful blogger who takes a Q-and-A approach to Americans wishing to learn about Korea and unexpectedly pummels them with knowledge and a good bit of sardonic jabbing, for those who dare to ask stupid questions . His blog, “Ask a Korean!”, answers questions on all sorts of topics: Confucianism, the Korea-Japan relationship, tiger moms, how to tell Koreans apart from other Asians just  by looking at them, and even topics as obscure as fan death! The adopted Korean comedienne Amy Anderson talks openly about her Swedish family from Minnesota, all of whom were adopted themselves, which is kind of a refreshing take on the concept of family. But there are just as many other adoptees who do not fare so well in the process of adoption or cultural assimilation and speak openly about the deep grief they feel over the loss of their birth family, abuse by their adoptive family or the pain of transracial adoption, with which children are afforded “white privilege” when they’re with their adoptive family, but have to stand alone in a world of prejudice when they leave that safety net. Adoptee blogger Paula O’Loughlin of Heart, Mind and Seoul speaks about this in her blog about “Why People are Nicer to Daddy,” something she was asked about by her own biological, interracial kids. Still, many other transnational adoptees describe their experience as being “white on the inside” and in fact, they are often surprised when they see themselves in the mirror and they aren’t white. My own Korean cousin describes herself as a “coconut.” Other adoptees use “banana” or “oreo” to describe the way that white, middle-class American culture has so permeated their identities, to the very core.

Without judgement, without commentary, without explanation: this is the experience of so many Americans who are our friends, neighbors, teachers, colleagues, bosses, students and of course… family.

I’m a third generation German-American. Both of my parents have 100% German-Polish ancestry that I can trace back for 5 generations. My skin looks like theirs. So why am I so interested in this radically different experience of life in America? Because without knowing what dichotomies characterize my own people, how can I learn anything about the cultures of other people from traveling the world?

Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Once a creepy long-haired alien kid posing as the son of even-weirder John Lithgow in Third Rock From the Sun, I think this perpetual man-child has finally come into his own. I just saw 50/50, which was just another opportunity for him to surprise me with his subtle, natural, slightly awkward way of making “cute white guy who’s down on his luck” actually seem real, believable and poignant. He even did this in the less-stellar Zooey Deschanel vehicle, (500) Days of Summer. I was not a huge fan of that movie, but his performance didn’t disappoint. But let’s talk about his choice of roles in the past, which is infinitely more interesting (see photo). Rian Johnson’s 2005 film Brick is one of my favorite films of the past decade: the script was amazing, the dialogue so pitch-perfect it’s uncanny, and the execution was brilliant. Every detail was just right. It was a little-film-that-could, gone absolutely, concretely, unabashedly right. Go a bit further back in the actor’s history when he played David Collins in a 1990 re-make of one of my all-time-favorite TV shows, Dark Shadows. I loved the original 60s version, which lasted much longer than the 90s remake, but the casting of the 90s version was absolutely spot-on. Gordon-Levitt was great as the bratty misfit, David. All and all, I think he’s THE great actor of my generation. Oh – and then there’s stuff like this out there: Check out Morgan M. Morganson\’s Date with Destiny

Rebecca Hazelwood: Sure, I’ve only started following her recently, as a result of my new obsession with the television show Outsourced, but already I know there is something magical about Hazelwood, beyond the obvious “exotic beauty” calling card. She, like a number of other western-born Indian actresses out there, is trying to distinguish herself  by playing provocative characters in provocative dramas (Kissing Cousins, The Ode) but I think her true success will come when she embraces her potential and starts playing strong women characters. Perhaps she’s gotta fight past the “repressed Indian woman” stereotype before she can do that, but I think she’ll manage. She’s got such obvious star power.

Audrey Tautou: In spite of a filmography with just as many massive hits as supreme misses, I still think Tautou is brilliant. She’s one of the non-English-speaking-world’s most recognizable female faces in America (although Marion Cotillard is hot on her heels these days) and somehow, no matter how many times she loses her head and makes a movie like Priceless or The Da Vinci Code, she’ll always run back to a great director and do something amazing. I’m satisfied that she’s spent her career hopping back and forth from celebrity status in the small French film industry to “supporting player” English language films. I was one of a few people who loved Dirty Pretty Things, but I understand that she can’t make films like that all the time: she’s a comedienne, and she needs roles worthy of quirky leading lady. It’s true, she’s no new, undiscovered talent, but she remains one of my favorites of the moment, so here she belongs, on my list of love.

Cillian Murphy: I’ve been following this young Irish actor since the days of Disco Pigs,

which led him to a short, beautiful string of indie performances (Intermission, Girl with the Pearl Earring, 28 Days Later) before Hollywood snapped him up as an evil bad guy with an accent (see the awful Red Eye, or better films, like Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and Inception) but I think there’s still more out there for him in terms of festival shorts, heart-wrenching dramas and small, Irish stories. If you ask me, Ireland is one of the most under-valued film centers in Europe; and with that under-utilized potential, there are probably dozens of actors of Murphy’s caliber going totally to waste. Murphy is obviously torn between Indie-wood and Hollywood; personally, I hope he returns to his roots and makes a few more Danny Boyle-style films across the pond to restore his street cred as an indie lead. I have Ewan McGregor-like dreams for this one, I do.