Into The Wild (ish)

So I was just sitting here at my desk after Christmas, working on some thing or another when my friend Matt calls.  Nothing out of the ordinary but about half way through the conversation he invites me on a trek with a couple of other old friends. A 36 mile hike/camp on snowshoes through the Adirondacks on the NPT trail.

Well, I had missed our every-other-year-post-christmas-hike-up-Mount-Adams because of family duties for the holidays. So I immediately said yes without even thinking about it and then went right back to working.  Over the next few days it slowly started to sink in. During some of the typically coldest days of the year in the northeast, I and three others were about to hike into a bit of trail from which there is no exit, only forward or back, breaking trail and sleeping in the open air lean-to's provided by the park service.  A feat I am woefully unprepared for physically, mentally and probably most importantly, gear wise. What was I thinking?

It took a bit, but I know exactly what I was thinking.  I am tired. I am tired of the constant battle of the last few years.  I am done with the trying to hide, to dodge a bullet, to sit here and brace for whatever comes next.  I am tired of the 09's and the 10's. It's time to move on it's time to shake things up.  To put myself into places and situations I am not entirely comfortable with. To get back into the creative groove, to feel better, to try to make things happen, to put myself back out there, and to ask the question: what would happen if?

2011, whether it turns out well or poorly, will be a year for me where I get active again.  Business wise, creatively, personally. The first decade of the new millennium is over, we can move on now. So I am making the choice to do so. It's not always going to be easy, or necessarily fun, but it will be enlivening for sure. And that is what I need, and probably a lot of other folks too.

A lot of it for me will be getting up and getting active.  Even pulling away from the desk for an hour during the day to get outside, regardless of the conditions.  Just to breathe and remember there is a whole huge world out there. It brings all kinds of perspective into all sorts of corners. For this hike I will be pushing myself physically and mentally. To prepare I have started running, and doing things every day to try to get my heart rate up. It's great, and it begs the question, why haven't I been doing this even without a goal in sight?  This hike will be 12 miles a day on snowshoes through unbroken snowpack with a 40 pound pack on my back. It will be merely in the teens during the day and at least the single digit negatives during the night. What will come of it?  Who knows.  Maybe just an experience. But that in itself, is really really great.

'Sides, better to do it now before the world ends next year (he wrote with a knowing wink).

The Biz...help a brother out?

BlueGreen, my third serious effort as a film maker is being released world wide on September 28th, by earthNOW!, an eco-oriented label imprint from Cinema Libre. I already gave that news up a few weeks ago here, but you can now pre-order the film at http://store.cinemalibrestore.com/bluegreen.html

It's a really, really exciting thing, and quite frankly, a little bit overwhelming. No one in this business ever wants to admit their naivete about how the biz end of it all works, but I am here to say, it can be confusing and sometimes unnerving.  Even though this is my third serious effort, it is the first time that I have had to deal with hurdles I never even considered, contracts, and my reputation as a film maker. There were a few mis-steps and a crazy learning curve.

Like this little one for instance. Netflix is a huge way for a film to get seen, reviewed and brought to others attention. But!  They won't pick up a film it seems, unless there is interest from the Netflix community.  What this means is, that to get Netflix to pick up BlueGreen, I need a little help from you all.  Put BlueGreen in your Netflix queue.  The more folks who want to see the film, the more chance there is that they will pick it up.  You can do it here:

http://www.netflix.com/Movie/BlueGreen/70125109?strackid=5f123914b6c...d0caf_0_srl&strkid=1980134918_0_0&lnkctr=srchrd-sr&trkid=222336+

You may ask yourself... do I even want to see this film?  Well check it out here:

http://www.bluegreenconnection.com

Amazing surf, beautiful locations and an illustration of how we are all connected to the big BlueGreen? Well, of course you want to see it.

So thanks in advance for putting BlueGreen in your Netflix queue, and helping me out while I am navigating some of these business hurdles.

Environmentalism In The Oddest Places

I like watching movies. I don't mind watching some movies over and over again. Good ones, bad ones, it takes a truly horrific movie for me to walk away. Sometimes I will leave the tv on in the background while I do particularly rote work where I don't have to think too much.  The channel of choice, of course, is AMC.  Why?  Because they show old, tired movies all day long, interrupted only by the obnoxious ads for whatever scooter device, or free diabetes testing kits the majority of their daytime demo needs (read: way over 65). It's where, as my Dad says, old movies go to die.

It takes a very bad film for me to change it off of AMC during the day.  For a multitude of reasons, when a Steven Seagal movie comes on, I won't change it.  There is a perfect mix of bad dialog, ridiculous action, b-list stars, and of course Steven's ugly mug playing the romantic action lead.  Normally it's easy to tune out, with the occasional explosion or burst of gunfire causing me to glance over from my work. 

But the other day, 'On Deadly Ground' was on. Typical Seagal fare for sure, he plays the good guy, working for the bad guys, then goes over to the good guys side, with lots of martial arts in between, and of course, somehow, inexplicably, he gets the girl. But while I was watching it, or basically ignoring it actually, something caught my attention- it was well written dialog! I turned my full attention to the tv.

At the end of 'On Deadly Ground' Seagal delivers a scathing report on Big Oil, and corporate greed fueled environmental destruction.  To hear a well written, researched, and delivered condemnation of those who seek to destroy our world for their own personal gain at the end of one of his movies was shocking to say the least, and really out of character I think.

And in 1994?  Almost unheard of except in Environmental circles. I am not really sure if anyone actually ever saw this film, beyond AMC, but this message rings true, ever so much more today.  With the BP spill still wreaking havoc in the gulf, and the Michigan and China spills on it's heels, this message has more power now I think, than it did tagged onto Seagals 1994 effort.

If you have 4 minutes, I think you should take a look.  It's worth it. Take what he is saying and multiply it by 10 for today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfNEKKva7HY