Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Best Friends Forever




Tyler and Jane asked me to make a short video as a tribute to Trip for our HS reunion this weekend. They shipped over like 6 hours of raw footage for me to work with that luckily for me, Jane had the foresight to digitize first. Going through all these memories has really put me through the ringer. Of course Brad insisted on watching all of the footage in its entirety under the reasoning that we needed to watch all of it to know what I wanted to use.

We laughed, a lot! I got to tell him a bunch of stories about my teenage years that I never really got around to sharing with him. We laughed some more. I took notes and began to pick out my favorite clips. By the end of our day long viewing party I had a pretty good idea of how this was all going to come together in my head. I proceeded to spend the rest of the night editing in my living room, and just as the sun was coming up I was finishing up my masterpiece. Our entire friendship was summed up in 2 minutes and 27 seconds.

I ended this video with Trip reciting his favorite quote, which I found oddly ironic yet completely appropriate for the occasion.

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”

Then he grabbed his stereo and started blasting “Institutionalized” by Suicidal Tendencies. It was sooo perfect and completely Trip in every which way it could possibly be!

This morning Jane flew in from DC and Tyler drove down from LA to check out what I’d done and get in some solid hang time. We watched it together and had a really good cry and for a moment it kind of felt like we’d lost our best friend all over again. But then the sad feelings kind of just left us as fast as they came and we felt better again. There was a moment today during all of our afternoon shenanigans where it dawned on me that in 40 years after we are done raising our families there's a huge chance we are going to come together and find ourselves doing the same exact things we are doing now. We've been friends for almost 20 years, and we are going to be friends forever!

Monday, March 21, 2011

In SD for awhile

I shot a music video in San Diego almost two weeks ago. Obviously I stayed with Brad during the production, but after I was done I found myself not wanting to leave. Then Brad asked me to stay and it was all the reason I needed not to go. I miss living with Bradley so much that being around him THIS much literally makes my heart ache!

Being home with Bradley has been so easy! I don’t even know any other way to explain it. Everything just fell into place so perfectly. We wake up in the morning and go to the gym. Then we come home and eat breakfast together. Bradley goes off to class and I spend my morning editing and working on fx. He comes home around 3 and we spend the rest of the day doing our “homework” and distracting each other until it’s time for bed, then he goes to sleep and I stress out over work for a few more hours. It’s so perfect that I never want to leave.

I currently have about 7 projects that I am working on simultaneously, and I ABSOLUTELY HATE WORKING ON EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM! Every time I even think about what I am doing I just want to kick the shit out of myself for being such a fucking loser/sellout! Without Brad keeping me sane and making this BULLSHIT tolerable I have no idea what I would do.

Lately I just feel so defeated dealing with all these businesses and advertising firms! I work so hard to make something tasteful and interesting and then they shit all over it with loud ugly nonsense AND IT DRIVES ME NUTS! Re-shoots, new animations, logos spinning in the wrong direction, clouds not fluffy enough, not enough gaudy flashing epileptic crap flashing all over, FUCKING MOTHER FUCKER GODMAN SHIT!! AHHHHHH!!! Little by little, it’s all slowly driving me insane.

My agent says I am feeling frustrated because I haven’t really set any clear career goals for myself. If I have something to work towards, it makes doing all this bullshit to get there a lot more tolerable. The idea of a future in Hollywood makes me sick to my stomach! I am just doing this to pay some bills and then I want out! I love film too much to ever really want to truly be a part of it; I hate actors too much to ever want to ruin my love of film.

I guess that the most frustrating thing of all is how easily I can make this whole nightmare go away. All I would have to do is call my dad and ask him to take care of it, and he would. I could go back to leisurely working on my art and designing surfboards and skateboards and just having a gay old time all day. But I am too proud to ever do a thing like that, so instead I suffer. I beat my head against the wall and I miss the love of my life because I am 100 miles away doing something I hate.

It’s time for a change! I just need to figure out how exactly I am going to do it…

Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Just a little complaining


Another late night in the office and it’s really kicking my ass! Tyler turned 29 over the weekend, so you better believe there was A LOT of drug and alcohol consumption taking place! It all started and ended with a $3,000.00 bottle of cognac and the rest is pretty much a blur... It’s been two days but my kidneys still ache, loud noises make my cringe and my eyes still can’t deal with direct sunlight! I am getting too old to be partying like this! Not to mention the fact that by Sunday morning, I had to be back in the office editing.

Being over $310,000 in debt from medical bills has really instilled this insane work ethic in me that has kept me working nonstop for months! All this work also just seems so fruitless because no matter how much money I make, I still owe sooo much goddamn money! It’s been almost 4 months and after my agent takes his cut, I’ve accumulated just over $22,000 to pay my extensive medical bills with. At this rate I am going to completely burn out by June at the latest, at which point I will have to consider faking my own death to avoid the creditors!

Working for a non-action sports related production company has been a HUGE adjustment for me. There was a lot I had to learn in terms of the process from inception to execution, its sooo different from shooting an action sports vid. Music videos, commercials and film projects are all just so rigid and structured, and the job of a director is a million times more detail oriented and requires a certain level of anal retentiveness that I am still not sure I am capable of!

I have found myself spending a lot of time in NYC shooting for a few different projects because a lot of my contacts in advertising and music are out there. What’s the deal with NYC producers!? Ever since my first shoot, I’ve noticed a HUGE difference in the outward appearance of my producers from the opposite coasts. In LA my producers are always slightly overweight unshaven white guys in oversized hoodies and baggy jeans. In NYC every producer I have worked with was impeccably dressed for a day in the office, and sexy as all hell! You’d think people would be more vain about their appearance in Hollywood than they would be in NYC, but I have come to realize that’s just not the case.

I miss NYC and all the pretty people in their fancy clothes… I want my apartment back! I would also like to win the lottery so Bradley and I can just live our lives in peace at the beach, surfing all day and screwing all night. When you’re rich, you don’t need to sleep!

Thursday, March 03, 2011

Relationship stuff

Brad and I have never really had a normal relationship. From the first day we met we began living under the same roof, and for the next two years that’s exactly how it continued! The day I chose to move out, I basically felt like I had to learn how to survive on my own all over again. Going to the grocery store became a mess because Brad always made the shopping lists. Fuck shopping!! I couldn’t even cook anymore because Brad was my prep chef preparing all my meats and vegetables! And sleep, forget about it! My bed became the loneliest place on the planet and to this day I spend half the night just staring at the ceiling unable to fall asleep without Brad wrapping his arms around me.

Writing these things down, I cannot believe how codependent I have become! But it gets even worse! Even when we were broken up, for the longest 4 months of my life, we still spoke on the phone almost daily. No matter what is going on in either of our lives we always make time to call each other. Something we also do almost daily (this next part I have been told is really weird and I should probably see a professional about it, but I HONESTLY feel like if this is strange to anybody they are the ones that have an issue because they are most likely dead inside!) is video chat. At first we talk about our days and what’s been going on, but then we just leave it on and go about doing our work, watch TV, do laundry, we even have friends come over expecting to see us on the computer screen. I have no idea how people survived long term relationships before high speed internet!

Brad is in a 5 year program to get his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree. If everything goes as planned, he will be done in a year and a half. The thing is life is already getting in the way of this 5 year plan! There’s some VERY SERIOUS talk of Brad being a real contender for the 2012 Olympics, which of course would mean time off from school. I don’t know if I can be away from him that long. He says the same, but I tell him we need to be strong and soldier through this. Everyday I think about packing up my stuff and moving back down to San Diego to be with Bradley. There’s nothing going on in my professional life that I wouldn’t give up in a second, to be with Brad. But I don’t! Because I hate the idea of being THAT guy! The needy clingy loser that couldn’t even take care of himself for a short time, while the man he loves took care of himself like he should be doing!

I am hopeless when it comes to Brad. And he’s hopeless when it comes to me. In most ways just knowing that he feels the same way I do, makes all this pain and longing from being apart, a little more bearable. But it’s also really scary that he would even consider giving up some of the opportunities he has before him just to be with me! The idea of me holding him back from his full potential kind of makes me feel like somebody ripped my heart out of my chest and showed it to me. It’s times like this that I wish we were both a couple of underachieving losers who couldn’t figure out a way to get our acts together. We could spend our lives in a dirty studio apartment somewhere in the valley living off our parents money and getting really really fat!! We would be poor and miserable, but we’d still have each other. Oh man, that would be perfection…