Twelve Step Jedi - Final

A week from today is the World Premiere of my first film, Twelve Step Jedi.

I've been writing stories since I was in second grade. I'd have a flash of an idea and I couldn't wait to get it down with pencil and paper. To me, the writing was a way of living it - like make believe with words. I'd think up an idea, then I'd act it out in nouns, verbs, and adjectives. At that point, I was content.

The thought of sharing this idea with anyone else was never why I did it. But, of course, you begin to discover that there's a certain notoriety that comes from being a writer. People think you're smarter or a genius or something. And that affects your writing. Its not enough to just write down an idea and enjoy it for a while. No, you have to perfect that idea so that others can enjoy it. It robs the idea of any special power and makes it a commodity to be bought and sold. You begin to be judged as a writer. Its not the worst thing in the world, but it does take away from the special feeling of being a writer.

When I first had the idea for Twelve Step, I thought it would be a good idea for a film and I played with it a little in my mind before I let it slip back into the eternal realm of ideas never to be realized. It was only when Andrew Navarro insisted that we make a film together that I suddenly dredged it up. Together, as we began to talk about it, I started seeing this idea in a different way. For once, this wasn't an idea that I created and that others judged. This was an idea that came out of my head, but that didn't gain traction until others added to it.

All through the long months ahead, Andrew and I fleshed out this idea into a story and finally into a script. At the premiere next week I will be showing actual footage that we recorded of one of our writer's sessions where you can see a character take shape and actual dialog created. The writing process is almost mystical in that when you are watching it, words seem to just fall out of thin air and become absorbed into the brains of the writers. The footage shows us throwing out ideas, rejecting the bad ones, laughing at the good ones, and putting it all down on paper. Its a video record of two people visiting the exact same idea at the exact same time. And at the end of that particular session, we put the script to bed.

Again, I got that feeling of visiting the idea in a new way when we got together with the cast for the first time for the script reading. Here was my idea taking on flesh and blood and sinew and voice. But by now, it wasn't just my idea. Now it was Andrew's and mine idea. It had evolved beyond a simple thought into a full blown script. And here were a group of actors starting the process of bringing those words to life. They were allowing me to hear what my words sounded like and giving me a first glimpse into what my world looked like when seen through my eyes and not my brain. It was just the first sip of a sweet champagne.

Over the next two weeks, we filmed almost the entire movie. We jumped around from one scene to the next and took many takes, and I'd like to say that I found the process as intoxicating and as pleasurable as the script reading, but I was mostly concerned with making sure that we got every line of dialog and every shot of footage that we needed in the time allotted.

When, at last, the film was done and I'd had enough distance from it to at least catch up on my sleep, I started watching the film. And my eyes opened yet again as I saw the first shape of a finished film on my computer screen. Here were the living and breathing characters walking around and talking and behaving as if I'd summoned them off the page. Here were the words I'd first heard spoken at the script reading. Here was the story that Andrew and I had crafted over the course of six months. Here was the idea I'd first noodled with almost a year before... in the flesh. But it wasn't quite perfect.

And so, over the past few months I've been messing with the edit and adjusting the color, and fixing some glaring problems with the story, and adding sound and music. And finally, when I pop that DVD into the machine and turn it on, I am visiting this other world that I first imagined more than a year ago. This brief glimpse of an idea has grown into a full fledged movie with story, character, dialog, and music.

When you watch it, you won't see the various layers. You won't hear a line of dialog and think about the creation of that line, or the various lines that didn't make it, or the eight different versions of that line that the actor gave, or what that line sounded like originally before editing and before sound effects and before music was added. You will see Gabriel Hall telling Pad... Monica that he loves her and you will be swept up by the moment as you visit this magical world for a brief forty nine and a half minutes. You will experience a world that popped out of my mind.

And I will experience it as well. Because the truth is, the way I knew the movie was done, was when I realized that I could no longer see it for its individual parts. It had become its own thing. It had started to exist on its own, combined, merits.

For the first time since I started writing way back in second grade, I have finally created something that others can visit and see just the way it first formed in my head. You can be a part of my crazy world.

A week from today is the World Premiere of my first film, Twelve Step Jedi, and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I have already.