This summer is wild. What was going to be an empty expanse I would fill with writing while I sold my investments and tightened my belt instead turned into a whirlwind month filming, preparing four shows for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe—thanks, Taylor—debuting one of those shows in New York City, and training for… a salaried, full-time job! Unheard of.

I'm excited for Edinburgh. My duties as an assistant producer will see me occupied 24/7 for the month of August; I'm eager to see how they test me in ways I haven't been tested before. Hopefully I'll have a chance to see some theatre amidst it all.

The excitement, later in the month, has turned to dread. What if I fail the team? I feel like I'm constantly failing the team. Knowing what I know now about my upcoming full-time role, I would have quite possibly rejected the Fringe position in favor of writing and training all summer. Juggling these many responsibilities has sort of soured my experience of them. The film I'm thrilled for, I'm just worried I won't have time to enjoy it. The job I'm eager to step into, I just wish I had more time to train and prepare for it—the Fringe is occupying that space.

A haphazard, unedited newsletter, this one. Simply too much going on to attend to the usual formalities. Plenty to add about any an all of the below--as always, would love to correspond if you shoot me a message.

Vampires and other delights.

Someone I went to school with won a Tony recently. It would be disingenuous for me to say I was particularly familiar with him—I don't remember ever having a conversation with him. He was, to my mind at the time, just a skilled Musical Theatre major in the year above me.

Since then, he's started a band, starred in Hadestown, and, most recently, stolen the show at an original Broadway musical where he plays a hot Californian vampire rock star—where he won that aforementioned Tony. Pretty decent career so far.

Naturally, I had to see this person I went to school with in his Tony-winning role. It was a whirlwind getting the tickets; the original set I reserved with my big from Ithaca were for the one weekend Ali was ceding the role to an understudy, and the next pair I got was through a lottery that I'd simmered on the waitlist for. Eventually, though, I had my admission in hand and was crowding into the upper mezzanine with another friend of mine, an actor on his own vampire kick. 

The Lost Boys was a blast—even from the absolute nosebleeds. Alongside the fantastic performances, there was a wonderful hit of stage magic to delight in. Actors flew through the air, played around sumptuous environments like a Californian boardwalk and an abandoned steel factory, and even got in a motorcycle race! The latter was so simple, which might be at the core of why it was so effective: darkened stage lights and the motorcycles’ headlights illuminated just the actors’ faces as another line of lights overhead flashed in time with them passing under highway gantries, and throughout it all they bumped up and down along the road and even traded places thanks, I think, to conveyor belts onstage.

What struck me most about my emotional reaction to the show, though, was how much it made me want to act. Watching a contemporary I went to school with receive give a dazzling performance to the adoration of a crowd made me, frankly, crave that adoration too; I wanted to step into a character and act to the delight of a crowd. It was a strange admiration and envy that I felt. 

I was also struck by how shaped by money a person's experience of theatre is. My friend and I enjoyed the show, sure—we also had a vastly reduced experience of it compared to the people sitting closer to the action who didn't have the ceiling hanging over their heads, who could actually take in the whole stage and, you know, see the actors’ facial expressions. I've had this thought about commercial theatre before—the expense of it all—it's just always striking to see it physicalized.

There was another play I saw this month, the Classical Theatre of Harlem’s Othello. Or, I was going to watch it; instead, the friend I was set to see it with and I made risotto, chatted for hours, and played cards. I daresay the time was just as well-spent. Funny how that works.

The model of a well-structured play. On Broadway with an all-star cast. Crammed it into a hellish week. Enjoyed. Ayo Edebiri's performance was weird. Play very “colleg scene study,” as a friend put it.

See Craft.

Very cool movie—not some extraordinary masterpiece. The actual odyssey of it all dragged. Final act its most compelling.

Ryan and I made a film

with friends! Given that the shoot dates directly overlap with the release of this newsletter, I have no time to reflect post-process this month. Instead, I'll be keeping a set journal here.

Before I get into that, though, a word on the very-right-now movie Obsession. Ryan and I went to see it at Universal Cinemas while I was in LA and , despite being decidedly rather squeamish about horror movies, we absolutely loved it. Here's what this has to do with Craft, though: the director—my age, I realize with horror as I wonder why I haven't yet produced a blockbuster movie—did such a phenomenal job of creating a sense of dread throughout the film even though no supernatural monsters were ever explicitly seen. Even though the “monster” was just a young woman occupied by some eldritch horror—many would say the real monster was the focal character, Bear—the way she acted was just so uncanny.

In addition to the lead actress’ phenomenal performance, the way her actions were framed evoked a sense of dread even though, again, nothing “supernatural” ever actually showed itself. I think part of the key of this was how her character was well-established in the opening act of the film. It made for a sharp contrast when the audience would then hear her voice in a completely different affect, often out of the frame of the camera, creating a gap between what the audience expected of the character's “normal” behavior and what we saw of her now.

Tension between the seen and the unseen was present in the way the director would mask Nikki's face in shadows and objects, the way we would see Bear react to something that we couldn't see ourselves, the way “Nikki” would be implied to be watching or following him.

Spoilers ahead for Obsession

There’s a great essay called “The Trajectory of Fear” by Ash Law that was written specifically in service of running a tabletop roleplaying game that I think yet applies to other media. In it, Law outlines four types of fear:

Unease is the sense “that something is not right in this world.” In Obsession, it's the odd reviews Bear hears about the One-Wish Willow, the sudden shift in Nikki's behavior when he makes his wish.

Dread “is the suspicion, unconfirmed, that something is not right and is HERE; it is more immediate and focused than unease.” In Obsession, this is Nikki suddenly screaming when she and Bear are kissing initially—something isn't right with this, and her erratic behavior implies this even though the thing that possesses her sets her at ease and never truly confirms it explicitly.

The essay notes Unease and Dread may be shifted back and forth between smoothly and don't even require payoff, creating the sort of vibe of a thriller movie when used together.

Sometimes, though, Dread evolves into Terror, “the most powerful type of fear because of its immediacy [...] The monster is here, and we must run or hide or fight. The monster is all the more terrible for remaining unseen.” Law claims Terror has the highest payoff, and it is this still-unseen quality that lends Terror its immense impact. In Obsession, I wonder if the moments that fit this model as Terror would be those when Nikki moves with the flower vase covering her face, the moments when we hear her grabbing a knife from the kitchen offscreen.

Horror is then “the most immediate and primal type of fear, but paradoxically the weakest.” Horror is when The Thing is revealed and we jump out of our seats—it is a release of tension because of this, though, putting us back to the starting point. In Obsession, I would imagine this is the moment when Bear realizes what Nikki has put in his sandwich, as well as the moment Nikki confronts him and Sarah at Sarah's car. We are horrified in those moments even while they simultaneously allow us to think, “Well, phew, that happened—that's the worst it can get.” After which, of course, the cycle begins anew.

Generally, I don't enjoy horror movies for the sake of being scared—I'm jumpy enough as it is, with my “overactive imagination”—but I had a blast watching Obsession with Ryan because it made me appreciate the phenomenal Craft that was going into how this movie was making me feel the way it was making me feel. Would absolutely recommend, if you've the stomach for it.

Now—the set journal from Ryan and I's own moviemaking enterprise.

Slow start today—film involves a lot of setup. Hung out to make myself available while addressing Edinburgh business.

We realized we didn't have enough wallpaper while we were setting up, so Ryan and I went to Home Depot to fetch some. Met the crew—wonderful group of people.

It was a quiet day. We got our footage, we socialized a bit. I had thought we were going to be filming in an apartment; turned out, the status of that apartment necessitated that we film on a soundstage. Our director did a clever job partitioning off the studio space such that we ended up with four distinct “rooms,” and we proceeded with filming.

It was a pretty substantial day of filming! I believe I remember correctly our director saying we got twenty-eight takes recorded by the end of the day. I'm worried something is lost in filming on a soundstage, some dynamism, some reality. Trying to just go with the flow and enjoy the process.

Felt more of the rhythm today. I love the camaraderie of arriving on set as a team, sipping coffee and munching toroid food while getting set up for the day, shooting the shit between takes, hanging out behind the camera and watching a shot come together…

We got a sense of it yesterday, but it was plainly clear today we have a great team. My energy was a little better—caffeine and a power nap on the set couch did that for me—and it felt like everyone was working together in a wonderful way.

I had people ask me on set: “What's it like watching your work come to life?” And I found myself having to say in response: “Terrifying, because the version of the film that I know best is the one in my head that I tweaked and revised a dozen times as it made its way to the set. The version that I'm seeing come together is a stranger to me, because it's all outside my head.”

To be a writer as opposed to a writer-director is to give up control. Hell, even the greatest writer-director must give their work over to actors. To create a film is to work with other people—that's all part of the fun.

I'm feeling the impact of having given up control; having not done enough on the production end of things. Been hearing “We'll fix it in post” and “we'll leave that to our editor” a lot. Rediscovering my director-hubris; I think this is a good thing. Creative itch.

The last actor we hadn't yet worked with was on set today. He asked some questions about the end of the script that I couldn't quite articulate satisfactory answers to in the moment.

My solution to the aforementioned feeling is to write the next project. Will be searching eagerly for opportunities to do so in Edinburgh.

—

Michael