At the beginning of March of this year, I was feeling creatively dead inside. No new ideas, no fresh thoughts, nothing. RHINELAND was as done as it was going to get, having been picked up by VCI Entertainment for distribution. Game Of The Year, having been crushed and rejected by the festival circuit, was now starting to make the rounds of the convention circuit.

The web series, Sound Of Nothing, was written, and I was going through the re-write process, essentially tidying up dialog.

However, nothing was moving me.

Everything felt all fucked and depressing, the people that I worked with on all of these things seemingly scattered to the four winds.

Although I was at least half-heartedly going through the motions of trying to get this stuff ‘out there’, I had really ceased to care.

Never having had a dedicated producer for any of my work, if I stop working on something, it stops completely.

I’ll tell you a secret-this is not encouraging. In fact, it’s downright miserable, and it really makes you question the choices that you’ve made to get you to this point. You can work, and struggle, and suffer, and if you take your eyes off of things for a moment, the whole machine breaks down, because there isn’t anyone there to help you turn the crank.

So, one has to ask the question:

Why do it?

Only those who know what I’m talking about here can answer that question.

Most people don’t get it. You tell them what you do, and the usual reply is “That’s Cool.”

This reply invariably is accompanied by a half-smile, which basically says “You’re full of shit.”

It’s not meant in a cruel way, or even an “I don’t believe you” way, simply an “I can’t exactly comprehend what you’re telling me” sort of way.

So again, why do it?

Well, that was what I was asking myself in early March of this year, before my mom got sick.

That event kind of took the wind out of my sails, put my own depression on the back burner.

You see, my mother has always, always told me that I was creative. She has always encouraged me, even when I didn’t deserve encouragement.

She never made me feel dumb, even though I was a terrible student, and hated school with a deep, burning passion.

My mother led a far from average life, and instilled in me a deep dislike of the average way of thinking.

My mother was not smugly condescending, or subtly unbelieving of my chosen path, that of the artist, the filmmaker. To her it seemed right.

From the moment I set foot on this difficult course, it made sense to her. Sometimes, it made more sense to her than it did to me.

Now, for whatever reason, the ideas are coming to me thick and fast, I can barely process them, can barely get them onto paper fast enough. Some might not be worthy of further thought, some might be my best work yet.

Why do I do this?

I do this because I’m a filmmaker.

This is what I do, this is who I am.

To do anything else would be to disappoint both her and myself.

…and that, most certainly, is not cool.