Day 26

I've been saying it for a few days now, but Spring is really here, and the way I know today is by taking notice that I went outside without employing the use of my faithful polar fleece outer layer. After a quick bowl of cereal I was on my way out the door sans fleece to go to Church. Not Emmaus today, not even a "normal" church, per se. Today, the first Sunday of break, I went again to visit the River Church at Mall of America. And today it was even more different than normal, because the service was held in one of the AMC movie theatres (normally they are in the Great Lakes Ballroom just inside "The Park at MOA" from the west). That was certainly a different experience. The seating was arguably the most comfortable of any church service I've ever been to. I like visiting that congregation, though, just for the novelty factor, and because, at least for the two times I've heard him preach, the pastor delivers a good message. Still, I'm not entirely convinced that the church in a movie theatre idea works for me. I felt very disconnected, very distant, even from the people in the row behind and in front of me. There's something about sinking into that comfortable stadium seating that also makes the sense of community sink away.

On my way out of the Mall I stopped in the Barnes and Noble and was astonished to see quite the contingent of Jesus books waiting to greet happy customers as they walked along the main entrance isle (if I were being really picky tonight, I'd have revised that sentence to remove the ambiguity of whether the books or customers were the ones walking... but I'll just let you think about it and choose the interpretation that works best for you). Books about Jesus, a whole table of Bibles, it must be getting close to Easter, but hey, I'm not complaining if B&N wants to use that as an excuse to promote the central figure in my faith.

Mom, Dad, and Grandpa met me at Taco Bell for lunch, or rather I met them, and yes, I got my usual #7 chicken quesadilla with hard shell taco and large Baja Blast Mountain Dew drink. We wouldn't want to stray from normalcy, now, would we?

Harry Putter more or less dominated the rest of my day. I had some free time to myself in the afternoon right after lunch, but about 3:00 until midnight, Harry ruled. This started with a trip to the composer's house in the hopes of picking up the soundtrack, which I would then bring to the editor's house and we'd put it in. The composer hadn't answered his phone all morning, so it was a bit of a risk to just show up, but fortunately he was there when I got to the house. Unfortunately, he'd not yet burned the music onto discs, so on my way I went without music.

Tony [the editor] and I spent three hours perfecting the Putter trailer. Not too many surprises there, other than I'm just really glad we're done with it. Arby's for dinner was delicious, as always, and then we set off to the composer's house (we called and talked to him first this time). Here's the surprise: we actually got discs from him! So we went back to Tony's and put them in the computer. Here's the next surprise: there was nothing on them! Arg! After all that waiting, and now nothing. Crumb. We called back to have them re-burned, and set off in the car again. Before that, though, while waiting to hear back about the re-burning, Tony sent me a short little film idea he'd written a while back, based on a real life experience of his in a coffee shop. I really liked the story. The basic idea is there's an attractive young woman sitting by a fireplace in the coffee shop, but the protagonist is intimated and never approaches her. It's only a two or three minute thing, tops, but reading it I felt like I was recounting some of my own experiences, and I started to picture, if I were shooting this, how would I do it? What would it look or sound like? In short, I felt an immediate connection with this script, even though it wasn't in script format at all. "Cool," I thought. "Maybe Tony'll let me help when he shoots this". Then he asked how I'd direct it, so I told him the ideas I'd had, and then he asked if I would be willing to direct it. Of course!

Our hope is to shoot in late May.

We drove back to pick up the second set of CDs, and this time we checked them on my computer first before driving away. Yes, they both have music on them. Great. We left, Tony copied the files onto my laptop while I drove, and then kept the original discs with him. It was time to call it a night. We didn't get as far as I'd hoped (in that I'd hoped to have all the music laid in today), but at least we finally finished that trailer, which means now I should have everything I need to get ready for my short Harry Putter presentation at Minnehaha on Tuesday. More on that tomorrow.