Julie Taymorrow

im really excited to meet Julie Taymor tomorrow... she is in LA from NY for pre-production on her next feature. i've only spoken to her by phone and by mail, so im really looking forward to meeting her in person and hope i dont make too much of a fool of myself (like i did when she called me). i watched FRIDA yesterday, as I hadn't seen it yet. i thought it was very beautiful, though i find films about artist's lives problematic- i don't know why, maybe all artists are cliches to some degree. or maybe i just see them that way. personally, i have a hard time even using the word 'art'- it just has too many high-brow connotations... though i do find myself using it more and more frequently of late, for lack of another word- it's just hard to raise money for a project like this without compromising a few linguistic principles. im also making use of this Blog, another word i dislike, though for completely different reasons.

anyway, there were definately some exceptionally beautiful moments in FRIDA, but what moved me the most had nothing to do with the film, but was actually a story Julie told on the DVD's extra features. it was about her time spent in Indonesia (she studied puppetry in Bali for 4 years back in the 70's). Julie recounted a story about a ceremony she witnessed on a mountainside- Masked Dancers sang entranced for one another as part of a once-in-a-decade ritual; the performers didn't know Julie was there...she was watching from a distance... and there were no other westerners/tourists around. The dancers came out of the forest wearing ellaborate costumes- it was a private ritual being performed for one another. and they danced the most passionate dance Julie had ever seen. The masks and costumes were amazing, every detail was perfect, and as far as they knew, there was no one watching but themselves... Julie thinks they were performing for God, or whatever you want to call God. that to me sounded like a perfect moment- to witness a pure creative act like that.

I'm really excited to have Julie on our Board of Director's, and am excited to talk with her in person about THE 1 SECOND FILM and the various sequels. we are also going to talk about her next film, an Untitled Beatle's Musical. i just finished reading the script and it's awesome. really really great- i got those tingly chills several times as i read it (which doesn't happen to me very often when i read). i think it was the ability to hear the music in my mind, coupled with the imagery and the story. with Julie's vision and ability to get away with creative risks...it's going to be amazing. Julie is looking to incorporate animation into this, and so we are going to talk about that too. i really love to talk about ideas...

i also have to try and get a bunch of 1 second film t-shirts silk-screened for this weekend's Downtown LA "ART" Festival. we are renting a booth to sell credits and hopefully, with the help of the t-shirts, we can raise the money we need to buy a new Video Camera...

also been working these last few days on the website- adding pics, cleaning up pages, improving the Forum, and also added a WISH LIST of some of the things we need... who knows? maybe someone out there might be able to help us out bigtime. i'm optomistic as we continue to receive support from new Producers every day- it's very exciting to know that this is all happening...