SDCT Productions

“I'm about to take my sixth solid shit of the day”. That's the text I sent Christ Complex Executive Producer, Jenny Sherman, right before I committed this record breaking deed. I love bowel movements because it gives me a chance to be alone with my thoughts. I can analyze mistakes and determine what I would do differently. Normally this time with myself is limited to maybe fifteen minutes at best to ponder on the events of the day...and that's only if I had Ghost Pepper sauce the night before. On this day in particular though, I was a goddamn fecal releasing Plato. So I sit there staring at the wall and suddenly I see flashes of the last 10 months of production. The casting calls, the casting decisions...hell every choice I have made since the beginning hits me like Alex DeLarge with his eyes forced open. One constant hits me through all this, directing is 90% people management. Wow, that will not be a popular thing to say. All of you kids out there, making your films with consumer equipment for the love of the art, that's only 10% of it. You can give me the jive that “I'm not a business person, I'm an artist” and I might buy it. Let me ask you a question though. Why are you making films? Putting them on You Tube or Vimeo in order to share your art for free? No intentions of ever being discovered? Or is it a resume builder? Are you trying to get your film distributed? Are you distributing it yourself? Well then you have a business plan...I mean right? In your head, you have some idea what you are going to do with this final product. You are a business person and if that's the case you have to manage your property. In order to manage your business have to be able to mange people. This part is going to shock you, but I have made some pretty drastic mistakes in this area. That's not to say they were detrimental to the film by any means. I have had a few people complain publicly on how I have handled things in the last 10 months, but if anything they are giving more attention to this micro-budget production then they intended. The thing is I should be pretty damn good at managing people. I have done it for years, successfully in various businesses. I wanted to take that philosophy and translate it to filmmaking. I wanted to be the "managerial director". Think about it. What do most managers do? Same thing Ethan Hunt does, builds a team full of experts. A good manager fills his team full of specialist who can work independently. That's what I did with Christ Complex. Telly Award winners, sound experts, lighting experts...a cornucopia of talent. Many complained that this is just an attempt to make others do the work and reap the rewards myself. That claim insults me frankly. The goal from the start was to take the people in this state who were talented but lacked the much needed showcase. I believed in the people I picked and I want them to go on to bigger and better things after this. I want them to leave me behind. I want them to fly. This film is everyone's resume builder, not just mine. Being a good manager is not wanting your people to get complacent. Anyone, in any various business, will tell you that's my core belief. I have taken that belief with me to this film and that's why claims like the one mentioned above incite anger from me. Finally, right before the big splash as the submarine sized feces reaches it's final destination, I think about the before mentioned mistakes. I have made my fair share of faux pas on this film. They have centered around people management and not technical oversights. That's probably not a mistake you hear a director admit to. Normally it centers around technical blunders, camera placement and others of the like. Not that we haven't made some technical mistakes and not that we aren't learning, but my regrets center around communicating with people. To put it simplistically I communicated triangularly when I should have communicated with the source. When I finally did communicate with the source we were both so "worked up" that it was impossible to salvage the relationship. This happened a couple of times during the shoot, it was a couple times too many. I'm wiping my ass now. As I stand up to flush I think about what Billy T always says “What's done is done.” This afternoon I flush away, not just a massive turd, but my mistakes. What's done is done. In a Plano Texas apartment, Jenny Sherman tries to think of a text back. She knows I'm sitting on a toilet beating myself up. She lives up to her normal modus operandi and tries to text back something inspiring. She's half way through as she gets one more text from me: “Time number seven, call Guinness”.