Little to Say

This is my husband, Jeremy's, music video for his song "Little to Say". He took all this footage in the fall of 2002 when he was in the Los Angeles City College Cinema program. (After helping me out with my films the first year I was in the program, Jeremy thought he'd take some of the classes himself!)

Jeremy has done a lot of work on all of my films and I helped him with his films, too, but this particular video is ALL him. He shot all the footage, wrote and performed the song, and edited it together himself. I tried to help him workaround a bug in Final Cut Pro (with not the best results) but I have no artistic credit in this one.

Jeremy will write a blog post about the video on his myspace page -- myspace.com/wardjeremy so I'll let him explain it for you.

Jimmy called

This photo of Gianfranco Russo was taken by Kevin M. King,
a guy I used to work with at LRN when I was living in LA. This
was taken after shooting Jimmy's House of Hugs. (I remember
it was July, 2003.) I wanted to have a good photo of Gianfranco
to possibly use for a poster for the film. I never did anything
with this photo. This is the first time I'm posting it anywhere.

I was reminded this week of how important it is to work with the right people. This past week, I received a message on my LA voice mail from Gianfranco Russo, Jimmy in Jimmy's House of Hugs. Soon after filming, Gianfranco disappeared from the United States and found success in Italy acting in an Italian soap opera. I've written in a past blog how I've always wanted to find him again. After all, I would like to do a feature version of Jimmy's, and to me, only Gianfranco is Jimmy.

Gianfranco called me wanting to touch base again. I was absolutely thrilled hearing from him. I was happy not just because he's a talented actor and the perfect Jimmy, but also because he was such a joy to work with. He was so professional, patient, kind and genuine. While finding people who are both talented and reliable is difficult, it is even more difficult to find the talented, reliable people who you feel you can have a good working relationship with. I do meet other nice, capable people in this field, but it doesn't mean I necessarily want to work with them.

Both Jeremy and I have always wanted to work with Gianfranco again. We'll see if that happens. Even if it doesn't I hope we stay in touch. But whatever happens I just feel he's still on my team (and we're on his).

Bill Millios is another one of the few people on my team. Jeremy and I visited Bill at his new studio in Manchester this past weekend. Bill was interviewing me for a short documentary on Old Man Dogs. He's coming out with a new DVD of the film in the fall. Now we filmed Old Man Dogs twelve years ago -- before my adventures in New York and Los Angeles. I went into the interview feeling like I didn't remember much, but, of course, as we talked, more memories came back. The main thing I easily remembered was how much I loved doing the film and enjoyed working with Bill, Bill McNally (the lead) and the other cast and crew. McNally was as easy-going as actors come, and Millios, well, he knew what he wanted as a director, but he trusted his actors to get it. If we got a little off track, he'd nudge us back on, but never in any overbearing way.

I realize I have to give Bill credit for another thing -- and that is being so supportive of my own filmmaking. After all, he knew me as actor first, and some filmmakers get a little weird when you go from being "their" actress to a filmmaker yourself. I had a friend who had done some indie films with some fairly big actors in them. We had kept in touch for several years as friends (we were on opposite coasts for most of that time) and he had always spoke of casting me in one of his films.

Long story short, a few years ago I gave him, in person, a tape of three of my films that I wrote, directed and edited. I never heard from him since. Yes, I did try to contact him, myself. He never responded .

Well, he was a Mets -- and an Eagles fan. So, maybe he never was on my team...