This Artist's Death & Life

The Last Rung

2011-09-14T08:14:00.001-07:00

Stephen King is the Bob Dylan of novelists. Like Dylan, he is ridiculously prolific (over 50 books for King, over 500 songs for Dylan). Like Bob, he flails around a bit at times but, far more often than the rest of us, King hits the little red dot on the dartboard. Sometimes the dude's even perfect.

The first taste I had of King was through TV ads for The Shining. I wasn't much older than the boy in the movie, Danny, when I saw that elevator’s payload of blood rush at me in slow-mo. I remember Mom saying, "Ah, that’s just Kool-aid". (Good thing the director, Stanley Kubrick, didn't hear because he took a year to make sure that shot didn't look like Kool-aid.) I didn't get to see the movie, of course, (or the other one I really wanted to see in 1980: Neil Diamond's Jazz Singer) and back then, if you missed a movie in the theaters, that was all she wrote.

Four years later, though, a fellow Navy buddy handed my father (also named Stephen) a copy of The Shining novel. Not being a spy novel or theology, it sat on his shelf until I grabbed it. The night I started The Shining, my parents attended a shindig in Honolulu Bay. While they welcomed a Spanish armada and my dad set up a golf date with Pat Morita, I was into something every bit as exciting and full of promise.

They had dropped us off at the neighbors' house where, earlier, their hyperactive son, Chad, threw a backyard sprinkler high in the air. After it landed on the top of my head, I decided it was time to go inside and read. As Chad's dad watched Magnum P.I., I found a comfortable spot in a corner of the living room. I pried the paperback open, careful not to break its spine.

The opening scene was Jack Torrance interviewing with the Overlook hotel’s manager, Stuart Ullman. In the opening line Jack thinks that Ullman is 'officious'. I marked my place with a finger tip and asked Chad's mom and dad what ‘officious’ meant. They told me to use it in a sentence. "Jack Torrance thought," I read aloud, "officious little prick." They took my book.

That one mystifying sentence was all the Stephen King I got to read for years. It had to tide me over until I was in high school. And even then, my parents were concerned about my love for these banal, nonsensical horror books. The deal they begrudgingly made was that I could read him as long as I read five normal books per King novel.

I couldn’t help but adore all that early King stuff. No matter how horrific his stories got, Stephen King was always big on creating human characters, fears and struggles. He was just as likely to show people devoured by monsters as he was to show you how hard it is shake a bad reputation, how soul-sucking it is working for a bad boss or how swampy and treacherous were the waters of human love and sexuality.

When I first read "The Last Rung on the Ladder" I liked it, but it certainly wasn’t my favorite story in the Night Shift collection. I was far more blown away by "Quitters Inc." (about a mob-run program for people who want to quit smoking), "Children of the Corn", and the other story about treacherous heights, "The Ledge". The quiet, tragic brother-sister story of "Last Rung" didn’t really leave much of an impression, at least consciously. I was only sixteen. I wanted a sister but didn’t have one. It would be another twenty years before I had my daughter Lilly and my son Jack. Nevertheless, that sad, beautiful story was inside me all those years and, when I recently decided to adapt a Stephen King story into an animated short, I thought about "Last Rung". I couldn't remember its name or much of what happened in it, but I knew there was something there for me. I found it in my tattered copy of Night Shift. I reread it and I bawled. I hoped it was one the stories that King was currently making available as a Dollar Baby project. It was.

White Wedding

2011-05-10T09:55:00.000-07:00

Minutes before I left the Super 8 Motel to head over to Tim’s wedding, my Uncle Bud and I spent up precious time exchanging texts. Lilly had just thrown up again and it was now only a matter of hours until she was supposed to be a flower girl. I gave Bud updates on her condition and he gave me Billy Idol lyrics. “Hope she feels better. Poor baby. BTW, it’s a nice day for a white wedding”.

And it was a nice day, an incredible day, a joyful day. As the song says: “a nice day to start again.” Tim and Kelita began their journey together as husband and wife. Two familes joined together. Many of us were introduced to unfamiliar traditions (the ceremony was full of Jewish symbolism and meaning). Family members patched things up with each other or at least began the process. Some of us met for the first time. I got to look into the blue eyes of my preemie niece, Ainsley, on her first big outing and begin the process of trying to make her think I’m cool.

After Bud’s Billy Idol text, I handed my daughter off to Aunt Merry, who got Lilly’s hair untangled and her fever cooled with meds, TLC and a cool bath. It officially broke when Lilly’s cousin Stella arrived to cheer her up. Lilly rode over to the Country Club, got in her dress (a purple/white mini version of Kelita’s), got her hair done and her fancy shoes on. I cried when I saw my little princess, knowing that someday I’ll be giving her away in marriage. I kind of hate that fact. When I can’t get a moment to myself, though, it sounds okay.

I’m a private guy and a hermit but I was surprised at how heavenly it was to be smacked right into the middle of my big, crazy family. Not a damn moment to myself all weekend but who cared? Lilly and I were loved and in love and it was all perfectly imperfect. A nice day to start again.

To Tim and Kelita! May your marriage be long and joyous!

And here's the trailer for my upcoming short John Harry's Bride:

(Lilly photo by Wendee Schmitke)

Getting Caught in the Act

2011-03-21T11:40:00.000-07:00

GETTING CAUGHT IN THE ACT

That what it’s like to finally release a film. Dylan once said (bet I’m one of many blogging that phrase today), “If they could see my thoughts, they’d probably put my head in a guillotine”. Releasing one of your creations is yanking the “if” out of the hypothesis. They really do see your thoughts now. And some in that angry mob are in a head-hunting mood. Good friggin' luck.

Some of them don’t know what to think of your film. They have no idea what the hell they just watched.

Some don’t ever get around to watching it. They’re more interested in the Idea of it than the actual It.

Some envy it. Or at least you hope they do.

Some are freaked out. They assume that the darkness in your story wasn’t gotten at by way of talent. You aren’t imaginative. You’re just messed up.

Some are excited by it.

Some think it’s so good that they don’t need to bother telling you.

Some feel sorry for you and your crapass "art" and make up compliments so you don't suicide yourself.

A teeny, tiny handful of them get it. And that's a best-case-scenario.

There are never enough nice comments for your Sarlacc pit of a needy inner performer, though. There will always be enough silence and criticism for you to pick a sentence or a silence and obsess about it. And when you’re really in bad space you’ll even see hidden criticisms in the most sincere encouragement.

Your heart (if not your mind) goes back to times when you were younger and you "came out" for the world and got the big fat thumbs-down…

Your heart remembers a failed skit in Drama class, where no matter how much you and Eric tried to improv your way onward, one of you just couldn’t remember your lines. You threw your hands up and quit in front of a live audience.

Your heart remembers a pageant you were in and how secretly proud you were. Then some dude told you how the judges were so desperate for entrants that they had to scrape the barrel and settle for guys like you. You and Jimmy and Frank.

Your heart remembers your first church camp. Where you picked a Great White song for the lip-synch contest. The whole amphitheater loved Matt Mintz & the Broom Boys! You slid across the stage and shredded your knees and you didn’t care. The next day, though, the oxymoronically-named Les Moore got up and read the sexual innuendos that you and Pastor Bob's son Brock hadn’t even noticed. Oops. People scooted away from you in case the lightning bolt was a big one. You felt like you were sinking as Les Moore quote Great White. “She was the best lick in town," he read with a heavy heart.

You remember all those messy moments of fame and shame and the two so intertwined you didn’t know which was which, was end was up.

You drag yourself to your keyboard.

You start the next film.

-----

(Here’s an old gospel song I learned in 5 minutes and recorded in one take, In My Time of Dyin’:)

http://www.facebook.com/Matt-Mintz-Music/118706994836181#!/pages/Matt-Mintz-Music/118706994836181

JUST PRESS PLAY

The Dreadful Power of the Self-Imposed Deadline

2011-01-31T11:32:00.000-08:00

I have a problem finishing things. I like to read twenty books at the same time and alternate between movies (fifteen minutes of Touch of Evil, twenty minutes of Fargo, five minutes of 27 Dresses). Not finishing books and movies isn't much of a problem, of course. I can take my own sweet time or I can tell my inner perfectionist to 'bite it' and even leave a book or movie unfinished forever.

But there's something else I do that looks similar but is serious. I have start projects and abandon them before their done. Projects that mean a ton to me, that I have worked hard on, that I have tortured my friends and family by being too chatty about. I've gotten quite a ways into them and then ditched them. I've left them shelved and blithely moved onto the next idea. I'm always working on something but nothing ever gets finished.

No one really sees what I can do. No one really sees what I believe. No one hears the thoughts inside my beautifully messed-up head. No one really sees my heart because nothing ever gets finished. Trailers get posted. Excerpts are shared. But nothing is ever finished.

You won't know this until March 1st rolls around but mark my words: starting now, I finish my projects. My current one, Little Wing, is due in one month. Jeez! One month and I have so much left to do: two more screenplay pages to animate, all the voice acting (including the terrifying idea of actually getting Lilly to cooperate for more than one minutes at a time). The score needs to be finished, the film needs to be edited. Then there are several steps just to get the final product exported and posted on the internet. One month to do all those things.

And the beauty is: that deadline, that March 1st deadline? I set that. I don't have a boss. Unless you count my wife, Kristen, who will stab me in the mouth if I don't have a finished product on March 1st. I set that deadline and I'm busting my ass to make and I will make it. Making that deadline means that I've been working on Little Wing six days a week. It means that most of those days start somewhere between 3:30 am and 5:00 am and go until the day's quota (two shots) is filled.

I love that I respect my bossless, self-imposed deadline so much that I'm getting up three hours before the sun comes up. I like Little Wing, its characters, its images, its music, etc. but right now, even more than Little Wing, I love my deadline. It's dreadful that I have to release whatever I have on that date and it's great too. On March 1st, I will be done. I will have finished something. I will start on something else and will be setting a whole new dreadful deadline.

On March 1st, I officially become a dreamer who DOES. Just you watch me. I'm gonna...

Here's more about Little Wing:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1760401338/little-wing-animated-short

mm

Trailer Tuesday

2011-01-11T09:53:00.000-08:00

Here it is, the trailer for Santa Goes to Hell. Not only delayed because I left it in California before our New Jersey trip but postponed another week because a blizzard kicked our butts the day before we were to fly home and kept us there another week. Then delayed another week because I have been sick ever since and mostly just 'cause I suck.

Santa Goes to Hell!

2010-12-21T10:00:00.000-08:00

I worked all week on the trailer for my upcoming animated short. I even woke at 1:30 a.m. the night before we left for New Jersey so I could finish it and post it with this blog in time for Christmas. See, as important as artistic quality is, making deadlines and coming in under budget is just as important to many great film-makers: Quentin Tarantino, Roger Corman and his protege's (people like Scorsese, DePalma, Demme)

Even though I'm not a working film-maker yet I admire their respect for the practical, work-ethic side of show business. I did make my self-imposed deadline BUT the trailer is on a flash drive...on my desk...at home. Hooray for moral victories, even when they're in California and you're in Jersey.

The idea for Santa Goes to Hell came when my wife posted Facebook pics of me playing Santa at her elementary school and said that the teachers were already requesting me for next year. I said, "There's no way in hell" and my Uncle Bud posted, "There's your next story: Santa Goes to Hell". I knew right away there was a funny, quirky Something in that idea, a story that I wanted to tell.

"What did Santa do to get sent to hell?" I asked myself. "Oh, that's easy. Same reason some think my handbasket and I are headed there too. He pissed the conservatives off." In my story, Santa gets damned to hell for taking the focus off Jesus and his followers. Shame, shame, shame.

Of course, Jesus is (by definition) the "reason for the season" but does that mean that the religion that takes his name is too? Is Christian merchandise also the reason for the season? How about preaching? Evangelizing Christmas-and-Easter church-goers and the rest of the lost? Hmmm.

Here's an excerpt from my work-in-progress script where I play with some of my questions, the kind that make me occasionally wonder if I'm going to hell.

--

After explaining that there's no such thing as a Naughty List, Santa Claus gives Satan his presents, no strings attached.

Satan: So what do I owe you for the, uh, unconditional love? How much that put you out?

Santa Claus (chuckling): You don't owe me anything.

Satan: Right. Okay. What kind of strings you got attached here?

Santa Claus: No strings, Satan.

Satan: It's cool. I'm cool with it. What do I gotta sit through? Little presentation? Some long-winded speech?

Santa Claus: How about a 'long' friendship?

Satan: Right. 'Friendship'. So, like, I call a certain amount of times a day? Couple texts an hour. Skype on Sundays.

Santa Claus: To be my friend, just 'do as thou wilt'.

Satan: Hm. That's interesting, man. That's...it's...

Satan gets choked up. His lip quivers. A few tears pop out.

--

There you go. Bet you didn't know the secret to friendship lay in the words of Anton Levay: Do as thou wilt.

Happy holidays to you all!

May they be new and old at the same time...

mm

To Come Home

2010-11-23T12:12:00.000-08:00

I have been working on an animated short called Little Wing. All animation, however rudimentary, is incredibly time-consuming so it's easy to fall out of love with a cartoon before it's even half finished. Three weeks into this project, though, my passion was renewed when one of my characters burst into song (in my imagination, of course). Little Wing was now a musical. I'd had no idea.

The best thing about me making a musical is that I don't like musicals. Even the few I do enjoy (Nightmare Before Christmas, Moulin Rouge) annoy me at times as the plot keeps getting put on pause for what I feel are too many overlong songs. Little Wing: Episode 1 will have three or four songs, each between thirty seconds and one minute in length. So, even though the songs are extremely important, hopefully they don't overstay their welcome.

Here is the final sequence of Episode 1. It the song 'To Come Home'. This being a work in progress, there are a couple shots (taken from 'The Green Mile') that haven't been drawn yet. I decided to leave them as stills, though, to give you an idea of how I create.

Look for the shooting star at the end and how it works with the tail end of the song.

My Own Perfect Poison

2010-10-29T14:07:00.000-07:00

Being the loudest and the funniest guy in the room worked well when I was sixteen. Home was intense; I never knew when blue skies would turn stormy. The neighborhood was intense; I lived in Navy Housing, the ghetto portion of any otherwise affluent San Diego community but I didn't know how to use my fists. School was intense.

On my first day at Farb Middle School, a guy was practicing bike tricks in the parking lot and he accidentally crashed into me. He worked his embarrasment out by punching me in the eye. I didn't know what to say or do. But fortunately, the next time someone gave me crap, the words in my head cooperated and I blurted out the perfect smart-assed reply. Like a treefrog, I could manufacture and excrete my own perfect poison.

After that, my peers and I had an understanding: I could claw my way to a certain amount of popularity as long as I remembered my place as the jester. I was allowed in the throne room but I had to dress funny and be funny and not bother the royalty. I agreed to the terms and even my teachers seemed to enjoy the Matt Mintz Show.

My English teacher, Mrs. Edwards was bosomy and heavy-featured. She was the Hester Prynne I envisioned when we read the Scarlet Letter. Mrs. Edwards made us write a poem for homework but I forgot. When she asked us to turn the assignment in, I grabbed a pencil and paper and, in the time it took the class to dig their poems out of their backpacks and pass them to the front, I scribbled an eight-line poem and mixed the imposter in with the ones that were actuallly more than a minute old.

Mrs. Edwards passed our graded papers back during the next class. She scolded me for not taking the assignment seriously but said that, despite my use of the trite phrase 'sick and tired', my poem was better than most. She gave me a sly Hester Prynne smile and warned me, "If you actually decide to apply yourself someday, Matthew, your words will be strong."

Twenty-two years have passed and fortunately I'm not the class clown anymore. The Matt Mintz Show is rarely on because the Matt Mintz that's a dad and a husband and a good friend knows that real life and love are more than just a bunch of strung-together chances to performance. Plus timing is everything.

You'd be proud of me, Mrs. Edwards. I have applied myself. I stuck with the words. Those powerful, exhilarating--at times, goddamned exasperating--words.

Check out some more more of my writing in this excerpt from my new song, "I'll Be All Right"...

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Matt-Mintz-Music/118706994836181?v=box_3#!/pages/Matt-Mintz-Music/118706994836181?v=wall

The World, The Forest

2010-08-09T10:36:00.000-07:00

When people feel uncomfortable with their lives they like to blame the "world". It's such a big idea, it's like saying nothing at all. "The world" is a catch-all term meaning anything about America/Earth/the Cosmos we don't like. "The world" is...shallow paparazzi. It's those doctors on Grey's Anatomy, always sleeping together and guzzling tequila. It's New Age spirituality, gangs, the commercialization of Christmas, floppy-haired Donald Trump!

If someone is materialistic, sexually errant or unaware of the correct ways to talk about God, that person is "worldly". The term is subtler (and less blatantly condescending) than "sinner" but it means the same thing. It means there's something wrong with them. Worse than what's wrong with us.

Sometimes I too see the world as antagonistic; the spiritual, emotional and physical equivalent of a dark, hanted forest. I stumble through the night like Snow White fleeing from her murderers. Tree trunks frown and gnaw at me. Branches tear my clothes. Roots rise up to impede me. Owls are demons. Logs are ravenous crocs. Bats are, well, they're just bats. I run but it's no use! I fall hard. I pass out. Then the spell is broken and I awaken in warmth and sunlight. In the morning, the world hasn't changed much but the way I see it has.

What is the world?
Is it hostile? Does it want to thwart us?

Is it friendly? Does it, as the people in The Secret say, support us?

Does it even give a damn about us?

Is it full of inherent meaning?

Or is it a blank page, waiting for us artists to write our stories on it?

I find all of these views compelling at different times of the day.

I used to try so hard to be unpolluted by the world. Now I sometimes worrry about the world being polluted by me. I no longer want a priest's purity. I don't want a scholar's distance. I want to dance with the world, to push and be pushed. To be a rebel and a follower. A star and a team mate. I want to change the world and I want the world to change me.

Here is a new one-minute song ('Change the World') with some ghostly, adorable vocals by three-year-old Snow White fan Lillian Kate. Song two of the two-song piece is coming soon...

http://www.facebook.com/musicplayer/index.php?owner_id=118706994836181&success#!/pages/Matt-Mintz-Music/118706994836181

My Authentic Swing

2010-07-13T11:35:00.000-07:00

In "The Legend of Bagger Vance" Matt Damon plays a promising golfer who leaves the game to serve in WWI. He returns alive but the traumas of war lead him to a life of cards, drinking and isolation. He abandons his first loves. He loses his swing.

Enter Bagger Vance, Will Smith's caddie. He's wry, brilliant; he may even be an angel. Bagger doesn't teach much in the way of technique but he helps Matt find his authentic swing. It isn't a particular way of golfing, a rule or trick. It's just the unique way Matt was made to swing.

I worry sometimes that I've lost my swing. My fortieth birthday is headed for me like a slow, unavoidable bull and I'm not as far on the journey as I thought I would be. Hearts have been hurt. Projects have been abandoned, and replaced by other abandoned projects. Time has been frittered away. Too many apple fritters have been eaten and too few miles jogged.

I write and record songs but, before I can finish them, the fun is gone. Instead of trusting my ears, I see images of listeners not getting it. My new song, Transform Me Into Any Shape, started with a spark of inspiration on the guitar. Through playful trial and error, chords were chosen and the arrangement solidified. Then I started recording. By the time the first session was over, I didn't like the song anymore. Or, more accurately, I was afraid other people wouldn't.

Then I remembered: it's none of my business (especially at this point in the creative process) what others will think. It's my business to be as good as I can, to be truthful about what I think sounds amazing. As much as I love an audience, my authentic swing doesn't have a thing to do with the people on the sidelines.

If I trust myself, I will find it again.

Here's my new song:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Matt-Mintz-Music/118706994836181

Crippling Doubt & Giddy Enthusiasm

2010-05-10T10:48:00.000-07:00

I've been reviewing my old writing journals. It is amusing to see crippling doubt trade blows with giddy enthusiasm over individual writing projects as well as my entire calling as a writer. Last year's journal tells of my Hollywood internship. The hardest and best part of the job was writing reviews (or what they call 'coverage') of the scripts that were submitted to us. My opinions (and how persuasively I wrote them) helped determine if scripts advanced up the ladder. I could read a script and write four pages of good coverage in about half a work day. The bosses asked a lot of me but they valued my opinion.

Then, on my last day, I submitted my best script, a theme-park park comedy called AMUSED. I went home and checked my email hourly for two weeks. I envisioned them writing, "Matt, we love Amused!!! Dare we call it genius? We have forwarded it to Judd Apatow's agent--who loves it!--and would like to meet. When can you come to L.A.?" I pictured walking through the production company offices on my terms; not to Xerox seven-hundred page books and make coffee but to talk million dollar deals.

Then I finally got the email response on what was already a nerve-wracking day. I was preparing to do an open mic; I made such a clown of myself at the last one that it took me a year to do another. I opened the email with my schedule book in hand. It was four quick sentences, thrown off with little care and what seemed like a cursory reading of the first five pages of my script. The carrot I'd been chasing for a year was rotten. My blood, sweat and tears had resulted in them thinking my best script was an offensive, pointless piece of crap. Or so it seemed. I wrote this poem:

--------------

REJECTION SLIP

When the voice of the last artist is finally silenced, the world will end.
Without revelation or second chance.

Just the ash of a dead fire,
a line of smoke,
and the smell of burnt garbage.

--------------

That's what I think about the importance of the artist.

I kicked ass at the open mic, by the way.

Artistry & Shopping Under the Influence

2009-08-13T15:14:00.000-07:00

So I'm an artist. Never had the balls to introduce myself as such, face-to-face. But here, online, in this my first blog, I'm going for it.

Being an artist means a lot of things, of course. It means paying attention to life, even at its most banal and heart-breaking; for unbearable interactions make great material.

Being an artist means making a third what my wife makes (for now). Some days it means sleeping in while she readies for work, playing football video games until an hour before she gets home then writing my ass off until she does. Sometimes this hour is more productive than a normal day's work (I hardly ever do this, honey. I'm just throwing comedy with you).

Being an artist means means telling a dear friend about your new song and watching their eyes glaze over as though you'd just said, "Blah, blah, blah, Tony. Blah, blah, blah." They love ya, Artist Boy, but they really don't give a damn what you write.

Being an artist often means a fanatical love of other artists (You complete me, Bobby Dylan, especially when I can fade your songs out after 2.5 minutes). I have learned the hard way, though, not to combine iTunes-shopping and booze. Demon alcohol, you are so seductive; even buying Van Halen 'Black and Blue' seems like a good idea when I'm under your spell.

Being an artist means you have a ton in common with your fellow artists, even when it feels like you don't. What we do may look pretty damn different. It may sound different. But deep down it's the same thing, the same calling; becoming more and more ourselves, being co-creators with God.

I hope...

...you enjoy these posts.

...you comment often.

...you share them with others.

...you have the guts to call yourself an artist.

Peace Be With You All,

matt mintz