Screening You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory, A First Feature Screenplay and Summer Movies

On Thursday, May 29th, I screened my senior thesis film You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory for the first time, alongside the new movies from two other incredibly talented filmmakers and friends, Morgan Ingari and Catie Stickels. The event, which we held in one of Tisch's larger screening rooms, was outstanding. I was thrilled to have cast members Mike Wesolowski, Mary Goggin, Matthew Vitticore and Zachary Gamble attend the premiere.

I don't believe I've shared either of the two trailers for You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory on this blog. Thank you so much to Benjamin Dewey and Bobb Barito for their brilliant color and sound on both trailers. Here they are:

You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory Trailer from Jack Kyser on Vimeo.

You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory Trailer #2 from Jack Kyser on Vimeo.

In the weeks leading up to the screening, I met with colorist and visual effects artist Benjamin Dewey for several final color and visual effects meetings. The movie received a masterful sound design by Bobb Barito in April, and after a few days of sound mixing and ADR re-recording, we recorded a great original score for the film by my classmate Ari Selinger in early May.

The movie now has its own IMDB page, and if you're interested in seeing stills from the film, please click here! The first DVDs of the movie have been sent out to our IndieGoGo contributors. Of course, the only drawback to have so many wonderful contributors is that I can't send the DVDs out to everyone at once. But be on the lookout for the final film in the mail, contributors!

Also, check out the acting reel of a great actress, Mary Goggin, who stars in You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory. I'm so proud to have the film featured in her reel.

In June, I screened the film for my professor Yemane Demissie's summer Sight and Sound: Film class, where I received some truly wonderful notes. They seemed very taken with the idea behind the movie and the lead character Charlie's ideas about memory and having a witness.

One student remarked that the character of Charlie seemed like it was written for actor Mike Wesolowski. Another asked if I had written Charlie's bizarre Jack Nicholson impression specifically for Mike, as it seemed like such a specific idea, and was so well-suited to Mike's personality. In fact, that impression was in the script from the very beginning, but they're correct that Mike is so convincing as the character that the impression seems like something something we might have developed in a rehearsal.

Many others praised the casting, the directing of the two lead actors and the use of music in the movie (particularly when Charlie rocks out to Bob Dylan in his room). We also discussed the use of New York as a setting. Even though we live in the city, the students felt New York is rarely used as well as it is here. More than a few people remarked that the apartment scenes, in addition to feeling very 'New York-y,' helped illustrate the closeness of this mother and son, living together cramped in their tiny apartment. Another person said they loved the way the movie began with quiet, dark city streets, and then ended with big and bright Times Square.

Yemane asked the class how I was able to generate empathy for a character who superficially does not 'deserve' to be liked. One person remarked that the character's confessions generate empathy for him. Charlie is very aware of what he's doing wrong, but the fact that he confesses his mistakes to his mother helps the audience empathize with him. Another said that we also understand him through the mother - her acceptance of him, even when she's telling him to leave, helps us have patience with him.

Yemane also asked the class to discuss the bravery involved in writing a screenplay like this, a piece that delves so deeply into seemingly personal territory. He also commented on the film's depiction of awkwardness. Most movies show awkwardness in a degrading or comical way, Yemane said, but my movie aims to show us awkwardness in a genuine and forthright way.

I went on to discuss the casting and script-writing processes with the class. Near the end of the discussion, Yemane asked his teaching assistant to replay one of my favorite moments from the movie, when Charlie stands alone in his apartment hallway calling out after his mother. Yemane pointed toward this moment as a great example of using off-screen sound to capture a character's loneliness. We hear the mother turn on the television in the other room, slam the door and then all sound goes out completely. Three small things, all added in post-production. Of course, a large amount of the credit here belongs to Bobb Barito. Someone else commented that they thought the sound of Charlie's voice was excellent, as he seemed so much louder than everyone else, which added to the idea that he's alone and reaching out. I was honored to get such great feedback from Yemane and his students.

In late March, I held a wonderful first reading of my feature screenplay at NYU. I was over the moon about the notes I received from my peers - it was a mammoth 166-page draft, and everyone was so generous to come out and stay for what ended up being nearly a three-hour reading. I finished the first (admittedly not great) draft of my feature screenplay earlier this year, and I can only hope it gets shorter and better from here. I certainly have a lot of fantastic notes with which to work.

In April, I'm simultaneously excited and disappointed to say that my film Jake the Cinephile was under close consideration by the Cinéfondation Selection Committee of the 67th Cannes Film Festival. The film made it to the final round of consideration to the Cinéfondation, but was unfortunately not selected for the festival. Although it would have been incredible to screen the film at Cannes, I'm still very proud that my wonderful crew and I were able to make a movie that got pretty darn close.

Jake the Cinephile screened on Wednesday, April 16th at Anthology Film Archives in New York City as part of the NewFilmmakers New York series. It was not only a great crowd and a very receptive audience at NewFilmmakers New York, but it was by far the largest screen on which I've ever had one of my films screen. Before the screening, I joined the other filmmakers in my section at the front of the theater for a brief introduction to the movies. To view pictures from the screening, please click here.

Additionally, here is an article from Broadway World about the New Filmmaker New York Short Film Series on April 16th with information about Jake the Cinephile.

In May, I had the honor of working on my friend Eliza McNitt's amazing short film for TEDMED as Assistant Director. The movie stars the incredible Adepero Oduye (12 Years A Slave, Pariah) and it's titled Play Is Not A Waste of Time. We had a great shoot on a soundstage in Brooklyn, and you can view the film online right here.

In June, I saw some excellent live stage performances, including Robert Wilson's surreal production of The Old Woman at BAM starring Willem Dafoe and Mikhail Baryshnikov, and a revival of Eugene Ionesco's The Killer at Theatre for a New Audience, which was one the most amazing stage productions I've seen in a long time. The extraordinary Michael Shannon starred in the production - it was my first time seeing him perform onstage, and he's just as electrifying as he is onscreen.

I also saw a performance of Alan Ayckbourn's A Small Family Business via National Theatre Live at NYU's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, which was a wonderful opportunity to revisit the world of Ayckbourn (I've performed a monologue from A Small Family Business frequently in the past, including for my college acting auditions and for my performance in Third North's Ultra Violet Live talent competition, where I won second place my freshman year). I attended the event with two dear friends, both of whom acted with me in Austin High School's 2007 UIL One-Act Play production of Ayckbourn's Round and Round the Garden. It's still my favorite play in which I've performed (I've been in it on two different occasions - in high school, I played Norman, and then five years later, at NYU, I played Reg).

If you're interested in watching Tisch New Theatre's 2012 production of Round and Round the Garden, the whole show is now online:

Speaking of plays, I don't think I ever mentioned that in March of 2013, I saw two amazing Broadway productions. It was incredibly exciting to see Tom Hanks in Nora Ephron's Lucky Guy. in which he gave an incredible performance. I met Hanks after the show, which was beyond cool. He told me to make the picture I took with him my "prof pic," and I'm inclined to agree with the great man. As you may remember, Hanks and Paul Greengrass gave us one heck of a movie last October (not to mention Hanks's extraordinary work in John Lee Hancock's Saving Mr. Banks as Walt Disney last year).

I also had the chance to meet Lucky Guy costar Christopher McDonald (1996's Happy Gilmore, 2000's Requiem for a Dream, 2005's Broken Flowers) after the performance.

The same weekend, I saw Lyle Kessler's Orphans on Broadway, starring Alec Baldwin, Ben Foster and Tom Strurridge. They all gave outstanding performances in this very powerful play, which seemed like something in which I'd love to perform some day (perhaps with my high school theatre director Billy Dragoo, who visited New York a few months ago with his wife Annie Dragoo, who was also one of my wonderful theatre directors). We've long talked about doing a play together, and something like Orphans (with a third young actor) would be incredible.

At the Tony Awards last year, I'm still not sure how Baldwin and Al Pacino weren't nominated for Orphans and the revival of Glengarry Glen Ross, respectively. But it was very cool to see Cicely Tyson thank Hallie Foote, Van Ramsey and Michael Wilson in her acceptance speech for Horton Foote's The Trip to Bountiful. And it was excellent to watch the Tony Awards get handed out in the same space in which I graduated two weeks before the ceremony (Radio City Music Hall).

I posted my reviews of Richard Linklater's Boyhood and Steve James's Life Itself earlier this month, but they aren't the only great pictures that have come out this year.

Clint Eastwood's Jersey Boys, released back in June, is another riveting Eastwood picture that deserves a lot more praise than it's receiving (not unlike Eastwood's other recent films, all of which I think are very under-appreciated - J. Edgar, Hereafter and Invictus). Richard Brody wrote a fascinating article about Jersey Boys, and it's one of the few pieces that actually tries to understand what Eastwood is doing with the material. Here's another good article on Eastwood from Variety about both Jersey Boys and Eastwood's upcoming American Sniper, as well as an interview with Eastwood. Eastwood has long been one of my favorite filmmakers and biggest influences, and I feel people aren't taking notice of his risks as a director after his indisputably masterful run of Mystic River (2003), Million Dollar Baby (2004) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006).

Doug Liman's Edge of Tomorrow is still the most fun and thrilling movie of the summer, with a real movie star giving a great performance in the lead. Remember when we got legitimately incredible summer movies like Minority Report (2002), Collateral (2004) and War of the Worlds (2005)? Tom Cruise is back to the rescue with Edge of Tomorrow. It's the only blockbuster of the summer (besides Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) that can claim to be a great movie.

Kelly Reichardt's Night Moves has more tension in any one of its scenes than most other thrillers have in their entire running length (there are now two masterful films titled Night Moves, after Arthur Penn's 1975 thriller starring Gene Hackman). Plus, the movie features another great performance from the brilliant Peter Sarsgaard. And I love that Jon Favreau's well-received Chef uses Austin as an actual location. Guero's, Franklin Barbecue and the 360 Bridge all make appearances, and that seems in keeping with the movie's low-key and inviting warmth. I'm thrilled it's become such a popular film.

I saw James Gray's masterpiece The Immigrant back in October at the New York Film Festival, though the movie was not released theatrically until May. It will undoubtedly be near the top of my end-of-the-year top ten list - it's one of the most extraordinary American films in many years. I saw the film again at a pre-screening at BAM, followed by a Q&A with Gray, and for a third time earlier this week, and the picture never fails to move me to tears. I think something about the movie's morals - perhaps Eva's sense of morality and struggle with whether or not she deserves happiness - touches me deeply.

Here's a beautiful piece from Ain't Them Bodies Saints director David Lowery on remembering The Immigrant, plus an interview with James Gray from Film Comment. Plus, the fantastic news that the brilliant Joaquin Phoenix will be starring in Woody Allen's next film. On a more tragic note, the outstanding Ric Menello, who co-wrote The Immigrant and Gray's masterful Two Lovers (2009), passed away last year.

David Gordon Green's Joe overflows with memorable characters and energy in every single scene, almost like a Robert Altman film. It's everything I love about Gordon Green's Prince Avalanche from last year, Jeff Nichols's Mud and Mike Figgis's Leaving Las Vegas (1995) rolled into one great film, with a masterful performance by Nicolas Cage. Here's an astonishing article from the Austin Chronicle about Gary Poulter, one of the stars of Joe, who tragically passed away shortly after shooting the movie.

Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin, which I saw back in April, is out-of-this-world and unlike any movie I've ever seen. It's fantastic to see new movies like Under the Skin and Pawel Pawlikowski's Ida (also one of the best movies of the year) that know how to use silence. Bong Joon-ho's Snowpiercer is the summer action movie audiences deserve, and John Carney's Begin Again charmed me the same way his Once did seven years ago, with the always-outstanding Mark Ruffalo doing great work. Paul Haggis's Third Person trusts its audience to let it takes it time. With more movies for adults like it, we'll have better audiences.

It's not a new movie, but I saw William Friedkin's Sorcerer (1977) at Film Forum last month, and that picture is a sight to behold. I'm so glad this movie is being rediscovered, because it's a masterpiece.

Boyhood remains the greatest cinematic achievement of the year - Linklater is on fire. I saw his Before Midnight last year at the Angelika Film Center with Aziz Ansari sitting behind me. I don't know what was more beautiful - the film, or him. I saw that film three times theatrically, and it's astounding what Linklater achieves (as I'm about to embark on shooting a new movie that takes place entirely in a hotel room, I am particularly inspired by the second half of Before Midnight, which has ingenious blocking and use of space in a hotel room occupied by Jesse and Celine). Finally, here's a beautiful message from Jesse and Celine, courtesy of the Alamo Drafthouse.

There have been a number of great artists who have passed away this year, including Eli Wallach, one of the great film actors (from 1966's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly to 2010's The Ghost Writer); Gordon Willis, the cinematographer of many of the greatest films ever made (including 1972's The Godfather and 1979's Manhattan); actor Bob Hoskins, who was so brilliant in Mermaids (1990), Nixon (1995), Hollywoodland (2006), Michael (1996) and Brazil (1985) - and there are still so many of his performances I need to see; the great filmmaker Paul Mazursky (1978's An Unmarried Woman, 1986's Down and Out in Beverly Hills); singer Jerry Vale, who appeared in Goodfellas (1990) and Casino (1995); and film critic Jay Carr.

Until my next blog post, where I hope to continue playing catch-up on the past year-and-a-half!

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue: Graduating from New York University

Note: I wrote this piece this past May after graduating from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. I believe the piece more or less deals with a lot of my fears immediately after graduation, and, to a certain extent, the piece still reflects a lot of my feelings even months after graduation.

There’s a deep, profound sadness during this time of transition. It’s about that time when regrets start bubbling up in my mind, although, for me, they never seem to really leave, and my days are spent recounting and reliving the social errors and faux-pas I made over the past four years.

If I’m concerned or preoccupied with anything, both in my everyday life and in my creative work – it’s behavior. Specifically, my own, over which I am significantly concerned. But I suppose in the days surrounding graduation, my normal state of anxiety has risen to a full-out existential crisis.

What behavior do other people remember? I think that my latest film, You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory, deals with this question a little bit. Is it possible to act like a buffoon in front of a large group of people, but still manage to salvage your reputation and retain some pride for the next day? Is everyone thinking mostly about their own moral failings, their own insecurities and disappointments? I know that I’m guilty of overanalyzing my own behavior, but I also know that I’m able to sometimes behave on autopilot, unaware of what my words might mean or suggest to someone else.

If only we were given a transcript of everything we said during a given day – every word, every action – then I would have a way of analyzing my behavior closely to see how I did (and I wouldn’t struggle to recall every significant thing I said). Was my behavior as awkward as I remember? Did I alienate anyone along the way? After reviewing it, I would probably hand the transcript over to someone else – a witness – to receive some sort of validation that I’m not doing as terribly as I think I am.

There are opportunities for opening up, but I squander them. I imagine most students who graduated last week are experiencing a kind of existential crisis to one degree or another. But my concern isn’t having an existential crisis – my concern is that I’ll continue to mask that crisis behind sarcasm and a snarky sense of humor that shoots down any real kind of conversation with another person. I build walls.

I also struggle immensely without structure. I began feeling comfortable and respected in high school when I became a part of our school’s wonderful theatre department, but that was a long time ago. I think I’ve been able to survive in college through the structure of the film school and keeping busy with making movies.

What structure remains now? There will be the weekly Wednesday evening meetings with my Advanced Production class, where we screen rough cuts of our advanced films and, ideally, screen feature-length films afterwards. The class is made up of people who I love dearly, and perhaps it’s because I love them all so dearly that I fear my excitement in seeing them each week will result in the kind of behavior I long to end. I’ll talk too much, I’ll get started on a rant about films, or perhaps a political issue about which I know far too little, and when the evening is over, I’ll take a look at myself and promise to do better the next week. But this is one of the only surviving structures in which there is the luxury of having a next week. And it won’t last for long.

But When We Get to the End, He Wants to Start All Over Again

That’s right, so many of the structures and institutions that give direction to my life are disappearing before my eyes. The Dean’s Scholars group, the classes, the internship, Tisch New Theatre – all have come to an end.

There are many friends (and people I wish I knew better) moving to Los Angeles soon, and maybe I’ll have the chance to see some of these wonderful people one last time before they leave. But there likely won’t be enough time for me to re-shape how they think of me, or for me to deepen my friendship with them in a significant way. Of course, I always tell myself I need more time – it doesn’t matter how long I have with someone. If I spend ten hours with another person, for instance, I’ll very likely squander 9 ½ of those hours by telling nonsense jokes, ranting about movies and acting bizarrely in an effort to gain some sort of attention or respect. And then, in the last half-hour, I’ll suddenly scramble to make some kind of real, true emotional connection with the person and achieve what I failed to do in the previous hours. That’s my nature.

Although some of us will remain at Tisch and continue editing our senior films in the months to come, the vast majority of people I know will move on, and what was once a fresh class of students and artists will drift away. I think I’ll miss it the most precisely because, just as I was learning how to become a part of it, it ended.

But for the past four years, every night was a chance to look back at the day behind me, review the possible mistakes I made and try to reinvent myself for the next day. I’m not sure there were very many days where I took that opportunity.

Now, I have that slightly lonely feeling you get after a shoot is over, except it feels like one giant film shoot has come to an end. Most shoots themselves feel like a rush of quick decisions, small arguments with other people – an entire laundry-list of sometimes questionable behavior. When they’re over, everything slows down. Suddenly there’s time to think through everything carefully, but it’s too late to change anyone’s opinion of you because everyone has moved on, and that rush that comes with having so much to do has vanished. There’s the need to lay low, make amends and keep quiet for a while, and you’re not totally sure if there will always be a next shoot, and you know you may not see many of these wonderful people ever again after spending so much time with them.

That’s what graduation feels like.

After the Gold Rush

It’s late at night when I get the most anxious – when I realize that all of the plans and dreams I had for a given day did not come to fruition, that I accomplished very little and that, frankly, I regressed in many ways. And then I fight against the night to fix what I can before I run out of steam and energy. When I wake up in the morning, the world seems so full of opportunity and promise again. Energized by the potential of the day, I get a little giddy, and I goof around, leaving the work for just a little bit later, and I goof around some more – until it’s nighttime, and I realize that I let all of that opportunity and promise slip away. But that’s okay, because the next morning –

When you get to the end, you know there are so many people who you could have gotten to know better. Oh, how I wish I had been more candid, more genuine and free of cynicism.

It’s true that there are wonderful things that await me. I get to live with two of my dearest friends this summer. I will continue working on my advanced film, a project I’m very proud of, and I will be faced with a few more opportunities, perhaps, to better my behavior in front of people I respect and admire.

But, for me, there’s always going to be a tension every day between the need to behave, to be rational, to make a good impression on others – and then the impulse to somehow transcend the day, to act a little bit crazier and take a few risks – but in doing so, maybe you get the chance to earn the love and respect for which you’ve been searching. And then there’s the fall – where the behavior comes crashing down and those risks turn into regrets, and you wonder why you didn’t play it safe and just behave like a normal human being.

Our last advanced production class with Yemane Demissie profoundly moved me. He screened Alexander Payne’s About Schmidt for the class, and although the film is one of my favorite movies, I didn’t initially understand why Yemane selected the film to end our class. He told us that he thought showing a transition film about college graduation might be a little obvious, so he wanted to show a film about a different moment of transition in a person’s life. The movie, as it always does, made me tear up a little bit at the end. But, after it ended, Yemane sat in front of the class and connected About Schmidt to my future in a way that I had never considered.

Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) plants a seed at the beginning of the film by sending a monthly donation to a six-year old child named Ndugu, who lives in a developing country, through a program called Childreach. It’s exactly the kind of thing an American man in his late sixties might do to give back, or to feel he’s doing some good in the world. Schmidt expects nothing by sending the check, though – it’s a genuine act that results in him writing letters to Ndugu throughout the film, speaking his mind and sharing his insecurities with a young boy who probably doesn’t understand what he’s talking about.

Over the course of the film, it becomes clear that Schmidt has planted nothing with his family – after his wife dies, he’s left to fend alone against his daughter and her fiancé. By the end of the film, Schmidt is alone. He has nobody left, and he has failed. His daughter marries the imbecile he so strongly urges her not to, and after the wedding, she’s gone, out of reach.

His wife is gone, too. He is mostly forgotten by his co-workers from his insurance office. “Relatively soon, I will die,” Schmidt writes to Ndugu. “Maybe in 20 years, maybe tomorrow, it doesn’t matter. Once I am dead and everyone who knew me dies too, it will be as though I never existed. What difference has my life made to anyone? None that I can think of. None at all.”

In the last scene, however, he opens a letter from a Sister who works in a small village in Tanzania and cares for young Ndugu. She tells Schmidt that Ndugu reads all of his letters and thinks of him every day. Enclosed with the letter is a painting by Ndugu, which shows two stick figures – one shorter than the other – holding hands. Schmidt breaks down crying. In the end of the film, Ndugu is his salvation. He expected nothing from it, and put his time and energy into relationships that ultimately failed him – but it was Ndugu that gave him his salvation.

Yemane asked us to remember, as we go forward in life, that if we plant something small and expect nothing from it, it could very well end up being our salvation. You never know what is going to end up saving you, and it may very well come from the place you least expect.

The graduation speech I needed came from Yemane Demissie. But it also made me wonder, where or what is my Ndugu? I worry and struggle through so many strained relationships, but which are the ones that will come through in the end?

How many times I have felt just like Schmidt – my last-ditch ambitions foiled, forced to return home, disappointed and defeated, only to have my spirits lifted by the smallest and most unexpected source. However deluded my happiness – or Schmidt’s – might be, it’s what keeps me going.

And so I move forward into a world of uncertainty and anxiety. My expectations are unrealistically high, and hopefully I won’t be crushed with disappointment. I only wish I knew the identity of my Ndugu, so that I can keep my eyes open and my heart ready for whatever ends up being my salvation.

An Introduction to You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory

Note: In April, I directed my senior thesis film, titled You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory, which received an Advanced Production allotment last fall from the Tisch School of the Arts. In order to receive the allotment, I had to pitch my film to Professor Yemane Demissie and the class in November. The first part of this blog entry is comprised of my pitch for the Advanced Production Workshop class, and the second part is comprised of text from my IndieGoGo campaign to fund the film (which was launched in February).

You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory Promo Video from Jack Kyser on Vimeo.

The Pitch

To say that my Intermediate Narrative film The Wheels is auto-biographical would be somewhat accurate. The specific events in the movie never happened, but the film does kind of reflect how I feel about a lot of things, and maybe it represents some of the things I wish I'd said to my father, who passed away when I was eleven from alcoholism. But interestingly, making that film became a way of understanding him, and by the end of it, I actually feel more sympathy for his character than for the son. So, I don't know, maybe that says something about why we make these films.

My new film, You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory, is about Charlie, a socially inept twenty-six year-old who compulsively confesses every detail of his anti-social behavior to his mother, Hazel, with whom he still lives in Harlem. When his mother asks him to finally move out of her apartment, Charlie is forced to confront his greatest fears – losing his only life witness and living in a world without his only friend and confidante.

In the latest version of my script, there is no mention made of Charlie's father, but the implication is there - if his father so easily disappeared from this world (as an older draft stated, aside from an obituary and a few pictures around the house, you'd never know he existed), what's to stop Charlie from being forgotten completely, too? Particularly when the people around him – his girlfriend, members of his family, friends who abandon him – are, as he puts it, dropping like flies? At the end of the day, the only person who knows his life story, who has been a witness for his entire life, is his mother.

The film directly addresses so many of my fears and anxieties - of dying without being remembered, the need to be liked or to impress in social situations, fear of abandonment, the necessity of archiving and preserving memory, and wanting to have someone by your side who knows your entire journey, from start to finish. Psychologically, I'm not sure I can say where all of these obsessions come from. Maybe it is from losing my father, or watching the size of my family dwindle down to just a few people. At the beginning of this semester, about two months ago, my mom's sister, my aunt, passed away, and suddenly all of my worst fears embedded within this script were reconfirmed. If anything, that’s made me feel even closer to the project, and more certain that it expresses something that truly matters to me.

The way that the character in my film, Charlie, handles the loss around him isn't exactly mature. He's a self-obsessed character if there ever was one - crying out for love and attention from friends by acting like a buffoon, and then, knowing his behavior was unacceptable, confessing his behavior to his mother and expecting forgiveness, never once thinking of her struggles.

Along with the other three films I have made at NYU - With Love, Marty (2011), The Wheels (2012) and Jake the Cinephile (2013) - this new film represents part of a cinematic biography, with each of these movies dealing with a different aspect of my obsessions. These are all stories of alienated outsiders and social pariahs, of young men with strong, rigid moral codes, and the films concern their disenfranchisement with a world that doesn't share their values. You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory is the culmination of so many of these common concerns and themes.

In With Love, Marty, Marty obsesses over a new romantic conquest every few weeks. His desperate behavior drives his friends away, and his obsessive quest for love culminates in an ill-advised trip across the city to profess his love to a young woman he barely knows. She rejects him, and his night ends in disappointment. The obsessive behavior in The Wheels is the father’s unstoppable drinking – it destroys his relationship with his son, but he can’t seem to help it.

Disappointment plays a large role in these movies. In The Wheels, the son is continually let down by his father, and by the film’s end, he has distanced himself from his dad, not allowing himself to get hurt again. In Jake the Cinephile, Jake prefers watching films to having actual relationships with human beings, because the cinema has never disappointed Jake. When Jake tries to start a relationship with a young woman, his obsessive behavior eventually drives the young woman to throw him out on his feet. To Jake, though, this is simply a re-affirmation of what he already suspected – that people are disappointing and unreliable, and the cinema is his only true friend.

More than anything, though, these four pictures all seem to revolve around characters who are forced to come to terms with their unsustainable way of living. These men are pulled away from their comfort zones and pressured by outside forces to change their way of life. More often than not, however, they eventually retreat back to their original behavior.

When I think about why I've written these pieces, I think about the scene in my Advanced film where Charlie, in an act of desperation to form a connection with someone, goes overboard and starts overwhelming his realtor friend, Jim, with his deepest insecurities and fears. Jim becomes very uncomfortable, and withdraws from the conversation. And I think maybe that's what I'm doing with my work - reaching out and hoping that someone will understand me, or at the very least understand how I feel (without alienating them, hopefully, as Charlie alienates Jim in the film).

So what's different about this new film that I want to make in Advanced Production? If this is the same self-obsessed character making the same mistakes, why make another movie about him? This is what I want to address first.

Working with Yemane in this class has made me even more aware of how my movies deal explicitly with resistance to change. This theme has evolved over the four movies in a significant way. In With Love, Marty, I do believe Marty changes, even if only by a small degree. The Wheels, however, is pretty bleak. The father reverts completely back to his original state by the end of the movie – there is no indication that he will get sober. Jake the Cinephile is trickier. Jake loses both the girl and the cinema, and at the end of the movie, he comes face-to-face with himself for the first time. Is that progress? I don’t know.

Now that I’m aware of this reoccurring theme, however, I’m inclined to do something a little different with You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory. At face value, the ending – in which Charlie moves back in with his mother after being asked to move out – would seem to represent a total retreat back to Charlie’s comfort zone. However, I’ve always viewed the ending a little differently – I think that Charlie has learned how much his mother means to him, and how scary it will one day be for him to let go of her. Rather than moving out, however, I believe Charlie deals with this fear by treating his mother differently at the end of the film, with more care and compassion. Yemane and I have talked a lot about Charlie's journey here, and it's become clear that, although you can't expect Charlie to change radically by the end of the film, maybe we can see a character who is ready to listen to his mother.

Maybe it is unhealthy for mother and son to live together for the years to come. But the end of my Advanced film poses the question, what if they truly need each other? What if Charlie learns, over time, to be there for his mother, as his mother is there for him? There’s a strange sense of comfort, if not hope, in that ending, that I don’t believe exists in the other films. With this movie, I want to work toward a new kind of ending – something that’s still true and perhaps a little melancholy, but one that also acknowledges growth and, perhaps, hope.

Inspiration and Style

I'm going to cross over here to inspiration. With all of this talk of guilt, confession, social anxiety and obsessiveness, there's one filmmaker who I really respond to over any others, and that's Martin Scorsese, who is the king of the cinema of loneliness.

The visual style of Mean Streets (1973) is a big influence on the bar scenes in my movie, not only because they are stylistically similar to what I want to achieve, but also because the beginning chapter of Mean Streets was a major influence on me when thinking of how to introduce my character in my script. In one of the opening scenes in Mean Streets, we follow the protagonist, also named Charlie (Harvey Keitel), through the bar and observe his behavior with his friends. In this scene, Scorsese introduces the camera’s subjectivity toward Charlie, and the bar is also used to represent a world of sin. Look at the way Scorsese follows Charlie steadily as he dances through the bar and makes his way onstage to dance with the woman – this is not totally dissimilar to the kind of subjective camera movement I would like to do in my scene, perhaps when my Charlie walks up to the bar and starts ranting to the bartender, doing his Jack Nicholson impression. We also learn quite a bit about Scorsese’s Charlie based on his interaction with his friends – he’s immediately separated from the rest of his friends because he insists on punishing himself, or testing the fires of hell, by holding his finger above an open flame. We then understand that Charlie exists in a more emotionally conflicted universe than the people around him. We’re introduced to both his physical world and his internal, emotional world.

There are two very different worlds in my Advanced film. The first world, of course, is the world of the bar. It will be drenched in red light – open, spacey and a kind of platform where Charlie can go wild with his behavior. The lighting and production design in this scene will emphasize that we’re looking at this bar as a kind of hell for Charlie (very similar to Mean Streets). This is the world of sin, the world of Manhattan – the world away from his mother. The bar stands in contrast to the later scenes in Harlem.

The other world, of course, is that small, cramped Harlem apartment where he lives with his mother. These two environments will stand apart drastically with the film’s production design, as the apartment will be full of furniture, scattered boxes on the floor, and dirty clothes. My hope is for the apartment to convey a real sense of confession, as if Charlie is in a dark confessional booth, defeated by his own behavior. It is almost as if Charlie, squeezed into that Harlem apartment, is forced to come to terms with his inappropriate behavior, whereas the wide-open bar is a playground, where he is free to act like a buffoon and go wild.

The Campaign – The Crew and Logistics

I'm incredibly lucky to get to work with so many people who have been on my creative team for the past three films, as well. Our incredible crew includes producers Erica Rose and Harry Tarre, cinematographer Benjamin Dewey, sound mixer and sound designer Bobb Barito, and production designer David Jaffe – many of whom did outstanding work on my previous films. (Current Jack here – take a look at Ben’s latest cinematography reel below, which features footage from You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory and The Wheels).

Ben Dewey 2013 Cinematography Reel from Benjamin Dewey on Vimeo.

The Impact

We truly believe that if you help us, you will be part of a great and powerful movie. Without the proper financing, however, the film cannot be made. The costs for film equipment, location fees, transportation, and meals for the cast and crew, among many other things, are overwhelming, and outside financial support is critical to the successful production of this film.

As I’ve been making more movies and working with slightly larger budgets, with each new film I think I’m getting closer to achieving what I want in terms of style. For one, I’m trying to incorporate more and more expressive uses of camera movement. Jake the Cinephile is really where I started dipping my toes into a more subjective, expressionistic kind of filmmaking, experimenting with a moving camera – and that’s what I’m hoping to really embrace and expand on with this new film.

My Intermediate Narrative film The Wheels won the Best Student Film award at the 2012 Metropolitan Film Festival of New York, and was an Official Selection of the 2012 Coney Island Film Festival. The film also received high praise from professors at the Tisch School of the Arts. My previous film, With Love, Marty, was an Official Selection of The 2011 Big Apple Film Festival, the 2012 World Music and Independent Film Festival in Washington, D.C., and the Emerging Filmmaker’s Series in Rochester, NY.

We already have an incredible ensemble of actors line up to star in the film, including Mike Wesolowski, who will play Charlie. Mike is a senior in the Atlantic Acting School at the Tisch School of the Arts, currently studying acting under Alec Baldwin. Mary Goggin, an extremely talented actress who has acted in films such as Little Children (2006), will be playing Hazel.

What We Need & What You Get

We need your help. As you can imagine, as a senior thesis film, the scope of the picture is far-reaching. We truly want this to be a film where New York City itself plays a key character in the story, and so we are shooting in many different locations around the city – including a three-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, a bar in the East Village, a restaurant to double as the Times Square Olive Garden, another restaurant in the West Village, along with several night exteriors in midtown Manhattan and Harlem.

Our budget includes fees for these extraordinary locations, additional equipment rentals, transportation costs, anamorphic camera lenses, and meals for an entire week of shooting. The shoot begins in a little more than one month, and in that time, we need to raise as much money as possible.

As I head into rehearsals with the actors and continue pre-production with my longtime collaborators, I cannot tell you how much I would appreciate it if you would consider contributing to this campaign. We will not be able to make this film without your help. And if you are among those who were so generous to contribute to Jake the Cinephile last summer, I’m so excited to share that film with you in the very near future.

We are working as hard as we can to make this picture a reality by April. Any donation you can make – however small – would be absolutely incredible. Our deadline is quickly approaching, but with your help, we know that we can make this film. On the right, we have listed the perks for contributing to this production. (Current Jack here - thank you so much for reading about my new film, and lastly, please take a look at our wonderful Steadicam operator Patrick Morgan's reel, which includes footage from You Can't Put You Arms Around A Memory):

Patrick Morgan Steadicam Reel Spring 2013 from Patrick Huw Morgan on Vimeo.