DAY 1

An incredibly smooth shoot so far — we are working at a whole new level. Jacob is focused like a laser and cool as a cucumber. The cast and crew are flawless.

Here are a couple of screen captures from the RED camera.

Rehearsals are done

We just finished two nights rehearsal for our shoot. Jesko was working with the members of our cabaret troupe ("Zirkus Foxglove,") while Jacob and I went over various production details. While they danced, he and I also spent some time alone going over my performance as the Poet. Very exciting- we can see this thing taking shape before our eyes. We used the offices (empty at night) of Montreal/Amsterdam/Paris Commercial Creativity company Sid Lee, which has been very supportive (especially its video production arm, Jimmy Lee, which is co-producing with us.)

Here are a couple of iphotos from rehearsal, plus a title card by my old friend the artist Paul Abraham, who has been lending his considerable talent to these adventures since 1994.

Tomorrow, we head into the Corona Theater for Day 1 of shooting.

IN THE MAKING video

As promised, my brother Bob has shot and edited a series of interviews with us to see if a clearer picture of what we're doing might emerge. You can watch it here:

One week Out

We shoot a week from tomorrow. We're almost ready. Our cast and locations are nailed down, and most of our crew and equipment.

Earlier in the week, we visited the theater again for a technical requi with our DOP Alex, and lighting/gaffer king Walter Klimkyw, who has shot in the theater many, many times. (I have known and worked with Walter since 1985 - he is ageing very gracefully.)

As we get closer, we're nailing down certain aspects of performance.

René Bazinet has joined the creative process. Jesko, Jacob and I met with him at Cafe Shaika in NDG last week. It quickly became apparent that the cabaret performance at the Corona should be centered around a two-step between René and Jesko. René was bringing a lot of enthusiasm, energy and intensity to the process. I think that, for Jesko, collaborating with René in this way is an unexpected career challenge and delight. René is a kind of mentor for him. I hope the result on screen will be exciting and unique, and especially interesting for those interested in clown work.

The pictures you see came from that session. Sans René, we had just finished a series of videotaped interviews with my brother Bob, for this site and for an eventual EPK. Boy, do we like to talk. Bob will have a huge editing challenge. You can get a sense of how relaxed we are - it's a good process.

Jacob has delivered a final, revised, script. I am still unsure of The Poet's motivation in certain sections, and we will need to work on this together before we shoot, so I don't completely suck.

Jacob and Jesko are off to Quebec City this week to buy costumes.

I'm pleased to note that my cousin Alec Gieysztor and my friend and co-worker François Lacoursière have confirmed that they will be part of the cast.

Once again, a short film becomes a snapshot of a life, trailing back for decades, in progress.

We've got a cooler

On Tuesday night last week, Jesko and I took a look at one of the coolers owned by a contact of mine - a fellow who owns a landmark Montreal steakhouse. It's roomy enough for us to shoot in, and the look is right. But boy, it's COLD. This will not be the most enjoyable part of the shoot, and the poor bastard who has to spend a long day acting/freezing in there is...me! This is conviction, I suppose.

(The shoot will be three days, two at the theater and one in the cooler. Plus two night rehearsal for our cabaret performers beforehand.)

We also met up with most of our cabaret cast and talked them through the project. Andrea got to meet Jesko, and I was happy to meet Sandrine, a dancer friend of Jesko's who performed in Celine Dion's A NEW DAY show in Las Vegas for five years, and more recenty had a briefish stint with Cirque du Soleil's KOOZA.

By Friday, Jacob was back from New York and the three of us met at his apartment, talking about the cast and adjustments to the creative. Very civilized, drinking coffee and smoking cigars before noon (cigars = a habit I had dropped for almost a year before this meeting. Bad influences.) This week, Jacob and Jesko should meet together to go over the choreography in detail.

My brother Bob read this blog and told me, in essence, that I write too much about logistics and not enough about intention. That is, he wonders, what are we hoping to achieve with this project? How are we going about this? But this is far too oblique a question for me to answer - to me, the process is intuitive and organic and telepathic. We know, and we're doing it.

So, I've invited him to interview us on camera and see what we say. Hopefully, I'll be able to post the results soon.

Enter Jesko

Jesko arrived from Berlin last week, bristling with anarchic energy after a long transatlantic flight. Here is a screen capture from my brother Bob, who Skyped me about 10 minutes after Jesko blew in like a Teutonic tornado.

As it turns out, we have been hired to work on a pitch for a major international brand together at Sid Lee (the agency) , and so are spending a lot of time in one another's company, dealing with matters apart from just IN THE COOLER. In fact, it looks like we may also be working together on at least one upcoming event as well, this one in Abu Dhabi in December (for Circo de Bakuza.) It's fun to be off the screen and face to face (or at least side by side.)

IN THE COOLER is, nevertheless, bubbling on the front burner. We will be meeting various members of the cast this week. This past Saturday night, we went to see a cabaret show performance by Shana of les Sept Doigts de la Main, at the Scena in Montreal's Old Port (lousy room, but they put on a good show. Faon Shane is devastating as always in her chain act.)

The MC at the cabaret was a veteran clown: René Bazinet. (He created and performed the roles Jesko ended up playing in SALTIMBANCO for 8 years. As I told Jesko, now I know where he copped his moves.) René and I had met, briefly, at the Paris airport last year, while we were transitioning from different points in Europe to Montreal. He has a captivating world-weary attitude combined with a charming sense of humour and compelling physicality that, for me, recalls both Buster Keaton and Fred Astaire at once. Jesko suggested him as a cast member, and, to my delight, he's agreed to be in our film.

Tonight, I search for a cooler to shoot in. I have a new client who owns an iconic, storied Montreal restaurant, and has offered his. I will take photos.

Jacob returns from New York, where he is producing a shoot for Cirque du Soleil and Sid Lee, in a day or two, and then we nail down our technicians. A little more than two weeks out, and we are just about good to go.

So you see how life and art and the business of creativity that is artful but something less than art continue to sineously interwine. It's not hard, this. It's like breathing.

Music and Faces

Things are moving along nicely.

Robert Marchand has created a wonderful demo for our cabaret performance sequences, delighting Jacob and Jesko, and reassuring me after two weeks away. Robert and I have been working closely together on a lot of live performance and longer-form projects with Circo de Bakuza and Sid Lee over the last couple of years. I really think he's found his strength. (If anyone knows how you can post music to blogspot, please let me know!) We met in 1994 working on advertising, which can be great because it encourages discipline and creativity on demand, but awfully constraining and even soul-destroying for some.

We've also found our cast - an eclectic mixture of new and old friends, performers and non-performers. Here are two - Matthew, known as Andrew, and his friend the dancer Tomomi, from Japan. He's a DJ (Komodo) and plays wind instruments - he performed with us in Dubai. They met while working together on the avant-guarde performance scene in Montreal. Hopefully, we can collaborate in some way when we try to do something live with In The Cooler and perhaps some of my older poetry-based projects.

You can see her stuff here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nhXgoGBUtg

Matthew was the man in the blue robe you can watch here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdHLnsV_pJg&feature=related

It's funny how these short film projects have evolved over the years. They're always very personal, and we seem to corral friends and co-workers pretty easily. We're fortunate that so many seem to have the time and inclination to take part in some way.You can't help but connect with the people you put in front of your camera. So the films that come out end up feeling like well-loved scrapbooks to me.

(Matthew and Totomi's pictures snapped with the same MacBook I wrote this on.)