Three Movies in Three Weeks: Epilogue

Since we finished shooting "Proud Mary," I'd been having the strangest dreams.

I couldn't quite place them. I just remembered a lot of people, a lot of stuff going on, some sort of grand direction to things, and the unmistakable feeling of big things being organized.

This morning, I realized that I had been dreaming - literally dreaming - about making movies. Imagine that. Three weeks of implacable dreams about making movies. How undeniably significant.

In a single three-week period, I made a movie for a friend that was low-responsibility and a lot of fun, a a movie that I did entirely on my own that I couldn't have been able to make a year ago, and a long-term project that was a real test of my abilities but ultimitely gratifying.

Something for a friend, something of my own and a challenge - if I make nothing but one of those three movies for the rest of my life, I'll be happy.

In my last post, I kept having to keep myself from writing "I went out a boy, and came home a man."

There is something of the war-movie cliche to making movies - chaos, comradery, structure, pressure. I felt transformed by the end of "Mary." For maybe the first time, I had both a proven skill - making movies - and a sense of direction, a clear path to how I would use it.

Now, I'm unemployed, but it's the good kind of unemployed. I can see how I can get the skills I'm missing as a producer, I know what sort of projects I want to do and with who, and I have a lot of confidence in both being able to make movies, and being able to do them better than a lot of other people.

Now that I know I can do something, all that remains is to see what it is I do.