Peace talks

A comment arrived last week via Linkedin. “Enjoyed your post about the new Solarians.” It was from the daughter of a man I’d known way back in the Before Time. His name is Gary Heilsberg and hers is Killian. Two extremely eclectic people, trust me.

I’ve had no contact with Gary in decades and prior to her email, I’d had next to none with Killian. She’s a film and broadcast artist-in-residence at Tribeca Flashpoint in Chicago now and Gary … I’m not sure … Google tells me that he landed in Appalachia, Virginia, of all places. When or why, I can’t say. He and Google must have had a falling out.

Because I’ve been unable to locate Greenville’s film community, assuming that we have one in any cohesive sense, Killian’s reappearance couldn’t have come at a better time. I’d begun to feel that I was working in a vacuum and her insightful analysis of “The Singularity“, received just this morning, has broken the seal on that vacuum. I hope to keep it that way.

Valdas Kotovas’ shoot in March was an early sideways attempt to do the same thing, but when Jeff Sumerel discovered that what he and Valdas were planning to do had been done already, they dropped it. That led to Fête Greenville, which led to Dream Logic, which didn’t lead to but was punctuated on Sunday by a seven-hour shoot at The Cazbah.

I held a boom pole. For seven hours. And it didn’t suck!

We were there, a cast and crew of 13, at the behest of writer/director/editor Dean Ferreira and camera operator Wofford Jones. If you’d like to see an example of their previous collaborations, search YouTube for “Iguana Man, Episode 3.”

The Iguana Man Muse and mine don’t speak the same language, but the moxie in evidence on Sunday was something to behold. Likewise the courtesy and the willingness on everyone’s part to pitch in where needed.

Unfortunately, language barriers aside, my Muse and my inner hermit are blood enemies. He quails at the prospect of wrangling actors and technicians and this infuriates her. She gets nose-to-nose with him and shouts, “Maybe you just need to grow a pair!” Can the neighbors hear her? I do hope not.

Compounding matters, my inner ferret doesn’t give a rat’s ass what it takes to get something done, provided we can move on to the next thing in under ten minutes.

I’ve asked the three them to order pizza and discuss among themselves, using their most respectful inside voices, Killian’s ideas about how they might work together more effectively.

And I refuse to mediate.

This should be interesting.