many layers of drag

 

hang on i'm actually tripping on something that i was trying to talk about earlier. question. can you use a traditional mode of production to end up with a thing that challenges it?


this is hard for me right now for some reason. i mean obviously with any project, especially like multiple-year-long projects, you just can't keep all the pieces in your head at once. ultimately all the many many small decisions that you make add up to something you hope is larger than the sum of it's parts. i think this is where ethics really matter, it's like a scale or something and each and every little teeny tiny decision has ethical weight.

i'm letting my mustache grow in, can you tell? it actually feels very experimental, like can i just go through every day people gawking? like yea uhhuh mkay anywaaay but really? it's not as easy as you might think.

we were casting tonight for the narrative section of my film. (see above my "transgender director" look- hows that workin for you) i'm casting non-actors, mostly from within la comunidad transgénero, for 2 lead roles. WOWWWIE casting is FUN. it's like a room, with hideous overhead lighting, where a group of strangers ask another stranger to pour her little heart out onto the floor (ie improvisational acting). wow. every single person was so amazing, just totally going for it - trying and being shy and uncomfortable and still giving so much. i feel really blessed and inspired by the whole process.

but see this is kinda what i'm talking about. casting is a movie convention, right, it's what everyone does right, so no biggie. but i guess i'm still tripping on the whole role thing, how it changes the way everyone relates to each other. i want to ammend what i said earlier and be clear that not at all am i saying these roles are inherently a good thing. no. i am just really trying to figure out what it all means to me. it seems casting creates a situation where suddenly as "director" I'M the one with a vision of who you're supposed to be, and you're supposed to convince me that you can be that person. and you're competing against other people. and then you have wait to find out if you did a good enough job. ???

i had a strategic need to do casting- a) to try to build peoples investment of course for many reasons, one of which being b) to ensure their participation because shooting is intense and expensive it totally depends on the actors showing up every day. like if someone misses their audition, you miiiight not want to work with them.... so....... that's what you get with a movie production, yep. for some reason (i mean for many reasons that i can say, just not here now) i am truly struggling with all of this. at the same time it seems like a necessary navigation, and i'm tryin to give it a go. i am. here i am.