We’re Firing Up the Blog Again

Last post on this blog: 2020.

Which means I let five years go by without writing anything here. In my defense, there was a whole thing. But mostly I just didn’t do it, which is a thing that happens when you’re out making films and not sitting at a desk writing about making films.

No apology tour. Nobody was waiting.

Here’s what I want to do.

I want to write about the work. The actual work, not the brochure version. The stuff that happens in the room when we’re filming. The things people say that I’ve been turning over for years. The stories I can’t stop thinking about and can’t tell you directly because I’m not in the business of broadcasting other people’s lives.

I’ve been doing this long enough that I’ve accumulated a lot of those.

I also want to write about why any of this matters. Not in a “preserve your family legacy for future generations” way, though yes, that too. I mean in the specific, particular, this-exact-thing-will-be-gone-if-you-don’t-catch-it way. The version that keeps me doing this when the travel is exhausting and the gear is heavy and I’ve spent another night in a Hilton Garden Inn watching SportsCenter.

We’ve made a lot of films since 2020.

I’ve sat across from people who watched history happen from their kitchen window and never told their kids. People who survived things with a quietness that you’d mistake for nothing, if you didn’t ask. People who said “I don’t know why you’d want to hear about all that” and had me leaning forward the whole time.

Some of those stories are going to show up here. Redacted where they need to be redacted. But the texture of them, the thing that made me want to write it down, that’ll be here.

I’m not going to promise I’ll post every week and then disappear for another five years.

I will say: I have a lot to say and I’ve been not saying it here for too long.

Let’s go.