King for a lifetime, fool for a... lifetime...

Somehow, its over. The 24-hour mayday film festival is complete (sans screening at tbd time and date). My group was a strong band of four. Confident and overzealous, we had no fear that we could write, produce, perform, edit, essentially create a short film between the hours of 12:22 pm Saturday and 12:22 pm Sunday. But we had reason to panic, for at about 2 in the morning, we had all succumb to writers bloc and rapidly descended into madness. Having already written and dismissed a multitude of stories beforehand and losing potential actors by the second, the downward spiral into the hellmouth of depravity had begun. But it wasn't met with despair and hopelessness on our part. No. Instead, we entered the realm of the absurd -- cackling hysterically at anything and everything that had anything and everything to do with how incredibly fucked we were and how we would never be able to submit an entry to this friendly competition (that we were hosting!) on time. It dawned on us that we, in fact, had no bad ideas but rather were riding a highway of good ideas that for some reason we were compelled to ignore. The premise of this film-making sprint is several groups/teams create a film from a common title that was under 10 minutes long. The title chosen by the masses: "Martyrs of Circumstance." Truly, it began as a wonderful title. We could make anything out of those nominal words. Then came the need amongst my group to somehow be thematically consistent with the title while not overloading the short on plot. This was the real challenge. And as 2:30 am hit, we were sure there was no way we could do in ten hours what everyone else had 24 to do. And then, the bizarre and surreal genius that most of you refer to as "delerium" took over. While wallowing in a page of dialogue entitled "Universe Soup," we all snapped. Our film had a beginning and an end, but no middle. It struck me as obvious that our film needed to center on a character, like ourselves, who was going crazy. And sure enough, we all went crazy and churned out a product so silly, so utterly absurd that we could only have concocted it in a fever-state, hovering somewhere between tired beyond the point of sleep and hungry beyond the point of hunger. I have not slept in over 36 hours and tomorrow, I'm back to work. The film, given the circumstances, is something to be proud of. Our finale centers on the last man on women on Earth who, for no other reason than our own amusement, decide to crucify each other. Don't ask how. The production design for that scene required us making two large crosses out of 4x4s and hoisting them upon high at Runyon Canyon. Truly, it was a sight to behold and the many hiikers and joggers at the park would have to agree. One ugly woman could be overheard muttering incredulously, "What the hell is this shit" upon seeing two of our actors tied to giant crosses with cameras and boom mikes jammed in their faces. Glorious. But the best was when I carried one of the novelty-sized crosses down the canyon back to street level. That, my friends, was a lesson in irony. Hurm...

And now, I'm tired and hungry. I will eat spaghetti, watch Sopranos and Deadwood, then fall fast asleep knowing that my weekend was a trip to hell and back. Only in this hell, I and my compatriots laugh derisively at our own failures and eventual triumphs. I hope I make it to work on time tomorrow.