As a kid, I spent a lot of time alone with Legos. I would build these whole little worlds, make up the people in them, give them problems, and then leave them sitting there after being called in for dinner.
A day could pass. A week could pass. Sometimes much longer than that.
But when I came back, I knew exactly where I had left off. I knew what had happened. I knew who was mad at whom. I knew what somebody was trying to get away with. The story was still moving in my mind.
Later, I got into photography and theater. I liked the image part. I liked the performance part. I loved the vulnerability in both.
When you put photography and theater together, you get film. Or at least I did.
Studying film with Ray Carney introduced me to filmmakers like Andrei Tarkovsky and Mike Leigh, along with many other memorable auteurs. Their films made me want to make movies of my own.
So I did.
The independent film world is not exactly known for opening the gate, handing you a map, and saying, “Come on in.” It can be expensive, exhausting, competitive, and full of people trying to convince everyone else that they have discovered the one true way to make a movie.
Still, filmmaking taught me a lot about people. About character. About silence. About what somebody says, what they mean, and what they will not say. I learned about emotion, and how it can sometimes run directly against what a character says they want.
Over time, I found myself pulled toward fiction. It became a new sort of obsession, more like a meditation: both in the writing itself and in pondering ways to deepen the characters and their circumstances.
These days, I write short fiction, longer fiction, and whatever else needs to become a story. Some of it has been published. Some of it has been sitting in folders, notebooks, and drawers for years, waiting for me to stop overthinking it and let it out into the world.
The Sand Midgets’ Last Call is my published book, available on Amazon.
For a look at my filmmaking work, you can visit my IMDb page.
If you have a question, want to say hello, or have something you would like to share, feel free to use the contact form below.
