The nightmares started about fifteen days ago. I would be contently sleeping, wedged between our dog and our new kitten when an almost film noir type of fade-in would occur in my subconscious. From there, a dream would start in which I’d be struggling to find something that was missing from our film, “Holy Ghost People.” Typically what I’ve lost is something that, without it, we cannot show the film which is set to debut this Sunday, March 10 at South by Southwest in glorious Austin, Texas. Most times in the dream I’m also at a screening and something was amiss with me personally or the film was missing and this was because of something I did.
Example: this morning at 5:00am a surreal dream kicked in which had me at the home of our awesome Cinematographer, Amanda Treyz, but it’s not her house at all. At least, I don’t think it is as I’ve never been there. It’s a condo in what seems to be Park City, Utah. Then it’s a house that resembles my grandparent’s house. Then it’s the SXSW screening of our film. Amanda has a baby and it’s my job to watch the baby at the screening. Just to be clear: Amanda has no baby and if she did, I would most definitely not be the one watching it at SXSW. But soon enough I have lost the baby and the film cannot start until the baby is found. Everyone is looking at me and calling me an a*****e. Amanda is understandably upset.
These are the kinds of dreams I’ve been dealing with for the past two weeks and they’re fairly upsetting, as you can imagine. Not so much the content, more of the fact that they’re having a physical affect on me. They feel extremely real and I usually wake up feeling like there’s a water buffalo on my chest and it takes me about five minutes to talk myself into the fact that not only are these dreams, they’re pretty poorly written ones as well. The critic in me never rests. But, by this time, I’m wide-awake and my mind is racing and if I fall back to sleep, it’s for about ten minutes before my alarm goes off.
I know what you’re thinking… I’m a huge baby for being such a little bitch when, after all, I have a film at one of the best (and my favorite) film festivals in the United States. Thousands submitted and most were denied. Maybe that describes you and if it does, I’m sorry. Truly. But since I’m going to SXSW as a filmmaker, I thought I’d do some blogs here to let people know how the experience goes. This was the first thing that came to mind. It gets better from here! Or, does it…
