September 2025 Update!
projects, running progress, inroads and obstacles
hello friend, it's great to see you again here at the lip of autumn, unquestionably the best stretch of the year, even though global catastrophes spread with the unchecked abandon of a legion of house centipedes. I come to you with an admixture of hope and optimism, based on nothing demonstrable but the faint waft of leaves desiccating from the hills and an internal feeling that it's all going to work out. Let’s begin.
WHAT HAPPENED IN AUGUST (BROAD STROKES):
- my short film Apology Ghost world premiered at the Defy Film Festival in Nashville, TN.
- I released a 4 song EP called Storm Clouds. (more below)
- went camping with my son at the Oregon Dunes.
PROJECT UPDATES
Grief Stick (documentary short, 20 min)
Exited to report Grief Stick has 2 confirmed screenings in Portland this fall:
Sunday October 19 at Turn Turn Turn in NE Portland. playing alongside two great local bands. Put it on the calendar.
Friday November 7 at Up Up Books as part of the Portland Book Festival. Film will be shown at a reading with 3 poets titled Conversing with the Dead. Put this on the calendar also. More specific details to come.
Very possible we will also screen this fall on the campus of a local university but that's TBD. I am so excited to get more people to see this film. I hope you can come to one or more screenings. more details on all screenings will appear in the near future here .
Apology Ghost (5 min, narrative short)
World Premiered at Defy Film Festival in Nashville, TN. I was not able to attend but the festival communication was great and they clearly support and love non-mainstream cinema. More about Apology Ghost here.
Sister/Brother (75 min, narrative feature)
2 more rejections, both from PNW festivals, including one I've played at before. Oh the agony. While camping with my son and getting several hours of intermittent top-layer sleep i was in a hazy gauzy dawn dreamstate and had a lightning bolt idea of how to possibly re-cut this together. (it's existed in rough cut form for several months - still missing final cut and final score - and i had kind of a seismic reframing that arrived in the hypnogic with crystalline clarity. Whether that holds is TBD). More about the project here.
STORM CLOUDS - EP
last week I released a 4 song ep. You can listen below, you can buy it on bandcamp, you can watch the videos for it here. All songs written and mixed this summer.
BEST THINGS I READ in August: The Girls by Emma Cline, The Hole by Hye-Young Pyun, The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly, Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, John & Paul: a love story in songs by Ian Leslie.
BEST THINGS I SAW in August: Flow (at the Hollywood Theater), Seasons 1 and 2 of Detroiters, S1 of The Pitt (rewatch, in process), S2 of Quarterback (esp notable for Kirk Cousins advocacy of great clips), Naked Gun at City Lights Cinema in Florence OR (esp notable for how cool this theater is and how much they clearly love cinema)
running
some decent motion. trying to stay consistent and have at least 3 runs a week is a real challenge with the time demands of my day job. I ran 3 miles last Sunday with the dog on the Springwater Corridor and it was so nice and good and raw and fun. As a person who contends with varying stripes of depression and anxiety, running is the best antidote. F and I signed up for 5K in december
fiver account!
I got my first official client last month for screenplay proofreading (Thanks Lisa!) In addition to screenplay proofing, I offer film editing, voice acting, and editing your kid's AAU basketball footage into a reel. Do you have need of any of those? Does your loved one or friend? If so go here
okay that's it for now. I hope your September is filled with gold in whatever form you need. I keep a small but ever-expanding gallery of photos of people who’ve died over my desk. They talk to me. They remind me that drawing breath is a luxury, that complaining about film festival rejections is a privileged position, that worrying about AI is a benefit (at least until the machines ascend and use our bodies for batteries). That said, it’s far too easy to get ensnared in the gears of daily life. Are you struggling in one or more areas? Me too. Hit me up.