JANE, our indie film, and FIRE IN THE HEART, the current beautiful production, were both born out of my own struggle to live in a body that is highly activated by stress, distress, and remnants of trauma. Like, well, pretty much everyone I know. This morning, waking up way too early, I did a...
Read more →When I was fifteen, I hitchhiked across country in winter, running away from something and towards nothing. I remember what it felt to be handcuffed and shoved into the back of a police car, picked up for being a runaway. I remember the strip search at Juvenile Hall and the invasion of my body,...
Read more →It’s Year Two of the journey we began to get JANE made. I always heard people in film say how long it had taken to get their dream to screen. Usually they were receiving awards so it was easy to dismiss them. They were, after all, now the lucky ones. When friends and colleagues...
Read more →When I was fifteen, I wrote poetry and had a best friend named Abbe. We were in love with this guy on a TV show and we actually embroidered a piece of burlap with yarn that said, “We love you,” and sent it to him. When I was fifteen, I got the part of...
Read more →What does it mean to make a movie that promotes keeping a spark of wholeness even when we are shattered? What I want for my audience is two potent experiences. One, they leave the theater with an increased capacity to notice that love heals. And that inside “love” there is a profound tenderness, an...
Read more →There is an apocryphal story in the African wildlife community about male elephants. Apparently, somewhere in Kenya there had been so much poorly planned culling that a group of young male elephants were left on their own, doing a lot of damage. (Elephants are totally community oriented. When humans try to lessen their numbers,...
Read more →I don’t know if a whole lot of folks know what movie making is like at this stage – development. Partly it means developing a strong foundation: commissioning a business plan that will actually reflect the cost/benefit to your potential investors, getting your legal ducks in a row including a very detailed set of...
Read more →It started in the offices of Communication4Good, a Santa Cruz-based company that helps promote social action platforms. Sandy Skees and Irene Tsouprake sat and talked with me for an hour about how JANE might be part of a much bigger picture. They coined the phrase for us, “It’s a movie and a movement.” Their...
Read more →When someone is trying to attack me, I guess his “privates” are no longer private – they are aimed at harming me and now they are public. Director Mike Buffo, actress Brittney Buffo, my husband Dan and I went to a graduation for IMPACT Bay Area this weekend. The idea of full force is...
Read more →Every day, I get up and I sit with JANE. I am 58. She is 15. So, in truth, she is inside of me. I have what she needs to become 58. At 15, I would not have known for sure that there would be an adult who came to sit with me. Everyone...
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