Update

I met with the potential producer and the line producer yesterday. The producer and I were talking about trust and responsibility and I was saying how I need someone I can trust is taking care of the things he's supposed to take care of so I can concentrate on the things I need to focus on, and how I see everything from the perspective of teamwork, and he was telling me how he's very trustworthy--he once sailed a boat to the arctic and in that situation, you learn that you have to recognize that every person's actions affect everyone else, sometimes in life or death situations in the face of a hurricane or things, and that that was a situation where he understood the value of being trustworthy and responsible. And I'm like, dude, you sailed a boat to the arctic? I...played sports. The earliest he's available is August because he's about to be greenlit for a feature shooting in June, but I'd like to work with him so I might wait until August for the short. It'll give me more time to raise funds and prepare, anyway.

Working with the Actors-- Gameplan

I'm so excited about working with actors. This is my favorite part, the melding of psychology and creation. I'm very method and like actors with that background. The way I want to work with the two leads who have a very strained marriage with passive-aggressive resentment (the man cheated on the wife), is to put them through a simulated therapy, with me as the therapist. When I work with actors, they need to be able to be so immersed in their characters, any question I ask them about themselves, they will be able to instinctively answer and know it jives with the truth. What was your biggest fear as a child? What is your darkest secret? How do you feel about where you are in your life at this very moment? Is it where you thought you would be when you looked towards the future when you were younger? What do you like for breakfast? What is a trait about your best friend/wife that you secretly find utterly irritating? What kind of people are you secretly prejudiced against? etc. And then once they get comfortable answering these questions (more so with the act of answering and knowing that what they said was true than the actual answers themselves), then I tweak it by asking them questions that imply certain things that they have to adapt to, implying events, like, "How did you feel when your husband told you he'd cheated on you?" etc. This plants certain things in their characters psyche, which affects their psychological outcome and performance.

I want to work with them separately, fine tune their own characters without the other knowing what exactly has been created, build up their positions, discuss their marriage and their resentment of the relationship and their partner from their own subjective perspectives, really delve into that resentment. Then put the two together. I don't want each person to know what the other has said about him or her. But because it's been talked about, it'll color their interaction. It's like, each person knows the other talked shit about him. But they don't know exactly what, creating an underlying tension and resentment. Furthermore, I plan to keep them fairly separated throughout the preproduction process and during production. During the "therapy" stage, I'll schedule one after the other with a slight overlap, keeping the other waiting in another room so each person is well aware that the other is talking about them. I also plan to have an exercise where they sit together in an empty room facing each other, but aren't allowed to say a single word to each other. I'll do this the first day, make them as uncomfortable around each other as possible. Since this couple is passive aggressive, by the actual actor not knowing exactly what the other resents him or her for or where the other is coming from, it should create a genuinely passive-aggressive and tense interaction to work with, which is what I need to carry this film. And then we can all go out for beers when this is done.

I'm so freakin' excited.