I’ve never really tried to break down my process of writing. It’s my superpower that channels directly from the source. And to break it down, would mean to demystify it and, possibly, to reduce the flow. To compound matters, I co-write many Elektrik stories with Patrick, and we have to be mindful of the different the winding roads we take to get to the story. It’s so complicated to pick apart, but, fuck it! I want to share, and my Higher Power would want me to tell all my secrets in case one of them might embed in your head and help to shake out the stories that live in the dusty places of your own sacred heart.
Well, as you know, we’ve set most of our stories over the last decade in a place called “Down the Road.” This is a real place off of Louisiana highway 46. This is also a fictional place we created. Our characters, whether fictional or documentary, live at the intersection between the real and the fictional. So you can see how people can get confused about what is true and what’s not. I want to tell you that everything I write is true. And everything I write is a fiction – I alter the story to tell the truth. Does that make sense?
This picture was taken on the levee behind a trailer park on St. Bernard Highway. In the fictional landscape, this is the view from Jared’s trailer park, Down the Road. Locations and landscapes. Sometimes the stories start here. But now that we have this world very well developed, we begin to think of how people in our own lives, within our own reach, can inhabit this fictional landscape, and how it might effect their stories.
Here is Nick fishing at the Florida Street Canal. This canal has been a part of our visual language since 2008. Nick has been a muse of ours for practically his whole life. On the back of his head you can see the effects of trichotillomania, which may or may not have been a result of the meds he takes for his condition. He will play a fictionalized version of himself in the title role of “Nicabob.”
Nick is an amazing and creative kid, and one of our greatest collaborators. He is my sister’s step son and, therefore, an ElekTrik nephew by marriage. He was dosed for “hyper-activity” at age 7, and he’s been medicated on a changing cocktail for nearly ten years. When we approached him about this project, he was totally up for it, and he likes the busy-ness of doing a film. The long, slow process settles him and gives him long term focus. Below we do some screen tests for costumes and FX.
As usual, we find our supporting characters within our own massively extended family of in-laws, halves, steps and bastards. We don’t tell them what to do or how to be. They just are. Altman said that a large percentage of filmmaking is in the casting, and I believe that. So, Derek decided to dye his hair blue for the summer. In some kind of cosmic genius, I realize that “Nicabob’s” brother would obviously have blue hair. I wouldn’t have thought about dying Derek’s hair blue to suit the character. He dyed his hair blue to inhabit the character without even thinking of it.
Lawren on the horse: Lawren has been a character in a number of our films, photo-essays and stories. She is the real cousin to Nicabob (by marriage) and Derek (by blood). She first appeared in “Destiny lives Down the Road” as Destiny’s cousin. We wrote her into our feature “Destiny is a Gangster” as a horse-riding drum major who directs a band of ragtag drummers. This was all fiction, of course, but, then, about two years later, the real Lawren posts a Facebook video of herself with her rescued horse. So, we hightailed it out to Pearl River to shoot some test photos of her on the horse. Life imitates fiction. Spoiler alert, Lawren will play the “Girl on the Horse” in the last magical scene of “Nicabob.”
While photographing Lawren, we shoot her little sister Shyly on her pony. She sticks in my head, and I can’t get her out, so there will be two girls and two horses at the end of Nicabob. Why? Because two girls are better than one and two horses are better than one.
What’s tricky about this is working out which world we’ll be in at any given time. There’s the “real” southern gothic world shot on the main camera. Then, there’s Nicabob’s youtube world shot on smart phones. Lastly, there is the magical world that Nicabob creates. Here we do camera tests on the smart phone.
Finally, finally…we begin to commit to paper. Hand written and hand drawn is how I like to start. There will be time for a nicely typed out and well formatted script, however, now is not that time.
