Finally, I decided to go back to my musical roots and put together a jazz collection. I grew up loving jazz and still own a number of good jazz albums (vinyl), but very few jazz CDs. Anyway, I turned to Spotify and started assembling songs I’ve loved for a long time in addition to relatively new songs I’ve discovered more recently. Plus, knowing that a lot of people don’t really care for jazz, I wanted this collection to represent a “big tent” and include crossover artists that would probably appeal to a wider audience.

So here’s the collection I put together. If you’re a jazz fan, you’ll notice that this collection is really accessible, and emphasizes cool jazz and smooth jazz more than any too fast and hard… no hard bop, no scat, and not even much of the big band/orchestra stuff that I grew up on.

Again Never – Branford Marsalis, featuring Terrence Blanchard
I’m A Fool To Want You – Billie Holiday
My Funny Valentine – Gerry Mulligan, featuring Art Farmer
Since I Fell For You – Nina Simone
Blue In Green – Miles Davis, featuring Bill Evans, John Coltrane, Julian Adderley, et al.
No Ordinary Love – Sade
California Dreamin’ – George Benson, featuring Herbie Hancock, Hubert Laws, et al.
Like A Star – Corinne Bailey Rae
Escape – Jim Brickman, Marc Antoine
Day Is Done – Charlie Hunter, featuring Norah Jones
Mighty Fine – Joey Baron, Arthur Blythe, Bill Frisell, Ron Carter
Love Me Like A Man – Diana Krall
You Know, You Know – Mahavishnu Orchestra
Stronger Than Me – Amy Winehouse

Hope there’s something in here that’s new to you. Enjoy.

Pollinating from Perfect Strangers Productions on Vimeo.

Willamette Writers Conference happened the same weekend as 48-Hour, so I wasn’t able to attend much of it. On Friday I pitched a new screenplay to two producers (one is actually more of a manager), and both asked to see it. I’m working on getting it ready to send, and hope to have that sent off in the next week. Fingers crossed, hoping that someone actually likes it.

Also at WWC, I attended the banquet and accepted my award for poetry writing. Although mine was a very small award, I take great pride in knowing that I received my award as a part of the same program that bestowed awards on Barry Lopez and Gus Van Sant.

This time around I’m with the same fantastic production team — Perfect Strangers Productions — which is led by Director Martha Koenig, DP & Co-Director Sam Leinen, and Producer Denise Ransome. Most of the team from our last event is back, as well as some new team members and acting talent. I feel really lucky to be able to be a part of this great team.

If you don’t know what the 48-Hour Film Project is, you should check out the website. Basically, each team has 48 hours to make a short film… beginning with developing the story and writing the script, through production, post-production, and delivery of the finished film. It’s a really taxing but exciting challenge. If you’re interested in making movies, you should give it a try!

But I feel great that the judges like my poetry. I really feel like I’m regaining my voice after taking such a long hiatus from seriously writing verse. It was my first love in the world of writing, and it still can take me places no other form can reach.

I had slowly begun working on my second collection, but now I no doubt will redouble my efforts to bring that collection to life. My first book — Repairing Shattered Glass — is available both from Lulu and from Amazon. Also, I’m in the process of making this collection available as an eBook, which would make it downloadable and much cheaper.

Here’s our 48-Hour film on Vimeo:

During the 48 hours between, the team must come up with a story idea, write the script, shoot it and edit it into the final movie. Needless to say, it is an intense experience. I was the writer for our team, which was headed up by Director Martha Koenig and Director of Photography Sam Leinen. I think we had about 26 people on our team.

This iteration of 48 was the 48-Hour Go Green version… meaning that each film had to deal with the environmental subject the team was assigned. Our assignment was “clean water,” so I had to write the script for a short (4-6 minutes in length) that made a statement about the need to save our water resources.

Martha, Sam and I brainstormed possible story ideas, and finally settled on one that was something of a sci-fi piece about a dystopian society divided into two principle groups — those who have water and those who do not. I actually got started writing the script around 8:00 pm or so, and finished the first draft shortly after midnight. Then we spent a couple of hours refining it.

Call time for a majority of cast and crew was 6:00 am on Saturday, so didn’t get much sleep Friday night. I wanted to watch as much of the production as possible so I could see how the film was coming together, plus, we had to do a little bit of rewriting throughout the day, depending on how things were working in the actually shooting process.

I went home as they were starting to shoot the final scene, which was shortly after midnight Saturday night. I felt sorry for Martha, Sam, and the super organized, diligent and supportive producer Denise Ransome, who still had to through another day without sleep (they reported that they all got about 4 hours of sleep Sat. night).

I still haven’t seen the final edited film, and I’m really anxious to do so. The public screenings of films made by all the Portland 48-Hour teams will be this Thursday. They’re being screened in two groups — 7:00 pm and 9:00 pm — at the Hollywood Theatre.

After the screening, I’ll post my original script and a link to the finished film.

My readers were Wendy Russell, Lizzy Shannon, Tom Cheevers, Ralph Priest and Michael Sasnow… with me reading the action and one male character. Feedback was excellent, and perhaps just as important, it wasn’t too painful.

There was a general consensus on where the script needed to be tightened up, and which characters I could best leverage to enrich the action a bit. Overall, I got some very helpful advice, as I now work to get the script ready to submit to the Nicholl Fellowships.

Basically, she outlined the three primary ways writers should (or could) go about getting their work in print. First, find an agent who will take your work to the six major publishing houses. Second, find an agent who will take your work to a small press or academic press. Third, publish your book by yourself.

She started out telling us that last year she received approximately 10,000 queries. Of that number, she was able to work with around 25 authors. So we see right away that the odds are against getting your work published in the traditional manner because at this point, you’re just trying to get an agent… the process of finding a publisher has not yet begun. And even if you combine the first two methods listed above — big houses and small houses — it’s unlikely that your work will make it into print. Eberhardt stated that she sometimes would take one of her 25 selected works to as many as 100 possible publishers and find no takers. So that means that out of her 10,000 queries, even less than 25 authors get printed. She finds this to be as frustrating as the writers themselves.

Perhaps that’s why she strongly recommended that writers look seriously at self-publishing. In fact, she congratulated all audience members who had already taken that step. Then she went to some length to explain why self-publishing is becoming such a reasonable option.

According to Eberhardt, when you get accepted by one of the major houses, it is still likely that you will get an advance, but it’s also likely to be only in the $5,000 – $10,000 range. In the vast majority of cases, you will never get any more than the advance, because most books don’t sell enough copies to generate any more income. So, in a very best case scenario, if you manage to defy the incredible odds against getting your book picked up by a major house, you will probably only receive (at most)  $5,000 – $10,000 paid out over one or two years. The big house will print maybe 5,000 copies of your book and will do some marketing for you, but they’ll expect you to do all of the standard platform building exercises, plus foot the bill for some of the marketing they do… for example, they may set up a book signing for you in New York, but they’ll expect you to cover all of your own expenses to get there and get home.

She then pointed out that if you get picked up by a minor publisher (small or academic), you typically will get no advance at all, and you will be expected to do all of your own marketing because most of these publishers simply don’t have the budget to do any marketing.

In both of the above scenarios, it is the publishing house that controls your books that are printed. And if they don’t sell, it is not uncommon for the books to be destroyed. Leaving you with not much except the prestige of having been published.

Now for a look at self-publishing. If you publish your own book, you will incur some expenses. Your book will need to be edited by a professional editor who can make sure your sentences are formed correctly, words are spelled correctly, grammar is sound, etc. You really want your book to be just as good as a book from a publisher. Plus, you will need a professional cover design. Covers have a lot to do with whether books sell… regardless of the saying that one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. In all, you will most likely have to spend several thousand dollars to get your book ready to print.

The printing itself will be print-on-demand or a very short run. Then comes the task of selling your book. This may not sound like fun, but even if someone else published your book, you’d have to do this anyway. In some cases it would be required… whereas in the case of self-publishing, you can do as much or as little as you wish. And you can do it in any way you wish. You control the cover design. You control the messaging. And you own the books… and you can do with them whatever you wish. Which means they definitely won’t get destroyed just because they didn’t sell right away.

There are many advantages to self-publishing, but Eberhardt emphasized that the really big challenge is to make sure you’ve done good work. And polished it to get it ready to print. She also mentioned that she is in the process of setting up her own operation to assist authors with self-publishing, and she knows other agents who are doing likewise. She referred to these activities as “agent presses” and said most are still in the formative stages. Some will be a type of “hybrid” press where the printer and author share in the costs of publishing and share in the profits (if there are any).

Overall, it was a strong message. If you still feel there’s a negative stigma to self-publishing… get over it. It’s the wave of the future.

One part that was easy to improve on was La Beouf… I mean, it’s not hard to believe Matt Damon is going to be better than Glen Campbell. Glen was a decent singer, but he was the real weak link in the original film. Whether the new kid, Hailee Steinfeld,  would outshine Kim Darby was a total unknown going in. But Hailee Steinfeld did an outstanding job… a much more realistic portrayal than Kim Darby’s.

And then there’s John Wayne vs. Jeff Bridges… I honestly didn’t think Bridges could pull that off.

I was so wrong.

But I’m frequently wrong about all kinds of things, so this instance didn’t upset me at all. In fact, I was happy about it, because watching Jeff Bridges play Rooster Cogburn was so much fun. He was probably better at it than John Wayne, but I’m calling it a tie. But there were moments when Jeff Bridges made me laugh out loud.

Josh Brolin made a much more entertaining Tom Chaney, but I still prefer Robert Duvall as Lucky Ned Pepper.

If you saw the original and liked it, you’ll like this one. If it’s completely new to you, then there’s no reason for concern… you’ll love the remake of True Grit.