Film Diary

It takes a lot of money, time, and resources to make a movie.  Because of our hard work, SLC, and the help of other creative people in the universe, it seems pretty likely we’re going to meet our whole budget.  But as we wait to find out in the next two months, it appears that I have absolutely no money left myself.  And when you get to the bottom of the barrel, you can give up, or you can Get Rich Quick.

So I made a list of what it takes to GRQ:

1)    Willingness to get down and dirty.

Randy enjoying other free things, like playing harmonica in a park.

An army travels on its stomach.  My friend Randy, one of those rare characters who seems to have a preternatural knowledge of all things going on in the underground world of free introduced me to the art of dumpster diving.

Headlamps, ropes, rubber gloves, and a little effort can provide food for two households for one to two weeks.  Keep an eye out for the cops, choose carefully, wash everything, and enjoy the tasty act of keeping trash out of landfills.

2)    Willingness to learn the Dewey Decimal System.

Just don’t forget to return your books on time.

The public library system has everything from How to Start Your Own Business to How to Work Out With Arnold Schwarzenegger for Women.  True, it’s not always the place to look for up-to-date-books (those can all be read on the spot on a comfy Barnes&Noble chair) but the public library has in-depth information that is invaluable and free for anyone to use.  Almost everything I’ve done in research for this documentary, including sending away across the country for rare materials, has been done through the kind service of a few public libraries.

3)    Willingness to party like a rock star.

Yes, the people who know how to have fun are the people that keep the world going.  I’m not trying to compare the guy lining up for his second keg stand to Gandhi, but there’s something to be said about the strength of the human tendency to do things out of joy.  I admire people who can harness the common desire for fun; my friend

Corene buying keg.

Corene is one of these magical people. I’ve witnessed huge masses of crazy characters coming and going in a house, on a bus, to the mountains and oceans all through the organization of Corene’s plans for a collective fun time. These are the people who will help you make your movie, these are the people who will come to see your movie.

Corene killing keg.

Keep up with people and keep in touch with your inner-skinny-dipping-beer-pong-playing-street-light-dancing side (at least once in a while) or you’re not going to get very far.

4)    Willingness to smile and bend the rules.

My master copy that got me free coffee through college.

There are two F words that can get you by in a big city: friends and forgery.  Because of our wonderful elaborate chain-franchise-corporate-headquartered world, every place you go has a sticky red tape bureaucracy that is disconnected enough from its employees to allow you to figure it out for the sake of free stuff.  This may mean something as simple as befriending a chap behind the counter or swiping some frequent customer cards off the coffee shop counter and using them with the siggies on your master copy.  Careful not to go too Catch-Me-If-You-Can.  And remember, if somebody gives you a free beer, don’t neglect to cough up a tip.

5)    Willingness to share.

borrowed, donated, or fallen off the back of a truck

When it comes to the low-budget film world, from what I’ve seen, this is the center of the system.  Predating capitalism was the barter system.  Everybody needs something that somebody else can get them.  I’ve lent out pretty much everything I own at one time or another, in addition to my time and brainpower.  And I’ve borrowed anything from a truck of grip equipment, a 30 foot styrofoam crocodile, a complete stranger’s car, a loaded rifle, to an 100 acre estate.  The real key is to just be ready to help anybody who asks that you believe to be a good human being, and bank on the fact that down the road, they’ll be willing to return the favor.

6)    Willingness to admit that father knows best.

pops at camp four circa 1975

Freight train hopping, fruit picking, hitchhiking, living off $3 thousand a year, lets face it, our generation is standing on the shoulders of giants when it comes to this kind of stuff.  The old folks survived without half of the things on our essentials list.  Throw back.

What exactly am I trying to say?  I’m broke.  But thats ok.  This is not about how to be lazy and avoid having to pay dues in life.  This is about being willing to work harder and risk what you are “allowed to do” to achieve what would have otherwise been impossible.  And, can you spot me a fiver?

As I was unpacking my bag this morning from a week-long climbing trip to Yosemite, all of my stuff seemed to permeate the smells of dirt, food, the spring air and sweat. But amongst all that, there was that one overpowering familiar smell on all my clothes: campfire.

Even the biggest bah-humbug city dweller can’t deny that there is something magical about campfires, about they way they bring people together on a cold night, the way they blanket everyone in beautiful orange light.

My Yosemite trip was completed by the nightly campfire in our site at Camp 4 with guitars and mandolin that brought people from around the camp to sing and play stuff like some particularly awful renditions of Bob Dylan songs (think ‘Mr. Bojangles’ done in rounds, uninentionally) and ad lib blues songs about off-width cracks.

In the morning, some people would stop by again around propane stoves, and as I would drink coffee and eat my eggs, they’d spell out what they planned to climb, exchanging some tips, occasionally signin on to somebody elses route, and be off until the end of the day, when we’d meet again at the campfire. The Camp 4 appeal, after fifty years, is still around.

From Thanh, practically a Camp 4 resident with his stories of rattlesnake bites and epics and remarkable memory for visualizing climbs, to Trevor & Javier from Idaho improving their trad technique, to Anna from SB just takin in the air, to Max, the wildlife biologist with an abnormal attraction to off-width cracks, I found myself surprisingly sad this morning when I woke up and didn’t hear them cooking outside my tent, but instead heard my alarm telling me I had to go to work.

At any rate, it’s this quality of the campfire that made me decide at the beginning of the brainstorming for this documentary that all the interviews with climbers should be done by campfire light or lantern light.

A huge portion of The Rock Adventure Guide consists of interviews with different people (rock climbers, outdoors enthusiasts from the 50s onward) who tell stories about life in the outdoors and on the rock. What better setting than at the side of a campfire?

Not only because it fits with the setting of the film and these characters, but also because of the aesthetic quality. Unlike bright lighting in an office or traditional interview setup (like with a swirly blue background reminiscent of your 3rd grade school pictures), a campfire provides for more a cinematic effect. A subjects face is partly lit and partly obscured in the same way that their legends are partly fact and partly myth.  You wouldn’t film Paul Bunyon or Johhny Appleseed in a studio with three point lighting, imagine how dissapointed you would be!  The same is true of the figures we plan to interview for this documentary.