"What wall is the door in?"

That's a quote from Brick, a movie with a lot of great quotes, a movie my wife and I watched tonight. The main character, a teenage detective investigating his ex-girlfriend's murder, just woke--sans his glasses--from a blackout caused by the pounding a of drug dealer's thug, and he's looking for a way out of the basement in which he finds himself, the basement of the dealer's mom's house. Film noir meets high school in this highly stylized, low-budget, hidden gem of a film. Check it out at your local video store today.

Okay, I'll break from the critic talk. Seriously, it was an entertaining movie. Part of the reason I liked it so much is probably the reason I should dislike it: it reminded me a lot of the movie I wanted to make. They stole my idea! If you know me then you probably know I had an idea for a movie that was to be called Dreamer. It originally manifested itself in a short script for a 10-15 minute video that I fully intended to shoot. In fact, I even got a cast together for one night of shooting on the Leonidas Overlook (forever documented in this over-played clip) before they all went so far in their separate ways that I could never round them all up again.

I didn't let the project die there. I spent many hours bulking it up into a feature length screenplay and submitted it as my final project in my senior year film class at St. Thomas. The instructor was a professional movie critic, and he did a very thorough job of writing notes in the margins (and gave me an 'A'). I always meant to go back and make another revision using those notes, and I figured if the opportunity presented itself one day that I would get a crew together and find some real actors and bring my labor of love to completion. Well, now it seems too late because somebody else sort of beat me to it, and to be honest with you, I think Brick is better than Dreamer would have been, especially with all of its snazzy dialogue.

When did I become somebody who just talks about doing things but doesn't get around to doing them? I feel like that's what's happening here. I get projects in my head, but then I leave them there so long that my passion for them drains away. The obvious excuse is the lack of time due to full-time employment, but even when I was between jobs the days went by so fast that I could never really dive into a project. I didn't even have the chance to dive into flossing my teeth. Still, how can I sit at a computer all day, every day for my job and then expect to come home and type up a novel? Well, maybe a novel isn't the best idea right now. Maybe I should concentrate on my ideas for some short web videos. Yes, I'm going to set my mind to them, even if it means giving up some TV and some blogging. I promise you this: over Labor Day weekend, if not sooner, my camera will be rolling.