3 hours to write a short film ... easy!

Last week Medina and I helped write the short film MAYOR MULLIGAN for Andy Thompson as part of the 24hr Film Race — and it won Audience Choice runner up at the screening!  Congrats to the entire team!!  Now the films will screen again in competition for the juried awards – WEDS SEPT 8th at the “Celluloid Social Club”, 8pm Anza Club.  Come on out, mingle, see some shorts that were written, shot, and edited in 24hrs — and see if we win any jury awards … should be fun!  Details below …
–
“MAYOR MULLIGAN”
an Andy Thompson film
in juried competition for
2010 Vancouver Film Race

This Wednesday Sept 8th, 8:00pm @ The Anza Club
By donation

www.celluloidsocialclub.com

A Random Acts Entertainment film
MAYOR MULLIGAN (Makes a Mistake) is about a buffoon-like Mayor desperate to get re-elected who stumbles into the absurd plot of some smart French prostitutes and their pompous pimp … let the mayhem begin!! Written, shot, and edited in 24hrs, this may be the final film to ever be shot at the infamous 2400 Motel on Kingsway…

CAST
Brad Wiens – Mayor Mulligan
Billy Marchenski – Pimp
Pandora Morgan – Prostitute #1
Chantal Thome – Prostitute #2
Michelle Christiaens – Prostitute #3
Norman Lev – Masochist
Jono Freedrix – Campaign Manager

CREW
Andy Thompson – director/co-producer/co-writer/co-editor
Jono Freedrix – co-writer / co-producer / co-editor
Daniel Arnold – co-writer
Medina Hahn – co-writer
Michael Julian Berz – cinematography / co-editor
Enigma Arcana – costume design & art direction
Nick Urquhart – original music composition
Robin Greenwood – co-editor
Suzie Klimack – makeup and hair design
Alysha Kothlow – production manager
Bettina Strauss – production stills photographer
Birdie Hamilton – script/continuity editor
Jacob Barker – boom operator / sound

“Each of us is here to discover our true Self…
that essentially we are spiritual beings who have taken manifestation in physical form…
that we’re not human beings that have occasional spiritual experiences that we’re spiritual beings that have occasional human experiences. “..

– Deepak Chopra

Thank you for your spirit.

Thank you for your generosity.

Thank you for your humour.

Thank you for your talent as an artist.

Thank you for your gifts as a human being.

Thank you for the rides to the Toronto airport.

Thank you for the in depth conversations.

Thank you for your insight.

Thank you for doing headstands in the middle of your living room.

Thank you for your wonder.

Thank you for cooking wonderful dinners.

Thank you for introducing me to the world of meditation.

Thank you for your light.

You will be missed here. But I have no doubt that you are shining over there…

“Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid,and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”

– Joseph Campbell

Death is not the end
Death can never be the end.

Death is the road.
Life is the traveller.
The Soul is the Guide

- Sri Chinmoy

Tracy Wright (1959-2010) • photo by Guntar Kravis

Losing, and discovering, Tracy Wright

by Brian D. Johnson on Wednesday, June 23, 2010 3:10pm

She was the quintessence of the character actor who was universally beloved and acclaimed by her peers, and whose formidable talent consistently outstripped her fame. Tracy Wright  died Tuesday morning at her home in Toronto just six and a half months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She was 50. Wright was a stage and screen actress would routinely deliver the kind of unique and memorable performances that get called “gem-like.” Even if her name does not sound familiar, chances are you would recognize her.  She brought an idiosyncratic clarity to even the smallest roles, along with a sense that there was so much more of her simmering just below the surface, or just off screen. Wright had a way of conveying an entire personality, and a motherlode of wit, through a word or a look. She worked with some of Canada’s most inventive writers and directors, including Bruce McDonald, Patricia Rozema, Daniel McIvor, Daniel Brooks—and her longtime companion Don McKellar, who became her husband shortly after her cancer diagnosis. It was  a treat to see her work alongside McKellar, as the cat-crazy Dizelle in the TV series, Twitch City, or as a cycling, pot-smoking ex-radical  in Monkey Warfare. And I doubt any actress has held her own in the clubhouse of Kids in the Hall as beautifully as Wright, who appeared as a sex-mad adulterer ravishing Bruce McDonald at an art gallery opening in this hilarious episode titled The Affair:

While Wright was rooted in Toronto’s theatrical and film community, her reputation went far and wide. Plug her name into Google, and the appreciations that pop up range from Texas to Scotland. American director Miranda July was so captivated by her small role in McKellar’s 1999 film Last Night, that she wrote a part for her in You Me and Everyone We Know, as an art curator who has an unwitting online affair with a child.

While Wright was chronically under-appreciated, an actress whose talent seemed to merit more generous roles,  she was gaining increased recognition in the past year or two. She won acclaim for her final stage role, co-starring with Caroline Gillis in the 2009 Tarragon Theatre remount of Daniel MacIvor’s A Beautiful View, as a straight woman who becomes involved with a lesbian. And after her diagnosis, MacIvor raced to write a screenplay that would give her a starring role opposite Molly Parker in another two-hander—a rock’n’roll My Dinner With Andre about two women who catch up with each other after meeting at a concert. The movie, directed by Bruce McDonald, is called Trigger, and most likely it will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

Until then, you can get a glimpse of Wright in another of those fleeting, gem-like roles, in McDonald’s This Movie is Broken, a romance wrapped around a Broken Social Scene concert movie; it opens on Friday.

Meanwhile here’s sweet glimpse of Tracy Wright on a park bench  in the final scenes of You and Me and Everyone We Know:

Macleans.ca article link

]]> http://dualminds.com/blog/2010/06/tracy-lauren-wright-dec-7-1959-june-22-2010/feed/ 0 http://dualminds.com/blog/2010/04/keeping-on/ http://dualminds.com/blog/2010/04/keeping-on/#comments Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:01:29 +0000 Daniel http://dualminds.com/blog/?p=223

Here we are at Medina’s yet again … doing a polish of our Any Night screenplay.  Lots of heat behind the script so far, really great coverage notes on it … and it ranked among the top 5% of scripts ever sent to Script Shark in LA!  A few directors have read it and are keen on it.  Even SARAH POLLEY read it and enjoyed it! Too bad she’s busy working on her own SETH ROGEN movies at the moment!  But we’re confident we’ll get the right director behind us!

Also, other big news!!  Medina got a role in a feature film starring MILLA JOVOVICH!  It’s called FACES IN THE CROWD and they fly her to Winnipeg to shoot it.  Yay Medina!  And today I found out I got a bit more development financing for me and Matt’s adaptation of “Lawrence & Holloman” into a feature film … which hopefully Medina will be inolved in at some point.  Can’t give up the Minds of Dual!

What else … organizing tours of Any Night (the play) to Edmonton and New York – woohoo!  

 Keeping on …

It constantly amazes me how messages come into our lives at the perfect time…

“To find out what you love to do demands a great deal of intelligence; because, if you are afraid of not being able to earn a livelihood, or of not fitting into this rotten society, then you will never find out. But, if you are not frightened, if you refuse to be pushed into the groove of tradition by your parents, by your teachers, by the superficial demands of society, then there is a possibility of discovering what it is you really love to do. So, to discover, there must be no fear of not surviving.”   – Krishnamurti

Sitting here in Vancouver this past week, going back and forth with Medina who’s in Thailand and Kieren MacMillan (composer/producer) who’s in Toronto, emailing about this great new musical collaboration we’re going to be doing in March over skype. Got me thinking about long distance communication and how easy it’s become … but think of the future: what if our gadgets and computers actually become a PART of us, and WE are connected to a network like the internet, not just our computer. We become cyber-organisms, cyborgs. Would we welcome it? I actually think a lot of us would, even though it might scare us at first. Because why CARRY a phone/computer when you can have it safely be a PART of you? Perhaps the pressure to become a cyborg will eventually be just like the current pressure to get an iPhone or whatever latest gadget.

Anyway, also organizing with the Vancouver Playhouse a table-reading of “The Annie Logo & Bill Board Show”, me and Medina’s new work, a musical!  Really excited to hear it aloud, and get it into other people’s minds, because I love the story, think it has lots to say about the global climate, and how we navigate our relationships and our politics within that climate – and I want to continue working on it.  Hopefully some development can come out of this read.  In any case, March is looking to be quite a musical month …

ANY NIGHT: from the creative team of Daniel Arnold and Medina Hahn (Tuesdays & Sundays) came this show to creep us out right before Halloween. No ghouls or ghosts but lots of psychological and surveillance elements to scare you. Terrific set and lighting design by Peter Pokorny and David Fraser gave this show a shadowy, spooky feel. Next time someone says, “I will take care of you,” run! – Jo Ledingham

For the full list go here Vancouver Courier – Best Plays of 2009

Wrecking Ball to Tackle Draconian Cuts to the Arts: Canada’s Leading Theatre Artists Take On the BC government from Coast to Coast

Vancouver’s theatre community joins actors, directors and designers from across the country in creative and satirical protest to the BC government’s mind-boggling and short-sighted plan to slash 90% of cultural funding, which will make it the only jurisdiction in Canada not to invest in culture.

In 2008, during the federal election, Wrecking Ball events across Canada helped turn the tide of public opinion against the Harper government’s planned culture cuts, and prevented a Harper majority. This time, events across Canada throughout the month of November will highlight the devastating arts cuts announced by the BC government in their September budget update! .

Vancouver’s Wrecking Ball features some of Canada’s most nationally and internationally recognized actors and directors, including multiple award-winning actor/playwrights Daniel MacIvor (House, Twitch City) and Linda Griffiths (Maggie and Pierre), Leacock-winning writer Mark Leiren Young, and Alcan Award winner Carmen Aguirre. Original member of the Nylons and BC Walk of Fame member Denis Simpson will host.

Margaret Atwood asks, “What is it that power-hungry politicians want from BC artists? Control over the story through the annihilation of the former story-tellers? Is this the agenda behind the decapitation of arts funding in British Columbia, while mega-millions are poured into the Olympics? The BC arts community will retaliate, of course. Over the past 50 years they’ve put BC on the map.”

“It won’t just be a protest,” adds Wrecking Ball Spokesperson Adrienne Wong. “It&r! squo;ll be a night to laugh and celebrate what we know – that Br itish Columbians care about culture.

“And it’s not just arts and culture,” Wong adds. “Cuts to Gaming investments in many sectors indicate to us that this government is looking for ways to subsidize its corporate welfare, low-tax environment on the backs of civil society organizations that provide essential services to British Columbians. It seems that they don’t think much of activities like culture and sport and places where people come together for reasons other than profit. They call it a frill. We call it democracy.”

WRECKING BALL VANCOUVER

WRECKING BALL ACROSS THE GLOBE

Monday Nov. 23, 8 pm
Vogue Theatre, Vancouver. By Donation.

The Commodore, Vancouver, BC, Nov 19th, 2009

PLAYING FOR CHANGE was created to inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world through music. The idea for this project arose from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. No matter whether people come from different geographic, political, economic, spiritual or ideological backgrounds, music has the universal power to transcend and unite us as one human race.

Saw them play the other night and was beautifully reminded about the power of art. The ability creation has to bring people together, bring about awareness, change and light. So much light….

Listen / Watch / Read about it: Playing for Change