If you look closely, you’ll notice this is a different moneybags figure from the one pictured above (that one smiles, this one frowns). There are sometimes similar or duplicate statuettes on both uptown and downtown platforms.
Last Thursday the Brooklyn Botanic Garden sponsored Hanami Nights in celebration of cherry blossom season. Hanami translates to “flower viewing”.
I have posted pictures of the cherry blossoms before, but this is the first year the BBG organized their special celebration in the evening, allowing for pictures in dusk and spotlight enhanced night.
There are also pics and videos of traditional Japanese folk dancing.
I have been busy acting in several handfuls of short films (and other projects) lately.
One of the short films shot early March in an upper class Upper East Side townhouse. It was a night shoot.
I played a sleazy manservant.
Here is a photo album of the shoot, but mostly of that town house. It was fascinatingly idiosyncratic.
A crew member laying down track for a dolly shot.
Notice the wall paper. Every room had what looked to me like bespoke wallpaper.
When I leaned my head against the wall, I realized the wallpaper was cushioned. Not as thickly as a padded cell, but still soft and comfy to the touch.
This lovely glass trophy came in the mail last week. I almost didn’t expect it even though I’d been notified of the win. But the Vienna Script Awards operated differently from most awards bodies and film festivals I know by inviting me to submit for free – somehow they had heard of me and my script through the grapevine – and then promptly awarding me their top prize and offering to send me their trophy for free, from Austria nonetheless (some awards bodies will send you a certificate of winning but make the trophy an optional item you pay for yourself, or at least ask you to pay for the shipping yourself.)
So to achieve recognition with absolutely no monetary strings attached from submission to statuette, that is something to note. Thank you, Vienna Script Awards!
But what is “Prelude to a Death”, the script that won the award? This is the first time I mention this project on my blog. But I have been working on this original feature length script – a gothic ghost story unlike anything you have heard before – for a while, and am now ready to shop it around, as they say.
Which has included submitting the work to a handful of festivals / awards groups that accept unproduced screenplays. The response so far has been pretty good. Here is a handful of additional award certificates (if not tangible trophies) “Prelude to a Death” has received (updated):
(What was I thinking? Something about the stripes the lion is hiding behind not fooling the striped zebras. But if it needs to be explained… yeah, I’ve done better.)
Notes from a Composer 