Hopefully your ideas come a bit more easily

Chel White is a Portland, Ore.-based filmmaker who has directed movies as well as commercials. Last year we saw his sexily strange stop-motion work for black soap Lux Provocateur. Now, his 2005 short film, A Painful Glimpse Into My Writing Process (In Less Than 60 Seconds), is being hosted on the Lumen Eclipse art gallery’s Web site. In it, free-floating eyeballs and exploding TVs whiz past, as a desperate narrator describes what it’s like to create something. He starts by dropping into a cold sweat, hoping he can steal something from television. He downs a six-pack of beer and falls asleep. He wakes up, does 700 jumping jacks and eats a box of cookies. He reads from The Old Man and the Sea, then bursts into tears and rolls down the stairs. Following more self-loathing, he jumps into a car, and as he is about to drive off a cliff to kill himself, a great idea pops into his head. So he stops, and writes it on his leg with a pen he carries for just such a purpose. Which is funny, because that’s how this post was created.

—Posted by Kamau High

January 18, 2007 | Permalink