Ok, so obviously I was gonna complete Hotel Dad with a third entry to cover my bases but I never did cuz life (sort of) went back to normal. So hotel dad was fun, but it’s over now. Gone too soon.
I’m trying to figure out exactly what I’m calling this substack. Right now it appears it’s just my substack, but that’s not, you know, enough. At the same time, I’m trying to figure out what I’m doing with it. This wasn’t launched with a lot of forethought, to be honest. The third thing is I’m trying to figure out, artistically, where I am, and I thought a good way to figure that would be to go backwards and look at what excited me in the past in a somewhat autobiographical way, but we can see what that means as I go. So, yes, this is a kind of history of myself. Maybe that’s for you. Maybe it isn’t. I get it!
In the beginning, I kinda remember there being two things: an article about James Cameron in Entertainment Weekly (probably) and the movie BATMAN from 1989. BATMAN was the first big movie I saw that didn’t scare me (Flashback 2 years to MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, which scared me so much I didn’t speak). It, in fact, completely and total inspired me. I wanted to do whatever was going on in that movie. I’m not sure if that meant being Batman or it meant being Tim Burton, but it eventually evolved to meaning Tim Burton.
A few years later, maybe 3, whenever Terminator 2 came out, there was a feature about James Cameron. It was definitely about his life, because it detailed him laying in bed, thinking about space battles. I did that! I thought. I was an avid action figure guy, and so I knew that I could make up fun scenarios in my head and play them out with my ‘guys,’ as I called them.
At some point in here, my parents got a camcorder and I started making movies with all my toys (from an IP perspective, it was a real disaster). I made a few live action ones, too, including a kind of detective drama that ended 3 minutes in after the detective spotted the killer outside the window (huge plot hole: how?).
This makes me reflect for a moment on something I think about too much: follow through. Sorry to sound like a dad, but why did I end that movie so quickly? Did I get bored? Is that what happened?
I was diagnosed with ADHD as a young kid, and I sometimes wonder if the designation did more harm than good. I was told I ‘couldn’t focus,’ which is not true, actually. It IS true that I think long form projects do intimidate and scare me, and I think that’s affected me as an artist, but I CAN focus enough to get things done. Look at this essay (written in 20 minutes using a website blocker!)
Next up I think I’ll write about high school and college theater, where I definitely figured out a lot. A lot! Sort of.