So Much For Resolutions...

Ok, that's it. No more public resolutions like I made in my last post... it's too public an embarasment when I don't hold up my end of the deal. So that's it, I won't do it no more!! Oh wait... I just did it again, didn't I? Sigh... hard to break those bad habits.

Two things before I get to talking about what's been going on in my life the past month:

1) Happy birthday James. Hope you got the package - keep us posted on the impending birth (and your shrinking girth).

2) One of western literature's greatest voices was silenced this week... it's not like it came as a big surprise; he was getting up there in years, and death comes to us all eventually. Still, I mourn the world's loss of Kurt Vonegut. There's a wonderful little tribute video that I saw on MySpace this morning... check it out.

So... as to what's been happening in Trish and my lives since my last substantial post...

>> Movies:

Shooting wrapped this weekend on From Kilimanjaro With Love, the independent feature that Trish and I have been working on over the past month... and what a long strange trip it's been. One week of rehearsals and 18 days of shooting have hopefully given writer/ director Robert Bruce and Production Manager/ Editor/ Camera Person/ Everything-else-woman Carey Bruce enough coverage to put together this ambitious feature... over the course of the shoot we had too much rain, too much sun, too much heat and too much cold... location changes, prop changes, line changes, and the trading of a helicopter for a biplane... and through it all the cast and crew kept their spirits up and worked together to pull the project off. Now it goes into post-production, and we all cross our fingers and hope that it comes out looking as good as we think it should.

I'll keep you all posted on news as it comes from Road's End... Bob and Carey are hoping to have a rough-cut of the film by September, and a fully edited final cut by November or so to start shopping around to festivals. In the mean time, check out some production photos that the crew uploaded to Flickr... of course, I have my personal favorites - but as the fight choreographer for the film I'm fairly partial to this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one. :)

I attended the screening of two movies I appear in, How To Breathe and Dark Horizon, at this year's Longbaugh Film festival. Well, I should say I attended the Dark Horizon screening; the shorts program that How To Breathe was being shown in sold out quickly and I wasn't able to get in (I did get a dvd copy of the work, though; my scene will be posted in the Video section of http://www.haroldphillips.net/ soon).

It's always wierd to see myself on-screen, but I think I'm getting better at it; I didn't cringe much at all when I saw my big nose or lack of chin, and I think that I carried my scenes off pretty well. The film still needs a bit of sound mixing, but otherwise it's in pretty good shape; it'll probably be headed out to other festivals around the country later this year.

One last Dark Horizon note - for those of you who have emailed me, yes, that was OUR Ryan Deal. It happend before I got there, and it sounds to me like Ryan got a little too caught up in the moment. He's made a public apology (on the Willamette Week web site, anyway... which is public enough for me), and David Walker seems cool with it. No such thing as bad press, eh?

The festival screenings did yield one other nice benefit - now that I've had a public screening of a film I'm in, I'm listed on IMDB - which means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme. Just a little ego stroke :)

Incidentally, before I leave movie-land, I should mention that I've added some shots from The Yard and God Has No Religion to the photos section of http://www.haroldphillips.net/. Stop by and check 'em out when you get the chance.

>> Theatre:

Rehearsals have started for Swiss Family Robinson at Northwest Children's Theatre... and it's gonna... be... AWESOME!!!! After a week of blocking rehearsals with Sarah Jane Hardy and a week of fight rehearsals with John Armour, I have to say I'm SO looking forward to this production opening. We're going to have a treehouse set (designed by Paul Brown), sweeping, adventurous music (courtesy of Rodolfo Ortega), dazzling fights with pirates... maybe even an explosion! The younger members of the cast are a joy to work with - since most of them have been through NWCT productions before (or classes at NWCT) they're very focused and ready to work at rehearsal, and it's always a joy to work with Buffie Rogers and Kerry Ryan.

There are some PR photos from in the photos section of http://www.haroldphillips.net/ if you want to check 'em out... and we're opening on May 4th, so consider buying your tickets online at http://www.nwcts.org/. You'll have lots of chances to see the show, though... we run all week (plus doing six school shows a week during the day).

Meanwhile, Trish has been cast in Integrity Productions upcoming production of Wonder of the World by David Lindsay-Abaire (scroll down to the bottom of the Integrity link to see details of the show). She starts rehearsals on Tuesday - so she gets a whole two days off after wrapping Kilimanjaro before going into her next production. Wonder of the World is a hilarious play - I auditioned for one of the parts (before being cast in Swiss Family Robinson) and read through the script - and Trish's part is a HOOT! She plays an amateur private investigator with a dark past. That show opens June 7th; you'll want to come see it. It'll be a blast.

>> Real Estate:

Now for the not-so-fun news... as you may rememer, Trish and I have been trying to sell our duplex in NE Portland for over a year now. We finally got an out-of-town buyer (ironically, when we'd decided to take it off the market for a bit) in late February, and we were slated to close the sale on April 2nd (after making many many repairs and spiffing the place up).

Because that wasn't stressful enough, one of our tennants decided to move out at about the time the buyer came onto the scene. We had to deal with "refreshing" her unit and getting it ready for the new buyer to rent as well as getting all the paperwork in order and other repairs...

Well, I wouldn't be writing about this if something hadn't happened. After finally getting the tennant out of her side of the duplex (there were some "issues" associated with that), signing our documents for the closing and getting the last of the repairs done, we were told that the buyer's bank had changed the terms of his loan, and he wasn't going through with the purchase. So, we were left "holding the bag" for all the repairs we'd done (and a fair chunk of credit card debt) and no sale.

This happened a few weeks ago, and time and distance have helped us to make peace with the situation... it's really just a "bump in the road" (sorry Carmela) and not the grand-mal catastrophe it felt like when we got the news. At this point the duplex is back on the market (with one side open and ready for a new owner who wants to live in half and get rent from the other half to offset his/her mortgage), and we're still receiving some rent to offset our expenses. We also took out a home equity line of credit through our credit union to pay off the credit card debt - better to pay a 6.7% intrest rate than the 19 - 27% interest rate the credit cards would have charged us - and with luck we'll have another buyer soon and we can pay off the line of credit quickly.

So... anyone looking to buy a duplex? Contact Francine Corriere. You can live in half of it, or rent the whole thing out... it's up to you :)

>> "Real" life

So, after all that, it'll probably come as no surprise that Trish and I haven't been seeing much of each other lately :) Even though we were both working on Kilimanjaro, we were often scheduled for different days - she'd be shooting in Yamhill and Newberg while I wasn't called and vice-versa. The 12 hour shoot days and travel time to base camp meant getting up at 4am to get to the set by 7, then getting home at around 9pm - which meant going to bed almost immediately to be up at 4 the next morning.

Add to that my day job as a computer consultant (a client sent me a funny Norwegan video about that... check it out), Trish's day job, Swiss Family Robinson rehearsals and time spent dealing with the duplex... and we're really missing spending time together. We had planned on taking a trip out of the country in June, but Wonder of the World got in the way of that... so we're planning on visiting Greece in September instead. In the mean time, we're grabbing at any chance at "together time" that comes our way.

Otherwise, life keeps on going. Amber, our new pug, has spent the past month integrating into our household. For the most part she's done ok... we had a week or so where she decided to get "assertive" and started peeing on our bed. Another week of being banished from the bed in the evenings seems to have fixed that.

She looks like she's starving to death, of course... she was rescued from an underground breeder who didn't care that she has hip displaysia and bred her anyway, so we have to keep her at around 14 lbs to reduce the stress on her hips and knees. Thankfully her foster mother (through Animal Aid, the organization who rescued her) has a connection with a supplement distributor, and can get us MSM, Glucosomine and liquid vitamin supplements fairly inexpensively... she doesn't get much food, but we're making sure she gets her nutrients.

So... that's pretty much what's been happening in our lives. It's good to be busy - at least we're not bored - but busy also has its down-side :) We're hoping that wrapping Kilimanjaro this weekend will give us a little more time to do more mundane things... like dishes, laundry, that sort of thing.

Oh wait... I think it's time I got to rehearsal :)

Hope you're all doing well...

-Harold