Vanessa Ruane Blog
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It’s three days into summer and I can’t believe half of 2007 is already gone. The passage of time never ceases to amaze me. I’ve been reading Peter Bogdanovich’s Who the Devil Made It. It’s a really well written book that contains interviews with the original filmmakers from the early 1900’s.
I’ve read many biographies and film history books, but I’ve never gotten so in-depth into the time of the silents.
They were making shorts back then in the beginning. Two or three a week. We are experiencing that kind of appetite for clever shorts again due to the internet and the short content needed for internet and cell phone movies. Back then it was Nickelodeon theaters that showcased this new visual medium.
The way they got things made is so reminiscent to me of the kind of independent film making I experience and at the end of the day what was most important then is still most important now. It all comes down to What’s the story?
A few weekends ago I volunteered my time to be the 2nd 2nd AD for a Public Service Announcement for the Say Yes foundation in downtown LA.
Say Yes is an after school program that has been helping homeless and less fortunate kids for the past 15 years. They team up with the Peacock Foundation for Animal Assisted therapy and that’s what our commercial was about.
What a different reality it is for those kids. Bouncing from hotel living to sleeping in shelters. Eating meals at soup kitchens, being dirty and not getting to wear clean clothes and in most cases having parents addicted to drugs.
And yet despite their circumstances they were polite and well-mannered kids. The organization is really there developing trust and hope in these children’s lives. So many of the children were really smart and creative.It got me thinking how great it would be to teach them film. To find someone to donate camcorders and an editing program. Give them the opportunity to document their lives and teach them to find their stories in the editing process. They all work computers and those over 12 could totally do it.
Art provides a passage over our obstacles. In art we are able to imitate life with our own twists, in a universe we can control.
I was recently up north at my boyfriend’s mother’s house. She lives in Brentwood CA – very nice, clean neighborhood with big house and backyards with pools and although the houses are different it’s different in groups of four. A community that was built all in the past five years. As pleasant as it is, I felt suffocated. It felt too pleasant – too quiet. I was craving character and diversity. We had dinner with one of her co-workers who commuted three and a half hours to San Francisco just one way for twenty years. Seven hours a day to get back and forth from work. This kind of a life is so foreign to me. It’s on the opposite side of experience and I have for days been wondering – what is the art in that?
I need art. I need to be able to tell stories to feel balanced on earth. I am so grateful that my life is on this path. Listening to the lives of Alan Dwan and Raoul Walsh, these men who lived into their nineties, they talk about a life making pictures and they have no regrets and they feel proud of the legacy they left behind.
I feel that way too, even without monetary success. Getting to be a filmmaker and pursue my dream of sharing stories with the world leaves me feeling no regrets about my life thus far.
Hometown Heroes premiere’s in three weeks and I await the opportunity to send my latest project out into the world.
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