Las Perdidas (the lost ones)

This 16 min. short was shot out in Wonder Valley, CA. We might be smiling for the camera, but it wasn't an easy shoot in the desert. You can see us accepting our Gold Remi Award at WorldFest Houston below. Las Perdidas played at The Rhode Island International Film Festival, the Newport Beach Film Festival, the Palm Springs International ShortFest, Cannes Short Film Corner, and won Best Comedy at the Broad Humor Film Festival. The best thing that came out of the whole experience was meeting Director of Photography Erik Forssell, seen in the picture to the right.

Captain C**kblocker

This was my first "real film project" after I moved to Los Angeles. My friend Galadriel and I produced it together as part of her Universal Studios Team Member film festival. Lauren Clinton, who plays Little Henrietta, went on to co-star in Disney's Bridge To Terabithia. This 10 min. film won the Audience Award at the festival.

The World of Cory & Sid

Winning the Grand Jury Prize for the 3 min. short, For the Last Sixth Time, sponsored by Banana Repubic, Vanity Fair, and Film Independent.

In 1998 I moved to Austin, Texas, and the first play I directed was desire: a Reconsideration of Eugene O’Neil’s Desire Under the Elms. I used the term “reconsideration” because I wanted the audience to look at O’Neil’s play as if they were watching an episode of Jerry Springer. Staged on a working farm in the hills of Austin and filmed nightly by a documentary crew, desire evoked questions about the newly emerging “Reality TV” fad, forcing the audience to watch violent action onstage played simultaneously on television, coupled with documentary style interviews that commented on the story unfolding before them. desire put me on the map in the Austin arts community, where I spent the next three years working on my directing skills and finding my voice.

Between 1999 – 2001 I directed plays for the dirigo group, an edgy theater company I founded with a group of other like-minded artists in Austin. I directed “reconsiderations” of Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love, adding the dating “Rules”, an Elvis impersonator and three dancing cowgirls to Shepard’s world.

Henrick Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler became a 50s inspired Doris Day/Rock Hudson dance performance, casting Hedda Gabler and Eilert Lovborg as gay women struggling with their forbidden desire for one another.

In 2000, the dirigo group was awarded a grant from the City of Austin to let me create a play about my friend David, who was an activist in Northern Californa. David was tragically killed on a protest and I wanted to create a piece that would honor his memory and his work. So armed with a video camera, I headed to the redwoods of Humboldt to interview the activists and loggers who would inspire the production. In March 2001, I assembled a group of over forty people, and with the help of the artistic and activist talents of Austin, created The Gypsy Chain, a three-hour rock and roll musical and launched a recycling drive that acted in conjunction with the production. People came from around the country to see the production.

It was an awesome, rewarding and most of all, humbling experience.