In late May, 2009, while waiting in the theater to see the movie "Up", weirdly enough, I started conceiving of an idea for a movie. Two ideas were swimming around my head. One was the Futurama episode "Time Keeps On Slipping", and the whole concept therein of time suddenly jumping forward, and people (or aliens, or robots) finding themselves in strange life situations, wondering how they got there. Maybe there's a bit of the Talking Heads song "Once In A Lifetime" in there too. The other was low budget filmmaking. I'd spent the last few years in LA writing spec TV scripts, spec feature scripts, but I missed what I had in college, when I used to help produce one act plays I wrote with the theater arts department. I wanted to make a movie, and figured if I started writing a script I knew I could make cheap, maybe I could direct it too. I also knew I wanted to write a script with a female lead, which I'd never done before.
That night, waiting for the movie to start, and later that night at my laptop, I outlined the basic concept for "Diamond Bar". I started writing it on June 1st.
It's now been a bit over a year working on Diamond Bar, easily the longest I've worked on any single project ever. I finished writing the script in August, and thought, I can get this finished in a year, easy. Cast in September, prep in October, shoot in November/December, and I've got six months for post. But shooting ran over by a month, and post proved to be much more time intensive than I imagined (shocker). Even when that June 1st, 2010 deadline looked unfeasible, I didn't change it for a long time, cause I have an OCD appreciation for nice, round numbers like "One year".
But it's not going to happen. The movie as it looks right now is good. Releasable, even, maybe. But it's not done. At this rate, it'll be late July or maybe even August. And that's OK. As it turns out, even if it was done today, I wouldn't want to release it yet. That's because Sundance demands movies that haven't publicly premiered yet only, and they won't show their 2011 slate until January. I'm not getting into Sundance, but might at well shoot for the top, right? I'll hold a private cast-and-friends screening in LA when it's done, wait for Sundance's response in December, and then start working on more festivals and broader distribution.
So screw internal deadlines and rushed products and OCD number love. This thing is getting done right, even if it will be 14 months instead of 12. It will be worth the wait.
Listening to: Talking Heads, Once In A Lifetime (My God, what have I done?)
