It’s hard for me to believe that it has been seven years this month that my sons and I hauled ass out to North Hollywood, California to film Leave, a short film based upon my short story of the same name.
That was one fun and memorable experience.
The movie premiered as the 2018 LA Femme International Film Festival, and shortly thereafter found a home at Amazon Prime.
Unfortunately, Amazon, in a huge diss to independent filmmakers all over the world, shut down its service to short films a couple of years ago and Leave has been without a distributor since.
I had plans to find a new home for Leave, but as we all know how way leads on to way, I never did…
Until now.
I have finally decided to bite the bullet and load it up on Youtube so that I can share it here with you on the Journal, and host it forever more, forever more on my Movie page, along with its trailer and The Making of Leave, a short documentary about the, uhm, well… making of Leave.
Upon reflection, the biggest lesson I learned about the entire movie making evolution, from writing the screenplay, to putting the cast and crew together, to tap dancing for donations here and at Kickstarter, to executive producing the production, to impatiently waiting for postproduction to post, and to trying to hustle it out to film festivals… is that the next time I decide to make a movie, and I still have plans/hopes to do so, I will definitely direct it myself.
Leave’s director, Caatje van Leeuwen, did a great job, which you can attest to when you watch the flick, but I just found it too difficult not having complete creative control over a story that means so much to me.
I guess its a familiar refrain through the industry, which is why we see so many written/directed by movies, particularly the indie ones.
So, go ahead and pop you some popcorn and pour you out some of your favorite adult beverage and kick back and enjoy the film.
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Good to see this again. I remember watching the first time round and, I guess, so many things have moved on since then that we would no longer recognise the life!
Indeed. Last month was 20 years since I retired from the navy. So much has happened since then but still seems like yesterday.
Yes indeed. 30 years since I retired from the army!