What could be better than looking forward to the upcoming Easter Break? Could it be the joy of a Maryland teen who has successfully navigated the MVA for their first-run drivers license? How about a middle-aged father who’s wife has given him permission to visit the New York Auto Show? How about an anime impresario who’s work is featured on EbaumsWorld.    

I live in Los Angeles County, so I will not be attending the NY Auto Show. Damn. I haven’t explored the artistic merits of transitioning from independent filmmaking, producing and distribution to anime creation. And I have not been lucky enough to have my work featured on EbaumsWorld. However, there may be a case for live-action filmmaking being the deterrent there.  

Broken Hearts Club

What I am working on this Easter Break, while the kids are out of school and probably driving me crazy, is the final touches to “The Broken Hearts Club.” Broken Hearts Club is my latest (and hopefully greatest-thus-far) independent film. I mention this not to my loyal blog followers but to anyone popping in to read my blog for the first time. The film concisely pitched as a story about six couples on the verge of breaking up who mistakenly hire a criminal psychiatrist as their relationship coach. The film centers around an apathetic clinical psychiatrist who’s perfectly detached world is thrust into turmoil when he forced to counsel the most melodramatic folks on the planet, and ultimately begins to feel something for them.

I’ve been around the world and back on this one. It’s been nearly 18 months since I shot the first frame of BHC and I lament that fact that the film isn’t done yet. It’s certainly not how I’ve worked in the past. When I edit, I edit like a madman because my heart races with the thought of finally finishing the film. With BHC I’ve been on again and off again. Trying an assortment of scene rearrangements and musical accompaniments  to finish the job. To date it’s the best film I have ever written and produced. I believe that–and this is why I’ve struggled with not being completely and irrevocably excited beyond compare by the final cut. But now there’s a new sheriff in town. A new idea.

The idea came to me while watching a film online titled Amnesia by John Wayne Bosley. The short film version of Broken Hearts Club  (view trailer) screened online with Amnesia during Bosley’s RebFest in late March. Earlier this year I’d decided that I needed a narration to weave some of the plot points and set pieces together. It would be an unobtrusive narration by one of the characters in the film. But which one? I wasn’t sure which character offered the best opportunity to exploit his/her relationship with the audience and the other characters in the film. Essentially the narrator would need to be an all-seeing-eye.

Then it hit me like a sack of nickels in a new argyle sock! Unfortunately I cannot divulge the details of the new narration here because then I’d have to kill you, or, at the very least wipe your memory clean like they do in Dollhouse.

So for Easter, while the hip-hop Easter Bunny is hippity=hoppitying himself through the grassy knoll hiding Easter eggs, I will be recording a narration for my film. I’d like to be knee-deep in narration recording right now but I have a “cough due to cold” as Mr. Gump would say. So you’ve got the first hint. Yup, you’re right. I will be the narrator. But it ain’t what you think.

Trust me.