12 Films. 12 Weeks. There are worse ways to spend a summer.

The Saga of Art the Jogger — and Final Film’s Title Announced!

Like everything wonderful about this project, Art the Jogger happened largely by chance.

The first draft of Film #1, “Old Love,” concluded with a long speech by the “James” character, after which Jason sits on his front steps forlornly, “feeling Rachel walk out of his life forever.”  I loved the script — still do — but felt that it needed a little more resolution.  Here’s what I wrote to Mike:

“The ending doesn’t quite feel like an ending.  James’s wisdom sort of wraps things up, but he’s not the main character, and I think we want a little more from Jason at the end.”

In response to that fairly vague criticism, Mike came up with a clever, highly cinematic way to create suspense and make Jason’s inaction seem more active.  He introduced a character called, in that second draft, “The Runner,” whom Rachel — along with, hopefully, the audience — mistakes for Jason when she hears footsteps coming up behind her.  It’s a simple, wordless sequence, but it gives us a chance to shift the film’s emotional center over to Rachel for a few moments, and when we shift back, we understand that Jason’s remaining on the steps is very much a choice, and a defining one — he is not the man running behind Rachel, and he never will be.  It’s an elegant little sleight-of-hand — a true screenwriter’s solution — and it gives the film as much of a “button” as we were comfortable imposing on such an inherently unresolvable story.

In the role of “The Runner” — who became “The Jogger” at some point between the final script and Mike’s putting together the credits — we cast Arthur “Art” Chan, Mike’s roommate and fellow Sleepwalk With Me associate producer, as well as a production assistant on our first four films.  We put Art in a pair of red shorts (his own), a Sleepwalk With Me t-shirt (his own), and a pair of running shoes; we topped it all off with an iPod and voilà!  Instant legend!

Art in “Old Love”: two seconds of glory!

Except, of course, he wasn’t.  At that point, he was nothing but a handy storytelling device.  We had talked about having some sort of underlying theme or recurring set of characters to unify our twelve disparate films, but I had resisted the idea; it seemed too limiting, too potentially restrictive — and besides, I didn’t want our films to become predictable.  Sure, it would be nice if there ended up being a thread that tied all the movies together, but I didn’t want to force it.

The next week, when we were filming “A Summer’s Day,” we put Art the Jogger in it for three main reasons: 1) we needed a few extras to fill out the opening shot; 2) Art was around anyway; and 3) we though it was kind of cool to bring back the same character for a second appearance.  But by the next week, when we started filming “Sublet,” the Art the Jogger appearance seemed absolutely necessary — a kind of totem, a ritual, an invocation to the capricious Gods of No-Budget Filmmaking.  And so it was that, without ever really intending to, we found our thread.

Art in "A Summer's Day": still moving left to right!

Art didn’t physically appear in our fourth film, “After Perfect,” because we couldn’t figure out how to shoehorn him into such an intimate chamber piece, but we managed to work in his cameo anyhow.  By the next week’s shoot, Arthur Chan was gone; Sleepwalk With Me had concluded its run, and Art had business in San Francisco.  With tears in our eyes, we bade him farewell, and I took over his room at Casa de Mike and James — though I couldn’t possibly fill his running shoes.

Art hangs loose on the "After Perfect" set.

Art was kind enough to leave his red shorts and his Sleepwalk t-shirt behind, so that his spirit could continue to be felt in the remaining films.  And thus, by brutal necessity, the Jogger’s cameo appearances continued to be abstract, elliptical, even abstruse — though I’m proud to report we did work him into every single film, sometimes more than once, and if you don’t believe, me I encourage you to re-watch them all.

But we couldn’t just leave it at that.  In our minds, Art the Jogger had come to represent the entire project.  A 24-Hour Film Race, like the one we competed in back in March, is a sprint; making 12 films in 12 weeks is more of a jog — a long, hard, demanding one, but a jog nonetheless.  Art was on our minds; he was in our hearts; he was on our t-shirts.  It was clear that we needed to bring him back one more time.

The original t-shirt image -- pre-Photoshop magic.

As Mike has already written, a circumstance eerily resembling divine intervention (mixed with good old-fashioned human kindness, courtesy of Student34) meant that we could fly Arthur in from Los Angeles at no cost to ourselves, film him, wine/dine him, and wave goodbye to him yet again as he flew straight to Michigan Law School, where he will spend three years becoming the best entertainment lawyer in history, after which he will sue to bejeezus out of all those deadbeats peddling imitation Art the Jogger paraphernalia.  Beware, miscreants!

I am proud to announce that our final film — the one we wrote hastily on Friday and filmed in Saturday’s imaginary downpour — is entitled “The Jogger.”  Will it reveal the secrets of this strange, mysterious figure?  Will it finally answer the questions of why he jogs, and where he is going, and why he seems to be so omnipresent in 2009 New York?  Will anyone besides Art Chan appear?

Tune in Friday to find out.  Arthur “The Jogger” Chan “The Man” — this one’s for you.

Posted by Keith