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

Filmmaking Is a Drug.

When my sister Caitlin wrote, in her “Moving Pictures” blog announcement, that she “might be addicted” to making movies, I was mildly shocked.  Caitlin’s been a theater person for as long as I can remember — besotted by Broadway and the charm of the great musicals, thrilled by the lore and lure of the stage.  Sure, she’s always had a keen appreciation for Fred Astaire and Jimmy Stewart; sure, she’s been working as a stand-in on TV and movie sets to pay the bills; but she’s never expressed more than a casual interest in cinema per se.  Now, all of a sudden, she seemed to have caught the bug.

It shouldn’t have surprised me.  Filmmaking is powerfully addictive, as I’ve known firsthand for years.  My first feature film, Miles (shot in the summer of 2003), was a stressful, painful, humiliating, often-hellish experience; I had no idea what I was doing, my DP thought I was an idiot, the schedule kept elongating itself as we went, the budget ballooned, our 1947 Ford pickup truck — the key prop of the movie — kept falling apart no matter how much work was put into it, and directing a film in which I played the lead character proved much more difficult than I had imagined.  As Michael Redfield (“Captivated,” “Spirits”) and James Creque (“Old Love,” “Captivated”), who both acted in that film, will attest, I was more than a little overwhelmed.

In addition to all that, the shoot literally almost cost me my life; as I was driving the truck to the location for the last day of principal photography, the brakes failed, and I went careening down a hill, through a stone wall, and into a tree.  No air bags in this thing — no seatbelt, even.  It was a minor miracle that I walked away.

A beautiful lady. A cruel mistress.

But there were enough magical moments — lighting up a deserted field for our first night shoot, tooling around back roads shooting montage footage, doing my own stunts for the kayaking sequence, and all those rare, precious times on set when I thought to myself, I can do this — to get me hooked on the highs of the movie-making experience.  To this day, Miles remains unfinished — I got to the rough-cut stage and ran out of steam — but it served its purpose.  It didn’t make me a filmmaker, exactly, but it made me damn sure I wanted to be one.

The next movie was better.  The one after that was better still, at least as far as professionalism goes.  I learned by leaps and bounds, the hard way, by failing, by making mistakes; I cherished the moments when I got it right, I swore not to repeat the same errors, I repeated them anyway.  Along the way, I made friends and learned to collaborate; I learned to relish the process of collective creation; I learned when to buckle down and when to let go.  Like any good drug, filmmaking keeps the highs coming; like any good drug, it never leaves you entirely satisfied.  There’s always something you could have done better, some shot you didn’t get, some nuance you overlooked in the bustle of production.  You never get it right, but you always get better.  And the perfect film, the perfect set, the perfect dolly shot is always just around the corner …

Caitlin, I’m sorry.  I really should have known.  You may never conquer this addiction, but here’s the upside: the rest of your life will be very, very interesting.

Posted ruefully by Keith