Well, that was certainly a year, huh?
Arbitrary calendar designation or not, 2020 felt like a lot. It was the year that all of the cracks in our collective social structure not only revealed themselves, but seemed to grow ever wider. I’m not going to rehash or review them all here; you’re well aware of the medical, economic, and social turmoil unearthed by a global pandemic, years of frustration over racial and class inequality coming to a boiling point, and the attempted unraveling of American democracy by a few power-mad old white men.
2020 started off well for me, personally. After returning from a four-day jaunt up and down the California coast with friends to ring in the new year, my wife and I moved (again) into a lovely rental condo in Huntington Beach. I finished a rough edit of Parkway of Broken Dreams and was readying it for test screenings and eyeballing film festivals to submit it to for exhibition in 2020.
After living in Southern California for more than two years, I was finally making some creative connections. I was slated to help produce a short film in April with a group of Orange County-based filmmakers, I had plans to reshoot the pilot for Notepads & Bar Tabs, the travel-interview series I’d been brewing up with my pal, screenwriter Matt Sorvillo, and I was talking to various people about collaborating on filmic projects.
(Plus, unrelated to anything, I had purchased tickets for a bunch of festivals, concerts, and shows scheduled throughout 2020 that I was really looking forward to.)
Then March rolled around, and everything changed, and the dominoes started falling.
Toilet paper shortage aside, my immediate world wasn’t initially rocked too hard by the pandemic and resulting shutdowns. My wife, Sara, and I welcomed saving money on gas and time otherwise spent commuting, even as we fumbled through adjusting to eating at home all the time. Even though she did end up taking a significant (though thankfully temporary) pay cut, we were still lucky; a lot of friends were hit much harder, especially those who work in entertainment and hospitality. On the East Coast, my father was laid off from his job and my brother furloughed by his employer.
Although my workload didn’t change much, I did have a bit more time to work on Parkway and finish off some other video projects that were idling on a hard drive. As film festivals were rescheduled and ultimately postponed or canceled, I realized it wouldn’t be until 2021 that this documentary would make it out to the world. The timing was wonky. As people were stuck inside all the time, the appetite for and consumption of documentaries and other content via streaming services was at an all-time high. But a documentary about a tiny little cultural scene in the 1990s didn’t seem particularly relevant in the face of a public health crisis, mounting civil unrest, and looming economic collapse.
Besides, the universe had other ideas about what would define my year.
My mother died on May 30, a few weeks after suffering a mild heart attack. I immediately flew out to Philadelphia to help my father, who was in both physical and emotional distress. I ended up putting my life on “pause,” basically, spending the next two months there getting affairs in order, selling my parents’ house, and seeing my dad through two hospital stays of his own. After helping move him back out to the West Coast to live with family, he died on August 20, when his body could no longer outrace his grief.
We were still reeling from those back-to-back knockouts when, a few weeks later, one of our two Pekingese dogs, Sophia, started exhibiting signs of what her neurologist suspected may have been a stroke or brain tumor. She compulsively spun in circles whenever she was awake, and she could no longer eat food on her own. Already a small dog at a normal 12 pounds, she lost about 25% of her weight over a few weeks as we force fed her both liquefied food and water through a syringe. We had to make that awful decision that all pet owners fear, and on September 20, she was peacefully put to rest in the comfort of her own bed, at home.
Somehow, despite all of this sadness and loss, some things got better. My brother (and the rest of my extended family) went back to work, full-time. Sara inched her way back toward full pay as new business came her way. I rebooted my YouTube channel and started making new videos, and got Parkway of Broken Dreams basically finished and ready for submission to film festivals and distributors. We started making plans for 2021, including welcoming Sara’s mom into our home (whatever that ends up looking like).
Against all of our worst fears and lowered expectations—and despite the attempts to discredit this otherwise—Donald Trump was not reelected President, and although neither Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris would have been my first choices to occupy the White House, I felt my first measure of slight hope, of a still-far-out-there-but-visible-in-the-distance light at the end of the tunnel, when they were formally declared the winners of the Presidential election (even if the fight for that appears to not be over yet).
And yet, we couldn’t escape 2020 without another loss, as our friend Alyssa died in late November, at far, far, too young an age, following a protracted battle with cancer.
Every year, of course, is filled with wins and losses, births and deaths, opportunities taken, others eschewed. 2020 was not exceptional in that way, except when it was. Except when we all suffered the same losses together, especially when those losses were caused or exacerbated by the coronavirus that impacted all of our lives, individually and collectively, in ways we likely never imagined—whether those losses were of people, or businesses, or livelihoods, or, selfishly, a not-going-to-be-rescheduled music festival that would have featured Bauhaus, Blondie, Devo, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Psychedelic Furs, Violent Femmes, Public Image LTD., Gary Numan, Marc Almond, The English Beat and more, all performing on the SAME DAY.
In a lot of ways, 2020 made our worlds both smaller and larger. For those of us who actually followed public health orders—or common sense and concern for the greater good—our day-to-day worlds became the four walls of our homes. If you’re like me, maybe you took the chance to clean out closets and share old photos and memories with friends. Maybe you learned to appreciate cooking real food, or spending more time with pets (or if you have kids, probably not appreciating more time with them). Maybe you got the worst case of dishpan hands from suddenly having to wash dishes ALL DAY LONG (we don’t have a functioning dishwasher).
And, of course, just because the calendar flipped over to a new year (or I guess we switched out the calendars? I dunno, go with me here.), all the good and bad of 2020 doesn’t go away. Record numbers of new COVID-19 infections (including mutated variants) are being reported even as the groundbreaking vaccines are finally getting distributed. Hospital capacity here in Southern California is dangerously low (one headline from today’s news: “Local Hospitals Prepare To Ration Care As COVID Cases Surge”). A runoff election in Georgia may decide whether our federal government will continue to be dysfunctionally gridlocked for the next two years. Businesses are shuttering, people are being evicted, local government coffers are running dry. And the social justice so many marched for throughout the summer and fall has yet to be achieved.
But the new year gives us a chance to reset, to redirect our energies, to set our intentions and to hopefully get started on the right foot. In years past, on my old Bleeding Neon blog, I’d do a post like this (though nowhere near as heavy, thanks a lot for making me seem like a depressing bore, 2020), reflecting on the prior year briefly while doing some goal setting for the year ahead. I didn’t go it last year, maybe because I knew in the back of my head that 2020 was not going to go as planned for anyone. And although there is still much uncertainty about the year ahead, here’s my shot at laying out some publicly accountable objectives for 2021:
Release Parkway of Broken Dreams
This one seems obvious, huh? The film’s done (or I’m done with it, however you want to look at it). It’s been submitted to about 10 film festivals thus far, although whether those festivals happen in person or online or not at all is still up in the air. But I have to at least give it a chance at a festival run before distribution can happen. But no matter what, it’s going to be in front of audiences one way or another in 2021.
Finish in-progress screenplays before starting new ones
A few years ago, when we first moved back to California and I shifted almost all of my creative focus to filmmaking, I drafted a planning document called “Project: Rebirth” (yes, I am that nerdy). It outlined all sorts of goals and tasks, some of which have since been achieved or completed, but many of which are stalled or in-progress to this day. One of those was making sure I had the following projects “in my pocket” for any potential meetings with agents or managers: an original TV pilot, a feature-length drama script, a feature-length action script, an hour-long TV spec script, a half-hour TV spec script, and a short film script.
In the first year, I knocked out two original pilot scripts, and began shopping those around a bit. And I had two feature-length scripts, one drama and one comedic drama, fully outlined but only about half-written, plus an action script fully outlined but only about a third written. More than two years later, I’ve barely touched the latter, but have chipped away on the two former to the point that there’s really no reason for them to not be finished…
…except that I am, without deadlines, easily distracted—and chock full of ideas—so in addition to producing a feature documentary, a TV pilot, and a few shorts in the meantime, I also started writing at least three other screenplays (as well as another pilot script).
So. 2021. Same way I did with Parkway of Broken Dreams, I just have to set everything else aside, focus, and finish what I started, before moving on to anything new. (Good luck with that.)
That being said…
More collaboration, less working in isolation
The best projects I’ve worked on have been in collaboration with other people, whether that’s music, or ‘zines, or comics, or, of course, films. However, I’m notoriously bad at asking for help or letting go of control over my own creative projects. 2020 didn’t make things any better, with physical collaboration between people literally posing a health risk. Of course, we have no idea how long it will be before it’s truly safe to commingle with other parties without insanely strict protocols in place, including buffering in quarantine time. But there are still plenty of ways to collaborate while staying physically distant—co-writing scripts, directing via video call, recording and sharing music tracks, etc. It’s just a matter of making that effort.
Speaking of which…
Make music great again
Playing, writing, and recording music has been a constant presence in my life since I was a mini Pj, even if it ebbs and flows every few years. I haven’t played any music—or even barely picked up an instrument—since moving to California in 2017, when I had to abandon percussive duties with Vdara Death Ray, a relatively new project formed with a few of my former Moonbooters. I sold my well-trodden Ludwig drum set a few years later, but I still have a half-dozen guitars and basses, a now-vintage electronic keyboard, and a USB midi controller that I bought four years ago to help with musical compositions but then barely ever touched. Part of this has been, honestly, not having a good space conducive to just sitting down and playing music without disturbing anyone (condo life, y’all)—and optimizing my limited home studio workspace for video production and nothing else hasn’t helped. Plus, I like playing with other people, and that’s been hard for a variety of reasons, including the whole OMG PANDEMIC thing. But I have ideas on how to carve out space, time, and equipment allocation to noodle around again, and maybe, just maybe, if and when it’s safe to do so again, I can even get in a room with some other humans and make cool tunes together.
Declutter and repurpose
This comes up every year. Selling my drums was part of my 2019 goals. So was paring down my comic book collection. “Inheriting” half a house full of furnishings from my parents didn’t help any. Do I still need my Canon Powershot from 2006 that takes only 7MP photos? Is there a practical reason to hold onto utility bills from 2015? Is there a better way to store or display the piles of flyers, news clippings, and other paper ephemera I have stored in plastic bins in our garage? My packrat tendencies have served me well for documentary and archival work, but in 2021 I really (maybe with the help of others) need to dedicate time to optimizing for usefulness, space-saving, and mobility.
This also applies to my digital footprint. I own more than a dozen web domains. Some are actively used, others are remnants from past projects, and still others are being held for future potential projects. Does anyone remember when I quietly launched an entire website and social media presence dedicated to my love of Old Fashioned cocktails? I’ve been getting better at letting go of these things, but I really need to follow my advice above and either finish what I started or move onto something new. My credit card will thank me when those domains come up for renewal.
Bonus: Hey, remember comics?
Somewhere between my journalism career and my filmmaking ambitions, I was a fairly prolific producer of comic books and strips (both my own and those I published through the now-defunct Pop! Goes the Icon). I haven’t produced any new sequential art since early 2018, when I wrapped up The Utopian Foundation. Like music, comics were pushed to the wayside as I focused on documentary work and screenwriting. But, y’all, I miss making comics sometimes, and I also miss the immediacy of the medium, how I can knock out in a few hours a couple of panels that capture the zeitgeist of the moment. Film and music often take far too long from conception to consumption. Comics and cartooning can defy that. But this is a “bonus” thing for me to get back to, only if I properly reallocate my resources and complete the projects outlined above.
And there you have it. If you’ve somehow survived almost 2,500 words, I’ll be expecting you to hold me accountable for all of the objectives listed above. And if you’re not reading this far, then that’s OK—this blog post is mostly just for me, to hold myself accountable, to be able to look back at the end of what is hopefully not another dumpster fire year, and to be able to say “all right, Pj, not bad, not bad at all.”