A Break from Gypsy Lyrics: I'm Making a Movie!

Austin Davis ("Freshie"), me and Rebecca Boughton ("Laila")
Photo credit: Katie Bogdanski

I'm making a movie. 

A real, full-length feature film.

MY movie. One I wrote. One that started out as a stage play back in 1995 and was turned into a film in 2000. TWENTY years after I wrote it, it is becoming a feature film.

With actors and stuff. Not just my friends that I hang out with. REAL actors. SAG-AFTRA people. Actors that are in the tabloids and stuff.

Oh. My. God. I'm making my movie.

My heart is pounding. My breath is short. My stomach is fluttering. My blood is pulsating in my ears. I feel like I'm about to bungee jump for the first time, and I'm praying that the cord doesn't snap. Holy crap, I'm scared. I'm really effing scared.

It's okay to be scared, though.  Everyone gets scared sometimes. Not everyone writes a feature-length film, casts known actors, raises the funds, and shoots the movie in less than four months. But, hey, we all have our own "things." (Right, Kristin?)

Me and Cody talking at an interview (cred: Katie Bogdanski)

I have had an enormous amount of fun getting to know the different actors that are a part of the film. I met Alix Kermes like seven years ago, so I'm really excited to see her again. (She just called from the airport... She flies in TONIGHT!!)  Mechelle (Martz-Mayfield, my Line Producer) and I had dinner with Jake Thomas one night, and then with Shelley Regner, Brian Tyler Cohen and Matthew Joel Kranyak another night. I know Judy San Roman, Mary Beth Kraese, Debra Cavaliere, David Eggers and Stephanie Katz personally. And Cody Calafiore... Well, I love that guy. I met him, and we just clicked. We actually clicked on the phone the first time I spoke with him. Now I look at him like a little brother. He is working so freaking hard on his role as Joe. He's flexible and accommodating and just so nice. He's going to go really, really far in this business.

And then you've got my crew, whom I cannot mention by name because I will inevitably leave someone out. Everyone knows that my core is comprised of my mom, Shannon, Joe, Kristin and, all the way from freaking Colorado, Mechelle. I've got an AMAZING support team. My crew rocks.

That's all for now. I'm going to try to document this process so that you all can see what we are going through.

(Jess, bring the Xanax. Fo' sho'.)