Update: Team Cerise, Art Eat Up, and More

February's been an awesome month! And not just because of a wonderful Valentines Day, an awesome Tweet up at Cinekink, my jazzy birthday gathering in NYC, but also because Cerise went from $0 to $2,100 in just 28 days! I'm excited to see how March is going to fare!

Thank You Team Cerise!
Some thanks are in order to all those most recent contributors to Cerise. Thanks so much:

• Nancy Taylor
• Jason Williams
• Kim Garland (@KageyNYC)
• Aziz Mamur
• Ariel Gasperini
• Jose Felix
• Lauren Harris
• Charlene Otero
• Denise Bartone-Pollack
• Rachelle Brown (@Stellar143)
• Lauren Clemente
• Jeanne Vaillette Bowerman (@jeannevb)
• Film Courage (@filmcourage) = David Branin (@davidbranin) & Karen Worden (@KarenWorden)
• Michelle Morel
• Evelyn Ramos
• Rohit Venkat
• Stephanie Faith Scott
• John Paul Rice (@NoRestrictions)
• Sangita Patel
• Michael Gamba
• Alex Wilson
• Sheinder Brun (@cherryBr)
  
• Rich Fuchs (@richiefuchs)
  
• Gabriel Zudeck
• Carol Jimenez
• Ed Melendez
• Slava Rubin (@GoGoSlava)
• Mattson Tomlin (@wackeychan)
• Giselle Del Oro
• Steve Gal
• Andrew Phillips
• Marinell Montales's (@Merrynell) parents, Engracia and Paquito Montales
• Patrice Stercks
• Glenn Ramirez
• Various "Anonymous" contributors (some of whom have proven to be quite generous!)
  

And an extra special thanks goes out to:

• Ryan Ronning, for being our first extremely big-hearted repeat contributor!

Thanks again, everyone! You're all part of Team Cerise, helping make strides that will lead Cerise to a bright and successful future!



The Next Goal for Cerise
Because I'm a literary guy, Cerise's next funding goal will be to reach at least $2.5K (50% funded!) by this Friday, the "Ides of March," when Julius Caesar was murdered on the steps of the Roman Senate. So please keep showing your unbridled support by making a contribution, by retweeting and sharing the IndieGoGo link on Facebook, sending out emails, and simply by spreading the word that haunts Josh Kermes!

Art Eat Up, Jersey City
On Saturday, March 13th from 6pm until 9pm, Pro Arts Jersey City will be hosting an Art Eat Up in which you get to indulge in a delicious meal and then cast a vote for your favorite art proposal of the evening. I will be one of a handful of fine local artists presenting a project; mine is a short film called Café Mnemosyne. The suggested donation for the event is $20, and 100% of the profits made from that night go to the artist to realize his or her vision. If you can, please check it out!



No Bite! A Beautiful Unlife on Hold
With all the work I've been doing on the rewrite for Cerise (which will go under the intense scrutiny of my red pen starting March 1st), I've had no time to even think about my next rewrite of my vamp script A Beautiful Unlife. It stakes me to have to say this, but a final draft of the script that will eventually save us from the Twi-hard nation will have to lay in its coffin until Cerise is a little more packaged and produced.

Coming Soon: Who's In My Manvelope? A #FF List
I've been inspired by people like @grking and @jeannevb who have lists of people they follow on Twitter. It's more practical (you can say why they should be followed in more than 140 characters, if needed) and time-saving (You don't have to type in all the handles after #FF and have fifty tweets all in red!) Because I've been spending so much time online in the last two or three months, I feel a list like this would be beneficial to my writing productivity in between my work schedule.

So, for the next couple of weeks I'll be working on my very own #FollowFriday list for my blog, which I'll update every so often when I discover some new tweeps who have cool and interesting things to tweet. Once it's up and running, I'll let you know!

Alright everyone, thanks for reading the update, and keep on trucking!

Fandependence: An Opinion in Brief

As a poet, by nature I'm a man of few words, so this will be brief.

For me, the term "fandependent" (beautifully coined by @Merrynell) dictates an intrinsic bond between filmmaker and film fan. A collaboration. A symbiotic relationship.

I applaud Ben Hicks for having the stones to propose a novel (though impractical for some) solution in this ever-shifting distribution landscape that's all a-quake with new possibilities for allowing truly independent filmmakers the same opportunities as studio independents who've made a monopoly of such capstones as Sundance and Tribeca.

Am I ready to join in on this Fandependent Movement? No. I think the manifesto itself needs a rewrite, much like all the great manifestos in the world. I think Sheri Candler didn't poke any holes into Ben's idea, but simply pointed them out, specifically regarding marketing. The good thing is that now he's got something to think about. This is collaboration. If the manifesto has inspired some and enraged others, then it's done its job.

Update: The Rewrite and One More Bite

Man, it's been quite a week!

First, I want to once more offer my deepest gratitude to all those who contributed to Cerise, my next short film project about a former spelling bee champion who, 24 years later, is still haunted by the word that took him down.

Thank you once more:

• Larry (Dean) Wilson
• David L. Ulery (@davidlulery)
• Alain Aguilar (@Alain_Aguilar)
• Gary King (@grking)
• Cielito Pascual (@cielitopascual)
• Sheri Candler (@Shericand)
• Walter Enders
• Lucy Ann Philips
• Larry Goodman
• Frank Guzman Jr.
• Jessica King &
  
• Julie Keck (@kingisafink)
• Chrissy Zurawski
• Jon Crefeld
• Daniel Arol Jahns
• Pamela Craig
• Ray Addas
• Mohamed Elmaksoud
• CineKink (@Cinekink)

Your support and contributions are going to make Cerise the best it can be!

Cerise Pitch from John Trigonis on Vimeo.

Cerise Sees Red: The Rewrite
Regarding my rewrite for Cerise, I've been working on tweaking the first act so that I know how to play my second act to its utmost potential. Today I made some excellent progress, and I should be moving on to finish up the polishing of acts two and three sometime next week. I'll keep you posted.

A Beautiful Unlife: One More Bite!
I got my feature-length script A Beautiful Unlife back from my script analyst Michael Ray Brown (@MichaelRayBrown) and it looks like my timeless vampire movie is one last polish away from being ready to hit the studios one more time.

More Ideas, But Where Does the Time Go?
Time is always the thing there never seems to be enough of in a single day. I've got so many ideas, some stashed away in the leather folds of my manvelope, others plugged not-so-neatly into the Notes of my iPhone, and still others that I've lost touch with; they live in the lines of retired writing tablets, journals that are overstuffed, and random Dunkin' Donuts napkins that have managed to avoid the trash can.

I've managed to pull one short film idea out of my phone this past weekend and I started brainstorming. I've got a very loose storyline, but one with lots of promise. There are some interesting characters, too, and soon I'll write up a basic screenplay for this intriguing little Twilight Zonish tale about a small place called the Mnemosyne Café.

That's it for now. Check back next time for another peek inside my manvelope! In the meantime, please check out Cerise on IndieGoGo and show your support.

So Just What IS in My Manvelope?

The question is frequently asked:

"What's in the bag?" (it's so not a bag) or "...folder?" (it folds but it's not a folder) or "...manpurse?" (really?)

I prefer the term "manvelope" and yes, there are tons of things squirming about inside my manvelope just aching for release (so much, in fact, that it warranted the title of this blog.)

This particular manvelope started out as a caravan for fresh photocopies of my poetry which would be recited at spoken word and open mic events back in my Bukowski days when you could find me curled up on the #2 piecing together my master's thesis. Now it's home to ideas inked out on Starbucks napkins, script pages reddened by the scars of revision, film reviews still in the fetal stage, random copies of CREATIVE SCREENWRITING or THE NEW YORKER, a Moleskine notebook (of course), and a surfeit of other concepts fresher than most of the food in my fridge, from short film blurbs and one-minute sketches to feature-length script ideas.

The latest projects to emerge from the innards of my manvelope are CERISE, a short film about a former spelling bee champ haunted by the word that took him down, and A BEAUTIFUL UNLIFE, a feature about a vampire from the future who travels back in time to 2010 hoping to find a cure for his ills and during his stay gets a job answering a suicide prevention hotline (all the better to find fresh blood) and falls in love with a cynical young actress whom he eventually learns is his own mother.

CERISE now has a project profile on IndieGoGo where I'm hoping to raise an extra $5,000 from fans like you to add to the $10,000 I've saved up myself so that I can make CERISE the best it can be.

A BEAUTIFUL UNLIFE (currently in its sixth draft) is currently on the desk of noted script analyst Michael Ray Brown. Once I receive the new coverage, it'll be time to begin the resubmission process and hopefully snag a nice one-step deal and save the world from the shimmery of the Twi-Hards!

As my days change, so do the contents of my manvelope, so be sure to subscribe and keep up with what white rabbits and sacred dragons I pull from my magic hat!