The 3-minute excerpt below is a deleted scene from Where Love Leads, which I made last fall with dance students at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania. Why deleted? It's a long story - about as long as the process itself. So grab a beer and listen up.
First, you need to know that my version of creative process includes quite a lot of improvisation - in every phase, including casting. In September, a few days before rehearsals would begin, I called on my host / cinematographer Jennifer Keller, with whom I'd first collaborated on Plow Plant Reap in 2015. Hoping to expand my experience by working with students with disabilities, I asked her to help me enlist some volunteers from the SRU community. Jennifer put me in touch with 2 women who strained their busy schedules and joined the able-bodied dancers for several rehearsals. In addition to educating me about the diseases which are an integral part of their identities, both Francine Maitland and Kayla Jesberger added life and depth to the Love community on screen and off. In the finished film, the core cast first encounters them at the thrift shop and sweeps them into the mix.
As I got further involved in the SRU community, I was tickled to meet 2 warm and talented professors: Jesse Factor and Lindsay Viatori, whom I spontaneously invited to make a quartet with 2 dancers from the core cast. We had one rehearsal on Jennifer's lawn and in the pickup truck. Later during shooting, the arrival of the 2 "hippies from over the hill" through the blades of grass was one of my favorites.
Later, back in Nyack, with this now deleted scene still included in the full-length edit, I was diligently trying to track down the rights holders for the delicious music by Jesse Winchester. Despite various emails to numerous parties - don't start me on this topic again! - I got nowhere. So I ended up cutting the scene for several reasons:
1. if I did eventually hear back about rights for Sweet Loving Daddy, it would only add to the total budget
2. the chances of being accepted into festivals is drastically improved the shorter the work is. For that reason, I also cut a rather lovely scene with just the women of the core cast in a flower garden in their pj's... maybe I'll share that one here someday...)
3. There was no compelling reason to add yet more characters at that point in the proceedings, as much as I enjoyed the idea of the hippies crashing the party. In fact, it already risks coherence to have Francine & Kayla find their way to the subsequent scene of the tailgate party but not on to the final scene. Aargh.
You can see how my improvised casting opens me to fortuitous opportunities in terms of creating community, at the same as it threatens to muddy the "script".
Did I waste everyone's time shooting scenes that didn't make it into the final version? Nah, for one thing, part of what I'm modeling for students is the importance of ruthless editing!
For that matter, what is the final version anyway? My "director's cut" might include both of those deleted scenes. And really, after these pieces have had some festival life - Where Love Leads will screen in Nyack next month - who but me will look at them again? As proud as I am that my filmography continues to grow, I'm not ashamed to admit that both my successes and failures also continue to pile up.
Speaking of successes ... two years on, Her Magnum Opus is still finding its audience: I'll try to attend VOB Film Festival to enjoy the experience of a live audience in Carmel, NY. And I'm toying with being there in person for Opus at Sunrise Film Festival in Pictou, Nova Scotia. Meanwhile, Tumult will travel to North Carolina, Kentucky and California and Red Dirt Dances to Brussels. Around the world with dance film!
Finally, thanks to the very few of you who were inspired to make a small financial contribution to my work by my last post. There is no bad time to donate, if you get my drift.
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