Finding Time for Oneself

I thought I didn't have time for myself before. Then I went into pre-production for "In Montauk." I can't remember the last time I was this busy. I get up, get the kids ready for school, take them or drop them off depending on who's carpool day it is, come home, work, pick them up, supervise homework, take them to afterschool activities, come home, feed them, hand them off to husband, work, read them a bedtime story, say "hello" to husband and go back to work. Part of it is the short pre-production schedule and part of it is the nature of the business. It's tough to get everyone excited about a project that's going to happen in six months. But a month, that gives some urgency to it. It would have been nice to find an in-between, but my location was about to disappear to construction crews.

I'm doing what I want to be doing, so I shouldn't complain, right? But that doesn't make it easy. I fall into bed every night feeling like I've been run over by a truck. Still, at least I sleep. Yesterday morning, while doing final re-writes on my script at 6:00 am, I got an e-mail from a friend telling me she'd found tights for our sons, who were to perform in a one-hour version of "The Nutcracker" later in the day. "Great!," I e-mailed back, "Can I come by and pick them up?" She lives down the street. I thought it would be no problem. She's e-mails back that she's in Central Park, ice skating. It's the only time she has for herself, early morning on the weekends. She gets time for herself by giving up sleep. I refuse to do that. Instead, I explain to my kids that Mommy's going to be very, very busy for a little while, but that I'll be back when it's over. "Are you going to be back for Christmas?" my daughter asks. I'd better be.

Bones and Sex

This week I have two things going through my head: getting my kids through their science test on bones and how am I going to shoot the sex scenes on "In Montauk."

I greenlit my project last week. (Can you say that about yourself?) I'm officially in pre-production, with the first part of the shoot planned for mid-December. Last night I had to write up a description of the exact amount of nudity I plan to have in the film for SAG (the Screen Actors Guild). The sing-song voice in my head: "Femur, patella, tibia and fibula. King Julien the lemur, comes up to your femur." I went over and over it again with the kids. It runs through my head as I'm trying to think about the sex. Breast in profile, legs up to mid-thigh. The thigh bone's connected to the hip bone. Wait, no, bones interrupting again. Bare butt but no crack. For the male, full butt, but no hanging parts. Sing-song voice again: "clavicle, humerus, radius and ulna." My daughter has taken up a phrase of her friend's: "What the phalanges is going on?" (Phalanges are the bones in the fingers and toes, for those of you who may not remember 3rd grade science. Or any science.) Fingers and hands running over bare stomach. No bush. Oops! Did I say that out loud? It's not always easy keeping everything separate. I can't wait until they want to watch the film. Perhaps I'll take 10 years to finish.

Collision Course

I'm trying to get a feature off the ground, 10 years after a very successful run with "Weeki Wachee Girls" and 8 years after giving birth to twins. There - I've put it out there. I've been trying to get a feature off the ground ever since I made "Weeki Wachee Girls" and have been saying it for almost as long. At first, I spent my energies on the feature script version of "Weeki Wachee Girls" and started fundraising for it almost two years ago. Then the bottom dropped out of the market, and $200,000 felt like too much for me to raise on my own in this economy. So I put it on the back burner. At the same time, my good friend, Brian Dilg, talked about his experience shooting a documentary, "Truth Be Told" on HD with available lighting. He'd had a screening of it and people told him it looked great. He said you could shoot a feature this way. You just needed a script with a few actors and minimal locations. So I dusted off "In Montauk" and took another stab at it, re-writing it and turning it into a noir-type drama.

I've spent the last 10 months re-writing it, reading it in my writer's workshop, and talking to people about how to get it done. I've completely re-imagined one of the characters and attached Lukas Hassel to play the role. I've met with the management company and primary owners in our Montauk co-op, The Royal Atlantic, about shooting there this winter, and they are enthusiastic. But that's where the potential problem comes in. I'd hoped to shoot in January or February. Give myself time to really hone the script. Finish getting cast and crew together. The only problem, they are planning a big renovation this winter. Starting in mid-December. They will work around me as much as possible, but I really don't want to be shooting in a construction zone. It's supposed to be empty. Lonely. No one around. It's key to the story. So the question is, can I get ready that quickly? A big part of me wants to say, "yes" and jump right in. It's the only way to do it. And the mommy part says, "But what about the upcoming hellish holiday season?" In the next two months, I have the kids' birthday, my husband's birthday, my birthday (which I'd happily forego), Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hannukah and Christmas. Yes, we are a hybrid household and therefore celebrate all Jewish and Christian holidays. My husband, ever supportive, says, "Go for it." I'm not sure if he understands quite what that means. I'm not sure I do. But for the next few months, our lives should be interesting. I will try to document what it means to make this film while still being "Mommy" or "Mom" as my son has recently taken to calling me. It will be fun if it doesn't kill me. Stay tuned for updates!

Lack of Choices

This blog is all about choices. And like most women my age, I assumed that when I had children, all my options would still be open. That it was just a matter of making the "right" choices. Even though I was a latchkey kid myself, it never occurred to me that the fault might be with the system. When I was in college, the biggest protest on my Atlanta campus was to protest the raising of the drinking age. At the time, I secretly agreed with the legislation, seeing how many kids drank themselves sick, or a few, to death. I couldn't hook into the Sandinsta/Contra debate. ERA was a dead horse and besides, it wasn't needed any more. When my sister-in-law had a baby 18 years ago and didn't go back to work, I assumed that it was because she had a difficult child. A few years later, a friend became very involved in the National Association of Mothers' Centers, after being frustrated at the lack of opportunities available to her that afforded her the ability to work and parent at the same time. It was still years before I had my own children when she told me that it wasn't possible to have it all. "I'll do it," I thought smugly to myself. After all, I'd succeeded at everything else, why not this?

Then I had kids. Twins. My mother lived in Florida. My mother-in-law was close by and very willing to help, but she was in her 70's. And my husband started working 11-hour days. I was lucky, because at least we had the resources to hire a nanny. And still, I was frustrated. I was exhausted. For the first five months, I never slept more than two hours at a stretch. The first three years are a complete blur. I know I did some writing and worked on a few short films, but other than that, I don't remember much. I'd had friends who lost all ambition for anything but mothering when their kids were born, but the opposite happened to me. I wanted to do more, be more, have something to show the kids for my life. Not to mention that my film life feeds me emotionally and mentally. But guilt set in at the same time - am I a good mother if I still want to make films? How do I reconcile wanting kids so desperately with wanting to make films just as desperately? Especially as both are basically 24/7 jobs. I looked for other women who still made art after kids. I lost touch with most of them. People asked why I cared about continuing to make art. I didn't need to work, I could afford to stay home with my kids, shouldn't that be enough?

And that is why Judith Warner's book, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety was such a revelation to me. My husband gave it to me several years ago, and I only recently picked it up. I haven't quite finished it, but the opening premise, that motherhood in America is madness struck a chord with me. My husband has relatives in France and I've talked with them about family leave policy, childcare options and listened awestruck as one cousin explained that she had the right to be out of work for three years and go back to the same or similar position in her company. Three years! Another cousin said how when she was working on a film, she was able to leave her late-life baby in a creche (nursery) until 11:00 p.m. to finish her editing. And this is a woman devoted to her child. The two things did not seem contradictory at all to her. But it didn't click until I read this book, probably, because at the time I was talking to these French relatives, I still didn't have kids of my own.

Now, I look back, and ask myself, "Why don't we have even a fraction of these supports?" "Why don't we demand these rights for ourselves?" We, as mothers, will never truly have choices until there are supports in place which would allow a woman to work and not worry about whether or not she has adequate care for her children. Not to mention the women who need to work, and have the same difficulty finding adequate care. Or can't keep a job because their child gets sick once too often. I haven't finished the book, so I'm not sure what Judith Warner proposes, but I know it's time for me to get more involved. And one organization I'll be taking a closer look at is MomsRising. And oddly enough, my current film project, "In Montauk", is about a pregnant photographer who tries to have it all and winds up dead for her efforts. I guess my work and my life aren't so separate after all.