"I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit.

"No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't. But there was going to be when I began it. It's just that something happened to it along the way."

Besides making a production-related phone call and scheduling that casting gig, I spent most of the day reading slash fic and getting absolutely nothing done. It felt kind of nice, for once. Usually that will send me guilt-tripping into a full on anxiety attack, but today for some reason I felt completely Zen, like Winnie the Pooh with a tummy full of honey, content with just being.

Then in the afternoon I dragged myself to the tube and went a few stations to Skärholmen to do some light grocery shopping, not because I had to do my shopping there and couldn't do it closer to home, but because I needed the trip. I even walked to the tube instead of taking the bus, just to get some movement in. On the way home too, even with the grocery bags, I walked. Good thing too, because a few ideas dropped by for a visit and I rewrote two scenes on my next short film screenplay. Thought I'd make it official now and actually rewrite them in the actual screenplay as well, as opposed to the changes just being in my head.

Rain, rain, rain

So I gave my blog a layout make-over, I felt it only fair since I've had about a hundred since the last time I changed it. Also, I felt it was time for a new title of blog since "coffee, cigarettes & conversation" hardly applies anymore since I quit smoking, and this blogging thing isn't really conversing either, is it? It's more of a monologue, and barely that. And also, I felt the title wasn't pretentious and obscure enough, hence the new title being "Metal, rain & yesterday's coffee"... much more in line with my current life situation.

Got another film gig today, stepping in for Caroline as casting assistant next week. Approximately two hours work, hopefully in the same day, greeting and reading with three different six-year-olds. I even get paid, which is awesome, since I've been stressing out about money lately. Being busy with my own short film, I haven't work anything this month, which means I'll be completely broke come next month. But maybe, hopefully, I'll manage. If I can just get the student loan people off my back during the summer, I'm good. The odds of that happening, though, are slim at best, since they've been hounding me since 2008... I could apply for a course again, but apparently they're not too hung up on details like that anymore, since they wanted me to start paying back my loan in May, when I was still studying up until mid-June, so basically, I got my last payment only to hand it right back. Ridiculous.

Meeeh, I hate talking about money, and thinking about money, and worrying about money. It'll work somehow, it always does. Worst case scenario, I'll be hungry this summer too. No biggie.

Oh, yeah, and it's raining.

Varma Mackor

I need to get better at updating my blog, so that I don't have a million things to tell you when I finally do... I don't even know where to start. The beginning, maybe. Okay, yeah. Well, I'll keep this short because I just woke up, I have my coffee here next to me, but I'm not sure it'll be enough jump start my brain this morning since yesterday was the last day of shooting my short film Varma Mackor, and like with any other shoot, the day after you feel sort of hungover from all the adrenalin and energy and coffee, plus reality takes a moment to get used to as well. Also, another reason I have to keep this short, is that I have to leave soon, I'm meeting up with Tove at Östermalmstorg to get the harddrives from her, the harddrives with all the material, I'm kind of freaked out actually... but first things first:

Pre-production. One big rollercoaster ride. But every bump in the road was dealt with quickly and smoothly, and things pretty much fell into place, over and over again, which in of itself is unheard of I think, so I was harbouring some "too good to be true" pessimism already. But the first day of shooting, we were in a school in Salem, we had a ridiculously short time to get the stuff we wanted to get from the two scenes we were shooting, a lot less time than what was needed to get them, actually. We also had, around us, fifteen kids that "belonged" to us and were extras in the scenes, as well as eighty kids that belonged to the school and were curious about what we were doing. But for some reason, things fell into place again and we actually finished ahead of time. My "too good to be true" suspicions increased.

The next two days of the shoot we were in the producer's dad's house and shoot the kitchen scenes and the scenes in the doorway to the brother's room. And long story short, I can't even begin to tell you how extremely happy I am about the stuff I have. The crew was great, Tove did an amazing job with the photography, and Edvin the scenographer was literally amazing, both with the scenography and as a person to work with. He was calm, concentrated, humble, had an eye for details, was patient with me when I got all excited and wanted to help decorate the brother's room, any other scenographer might have got annoyed because I stepped on their toes, but he was just amused and let me bounce around and then concentrated on his thing. In the end, all the material we got, both in the kitchen and the room, looked amazing, I got some seriously excellent stuff out of the actors, who were all amazing as well. Wilma who played the lead girl is a wonder, I have never seen anything like it, and everyone else have reacted the same. She is so focused, so nuanced and natural, she has this aura about her, she is so intelligent, and no matter what directon I gave her, she took it and used it, nothing blocked her, not even the ridiculously long and difficult lines of dialogue that she had. I mean, the stuff that she got to do this weekend, emotionally, mentally, and even physically when we did her POV shots and she had to sit on the floor between Tove and and the table and try and reach her hands up and repeat her actions from the scene, it was extremely tough stuff to do, for a grown-up experienced actor, and for a child actor, it's basically impossoble. I mean, to get natural from a child actor is tough enough. I have to stop praising her now... but you'll see when the film is done, she's just incredible. They all are.

Anyway. Since I'm so happy with everything, you can understand that the "this is too good to be true" feeling has increased to epic proportions and why I'm freaked out about getting the harddrives with all the material on them now, I'm thinking I'll either be robbed on my way home or get hit by a bus...

Today I had sunshine in the palms of my hands.

So I went into town to meet up with Anja before our appointment with this actor. She was just as nervous as I was, possibly even more so. But the meeting went swimmingly. The guy turned out to be, not only great, interesting and sensible, but a truly genuine person as well (which is the most important quality in my book, since I seem to be surrounded largely by people who are anything but...) Mine and Anja's intuition about this actor is looking more and more spot on, just sitting there talking to the guy, just drinking in his energy and general way, I'd almost say I had the actual character from my script in front of me. And knowing that he's a really talented and charismatic yet subtle actor as well, from seeing his performance in the wonderful mini-series "De halvt dolda", it's just perfect casting and I am so happy right now!

Oh, and he seemed really pleased with the information he recieved from us as well and had some really interesting thoughts and ideas about the script, which he really liked on top of everything, and when we got to discussing work method I found out that we're completely on the same page when it comes to acting and process work, being more interested in exploring the character and the scene and the character's relationship with other characters and just be present in the now and open to impulses (and basically everything I learned from the amazing Stephen Park and keep learning again and again through my own experiences since VFS) rather than focusing on Stanislavskis earlier methods (that he later revised because he himself realised that it wasn't the best method) which is what most acting schools and courses seem to teach, where you basically reach back in your memory and use experiences from your own life to re-create a certain emotion, instead of just being present in the moment, with your co-actor, reacting to the given circumstances and exploring the scene. And this actor, Henrik, was all on board with that, and the way he talked about it, when I asked him how he preferred to work usually, he basically voiced all of my own opinions and preferences, both as an actor and as a director. So I'm really looking forward to working with him now! Hopefully he and the girl who'll probably play the main characters (his little sister in the film) will connect and have some real, interesting chemistry between them... if they do, then I have half my work done already, and the result will most likely be amazing too...

Anja and I walked around for a bit after we'd said goodbye to Henrik, all giddy from how well the meeting went, and ended up (as we always seem to) having some firey discussions about everything, but mostly about film, especially the films we want to make, how women are portrayed in film that get made and the kind of scripts we write and our (quite similar) writing style that not many people seem to get. It's really funny, because I just mentioned one example of a detail from my screenplay, a thing that my main character does, and I didn't even have time to explain why I thought it was important -- she got it instantly! -- and that's why I love her. And that's why I'm re-writing my screenplay again, I'm still getting rid of the pretentious choice of phrases that I sometimes use, but I'm keeping my details. And that's that.

Met up with Anja yesterday for coffee and conversation. She also brought me up to speed with her end of the casting. This actor that we really want for the part of the Big brother, she actually got a hold of him and pitched him the project and he seemed genuinely intrested. So she emailed him the script. Now we just have to wait and see. Other than that, I guess things are coming together.

I spent a while cruising a second-hand store and found some clothing items for a couple of the characters, as well yesterday. The store wouldn't actually lend them to me, so I ended up buying them. But I only chose things that I can see myself wearing, that way it's not a big deal if I don't get re-imbursed for them, I'll just keep them after the shoot. The two blouses/dress shirts that I found for the Mother, in particular, will more than make up for it, they're just my type, all 70s style and kind of hideous, but in a cool way. I just love my hideous shirts.

Still avoiding reality. But it's a red day, so I can if I want to.

Yesterday I revised the current draft of my screenplay and got rid of all my Virginia Woolf-esque scene directions and details so that I'd have a more stripped down version of the script to show to potential producers and I'm now down to 115 pages (including the title page)! It was 137 (excluding title page) before!

Today my mind is in Brighton, UK.

Also, I'm watching a genius comedy/dramacomedi called "I love you too" that you must watch. Another amazing performance by Peter Dinklage, a new favourite actor. I started watching another one of his films last night in which he had a tiny role (but he made the most of it and was awesome) but I couldn't keep watching it. I think I might have hated it. But I was too stunned by the weirdness of the whole thing that I'm not exactly sure what I felt toward the monstrosity of a film. It's called "Just a kiss". It felt more like a 90s MTV special (or a re-enacted letter from the Swedish teen program "Bullen" from the same decade) than an actual movie. Especially with the random and weird as hell cartoony effects that suddenly pop up over the actual film, like the orcs in the old animated version of "Lord of the rings", but worse.

Nothing particular

It's insanely warm, and it's only going to get worse. Taking advantage of the long weekend, I've been holed up in my room for the past 72 or so hours, watching films and rearranging my piles of notes and ideas for stories, putting my two vinyl records (Iron Maiden and Blue Oyster Cult) on the window sill to block out the sun light where the blinds aren't covering. I've been on an Adrien Brody kick (Some awesomeness: , and before that it was a lot of Ben Stiller for some reason, and before that I discovered two new favourite actors, Peter Dinklage (Must see: The Station Agent from 2003) and Rinko Kikuchi whom I'd seen in Map of the sounds of Tokyo but since I hated the film with all of my being, she didn't stick with me at the time, even though I thought she was doing a good job in that as well, it wasn't until I saw her in The brothers Bloom from 2008 that I fell in love with her. The character she plays in that is awesome as well, so that might have something to do with it. I'm sure I won't be as thrilled with her/her character in Norwegian Wood (if I even watch it) since I couldn't even finish that book (Sorry Ana, if you happen to read this) because I hated it so much.

It always breaks my heart to go through all of my notes, because I have all these stories that are basically finished and just waiting for me to write them down, and I'm thinking maybe I'll never get around to it, and they'll never be told.