Okay, here’s the deal. We all have our good days and our bad days. Slow days, on the other hand, are just painful because they are neither. A slow day, I dare say, can sometimes be worse than a bad day because at least you’ve excepted your fateful bad day — you meander until its over, and go to sleep as quickly as possible in hopes of starting a good day tomorrow.
But those damn slow days…you know, the days where you’ve done everything you can and are now knee deep in that painful waiting game in which you have no control over. Slow days are the days when the ball is in someone else’s court.
First, a little background. My writing/producing partners (Nabil Abou-Harb and Colin Ferri – geniuses in their own right) and I have finished the final draft of the feature version of Arab In America! For those of you who are not yet informed, Arab In America is a family comedy poking fun of the prejudices we all have towards one another, and more specifically Muslims. It is a movie that will make us laugh at how silly our actions sometimes are, and hopefully, reignite the American Dream in many people across the country. I truly believe it speaks beyond races and religions, and to put it simply, reminds us of how similar we all really are. With any luck, Arab In America will be out late next year in 2011…10 years after 9/11…10 years of not much change.
The truth is, there are way too many slow days in development. I like to think of the development process as if I were climbing a mountain, say Everest, because its almost impossible. Even if you have all the gear you need to make it to the top, a snowstorm could swoop in out of nowhere and make the climb to the summit nothing more than a dream. You could try to push through, but sooner of later, you’ll realize you should turn back, because if you don’t, you’ll get frostbite and die a miserable lonely death. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather climb back down with my life and try again later because sometimes, it’s just not the right time.
Which brings me to another point. Nobody in their right mind would go mountain climbing by themselves. It’s too risky. The same goes with movies. The reason why we have gotten as far as we have with Arab In America is not because of any one person, though I do give much of the credit to Nabil and Colin, because it was their award-winning short film that has propelled us on this journey in the first place. An efficient team keeps everyone in check. A bad-idea doesn’t slip by unnoticed.
That looks suspiciously like Paramount’s logo doesn’t it….I wonder why…
Anyway! Back to Everest. I feel like we’ve been up and down the first half of this mountain for about a year now. There is always a storm, some twist of fate, that forces us to turn around and live for another day. Depending on who you are, you could call this cowardice, or just plain smart. I side with the latter for two reasons:
First Lesson: When developing a film, we learned early on to NOT put all our eggs in one basket. We decided to never count on only one thing coming through because chances are it probably won’t. It is easy to forget sometimes that you are dealing with real people, with their own personalities, and own problems — things that you have no control over. For us so far, this has usually been about the money. So, we’ve decided to spread our resources across multiple avenues to maximize our potential success in the shortest amount of time…I’ll let you know how it goes in a few weeks and/or months (depending on the number of slow days! yikes!)
If getting to the top of Everest is the same as getting into production, then I’d say we are about half-way there. We’ve been close to this halfway mark before, but the difference this time around is that I can see the summit because there isn’t a cloud in the sky. Hell, there’s barely any wind. It’s looking pretty good.
Yet, today is a slow day. Let’s just say, we don’t have the resources available to us at the moment to keep going just yet. The climb from here to the top is a steeper, more treacherous approach. We’re closer than we’ve ever been, but it’s a careful balancing act from this point forward, and it’s getting harder to stay on course. We need reinforcements, and luckily for us, we have found some. We’re just waiting for them to get here.
Second Lesson: At some point, know when you need extra help, and find it. It took us a while to find them, so I would say not to rush into any relationships until you genuinely get to know someone and what they are about. It obviously helps if they believe in the project as well. If you’re going to be doing business with people, make sure you get along with them, otherwise I would imagine the rest of the journey would be a truly painful experience.
That’s all I can say right now without screwing up any potential opportunities, so I hope my elongated metaphor didn’t put you to sleep. If we make it to the top, I’ll draw a map of the mountain chronicling the different stages and barriers we’ve had to go through. I could do it now, but I feel that would be premature. Wish us luck!
