San Francisco in Jello

I'm a little homesick today. Living in the Berkshires, "the city" now means Manhattan, but my city will always be San Francisco. In homage, I offer you artist Liz Hickok's inspired Jello renderings of the city by the bay.

$10 Plane Tickets! Hello, Skybus.

I'm not leaving on a jet plane right this minute, but the Skybus deals are tempting. A coworker recently flew this new discount airline out of Chicopee (near Hartford) and said the plane seemed normal and the service was fine. Sign me up.

Update - April 8th: It was too good to last. Skybus filed for bankruptcy last Friday, citing the high cost of fuel and a slowing economy.

Rae Dunn Mug

I've been almost-buying Rae Dunn's "BEGIN." mug for a year or two from the Paper Source catalog. When I spotted it this afternoon at a shop in Lenox, I didn't hesitate. It is time to begin. Paper Source doesn't carry the mug anymore, but you can find it here.

Speaking of Jello

...and apparently many people are, as lots of you typed variations of "Easter Jello" ("easter lemon jello," "easter jello salad recipes," "lemon lime jello salad," etc.) into Google and found your way to my blog today. Welcome. The Sea Breeze Salad I made looks positively radioactive. You might try making the more glamorous Jello concoction pictured on the cover of Lost Desserts: Delicious Indulgences of the Past by Gail Monaghan.

Winning Easter Jello Salad Recipe

Turns out Easter Jello Salad is an actual tradition. Thanks to the Internet, I have pondered an array of Miracle Whip-infused wonders, but have settled upon the the following recipe from RecipeZaar.

Sea Breeze Salad Recipe

"I love the lemon-lime flavor combination of this Jello salad..so refreshing! I like to serve this with our ham dinner on Easter Sunday."

by Hazeleyes

45 min | 45 min prep | SERVES 10 -12

2 (3	ounce) packages lemon Jello gelatin
1 (3	ounce) package lime Jello gelatin
2	cups boiling water
2	cups cold water
1	cup drained crushed pineapple
1 (15	ounce) can lemon pie filling
2	cups whipped cream

1. Dissolve the Jello mixes into the boiling water. Stir well.
2. Add the cold water.
3. Chill until thickened, then stir in the lemon pie filling and whip until well blended.
4. Reserve 1 cup of this mixture.
5. Add pineapple to the remaining Jello mixture.
6. Pour into a 9x13 glass dish, or a decorative glass bowl and refrigerate until set.
7. Fold the 2 cups whipped cream into the reserved Jello mixture.
8. Spread on top on the salad.
9. Chill until set.

Also on the menu: green beans with lemon, cheddar scalloped potatoes, brown sugar-glazed carrots, and biscuits (courtesy of Guido's, thank you very much).

Gold Diggers of 1933 at Bard Summerscape

Bard Summerscape's handsome brochure landed in my mail box today. The cultural festivities include a film festival dedicated to "Cinéma Transcontinentale: America, Russia, & France in the 1930s." Gold Diggers of 1933 sounds terrific. I love the photo.

Gold Diggers of 1933
1933, directed by Mervyn LeRoy
This is easily one of the most remarkable Hollywood musicals to use the Great Depression as a backdrop and plot element, most notably in the number “Remember My Forgotten Man,” featuring lines of unemployed ex-servicemen. Generally, though, the mood is lighthearted and hilarious, especially when then-newcomer Ginger Rogers sings a chorus of “We’re in the Money” in pig Latin, wearing a costume of dollar bills. Dick Powell, Joan Blondell, and Ruby Keeler star in this dizzy showbiz comedy, choreographed with surreal flair by Busby Berkeley.
96 minutes
July 13 at 7 pm

Easter Jello?

We're spending Easter in Connecticut. My mother-in-law is making ham and dessert and I'm charged with bringing everything else. I usually cook (or procure) gourmet-ish delicacies that she hates. After nearly 20 years, perhaps it's time to make her happy? I'm thinking: Jello. Readerville friend Miriam suggests a salad of cherry Jello, canned cherries, cubed cream cheese, and walnuts. Any other favorite recipes out there?

Next up: David Samuels

I'm slammed with work (check out the theater's new website...and please let me know if you find any bugs in it as I'm still tweaking), three magazine assignments due this month, and trying and mostly failing to make time for my fledging novel, but I'm excited to announce that David Samuels's The Runner is next up on my bedside table and his publicist tells me he's game for a blog interview.

We're in the midst of figuring out what to do with the child this summer. Any suggestions for east coast camps?

My New Tote

It's Friday night and I'm exhausted, but I do want to share with you my new and most excellent TOKYObay tote. The photo doesn't do it justice. The material looks like crushed paper soaked in blood. I'm not sure why that's such a good thing, but there you have it.

Interview with Jenny McNabb

Feb. 27, 2009 UPDATE: Click here to hear a podcast of Jenny talking about her film, new distribution deal, and upcoming plans.

Jenny McNabb is the director, writer, and producer of Cowboy, a short film about an unconventional young ranch hand who travels to the city to win back a forbidden love. Previously, she worked as a travel writer, editor, and photographer for Lonely Planet and Fodor’s, living in and writing about destinations as varied as Belize, London, and Finland. She and I became friends 11 years ago at the Book Passage Travel Writing Conference.

Jenny graduated cum laude from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in Mass Communications, and began her writing career in New York City at the fashion magazine Mademoiselle.

Studying screenwriting at the University of California, Los Angeles, Graduate School of Film and Television, Jenny distinguished herself as an able producer as well as writer. She received UCLA’s Graduate Screenwriting Fellowship, the William Morris Fellowship, and the Jack K. Sauter Scholarship.

Jenny's filmmaking draws on her passion for the absurd, her love of adventure, and her unique appreciation for and sensitivity to different cultures, the legacy of many years of living and working abroad.

Currently, Jenny is in pre-production on her next short film and finalizing the script for her debut feature.

******

Gina: I've been hearing about Cowboy for at least a couple of years in your holiday letters. The credits for the film include dozens of people. It seems like an incredible amount of effort for a 5 minutes, 24 seconds-long film that very few people will likely ever see at film festivals. Are short films the marginalized poetry of Hollywood and/or were you thinking of it all along as an audition stepping stone to lead to full-length features?

Jenny: These are good questions. I made the short for two main reasons:

(1) to learn/gain or improve my skills as a director: directing actors, choosing and planning shots, moving the camera, editing, etc. are all things I've found I have to try for myself (and fail at) before I figure out how to do them successfully.

(2) to begin building a body of material that I can give to agents, managers, financiers, producers, etc. when I am shopping around a feature script of mine that shows my skills as a director.

Reason (3) -- to have fun! Which I had a ton of. I love producing and directing (I love writing and editing less, because they are much more challenging for me). I don't know how many people contributed in total, but that's the chief joy of being a writer/director -- being able to build a team (or family) of collaborators. I love doing that -- the good ones always bring so much more to whatever it is I've come up with.

So that's reason (4) to make one or more shorts: to find people I can take with me film to film, and develop our style of working together. For example, on this short, I had two composers score the film unsuccessfully before I found Joe Kraemer, who I love, and who did such a lovely score for the film.

Ideally, I'd like to work with the same cinematographer, editor, composer, from film to film, because it's really sweet when you can shorthand what you want and just say, "Hey, do that thing here that will be like that thing we did on the last one." (My actor and I got like that by the end of this shoot -- I'd just say "do that other thing like before" and he'd nail it.)

Myself, personally, I'm less interested in how many people see this film or where, for one because I've lived with the film for so long that by the time I'm done editing and mixing and whatnot, I'm fairly tired of it, and more preoccupied with the next one, and just want to send it out in the world, wish it all the best, and hope it finds its place.

That said, overall it's great to get a short into certain festivals, because these are great places to network. Another reason to play at festivals -- I'd like to see the film play on a big screen with at least one audience, so by their response I can learn where my pacing worked and where it didn't -- a film plays very, very differently with a room full of people watching together, vs. one or a couple of people watching on a TV at home. I am especially curious how this film will play on a big screen -- I am 99% sure I started one of the music cues in the wrong place, and it will be interesting to see if the audience reaction will bear that out.

Just an aside -- This short film took a particularly long time because I was kind of feeling my way through so many steps of the process. The next short, we can probably get done in about four months.

As well, the next short I make will be timed to go out on the festival circuit when I have my feature script ready to shop around, which is a strategy designed basically to get the feature script into the hands of people who can help me get it made.

It might be unfair to say that shorts are marginalized poetry in Hollywood -- for example, Sundance had over 6000 short film submissions this year for something like 50 slots, and the reason why so many people were competing for those slots is that a good short, shown at a top festival, can really help further your career -- IF you have a follow-up project, a feature, ready to go. This is the truth of the matter: If you have a great short, it shows at top festivals, and you have no follow-up project that's feature length, you're not going to get very far. Of course, there are always exceptions to that rule!

Gina: How does your experience as a travel writer and editor influence your approach to film?

Jenny: I find that my background as an editor helps as well as hurts when I'm writing. I have a very clean pared-down writing style when I'm working on a script, but sometimes that desire to sit and play with wording for a single sentence for an hour is counterproductive to just getting a fucking first draft done. In the early stages of writing, I fight hard to silence my inner editor so that my creativity can flow freely.

Some of the stories I'd eventually like to tell are drawn from having traveled, experiencing different cultures and being open to them. I guess the inquisitiveness that led me to become a travel writer is the same inquisitiveness I direct towards telling fiction stories on film.

Gina: There's a scene in your film with a cow in a house. Where did you find the cow and how did you get her in the house?

Jenny: I was originally going to have a friend who lives north of me in California cattle country, who I'd met at rodeo school the previous year (she was in saddle broncs, I was doing bareback broncs, and we were the only two girls in a group of about 80), borrow one from a neighbor's ranch. I went and pulled all the filming permits (a very long, complex procedure) and then the plan fell through -- when you pull a cow off an 80,000 acre ranch, it's pretty wild, and for the safety of the actors, equipment, crew, etc. we decided not to have her bring it down. We were days away from the start of the shoot, and everything else was set, so this was quite a panic!

Fortunately, when I was doing preproduction I'd called professional animal wranglers just in case I needed some sort of backup, so I got back in touch with the one I liked, and hired him. Spotty the cow came with her own trailer, two handlers, and her calf (who stayed in the trailer while she worked) and was a true pro. She was the most experienced actor on our set -- she's been in California Cheese commercials and a bunch of other stuff.

We shot with the cow one day, two locations, and we had been incredibly nervous about "cow day" -- because we had such a limited amount of time with her, and had to get everything we needed in terms of shots at both locations. For her scene in the kitchen (the house interiors/exteriors in the film are of my house), I had friends help me build a special ramp for her to walk up and stand on. It felt very "Waiting for Guffman" building our ramp and waiting for our cow.

Gina: You've been slogging away in Hollywood for a decade now. I know it's not easy. What keeps you going?

Jenny: It's true I've lived in LA for about a decade, but after I left film school I took a very, very long break from having anything to do with filmmaking -- it was personally a very painful time for me, and I felt creatively exhausted and like I needed to explore some of my other interests. I worked for a fashion designer, a yoga studio, and at a middle school for low income kids -- which were all deeply enriching life experiences. So in a way, right now I feel like in terms of filmmaking, I'm brand new and just starting out.

Gina: Do you have a website?

Jenny: I don't have a website currently, but plan to have one soon. The DVD of the film is available for $10, and I accept payment through Paypal. Contact cowboyalovestory@earthlink.net.

Big Hair

Last night Dave and I tended bar at the IS183 "Rock the Opera" gala at the Masonic Lodge in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Dan Shaw snapped the above photo of Bess Hochstein and me. It's not for nothing that we lived through the 80s. For more about the party, see Dan's beguiling new website Rural Intelligence.

What Punctuation Mark Are You?

I have a very, very long to-do list staring me in the face upon return to el norte, but I couldn't resist this personality quiz. Turns out I'm a comma. What are you?

You Are a Comma

You are open minded and extremely optimistic. You enjoy almost all facets of life. You can find the good in almost anything. You keep yourself busy with tons of friends, activities, and interests. You find it hard to turn down an opportunity, even if you are pressed for time. Your friends find you fascinating, charming, and easy to talk to. (But with so many competing interests, you friends do feel like you hardly have time for them.) You excel in: Inspiring people You get along best with: The Question Mark

What Punctuation Mark Are You?