JUNE

At the City Paper we’re encouraged to research the Spoleto and Piccolo festivals long before they start, letting the A&E editor know which shows we’d like to cover. After making my requests months before the fest and being promised that I could cover them, I did plenty of preparation on each piece. But when it came to the crunch, I found myself assigned to other shows.

I’m also encouraged to blog for the paper on an unpaid basis, especially during Spoleto. This year was different. After several days trying to access the CP blog, aided by a baffled webmaster, I was told that there was a freeze on non-staff members blogging (I’m a freelancer). I already had a bunch of blogs and interviews that I’d personally lined up. I didn’t want to waste even more work, and I thought it was important to let Spoletians know what was going on on a day-to-day basis. So the stories ended up on the Post & Courier’s Spoleto Today website.

Likewise with my video pieces – I made them partly to show the CP’s editor what I could do with a camera, in the inevitable event that the paper started getting serious about multimedia content. The vids were ignored (official line: “we don’t know if we’ll have time to get to them”), so they ended up on the P&C site as well. I also guested on a few of Today’s audio shows/podcasts, interviewing David Lee Nelson and the Charleston Academy of Music. After a wee bit of number crunching, the hard-working people behind Spoleto Today – including Dan & Janet Conover and Geoff Marshall – left the paper or accepted a buy-out as the publishers tightened their belts that Autumn. The remaining veterans now pull double or triple duty at the paper; that’s why you’ll find film writers covering travel or sports writers doing life columns.

More than anything, the festivals are a great excuse to catch up with everyone downtown. I danced at a workshop held by poet/performer Marc Bamuthi Joseph, watched “Monkey” rehearsals with the director Chen Shi-Zheng (we discussed the astounding Japanese TV version and the original source novel), chatted with actress Joy Vandervort-Cobb (we discussed eyebrows) and saw Jay Clifford perform with a section of the CSO. At that show, violinist Brent Price proposed to Katherine Bailey (in a very roundabout fashion) and she accepted. Ah, the summertime!

In 2004 I helped put together a Film Festival on Folly Beach. At the time I was teaching a filmmaking class and the fest was designed as a showcase for their finished projects, as well as work by other filmmakers worldwide. Five years later the fest had grown considerably, moving from the local library to the Holiday Inn Ballroom. Festival coordinator Chris Weatherhead hosted a discussion about filming dos and don’ts with short form director Todd Tinkham. I wanted to jump up and ask him what to do if someone took your credit. I stayed silent in true British stiff-upper-lip fashion.

There were other projects on the horizon. Preproduction began on “Holy City”, a nourish vampire film created by JC Conway. JC plans to spin the concept off into a TV show. I also filmed interviews with Phil Noble and Steve Skarden about their non-profit project, Laptops SC. It aims to get less-than-$200 laptops to underserved schools throughout the state. The interviews were directed by Craig Hadley.

June was also the month that I visited New York. As I’d predicted to myself, it blew my mind. However, the city was much friendlier and easier to navigate than I expected. In my week at Juillard, I grabbed plenty of footage for “Broadway Bootcamp” and saw the immense hard work the students put into their classes: dancing, singing, acting, the bootcampers could do it all.

JULY

Just in time for star Julio Cotto’s birthday, the “Know When To Walk Away” video premiered at Torch in downtown Charleston. I got out of town a few times, nipping to Washington, DC to prepare for my Citizenship Test (to become an English-American) and Walterborough for a “Cold Soldiers” location scout. As we roared through a cobwebbed swamp on a little open-canopy jeep, banana spiders tried to eat my face. To recover from the ordeal, I had to pop into the brand new Apple Store on King Street on my way home.

In Columbia I plugged “Undead on Arrival” at the Richland Library. So far it’s the only time I’ve given a talk about the book.

AUGUST

Some projects sit on the backburner for a while, allowing me to get on with pother things. For over a year I’d been working on a film about local band Black Eyed Susan. In August I completed the short film and hope to screen it in the near future.

At JC’s sanctum sanctorum we held a read-through of the first half of “Holy City”, aided by accomplished actors like Mark Gorman and Andrea Conway. On the “Cold Soldiers” front I invited Jimmy Hager to join the cast. He agreed, then candidly told me that a negative review I’d written of Charleston Stage’s “Denmark Vesey” play had pissed him off (he was the co-star). This led to a rather uncomfortable moment in my living room. I’m glad he still agreed to work on my film despite the critical review. His performance was everything I expected it to be.

To help pay the bills, Trevor Erickson kindly tipped me to some Porter-Gaud football games that needed to be filmed. This was my introduction to high school football games, with its pomp, circumstance, ornery coaches and committed communities (some of the schools even printed T-shirts for individual games). The work took me all over the state, from small fields in Charleston to fancy stadiums in Columbia, in all weathers – heat, cold, torrential rain, even lightning storms – the games must go on.

SEPTEMBER

Sam took his first piano lesson and soon learned how to play the theme from “Star Wars”. I got on with my next novel, a mix of fantasy and police procedural called “Virtual Illusion”. And Rink Entertainment assigned me to assist on “Army Wives Gives Back,” where the stars of the hit TV show give brand new Mustangs to real-life army wives.

Over at South of Broadway, I wrote and directed a play called “Planetfall” for a first-ever Playwriting Festival. The on-the-ball actors in the staged reading were JC Conway, Mark Gorman, Jelena Zerega and Bill Davis.

OCTOBER

In October work began in earnest on “Healing Springs”, a documentary about the area in mid-state SC directed by Craig Hadley. The natural springs are said to have miraculous healing properties, and the land is the only half-acre in the state to be deeded to Almighty God. Doesn’t he own everything already?

At Fort Moultrie, Linda Eisen, Mark Gorman and Carol Antman put together a multi-part tribute to Edgar Allen Poe. Various actors performed Poe’s greatest hits, including a memorable “Premature Burial” starring Braxton Williams and “The Black Cat” rendered by Danny Jones.
The Playwriting Festival was a success, leading to talks of a sequel and a workshop in October. Stepping up to read a couple of monologues, I got to add the Devil to my acting resume (which includes a serial killer, a rapist, a cat DJ and a WWI soldier).

I hadn’t heard from the City Paper’s A&E editor since Spoleto, but I continued to write for the news section. For the annual Give Guide, I covered the Trident Literary Association (which battles illiteracy in the tricounty area) & Carolina Autism. Members of the latter organization were on the set of “Dear John”, a Nicholas Sparks movie shooting in Charleston. One of the leads had been given to an autistic child, so CA was on hand to make sure that his needs were met. Their knuckles were rapped for talking to me outside of the Sparks publicity machine, but not too hard – informing readers of CA’s work was a good thing under any circumstances.

While “Dear John” lit up James Island, production on “Cold Soldiers” picked up speed again. Although I’d been working behind the scenes on the film every day, there were still plenty of fights, car chases and dramatic sequences left to film. We gained permission to film on the Yorktown, transforming it into a terrorist-held hostage ship for a day. We were aided by Arlene Lagos, who joined us on the movie as publicist, actress and extra wrangler.

For Boone Hall, I shot and couple of nasty commercials featuring the “Son of Saw.” It got the desired effect – parents called the plantation to complain that the ads were scaring their kids. The “Saw’s Scream” campaign and its star Carl Hedgepeth were so successful that Boone Hall added extra dates to their attraction.

In the same Halloween vein, at the end of the month I went ghost hunting with Darkwater Investigations, a local company that looks for sprectral anomalies in alleged haunted places. We didn’t find any spooks, but I got a fascinating glimpse into the world of a bunch of dedicated, refreshingly cynical folk.

NOVEMBER

Much of November was spent working on a screenplay for “Small Altars”, a feature film project created by Eric Vincent. This is the tale of an artist who accidentally summons a demonic deity who makes his life a misery. The artist is forced to “sacrifice” people to the god (they’re turned into zombies), and ultimately has to choose whether he will sacrifice himself to save the woman he loves. “Small Altars” is slated for production this summer.

The City Paper’s A&E editor called me and told me he hadn’t spoken to me for four months because I’d written Spoleto stuff for the Post & Courier. This despite the fact that I’d given him first dibs for my stories, and that I’ve been writing for the P&C for five years – all on an unpaid basis. For whatever reason, the editor had decided to put the incident “behind him” and I started writing art reviews again. This gave me the chance to cover some great shows at Redux, Corrigan Gallery and Spark Studios, among others.

At the end of the month I took my Citizenship test. To become a bona fide US citizen you have to pay a fee of almost $1000, take an oral and written test, and learn about American history, politics and geography. Sample questions: Who wrote the Declaration of Independence? How many years does a US Senator’s term last? What did Susan B. Anthony do?

The experience was scary for me because I knew my future was in the hands of a bureaucrat. One wrong word and I’d be $1000 poorer. The guy who tested me was actually quite friendly – he said he was pleased to find a candidate who could speak English. But my hands were still shaking so much that I could hardly put the pen back in its holder.

My wife and I were told that we had passed and that we’d narrowly missed the deadline to take the Oath of Allegiance that day. We were informed that it would happen next week. Six weeks later, we’ve heard nothing from the INS.

DECEMBER

While interviewing the Lost Trades boatbuilding crew for Charleston Magazine, I’d expressed an interest in helping them finish their catamaran and sailing with them. Glad I didn’t; the ship was wrecked in a storm off the coast of South Carolina. The crew survived, saying that the grilling they got from the insurance company was worse than any squall.

With Christmas approaching I donned a white beard and red suit to play Santa – my sixth Holiday season as Mr. Claus. Adding padding to my stomach to round out my belly, I sweated through 80 degree heatwaves. I was always either too hot or too cold. I felt nauseous. My feet hurt. I had strange cravings for cookies and candy canes. I started to realize what it must be like to go through the early stages of pregnancy.

By year’s end, the scripts for “Holy City” and “Small Altars” were coming together and “Cold Soldiers” is nearing completion at last. The Bootcamp documentary premieres on January 25th. The wheels of publishing turn slow, so it’ll be 2010 (at least) before “Cat City” is printed. But at least I feel like I’ve gained closure on a couple of issues – the City Paper editor’s code of silence ended, and I called my dad after months of not hearing from him (he’s a busy man, apparently). I’m reminded more than ever that I can’t achieve my goals alone. With my family and friends I can create - and complete - bigger and better projects in 2009.

2007 Rants & Raves

Over the past couple of Christmases I’ve written a personal round-up of the year for The Scratching Post. Since 2007 was a busy one for me and I haven’t had a chance to blog as much as I’d like, I guess it’s time for another annual summary.

Please note that I’m not trying to blow my own trumpet in this blog. It’s an update for friends, family and supporters who want to know what I’ve been up to. None of it would have been possible without the help and hard work of my colleagues based here in Charleston, South Carolina. Thanks guys.

JANUARY

Rant: I taught acting to groups of 1st – 5th Graders at a private school in downtown Charleston this year. I’ve taught all kinds of children, from abused 8-year-olds to shy tweenagers. I was expecting the pupils at the high-rent private school to be the best behaved I’ve ever worked with.

Boy, was I wrong. The disrespectful tikes made every lesson hard going. At least I didn’t have it as bad as another teacher who worked with them for one week – they threw scripts at her and refused to listen to her instructions. She compared the experience unfavorably to working in LA inner city prisons.

Rave: A documentary about abstract artist Patrick Pelletier premiered at the Dunnan Gallery, King Street. When I was hired to shoot the doc, I was told that it would be a very simple “talking head” film – i.e. the artist just sitting on a stool, chatting about his work. The end product became a far more complex, non-linear piece charting a day in the life of the up-and-coming painter. It was completed just in time for Pelletier’s inaugural solo show, Block Party.

I also film the Charleston Youth Company’s musical extravaganza, and I was struck by the professionalism of the kids involved. They were disciplined, talented and their production was actually better than some of the semi-pro shows I’ve seen in recent years.

FEBRUARY

Raves: More filming, this time of the Miss Charleston Scholarship Pageant. I followed the whole process from interviews through to the crowning of Miss Charleston, Miss North Charleston and Miss Coastal Carolina. This gave me a fascinating insight into the pageant process, guided in our area by the tremendously hard-working Randall Dukes. And not a geography question in sight.

I moved to the Lowcountry in 2003, but this month marked the first time I danced the Charleston. I played a cocky nightclub owner in a “Roaring 20s” themed gig for the Actors Theatre of South Carolina.


MARCH

Rants: I was well on my way to completing a rough assemblage of my first feature, All For Liberty, when disaster struck. The edit suite threw a wobbly and footage was deleted.

Fortunately, all the scenes were still on tape; unfortunately, weeks of work were lost. Still, I managed to salvage several sequences to make life easier for our fine cut editors. The film would go through several versions as the year progressed.

After the stress of editing Liberty for months, I needed a relaxing job as a casting assistant and stand-in for Warner Bros.

It was the opposite of relaxing.

The studio rolled into town to shoot Reinventing the Wheelers, behaved in an obnoxious fashion, pissed everyone off then left. After the relative good manners of Touchstone’s Army Wives crew – also shooting in Charleston – the attitude of the Warner guys was a shock. They got their comeuppance, though; they were attacked by a plague of gnats at Fort Moultrie, left town and the pilot was never picked up for screening. Good riddance. The Politest City in America has no room for obnoxious cinematographers.

Raves: I shot a historical sequence for screening at the brand spankin’ new Upcountry History Museum in Greenville, SC. The museum’s an ambitious one, encompassing religion, sociology, wars, agriculture and present oral accounts. The scenes were filmed at Fort King George, Georgia, under the guidance of veteran producer Michael Schaffer (Michael Schaffer Productions) and director Craig Hadley (The Living History Group). Our star actress Jenny Pringle gave an incredibly detailed performance, aged through decades with prosthetic makeup as she recounted various periods in the Upcountry’s history (photo by The Living History Group).



Back in (North) Charleston, I was a guest lecturer at Springfield College for a course led by Roy Freedman. The students all work in the human services field, from police work (cold cases) to supervising troubled teenagers to standard casework. I incorporated role play and team-building exercises into my acting workshop. They did good.

APRIL

Rave: In April I spent a lot of time teaching. I have a great bunch of students at the Lowcountry Senior Center on James Island. The Senior tag is just that - a mere tag. Their ages range from mid-50s to late 70s. They’re whip-smart and ready for anything I throw at them – improvised scenes, short films, monologues or one-act comedy plays. At the end of the year they performed a hilarious version of John Pielmeier’s short play, Splatter Flick.

MAY

There was too much good stuff to see at this year’s Spoleto Festival and its Piccolo fringe – in the latter I reviewed underwear-loving comedian Paul Thomas, the touching if overlong Denmark Vesey: Insurrection by Julian Wiles, Henry Riggs’ Hobo: The Musical, PURE Theatre’s mesmerizing Cloud Tectonics and several other colorful shows.

Raves: On the 4th I organized a second (hopefully annual) Night of Short Films at the Gibbes Museum of Art and recorded an audio interview with video artist Janet Biggs.

After filming a show by rock/soul band Black Eyed Susan until about 2 a.m., I had to drive up to the border between North and South Carolina to shoot a battle scene at Kings Mountain for the Upcountry History Museum. After an arduous cross-state drive I reached the location at the crack of dawn and dragged my ass through rain and smoke for the hectic action scene. Meanwhile over in Columbia, a group of shorts from the Folly Felder Film Festival were screened at the Nickelodeon for their Film Crawl.

Later in the month I hung out with artist Johnny Pundt and we doodled our way through a few ideas – one of which was improved upon and recreated for a Pundt T-shirt. I now wear the shirt with pride, even though I don’t know what the hell the Japanese words on the front mean.

After that I worked in Greenville for a 10 day stretch, interviewing important figures from the past and present of the city for the new History Museum. I returned later in the Summer to interview more civil rights leaders, spiritual gurus, corporate Big Cheeses and regular, ethnically diverse business owners.

JUNE

In June, the fourth annual Felder Film Fest on Folly Beach was the biggest one ever. We had to turn away some high quality entries simply because we didn’t have the space to show them all.

On the 18th, disaster struck. Nine firefighters lost their lives in a raging fire at the Sofa Super Store on H17. The smoke darkened the sky that evening; the event continues to darken the lives of the people who knew the Nine.

Charleston was in the national news because so many men had died in one blaze; for a while, newshounds and political candidates buzzed around the area. Now they've left us to mourn in peace.

JULY

Four years after moving to the USA, I had some extra responsibility thrust upon me. The Charleston City Paper’s A&E editor, Patrick Sharbaugh, moved to Japan. I picked up some of the slack as the paper’s “arts go-to guy” until a new managing editor and A&E editor were hired. After two months of sourcing and writing articles, I was pooped.

Rant: Think you’re living in a free country where you’re at liberty to do what you want? Not if you’re fond of a ciggie. A smoking ban kept puffers out of bars and restaurants. It wasn’t uncommon to see folks lined up on the sidewalk, smoking, chatting and fuming about the new law.

I also bought a Sprint phone around this time, enticed by a $150 rebate when I purchased the contraption online. I mailed in the rebate then Sprint informed me that they’d changed their tiny minds and didn’t want to give me any cash back. Not a great way to create customer loyalty.

Rave: For the second year running I taught a Summer acting course at Creative Spark learning center. This time it ran parallel with an excellent Rock Camp, led by Josh Kaler of Slow Runner. Potential band names for the kids included Cremated Tennis Shoes, Petrified, Ghost in My Arms, Fungus Flush, The Fire Breathing Dragons, The Beastly Beavers and Nauseous Nailheads from Norway. True to their gnarly names, they rocked large and hard.

AUGUST

While other people took a vacation, I kept my wheels spinning in Chucktown. I produced a top-secret yoga video for Mary O’Neill out of Washington, D.C.; I was cameraman at Actors’ Theatre of SC’s Movie Camp; and I took a short-lived seat on the Late Night @ Footlights Theatre committee before I dropped out for fear of a clash of interests (I occasionally review Footlight plays).

Among the many theatrical productions I reviewed this year for the City Paper, the College of Charleston’s Richard III stands out for its sheer ambition: strong acting, sumptuous costumes, clever moving sets and a buttock-numbing hours-long running time. And it wasn’t the only Shakespeare-oriented play that the College put on at that time.

SEPTEMBER

In September I interviewed Black Eyed Susan for their promo video, and produced a few commercials for local company Muhler Windows and Blinds (catchphrase: "we make your homes better'). It gave me more insight than ever into the workings of Charleston's Channel 2, 4 and 5.

The Upcountry History Museum opened, with video clips shot all over the Greenville area and one or two historical characters voiced by yours truly. Producer Michael Schaffer soon burst my acting bubble by making a jibe about my Bristol accent. But hey, he’s from Boston.

OCTOBER

I caught my first hockey game (Stingrays v. Columbia Inferno in North Charleston) and enjoyed it – partly because my son and I snagged ringside seats. The month also marked the first read-through of my new independent feature film, Cold Soldiers; before the year was out, half the cast would change and half the movie would be in the can.

On Kiawah Island, I teamed up with DJ Tucker (who'd been a tremendous help to me on the Museum shoots) to play a Legend of Bagger Vance-style golfer, surrounded by classic ‘20s cars all aiming their headlamps on a putting green – a re-enactment of a scene from the Robert Redford movie.

NOVEMBER

Rant: While performing in a murder mystery event on Kiawah, I was confronted by a guy who thought my British accent was fake (er, I’m from Britain) and insisted that England uses kilometers, not miles to measure road distances. Confusing the UK with mainland Europe is as offensive to a Brit as mixing up Canada and the US is for an American. I kept my cool. Kind of.

As preproduction for Cold Soldiers picked up speed, I filmed the South of Broadway Theatre Company’s Nightmare ‘Til New Years! show. With my acting hat on, I worked with students at Trident Technical College where an innovative (for Trident) program got actors and directing students together to work through potential challenges.

DECEMBER

In December I finally got to launch my fourth book, Undead on Arrival. The book-plugging started with a zombie groan as the Walking Dead invaded The Black Cart bar on the corner of King & John Streets. Sadly, a pair of attending vampires did not challenge the zombies to a game of pool; maybe they were afraid of the cues (anti-vamp fact: when snapped in half, cues make handy stakes).

When I wasn’t in sick & twisted author mode, pushing my book, I was Santa Claus on Marion Square, writing for the City Paper or directing my second feature on East Bay Street. Every day I learned something new – about cinematography, about sticking with my decisions or communicating my ideas. That’s what this year’s been all about – improving communication. Hopefully I’ll get it right in 2008.

Happy New Year to you,

Nick