begets

1. To father; sire.
2. To cause to exist or occur; produce: Violence begets more violence

E.J., the pastor at the Refuse has been talking about beget quite a
bit lately... the cause and effects of situations. The type of thing
that, when you're in a reflective mood, makes you stop, pause, and
ponder. Sometimes the reflective mood in my head comes from
depression, though mostly that's just moroseness. Other times, the
triggers are smaller things. Tonight, Angela and I saw Elizabethtown
and it got me thinking about begetting.

I have a small list of movies, not even necessarily what I would call
my 'Favorite' movies, that make me want to make movies. They're not
necessarily great movies, they're just the ones that for whatever
reason poked me and told me to create, to cause to exist or occur, to
produce. There are maybe half a dozen to a dozen movies on the list.
It's rare when one comes around.

Tonight, the movie added to that list is Elizabethtown. A friend lent
me a pre-release copy because I hadn't had a chance to see it. Cameron
Crowe, like John Hughes in the early part of his career, tends to be
one of my button pushers and I'm not entirely sure why I never got
around to seeing it in the theaters. Actually, I do know why. It
appeared in the dollar theater for a week and left before Ang and I
could get there.

In any case, I've had this copy for a couple days and I've been vowing
to overdose on a whole series of Crowe films.

I don't want to turn this into any sort of a review. I just want to
say it inspired me to create. if only I could bottle the feeling up so
that I could use it at a time more practical than 1:10 AM on an early
Sunday morning.

We've hired a sales guy at the office. I don't know if it will help,
but it certainly can't hurt. On top of the fact that we hired a sales
guy, we hired a guy who has a long history of selling creative and
already has thoughts on places to hit. I hope it's the answer.

I turned down a job this week, partially because I wanted to fix this
existing problem, but also because it wasn't truly what I wanted to
do. Thankfully, my friend offering the job, told me to call back in
March when I might better know the situation.

I've been buried in work this week trying to finish a promotional
video for the music festival I work at every year. Thursday night was
an all-nighter and Friday could have been if we hadn't had a friend
coming over for dinner and a movie. Today was a full day and tomorrow
will be up until the Superbowl. It IS almost done though, and then
I'll post so you can see what's taken me away from blogging.

Go rent Elizabeth town when it comes out on Tuesday and pay close
attention to the last twenty minutes. Those were the magic minutes,
the film-making and creating moments. Those are the ones I'll rewatch
and try and inspire myself from. Those are the minutes from which I'll
take the music that carries me there when I need to create.

more later.