Whose Hat Has Your Head Been Under?

It hit me last night -- or, this morning, really -- as I drove home from an edit session at 3:45am.

Not a deer crossing I-64 in a frantic flight from Hampton Roads sprawl. No, what hit me was a thought that eased my recent bout of self-disappointment. Not that that’s a word, even hyphenated, but you get the idea and I’m too tired to whip out the thesaurus.

I’d just spent seven hours with the editor and one of the other producers, whittling down the Dismal cut so that we’re pretty close to where we want to be by the next screening with all the producers.

We needed to cut about half an hour, maybe a touch more, and so the bulk of the revision was hacking stuff out. It was a weird, splintering experience.

As a writer, I really wanted to hold on to a lot of the moments and lines and story developments in there. I mean, I spent a lot of time coming up with them, and frankly I think most of them worked pretty well -- developing character, building tension, adding depth to the story.

Don’t get me wrong, there were some places I thought, “What the hell was I thinking when I wrote that,” but overall, I thought the story worked nicely.

But we had to lose half an hour. Shit had to go.

So I reminded myself what hat was currently topping my slam-bald head. Right now, I’m a producer. I happen to be the producer who wrote the script, but still, I’m a producer. Producers have to keep the full scope of things, the Big Picture if you will, in mind always, and not get too bogged down in the art if the thing.

I mean, the thing needs some art of course, but it has to keep asses in seats, too.

So anyway, as producer, I worked with the team to get the cuts made –- sacrificing some of the subtle moments that intellectually I enjoy, but don’t get us where we need to get. My wife calls it “being willing to kill your babies.”

And they were good cuts.

(Poor little babies.)

And then, as I was weaving down the highway with fatigue, I realized I don’t need to get down on myself for not writing a lot right now. Because right now, I’m not a writer. Not primarily anyway. I’m a producer. And having the skills of a producer, well honed and exercised regularly, can only help me in the long run. The Big Picture if you will.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m just exhausted. I mean, damn. A Shania Twain reference for a title?