Substantially harder to explain is why I choose to do what I do.  Life would certainly be easier if I had a paycheck handed to me every once in a while (which is one of my aims).  And it would be substantially easier if I simply chose to do less.  I don’t have to volunteer to design yet another short film that only the festival geeks will ever see.  I don’t have to set a deadline for my next screenplay since I’m worlds away from having an agent breathing down my neck for it.  So why do I?

All people are driven to step beyond their obligations to simply exist and procreate by different reasons.  It can be to stave off boredom, to release a subconscious desire, to answer the call of the muse, or the desperate need to be able to look back on their lives and say “yeah, I did that.”  For me it is both all of those reasons and none of them the same time.  It’s a voice that tells me that I will accomplish something great.  It’s the visions of me attending my own premiere, being interviewed by an iconic figure and yes, being handed awards.  Above all that, it’s the idea that I will watch a compelling story that I helped to create, play out before my eyes and still get from it that same sense of amazement and wonder one only seems to touch in the early years of childhood.  It is want.  It is desire.  It is drive.  It is need.

I can only relate this intangible concept to one tangible object: Michelangelo’s Rondanini Pietà.  Never heard of it?  I’m not surprised.  It was the last piece Michelangelo was working on up until a few days before his death, and it was never finished.  What remains of this marble block is only the sinewy ghosts of Mary and Jesus, and one nearly finished arm, polished to a shine but completely dismembered from any body.  This hacked apart marble block could never have become a completed work worthy of the master’s reputation.  Nonetheless, seeing it nearly brought me to tears.  Michelangelo worked on this sculpture up until a few days before his death at the unheard of age of 89.  Driven by whatever his need was, to touch the divine, to step beyond the mortal plane and out of his pain-ridden mortal body, or to perhaps leave a piece of his soul here on earth, he just had to keep working.  In that dismembered arm, the shadowy faces in the stone, the jittery marks of an unstable chisel, I could feel that need, that driving force to create that was so strong it became destruction.

So I keep chiseling.  I answer my muse.  I let my subconscious take the driver’s seat.  I am far from bored, and someday I will look back and say “Wow, I did that!”  I just hope I know when to stop chiseling.  Even if I don’t, someone may look at what I created and see beautiful destruction.  I leave you with the words of the master himself.

Only with fire can the smith shape iron
from his conception into fine, dear work;
neither, without fire, can any artist
refine and bring gold to its highest state,
nor can the unique phoenix be revived
unless first burned. And so, if I die burning,
I hope to rise again brighter among those
whom death augments and time no longer hurts.
I’m fortunate that the fire of which I speak
still finds a place within me, to renew me,
since already I’m almost numbered among the dead;
or, since by its nature it ascends to heaven,
to its own element, if I should be transformed
into fire, how could it not bear me up with it?
- Michelangelo Buonarroti 1532

A few observations from the flip side:

American money IS really boring.  I had heard that before but could never really relate.  It also feels substantially less robust than Aussie money.  Perhaps currency reflects culture in more ways than intended.  But you certainly spend a lot less of it.  My idea of a reasonable price is so far from what it used to be.  Shopping at certain outlets and chain stores felt almost like getting away with theft.  I guess there is something to be said for a mass consumerist culture.  Although, taxes and tipping sucks a bit.  Go easy on the foreigners who might shortchange you.  They probably just come from a culture with a more straightforward billing system.

Driving on the other side of the road only seemed a little strange when I was on a new road.  It created a particularly strange sensation while on a road lined with eucalyptus trees though.  Coincidence?  I think not.

Changing seasons on the way there was not particularly hard, but coming back to winter is quite a depressing experience.  If the cold doesn’t get to you, then the lack of light does.  We came back to Sydney on the shortest day of the year after having been in a city where it was still light at 8pm.  Luckily the days can only get longer from here.

My Many Homes:

Going back to LA felt the same way it always has.  I guess I’m used to coming home again, even if the trips happen less frequently than they used to.  But this was the first time I have ever gone back to New York and not been returning to my own humble abode.  I can only describe the sensation of going back like that of reading a book or seeing a movie that you loved as a child but haven’t been exposed to for many years.  You remember the major plot points, the characters and how it ends (usually with a slice of pizza at 2am on a Sunday) but you’ve forgotten little details here and there.  I’d see certain street corners, overhear conversations on the subway, get trapped in the stampede of a deli lunch rush and find myself thinking, oh yeah, I remember that.

It was also louder, more congested and just generally more insane than I remember.  I guess after living there for enough time you develop the ability to shut out everything but what you need and want to hear, see and even smell, then lose it after spending some time away.  But I muscled through overstimulation with the iron will (and stomach) of a true New Yorker.  Yeah, I’ve still got it.

The bagels are amazing, the cocktails are generous, the pizza is rich and delicious and the coffee sucks.  But it tastes like no other coffee in the world.  That slight hint of burnt metal and taste of grounds that have spent weeks at the bottom of the machine is a flavor I fondly associate with the Big Apple, ode de health violations.  I also thought I walked plenty in Sydney, but I realize now that no creature on earth walks as much as a New Yorker.  It took wearing holes in one pair of shoes and my only pair of feet before I got my city legs back.  Aussies will be able to swim around the planet when the polar ice caps melt but until then they’ll never beat a New Yorker in an endurance walk.

But perhaps the most surprising thing about going back home was the fact that it made me really feel how much time has passed since I’ve been back.  When you move to a new country, how you feel and what you experience tends to change every few weeks.  Excitement becomes culture shock, because excitement again.  New experiences become everyday life.  Odd becomes normal and eventually your new environment becomes your new home and before you know it an entire year has passed.  But for the people you left behind, the people whose lives now have one less person in them, they seem to have felt every day pass.  You can tell by how tightly they hug you when they finally see you again.  You can see it in the tears they can’t hold back when you have to say goodbye for another year.  It suddenly becomes much harder to leave than you thought it would be.

But because of all those people, both East coast and West, I now have more than one place to call home.  As hard as it is to be separated by time zones and hemispheres, I know I can not only always come back but that I will also always be welcomed.  I’ve felt so much at home in two vastly different cities now, that  when people here ask me where I’m from I have trouble deciding what to say.  And I wouldn’t feel that way without the people I have so much trouble prying myself away from.  So I consider myself lucky, exceptionally lucky.  And if I continue to be as lucky as I am now, maybe I’ll have a third city to call my home.

Now, I’m going back to two different places that I’ve called home for most of my life and I wonder if all the commonplace everyday things that I once took for granted are going to stick out like the peaks of the Opera House.  Will the LA traffic finally seem as ridiculous as I know it really is?  (although Sydney has its fair share of congested arteries as well.)  Will NY actually seem like the densely, jam-packed pickle of an island I had once been so accustomed to?  Will I experience a sense of relief at finally no longer being the one with the accent?  At least no one will think I’m Canadian.

I’ll report my findings upon my return to the land of Oz.  Until then, I’ll be enjoying a literal change of season. Cheers!

I did participate in Earth Hour, but was away from my own apartment so I couldn’t watch as the city center went dark.  I was actually looking forward to seeing how the birthplace of the tradition would celebrate it, especially since Time Square gave such a pathetic showing last year.  I guess it will take another blackout of the entire eastern seaboard to put out all the blinking lights on 42nd Street.

This past weekend I just barely missed the homecoming of Jessica Watson the youngest person to (unofficially) sail solo around the world.  Of course, I wouldn’t have missed that had she shown up on time.  Dang teenagers.  At first I felt a sense of guilt at missing these odd, unique and occasionally historic events occurring right outside my window, then I thought about all the things I probably missed seeing every day of my life until now.

I never once saw the New Years Eve ball drop in Time Square.  I’m of the school of thought that real New Yorkers know it’s too crowded, too cold and too touristy.  We’d all rather be drinking indoors.  I never went ice skating at Rockafeller Center.  You want how much for 45 minutes?  My gracefulness belongs on cheaper ice.  And even though we made a yearly tradition of watching the parade balloons getting inflated the night before, there was no way in hell I was getting up at the crack of dawn to actually watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

But my life is not lacking.  Something interesting probably happens in every city in the world every single day.  I won’t let the drive to experience the goings on in this lovely city die, but I won’t drive myself crazy trying to catch every event that might just happen to cruise by my window.  For every event I miss a spontaneous fireworks show occurs.  There was a lovely one just a few hours ago.  Someone must have been really happy it was Monday.

With friends on both coasts in the US, e-mail had already become a quite a trusted friend of mine.  And then G-chat was just the icing on the cake.  Most of my online communication was still in fairly real time with friends I would have happily called and had the same conversations with (only you can G-chat topics at work that you probably wouldn’t say out loud, at least not in front of your boss).  But now the e-mails get sent with less regularity and I only have so many hours to chat before everyone I know in the US goes to sleep.  Afternoons online are quite quiet indeed.

But because of facebook, I can now not only keep tabs on those same friends but also on my childhood friends, friends of friends, classmates, business associates, former professors, bosses, and relatives I might have otherwise never knew I had.  What a weird and wonderful world we live in that I can see pictures from a wedding I would have attended had I been in the States, alongside photos of a former professors newborn son whom I’ll probably never meet.  Being on facebook is like attending a reunion of every institution and family you have ever been associated with.  But unlike the one on one conversations over cocktails that you might get at a real reunion, facebook is one where every guests grabs the mic and gives a speech at the same time.  It can be very hard to have a decent conversation over all that noise.

I love you guys, but I don’t need to see every video that amused you during your otherwise dull work week.  We probably know each other because of some common interest that we share, but that doesn’t mean I read the same extreme political columnists or listen to the same bands you do.  And it’s because I care about you that I have to tell you, the amount of time you spend playing farmville is just sad.  And don’t even get me started on those of you who complain about facebook on facebook.  If you hate it so much then just stop using it for f*^%$# sake!

What people seem to forget when they are using short form, instant e-communication, is to consider what they wouldn’t say if they were broadcasting on a different forum.  Over the phone, you might tell your friend about an interesting thing you saw on TV that week, or whinge a bit about how you’re feeling sick.  But would you call the same friend every five minutes to give them an update on the latest topic that was running through your mind?  Probably not.  So does your ex-boyfriend’s, co-worker’s, roomate’s cousin really care how many avocados you ate on Tuesday?  Probably not.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the internet has blessed my life with Skype.  I may be drinking my coffee while my friends are sipping glasses of wine, but we are still having a conversation over drinks just like we would in person, rude gestures and facials expressions included.   I not only get to have my weekly conversations with the parents but I can also see that they’ve never fixed the clock on the stereo in the living room.  Those little things add such a pleasant touch of home.  And no one on Skype bothers to tell me how many times they went to Starbucks that week.  They know that would be a waste of bandwidth.

So when communicating through the wonderful interwebs, that has blessed our life with such an abundance of information both exciting and mundane, interesting and dull, relevant and very much not, stop to consider this; does my friend living on the other side of the world, having her breakfast a full calendar day ahead of me, really care about what I’m about to post?  Or, would she perhaps like to hear about that crazy blind date I went on last week, that promotion I got at work, that I’m getting married, having a baby, getting a sex change or any number of other things that cannot be communicated in 200 characters or less and probably shouldn’t be broadcast to 300 people at the same time.  Maybe, just maybe, since she’s such good friend that I have her e-mail address, skype name, phone number, home address and enough information about her personal life to keep her from ever running for public office, I should have a chat with her instead.  Yeah, she’d probably like that.

whinging = whining.  I like this because it can never be confused with wining and dining, something I would never whinge about.
flat out = busy as hell.  This is a personal favorite of mine because it conjures of the image of being flattened by a steamroller, which is how being busy as hell can feel from time to time.
full on = intense, holding nothing back.  If work is full on you might feel pretty flat out, but try not to whinge about it.
rug up = layer up.  Winter is coming so I’m going to have to rug up.  Since most of the housing in Australia lacks insulation, I’m even going to have to rug up in doors.  That is something I will whinge about.
rock up = show up.  It’s pretty much the opposite of bounce, the way New Yorkers say they want to leave.  I haven’t adopted either, so I’m not likely to rock up and then bounce from anywhere.

There are also a lot of words that Aussies use in ways that Americans tend not to use them in.  I believe it was a former boss (the same one who hated the expression “no problem”) who pointed out how rude it sounded to start your statement with look or listen.  Not that I ever did that, just a lot of other people I had to listen to him complain about.  I became quite sensitive to it after that.  It does, in fact, sound like you are starting your sentence with “look, dumb ass.”  But it’s very common practice in Oz.  Not only do you hear it in interviews, on news programs and in casual conversation, but politicians also use it during debates and press conferences.  Of course, to their opponents they may very well be saying “look, dumb ass.”

Americans also tend to think that scheme means something bad.  People are always coming up with hair-brained schemes on sit-coms, which tend to go very wrong.  In the States, criminals and crooked politicians scheme.  But in Oz, a scheme is quite literally “a plan, design, or program of action to be followed.”  Thank you dictionary.com.

And for our last lesson of the day, when an American might say knock on wood and Aussie will say touch wood.  I won’t get into why that would be misunderstood.  Just know that I’ve adopted that one too, so try not to laugh when I say it.

Most often, I dream about having to get somewhere while facing certain architectural obstacles on my journey.  They usually are, pools of water that have to be swum through or skirted around, tiny doors that I have to squeeze through, and endless staircases that I have to climb up and down, often taking me to the wrong floor which forces me to have to turn around and start all over again.  Living in Australia has officially added another obstacle to my subconscious, slumbering journeys; giant spider webs.

Now, stretching across the staircases and hovering in the center of those tiny doors are elaborate tangles of spider web.  Just like in real life, my fear is not of a deadly spider, since I know even the bulbous ones in my dream are harmless, but of getting sticky threads of web, several times the strength of it’s equivalent thickness of steel, splayed across my face.  As if climbing up and down often uneven staircases wasn’t exhausting enough, I now have to limbo under those barely visible walls at ever other turn.  Thank you Australia, that’s just what I needed.

Mum = Mom
Bashing = Beating
Arvo = Afternoon
Brekky = Breakfast. This is just one example of a countrywide tradition of shortening words. This includes the names of people, places and activities. Almost any word that can stand to lose a syllable, will. So I’m still not quit sure why they attach the extra “s” to “maths.”
Re = Regarding and it is pronounced as a word and not each letter. Although, I have a feeling this shortened word didn’t become common until well into our current era of texts and e-mails.

And in the tradition of shortening everything as much as it can possibly be shortened and still understood, the Aussies have taken their own expression “Good on ya” and shortened it to a sweet and simple “On ya.” I guess the extra four letters make it just too long.

“Nice day for it” is often the response you will get in polite elevator speak. “Going to the beach? Nice day for it.” Yes, it is often a nice day for most things Oz.

Don’t ask what someone thinks but rather what they reckon. Aussies will also often tell you what they reckon. “I reckon it will be a nice day for it.”

If you like something then you’re probably keen on it. “I reckon we could go out for a beer this arvo if your keen. Nice day for it.”

“Hey” can be used like the Canadian “eh” and often is intended to pressure and unspoken agreement. “That was a good movie, hey?” Although, what I find confusing about the Aussie use of this particular expression is that it’s more often associated with the Kiwi’s (which, by the way, is also an accepted news term) as is the use of expressions ending with “as” like “he was drunk as,” “she is hot as” and “that was stupid as.” Whether Aussie or Kiwi in origin, I particularly like this expression because there really isn’t a need for the comparison that might follow the “as.” The lack of words paints it’s own picture. ‘Nough said.

But the occasional use of an expression that seems to float between the countries, doesn’t stop the Aussie’s from making fun of their neighbors for their grasp of the English vowels. I would love to see what they think of a southern drawl.

My next set of travels will take me to Queensland, a state so determined to be different from the others that it doesn’t even adopt daylight savings time, and then to the heart of the country where I’m sure everything will be different. I’ve no doubt those experiences will lead me to more accents and expressions I could never have learned about from a guide book. So stay tuned for continuing installments of “How to Speak Australian.”

So, naturally I was happy to find some like minded souls to endure the process with, and to find out that the permit issues, schedule setbacks, budget constraints and general insanity of the filmmaking process seems to be international.  This is a language I speak fluently.   But in Oz I do run into something new; a general question that even if not asked out loud I can see in people’s eyes when I explain where my accent came from.  “What are you doing here?”  True, I was born and raised in LA, the world capitol of filmmaking and I just spent ten years in NY, its not-so-little sister in “the industry.”  So yes, all of my connections (if you can call them that) are back in NY and all of the kids I grew up with who didn’t become lawyers found positions in the business that is Hollywood.  Most of the filmmakers I meet here are trying to get over there, so they can’t really fathom why I went the other direction.

I could write an entire dissertation about the many reasons I came all the way to Oz, life experience being chief amongst them, but everyone already understands those.  What I can’t seem to get people out here to see, is what an amazing filmmaking resource they have right here on their native soil.  The big studios set up shop in Hollywood because California offered almost every environment imaginable within one state and surrounded by a nice temperate climate.  Australia has that!  So what else do films require?  Money, for one, and there isn’t much of that in California or even NY these days.  But Australia has that!  Out here I’ve seen more opportunities for grants from each state and from the entire country than there are people to snatch them up (at least for a worthy film).  And what about a solid source of acting talent?  Hmm, well since a surprising amount of Hollywood’s biggest starts are Australian, and received their training in Australia at one of the most acclaimed acting schools in the world, I think it’s safe to say that Australia has that too!

So why isn’t the country crawling with wanna be directors and people who just happen to have a copy of their latest screenplay in the trunk of their car?  Why are the few people who dream in 16:9 trying to slap their storyboards down onto the overcrowded conference tables on Wilshire Boulevard?  It probably doesn’t help that, generally speaking, Australians tend to hate their own films.  I have yet to figure out why this is, but I’ve read several articles about how badly the home grown films do out here as opposed to when they are overseas.  And the filmmakers I recently met all seemed to agree.  They don’t like those “same old gritty stories.”  Aussie’s also have a lukewarm relationship with their biggest stars.  There are always current favorites and tabloid darlings, but Russell Crow’s and Nicole Kidman’s heydays have long past.  Gee, I’d still give them leading roles.  I just hope nobody badmouths any of Baz Luhrmann’s films around me, I might just deck them.

But if any of my fellow Aussie filmmakers were to ask for advice from someone with a little experience begging for jobs in the other hemisphere, I would tell them to ignore those snooty know-it-all American’s for a while.  The world does not need another cop drama set in NYC, another show about the spoiled and vapid in LA (think about what you have done to yourselves Los Angelinos!) any more reality TV stars, another heart-felt drama about a middle class American family, or any more parts that would be just perfect for George Clooney (Do you ever take a break, man?).  Take a page out of my favorite Australian’s book, and make your own movie, your own way.  Grab some of that money your country is so desperate for you to use to make them look good, take your camera out into the middle of nowhere (it won’t take long for you to get there) and film some of that great undiscovered talent that is going to sweep the Oscars one day.  You have everything you need right here, so use it!  I know you can do much better than re-making Mad Max (remember, that was a snooty American’s idea).

Hmm, maybe I ought to take my own advice.