Jeff Phillips's Blog, page 22

Adore - projection & performance

I recently joined XIII Pocket as an ensemble member and last night I got to see some of the film work for the upcoming production of Adore going up at Steppenwolf in the Garage studio space. The staging of it involves intricate juxtaposition between live stage and film projection, and it's equally interesting to see how Stephen Louis Grush wrote it to play out that way. Often times mediums are mixed to add a stylized layer, but when an artist intends the production's vision as a precise combi...

The Liquid Burning of Apocalyptic Bard Letters

This coming Thursday Feb. 11th, my friend Aaron Cynic of Diatribe Media / Chicagoist and I have teamed to throw a reading event based on the theme of dystopia and apocalypse. Since my book Turban Tan is a very much in the realm of dystopia and global apocalypse, and Aaron's forthcoming zine explores this theme as well, we figured it'd be swell idea to pool our efforts and really have fun with such a heavy theme that is open to a wild variety of intense scenarios. We're jacked about the line ...

world of tea

This weekend we shot more for Tea Man, Steep! including a tea party sequence, which was a blast. That was Friday. Saturday we shot the morning after sequence. I'm very proud of the shots Eliaz Rodriguez and Ben Fout have been setting up. Over the summer we worked mostly at pumping together improvised short films, meeting every Tuesday and working with whatever locations were immediately available or shooting complete guerilla style, making up all dialogue and interaction based off of a loose ...

Tea Man

During my first few months of college, I drank a lot of tea during the day. This was before I got full fledged into coffee. But I was really into, drinking it. Some of my first college friends would jokingly refer to me as Tea Man. The monicker subsided rather quickly as the blacker, caffeinated beverage gave me a better buzz, but the idea of Tea Man returned recently with an idea for a new Wood Sugars short film Eliaz Rodriguez and I started to brain storm just before x-mas. We are now in pr...

Phillips on Drippy Man

The Drippy Author from Jeff Phillips on Vimeo.

The Roof Party

Last night I dreamed I lived and worked in a very tall tower in a city with very close and sky penetrating towers. On the top most floor was a very run down lounge, no longer in use. Red velvet carpet ran the length of the floors. Booth chairs were gripped in dark red plastic and white curtains covered the windows. An "emergency exit" door opened up to a roof ledge. There was a small space between the ledge and the ledge of another close by building. It snowed heavily. It was often very wind...

TELEVICTIM in progress....

So in November I did the NaNoWRimo - national writing month. I had an idea in mind for it but scrapped it at the last second and decided to surprise myself and go stream of conscious with and see what story unfolds. It was truly blast and I'm proud of the story I probed and laid out. I'm excited about the characters and general world that came about by just unleashing - not controlling. However, quite a mess of text. Many feverish sections detract and don't develop. I started to comb through ...

Foaming

I've developed an odd habit over the past week. I've taken to zoning out in deep thought while brushing my teeth. The foam builds up and I wind up swallowing a little, and then I cough and gag. It makes me want to not brush my teeth. But I don't have dental insurance so that would be a bad idea. I must really work on focusing on the task at hand. It reminds of something an old boss said to me when I slipped up a little on a project, I forgot to test one of our back up systems, and sure enough...

Strange Fear

As I was coming home from an errand mid afternoon yesterday, walking up the courtyard I was stricken with an odd sense of panic. A woman was fast approaching from behind, draped in a yellow jacket, hood covering her face. Her feet clopped. The particular tonal quality of the clopped drove this panic through the roof and I hustled to the front entrance to the stairwell. She was still coming fast from behind. I fumbled with the keys, got in, and hurried up one small flight of stairs and fumbled...

Turban Tan read aloud at Columbia College-Chicago

Here is a clip of me reading from Turban Tan at a Columbia College-Chicago reading event.

Jeff Phillips reads from Turban Tan at Columbia College-Chicago from Jeff Phillips on Vimeo.