Donald Miller's Blog, page 132

Not Much Time Left to Live

Brandon Heath loaned me his Harley while I'm here in Nashville. We worked overnight last night, so I slept late and then took the bike out through the hills and ended up at a high view where Vanderbilt University has placed a small observatory to study the stars. I left my phone back at the house, and my computer and any books or work. The people at Vanderbilt took the shell off the top of one of the old telescopes and suspended it from the trees, over a concrete picnic table. The trees were past orange and dead leaves laid over the crest of the hill so squirrels scurrying from tree to tree sounded like they were trapped inside potato-chip bags. I think maybe God had a hell of a good time making that place, scooping the smooth hills up in the palm of his hands, scattering the seeds, breathing life into the critters. I wondered if He ever longed to come back to that place, or whether He remembered it at all. Maybe He'll go strolling through the woods of Tennessee some day and remember it like a line in a novel He wrote thousands of years ago, and it'll all come back to him, what He meant by it and why He thought it was beautiful at the time. And maybe He'll be delighted and surprised to see they put a picnic table under the trees, and smile at the telescope that has always been trying to find Him. I am really enjoying Tennessee. It's lovely here in November.

The Fear of Doing

Today I read an article on a blog about a creative project, and how some people liked it and some people didn't, and I kept wondering, when I was reading the comments from people who didn't like it, why their response was to comment about not liking it rather than to create something better. Nobody stands around a negative comment and talks about how great it is, or how well it's written, or how it's going to change the world.

But then I also understand why people do and say such things. It's hard to create things. It takes confidence and resources, two things that don't come easily or naturally. And also, there is an appropriate season for finding our identities, for trying on movies and bands like clothes in an attempt to figure out who we are.

Perhaps we should not put our energy into criticism, we should accept the challenge to squash what we do not like by creating something better. And when we have done so, we will realize how hard it was to create the thing we dismissed so easily.

Sooner or later, though, we have to create. We have to go and make something with the collected likes and dislikes we've assembled, we have to turn them into stories and songs, into families and gardens, into companies and churches.

These things start small, though, just a kid rolling a tiny pile of snow into a ball until it gets so big somebody gets interested and wants to help him, after which the ball gets larger and larger, and then others get motivated by what they are seeing and bring out sticks and lumps of coal and a tophat and a scarf.

But then again, snowmen are stupid. They just melt. Why try.

Movie Monday!

Good morning to you. As promised, our first Movie Monday update:

You can follow the movie madness much more consistently at the movie's website www.bluelikejazzthemovie.com

Extras Needed at All-Night Party in Nashville

On Monday night, starting at 5 and wrapping at around 2AM to 4AM (depending) we will be shooting the most energetic scene in Blue Like Jazz the movie. It's the Renn Fayre scene from the book Blue Like Jazz. The scene has been adapted as a Come as Your Own God party. We need over a hundred extras for the scene, in costume and ready to party.

So, if you have a great Holloween costume, come on out.

That said, though, this is a Come as Your Own God party so anybody wearing a toga, a Greek god or goddess outfit, a devil outfit, a moses outfit, a superhero outfit, or any other person or diety that could or might be idolized, please come and join us. This is an extremely lively scene, so take your five-hour energy and spend some hours on the set.

Our requirements are that you are between the ages of 18 to 25 and that you come in costumes. There will be plenty of snacks and stuff. Come with friends to make it more fun. Plan your costumes this weekend, get creative. The set has been an absolute blast. This is the craziest, most mayhem-filled scene that will have all the principal cast involved. I'll be around all night, too. I'm seriously going to try to sneak into this scene!

WHEN: Monday, November 1st (the night after halloween) at 5PM (We will go very late into the night.

WHERE: Scarritt Bennett, on the campus at Vanderbilt. 1008 19th Ave, Nashville, TN

Okay, here are some pics to help you get your mind around what we are talking about in terms of costumes. But seriously, get creative. Angels, devils, moses outfits, famous celebrities who people idolize, the stay-puff marshmellow man, whatever.

Of course, any kind of costume will do for background, but the people who dress more along the lines of these photos will get a bit more camera time and will be paid ten times what the others are paid (ten times zero is?) Here are some ideas:

Pressure is What You Feel When You're Not Prepared

Before the Oregon football game Thursday night, a reporter asked coach Chip Kelly if he felt any pressure. The coach shot back without hesitation "pressure is something you feel when you are not prepared." He said they were prepared. Oregon beat UCLA that night by a score of 60 to 13.

I think coach Kelly has a point. I don't think it's completely true, but it's largely true that if we feel nervous about a task we've got coming up, what would take the pressure off may be a few hours of preparation.

As I thought about the idea that preparation takes the pressure off, it motivated me to sit down and go through my major projects and do a little more preparing. I had a speech coming up, I had to go through the script and prepare a few scenes, I had a book tour lined up only  a couple weeks away. Now, for all those things, I'm feeling a bit more prepared than pressured.

But I'm not sure what to do about nerves.

Children Don't Learn They Matter from the Bible. They Learn it From You.

Yesterday, Matthew Perryman Jones sent out a tweet saying there was a princess party in his living room. You could tell the tweet went out from a moment of pure delight. How could you not delight in that picture? And earlier yesterday morning, I read a quote from John Sower's book Fatherless Generation about how quickly our girls wilt when their fathers leave, how they long to know they are beautiful and wanted and have the God-given power to endear a man. And for obvious reasons, the picture and the quote struck me pretty hard.

Young men and young women really do want the same things; to know they are important, to know they matter, to know they can impact the world, to know they are wanted and so on. Of course, these desires are expressed in different ways, but children of both sexes gain early on a confidence that they are on the earth for a reason and not as a mistake. And they don't learn this from a book, not even from the Bible. The idea we matter is more important to learn in childhood than in any other stage. And they learn from adults, from whether or not they get off the phone, make eye contact, get mad too quickly, love them enough to stay married to their mom, love them enough to protect them from danger, even from themselves. The message God wants to communicate to children is entrusted to you, to the way you look at them or celebrate them when they walk into a room. If they get that message, the Bible will confirm it for the rest of their lives. And if they don't, they'll struggle to believe the overwhelming obviousness of God's love.

The acclaimed poet Maya Angelou, when asked how she had become such a great poet, responded by saying she'd become a great poet because when she was a little girl, her father's eyes lit up when she walked into the room.

Love your sons. Love your daughters. Teach them what's already true; that they are delightful.

Thank You…

You can't possibly know how many people you've inspired, how many people you've made smile over the last month. I never thought I'd get to live through a story as great as this one. The best part, is there was nothing any of us could do. Jonathan Frazier and Zach Prichard rallied the troops to rescue us. Those really are the best stories, when the group of protagonists are finished, and their friends come in to rescue them.

Thanks for believing in us. You've told us a great story, so now we are going to get to work telling one to you.

From here, we will be keeping in touch with you through a couple blogs. If you visit www.bluelikejazzthemovie.com, the site will be changing shortly. There will be two links, one to a production blog which will keep everybody informed about what we are doing technically (sort of the press release version), and the other will be a more fun blog that Zach and Jonathan will be producing to keep everybody in touch with the project.

This blog will continue as normal. Tomorrow's post will be as though the movie stuff never happened, and I'll be sharing thoughts and ideas as we move along. Each monday, however, will be devoted to the movie. I'll do a video update. We'll call it movie mondays, that way nobody gets sick of all the talk.

Thanks so much for your grace and kindness through this process. I know you got tired of the tweets and blogs. Your response was thoughtful and understanding.

You've broken a crowd-sourcing record, you know. It was an amazing run. But I'm hoping somebody else, perhaps one of you, breaks this record soon and gets to feel the way we feel tonight. When the record is broken, I'll lift my glass.

Tell the right story at the right time and you'll change the world. Movie making just changed forever. Congrats, early adapters.

Sincerely,

Don

Five Reasons to Donate to the Movie

1. You will be part of the exclusive community that made history. And as such, you'll also be on a list of Blue Like Jazz supporters, which means you will be the first people we contact regarding potential screenings, sending movie posters and other such movie related promotions.

2. Because movies that talk about our faith often do not reflect the muddled reality of our lives. The life of the average evangelical is lived in the closet. It's hard to imagine such a story not being cheesy, but it only takes one, and then everything changes.

3. The subplot of the movie is about justice overcoming injustice, specifically related to the accessibility of clean water. A story, well told, about the need for clean water, can multiply a thousand-fold in social action.

4. Because we are telling the world we are producers of stories rather than just consumers. Before this movie (and again, this is the first in American history) movies were funded by a very small group of people who shoved stories down our throats to make money. This is a story being told by the people.

5. Because we would be very grateful for your help. We need your help.

Please join us today.

Some Words of Gratitude in the Final Hours…

With only a few hours remaining, we'd like to thank you.

The crew in Nashville that didn't have work until you helped us thanks you, the writers who really wanted to see their story on the screen thank you, our mothers thank you, the actors who live to bring other characters to life thank you, the musicians who will make the soundtrack thank you, the real life characters whose lives will be reflected in the story thank you, the people who were turning toward cynicism thank you, everybody who was about to give up before they heard this story thanks you, and I thank you.

Tell the right story at the right time, and you'll change the world. Thanks for telling us this story. We hope the one we tell you is half as good.

It's not too late. Join us.

The Story of Blue Like Jazz the Movie

Four years ago, Steve Taylor, Ben Pearson and I sat down to write a movie. Steve and Ben flew out to Portland and we spent hours in my living room, plotting out a story on a white board. It was the most exhilarating writing experience I'd had yet. We threw ideas around the room and entertained each other as we added to the story. And we laughed. We laughed so hard we fell out of our chairs. There were also somber times, when we realized one of our principal characters had been abused, and we had to bring it out in the story. There were times when we literally cried as we wrote a scene. It's a very strange thing to talk about, but sometimes fictional characters become real, and it's a trick in the mind that you love them as though they were your friends.

We knew we had something special. We hoped we had a story that could change everything, that could, as David Dark says, increase the talkability of the issues the average American evangelical deal with. We knew we had a good story.

We wrapped up the screenplay and began raising funds. But this was right at the beginning of the recession, and nobody was investing in movies. We'd hear somebody was interested, and then they'd back out. People would promise us they'd invest on a specific day, sometimes the next week, and something would change at the last minute. It was a difficult time for all of us.

Imagine writing a song that nobody would be allowed to listen to. Or a book nobody would be allowed to read. Imagine discovering a great piece of music, but you could only listen to it when you were alone, and you'd never be allowed to share it. Imagine creating a piece of art in your mind, but not being able to afford a canvass on which to paint.

Art becomes even more beautiful to it's creator when they share it with others. It's like God, as He goes to prepare a place for us. Creation is best when it's purpose is to move somebody else, to love somebody else, to enlighten somebody else.

The time came to call it quits. After two years, and having written a book about writing the screenplay (all the time thinking the book would come out with the movie) we had to face the truth. The movie was dead. So on September 16th, I wrote a blog stating we would not be filming Blue Like Jazz.

What you don't know is just before I wrote the blog, Steve Taylor and I had a long conversation in which we talked about the fundraising effort. We talked about how much heart we'd put into the film, and even how much heart I'd put into the book, but the fundraising story wasn't nearly as magical. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I told Steve we needed a good fundraising story, something as meaningful as the story itself, something that invited people to be part of the story. And that's what happened. The only catch was, Steve and I didn't have anything to do with it. What happened next played out like a miracle.

My friend Randy Williams called and said he had a couple friends in Nashville who had an idea. His friends were Randy Frazier and Zach Prichard. Their idea was to crowd source the movie. We needed hundreds of thousands of dollars, and we honestly didn't believe we'd get anything close. We set a low goal at $125k, but we only did this to be realistic. We had another investor, so technically, we could get a very low-budget movie done with that money, but we certainly needed more.

Ten days later, the movie was alive. When Kickstarter topped $125k, we were shell shocked. Steve immediately ramped up production, and every day, as the kickstarter campaign grew, he was able to afford a better camera, or better set design. Production companies heard about the campaign and offered their services at a discount. Locations began to offer their building for free. Each of the three writers waved our compensation. And as the total continued to rise, we sent offers to more and more talented actors. Amazingly, after being pronounced dead, the movie was alive and well, and even making the news.

The hero of this story is you.

But what you did was more than save a movie. You made history. This is the first American film to be crowd sourced. It certainly won't be the last, but it will always be the first. How cool is it that all 3271 of us (on the final morning) are the first people to ever do something in all of American history? Blue Like Jazz will always be remembered as the first major release American movie that was crowd sourced.

If you've not yet joined us, please do. There won't be another chance after midnight tonight.

WE are making a movie. WE have already made history. WE are telling the world a better story.

Today you are giving to us. Tomorrow we will start giving back.

Forever grateful,

Donald Miller

If you haven't joined us yet, today's the last day!