Hey Portland food lovers and providers,

We are looking for food sponsors for our upcoming 9-day shoot. Meals are a crucial element on any food set, keeping a 40-person crew properly fed and caffeinated can make the difference between movie magic and total mayhem.

If you know of, or are, a restaurant, coffee shop, caterer, food cart, chef, farmer, genie or general Good Samaritan who can provide in-kind donations, day-old/leftovers or gift cards between the dates of 8/29 - 9/7 please get in touch with us.

And thank you for supporting your local film-making community!

No, she’s not a member of the cast, but we’re happy to welcome her anyway.  Meet Ryan Findely’s new daughter, Mable August Findley

I’m very happy to report that The benefit for The Adults on Sunday was a rip-roaring success, and most certainly worth the effort.

The crowd at La Merde

Thanks to everyone who came to enjoy the art, drinks, and conversation, and an extra special thanks to those that made donations or placed bids on items in the silent auction.  Your generosity helped us raise over $1,000 towards our production, bringing us one step closer to getting cameras rolling.

Unfortunately, the intended highligh of the evening—a sneak peek at new footage from the film—didn’t pan out.  Let this be a lesson to you: you can test an AV system over and over (and over, and over) and something can still go wrong.  If I wasn’t grateful to vodka sponsors before the sound went out on our presentation, I certainly was after.

Even if you missed the event, there are plenty of ways to support us (yes, even if you’re broke).  Visit our support page here to see all of our wish lists.

Read the full invitation here!

Our benefit at La Merde is gearing up, and we are looking for contributions of original artwork, goods and services for our silent auction. Make a contribution, and you or your company will get a shout out here on the site, a listing in our event program, and, of course, our undying gratitude.

To donate contact auction supervisor Martha Early, at (360) 448-5475, or via e-mail at marth.early@gmail.com.

Casting the role of Andy was relatively easy. The script is told from that character’s point of view, and the actor has a lot of material to draw from to make that character complex and sympathetic.

But the role Peter is another story. Peter’s motivations remain shrouded, and his very inaccessibility is an integral part of his character. Additionally, there will be audiences who have identified him as a bad guy—a “predator”—before the lights have even gone down. The actor behind the role has to be able to challenge those assumptions in a relatively short amount of screen time.

After two callbacks, it came down to three amazingly talented actors, who took the role in three very different but totally feasible directions. It was not an easy choice, but I believe that we made the right one in Ryan Findley.

When not acting, Ryan keeps himself very busy with his own gutter company, his wife’s store, Red Berry Boutique, one son, one daughter and another daughter on the way. He does not, apparently, sleep.

He is currently in production on the local WWII drama Pathfinders: In The Company Of Strangers. Suffice it to say, Ryan’s role in The Adults In The Room will be a very different one.

You can read more about Ryan on his IMDb page.

It feels silly in retrospect: after watching dozens of young men read and holding three rounds of callbacks, the actor we’ve chosen for the part of Andy is not only the first person to have read for the role, he was the very first person to respond to our call for actors. Introducing Calvin McCarthy.

Calvin’s reading became the centerpiece of the verité scene I cut of the first round of auditions but I was hesitant to offer him the part until I found just the right Peter for him to play against. That didn’t stop Calvin from becoming a “fan” of the project on every platform available, including our Vimeo page, where that scene—which all but announces him as our pick—is hosted. I kept him on the hook so long, I was expecting him to be irritated or just plain unavailable when I finally offered him the part. Instead, he acted as if I had just handed him a winning lottery ticket.

Calvin has a ton of experience on the stage and the screen, having recently wrapped production on the local feature film American Disciples. The Adults In The Room will be his first starring role.

Read more about him on his IMDb page.

Moving right along, we’re holding auditions for the supporting roles of the film, in Downtown Portland.

Interested in auditioning, or know someone who might be? Fill out our handy online form, and we’ll be in touch.

Yesterday I wrapped up a teen filmmaking workshop at Northwest Documentary Arts and Media. The content of the workshop itself wasn’t very different than the teaching that I do in my normal life as an artist in residence at the Northwest Film Center, but this workshop was actually produced solely for the purpose of capturing footage of myself as an educator for The Adults.

One of the major themes of the film is my relationship with young people in contrast to Peter’s, as well as—though I hate to sound immodest—the fact that I’m pretty damn good at teaching kids. That means shooting the beginning few days of the type of class in which I (and students) shine: a week-long filmmaking intensive.

“But wait,” you (and a lot of other people) ask, “why not hold a one day workshop, if you only need a few minutes of footage?” It’s a valid question, and I considered that option, but the moments that I want to capture on film are the ones in which young people are opening up and expressing themselves, talking about the films they want to make and the stories they want to tell. That process is a difficult one, and without the promise of actually being guided through the production of that film on the back end, there wouldn’t be anything keeping them at the table. Even though I only need a day or two of footage, the students need the promise that a real film will come out of the process for them to be motivated to participate.

Taking cameras into one of my existing classes was out of the question, since introducing a camera crew would jeopardize what I’m trying to do in the classroom. The participants have to know what they’re getting into off the bat. And utilizing the facilities of the Northwest Film Center wasn’t an option at all, since I am essentially offering a version of a class that I already teach for free, which would be unwanted competition.

So then we tried to go to another nonprofit. At first, it seemed like Northwest Documentary Arts and Media would be a perfect partner: they have the space, they offer classes already, but none in narrative work, and their executive director Ian McCluskey is a huge supporter of the film. When I presented the idea to their board, it seemed like a slam dunk. One board member even asked “why wouldn’t we do this?” I explained that the ONLY possible snag would be if a parent objected to the broader content of the documentary, which I then explained but added that it had absolutely no bearing on the workshop, and that as far as the kids were concerned, it was just a class. But it didn’t matter; from that point on every discussion was about whether the students would be “harmed” or “exposed”. There were two emergency board meetings held on the issue before they determined that they couldn’t include it as one of their programs. Luckily, Ian had the ability to provide the space as a (highly subsidized) rental without getting board approval, but without the partnership of the organization, there was no marketing. That meant that recruitment would have to be cobbled together from Craigslist posts, Facebook status updates, and word of mouth. In addition, since the workshop was not part of Northwest Documentary’s programming, we were not included in their insurance, so we had to buy our own.

When the first day of the workshop rolled around, I was expecting a maximum of five participants. Instead, I got eleven of the brightest, most charming, and most enthusiastic teenagers I’ve ever worked with. We had a great workshop, and the footage we captured is fantastic. Anna was able to zero in on several of the touching moments that reveal themselves when a group of young people are encouraged to express themselves.

Extra special thanks goes to to Ian McCluskey and Julie Gliniany for supporting this project and putting up with us in their office for an entire week. For the footage we got, I promise it was worth it.

It’s 2:00 AM, and I’m watching the same clips over and over. It’s the video of the callback auditions for the parts of Andy and Peter, and I worry that I’m becoming numb. It’s been months since the callback, and haven’t contacted any of the actors, even to let them know that we are behind schedule. I’ve been terrified of even looking at the tape.

Exploring personal territory isn’t new for me, I’ve been doing that for my entire career. But talking a topic to death is very different from reproducing events; deconstruction makes the confusing things more intelligible, reconstruction throws all that confusion back into your face. Here in front of me is Peter, with all his maddening flaws and contradictions, channeled through an actor whose job it is to understand who Peter is better than Peter ever did himself. And here is young Andy, a child actor reading grown up words that makes the contrast between the two starkly apparent.

My job is to make a decision, but doing so forces me to identify exactly what it is that I want to say about these two characters. Are they in love, or are they willing (or maybe trying) to destroy each other? And maybe more importantly, am I ready to hand that decision over to actors who didn’t live through it?

Meanwhile the shoot dates come closer and closer every minute, and everyone is waiting for me. I know I have to make the hard choice and commit. But for now, I’m going to look at those clips one more time.