I took this picture at last night’s screening of Butterflies of the film’s director Ester Brym and YouTube hottie Olga Kay as part of the Arclight Documentary Film Festival — at Arclight Cinemas Hollywood.

RENT BUTTERFLIES ON YOUTUBE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOHx2or45Go&feature=featured&playnext_from=TL&videos=ANLxzaKh00A&playnext=1

Just now, I was able to watch Revolutionary Road in its entirety, with no interruptions, and in order. I am still wiping away my tears as I write this. But this is the first time I can write about it as the other time I screened it was pre-release. Now that the movie is in theaters, I can be open with my thoughts and share them with you.

I can’t get over the writing. And the directing. And the acting! And the cinematography. And the score. And the production design.

The typical Hollywood movie, the typical yet well-done Hollywood movie, rips the scab of daily existence off and exposes our core to the elements – for a brief moment – and then, gently covers the open wound with dressing in the form of a forced Hollywood happy ending and off we go back to the parking lot to our cars and then our mundane lives. It all happens so fast, you’re almost not entirely sure you have just experienced it. But this movie will rip the scab off, hold your arms behind your back – and force you to sit with that feeling for an uncertain period of time. When you think you’ve had all you can take, an intense, golden light will pour over your open wound. If there were any parts that were out of view, they are no longer.

“People don’t forget the truth, they just get better at lying”

All the while your dark, inner secrets are being forcibly exposed to the part of you that is out there living life, there is a piano softly playing in the background. It isn’t the soothing type of piano either, it’s the type of piano that is constant and repetitive, which can either affect you like a lullaby or a psychotic chant. It chants it’s tune to remind us of that voice that lives inside of us, that Truth that keeps knawing at the door that we have shut on it. Sometimes the piano strikes chords that are reminiscent of the out of control feeling inside. And you sit with the core of YOU open to the world, and you FEEL in that moment – a moment which feels like eternity. And and you feel. And feel. And feel. Until you go deeper and deeper into the core of You. If reading this evokes discomfort or anger in you then I know one thing about you: You are afraid to face your true self and chances are, you won’t like this movie very much. If, however, you appreciate the opportunity to get in touch with the deeper part that lives inside of you, the part that you have perhaps gotten really good at ignoring, then this movie is a must-see for you – as it was for me.

To help paint a better picture of why this movie had such a profound affect on me that morning at the lab, let me explain the circumstances that lead up to it. I had just worked the Benjamin Button premiere the night before. My job at the premiere after-party was to “guard” the Paramount Execs’ table (basically, not let anybody who wasn’t supposed to be there be there – a real no brainer.) Well, I ended up standing next to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie for a long time as they hung out at that table and not at their designated VIP section. I was thrilled to be so close to two of the biggest Hollywood stars in the business. It’s one thing to see pictures of stars, or watch televised interviews, or watch edited films, but it’s another to stand next to them watching them talk with all kinds of people, live. I watched how they interacted with people, and each other. At first I was like, “oh wow, this is cool” but that was quickly replaced with something on a deeper level. I saw my unlived life in their faces, in their smiles. I stood there guarding that table well into the night. I was cold. My feet hurt. My soul hurt. And I knew I had the 8:30 screening the next morning. I just felt invisible and in pain.

“If being crazy means living life as if it matters then I don’t care if we’re completely insane, do you?”

The next morning I watched the first three reels of Rev Road as I mentioned at the beginning of this blog. I was blown away. The writing…. it’s… me. It’s like someone reached into my core, the core that I don’t tell ANYBODY about, and put it in a glass jar and then poured the contents of that jar over film emulsion and then projected that back to me in the dark screening room in Hollywood that morning. What a strange feeling to have your Self projected back to you in way of a work screening. I am there to check the print for scratches, hits, digs, water marks or the like. But how could I? How could I notice ONE THING wrong with this film when all I knew was what I felt inside and what I felt inside was telling me to get up and walk out of there and never go back to another J-O-B again in my life. But I didn’t and that made me just as sad as I felt at the end of that movie. I couldn’t help but think about how many missed opportunities there have been in my life. The affect this movie has had on me will last a very long time, perhaps forever. I’m still digesting my feelings from it but this is where they stand as of screening #2. I’m sure I’ll have more to post about this later.

Golden Globes and Oscars.

Best Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio
Best Actress: Kate Winslet
Best Director: Sam Mindes
Best Cinematography
Best Production Design
Best Score

This movie plays out more like a stage play than a film. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe” was referenced more than once when talking about this movie. It is a dialogue-driven, character-driven movie – my favorite! I will see this movie many more times I’m sure. And a dream of mine would be to write something as profound as this movie (I’m now reading the book), to work with Kate Winslet (she’s my favorite actress) and Leonardo DiCaprio (my favorite actor) and to live my life from my heart. This is what sticks with me from this story: LIVE YOUR TRUTH. LIVE YOUR TRUTH. LIVE YOUR TRUTH.

Madisen Beaty & Lisa Murray at the Benjamin Button Premiere

I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to upload this picture! I took this is the night of the “Curious Case of Benjamin Button” premiere. Yes, I took the picture!  LOL  It’s a thing I do with my digital camera.  I hold it in one hand and then just snap away!  I do this a lot.  Anyway, I was fortunate to meet Madisen Beaty, the young actress who played “young Daisy – age 10″ (young Kate Blanchett) in Ben Button. She is the sweetest person! Her parents were with her too and they were wonderful as well. I really just couldn’t believe how down-to-earth and sweet she was. In a sea of “Hollywood”, she and her parents were a breath of fresh air! Not only is she sweet, she is AMAZING in the movie. She stands out, seriously. She has an amazing camera presence. She has so much expression and she comes across so confidently. I mean, think about it, here she is on the set of her first major movie, starring opposite BRAD PITT as his love interest (it’s complicated, you have to see the movie to understand!) and she comes across like an industry pro!  Anyway, keep your eye out for this wonderful actress. I know amazing things are in store for her.

My holiday party December 18, 2008

It started off as my mom’s house, the real-life house that I grew up in.  It wasn’t a great house, but it has cute aspects.  The worst part about that house was how many layers of dirt and dust there were everywhere – in real life (growing up) and in the dream.  And here I am having a party with my boss and everyone else under the sun expected to come.  Even for my real life party last week, my apartment wasn’t as clean as I would have liked it to be.  It’s hard to just turn around and scratch your ass in the confinement of an apartment when you are used to a house.  It’s great that it’s smaller than a house because cleaning is faster but because it’s small, it’s harder to feel like you have made progress because I really just end up moving the same stuff from closet to room to room back to closet.  I can’t stand living like this.

But back to the party…

Anyway, as people were showing up, the party was morphing into this beautiful place and not an unfamiliar place either.  It was morphing into my real-life grandparent’s house in Winnetka, Illinois.   But in my dream it was MY house.  My grandparents had a beautiful house (real life) and one that inspired me to be prosperous in my own life.  After my grandmother passed away it was sold by the bank that managed my grandmother’s affairs.  It was devastating to me as I had always planned on getting married there.  The house was magical and healing for me spending summers there as a child.  Coming from a dysfunctional and extremely stressful home life in Arizona, it was like a dream to be there.  Everything was as it should be.  There was a place for everything and it was always neat and organized and clean.  I even wrote my first screenplay there when I was 10 on a manual typewriter I found in the attic.  But as my grandmother grew older and needed 24-hour nursing care, her estate, her money, her investments and her home were all transferred over to her bank, The Northern Trust Bank of Chicago.  Over the years I really came to hate the trust fund officers at this bank.

The back of my grandparent's house in Winnetka, IL

Side Note:  If you ever consider setting up a trust fund for your beneficiaries, please make sure you set up a proper Power of Attorney.  The way my grandmother’s estate was set up was that the bank was the judge and jury for how every single penny would be spent and there was no third-party representative to make sure the decisions that were made by the bank – as to whether to pay for something or not – was executed per my grandmother’s wishes.  But they would twist and turn the written word until it wasn’t recognizable anymore.  I’m sure they had their pressures from their bosses to behave in ways that were, well, just downright rude and unacceptable, but treating the family like scum for wanting to utilize our grandmother’s money as she had intended (school, medical bills, etc.) is just something that to this day I get angry about!

But back to the party…

So as I was cleaning all the last minute areas which really wasn’t “last minute dirt” which is why I was partially mortified and stressed out as the party was beginning.  It was the kind of dirt that I should have cleaned a week before the party!  Dust and dog hair behind the couches.  Lots and lots of dust on primary pieces of furniture that were in the midst of the seating areas.  God, as I write this a part of me cringes because I know I have lived this scenario from my dream so many times in real life.

But back to the party…

Mr. Roarke

And so in my dream, I am cleaning and there is a worker following me around asking me what I need help with.  He was a very pleasant and soft-spoken man and never questioned my decisions but he was the kind of person who would give you a look if what you suggested wasn’t the “best” route of action.  Kind of like Mr. Roarke on Fantasy Island.  Mr. Roarke would do what the “guests” requested, but he always gave them a “look” which was their opportunity to rethink it.  However, there would be no show if they did rethink it and only the audience was left to move forward with the knowledge that whatever this person was choosing for their Fantasy Island experience was one that would be riddled with trouble.

But back to the party…

So I was moving through the rooms dusting, lighting candles and putting sheets which were turning into perfectly tailored couch covers over the old couches.  As I was doing this, more people and workers were showing up.  My really cool real-life boss was there and was preparing for Michael Bay to come and wanted to make sure we had enough paper.  She actually snapped a little and said, “I don’t know who put two pads of paper down here.  This clearly isn’t enough!  I don’t know what they were thinking!”  And I responded, “Oh, it was me. I didn’t realize we needed more paper than that.”  I then asked her if we were going to transcribe by hand, word-for-word everything Michael Bay was going to say (ie: his demands for Transformers 2), she said, “Yes”.  Whoa.  But I couldn’t deal with that because the house wasn’t clean all the way and so she gave me a look like, “Don’t worry about it, I’ll enlist someone else to get more paper” and with that I was off.

Rob Moore

Soon after that moment, I lit a cigarette (I don’t smoke) and then I felt bad because I noticed Rob Moore, President of Marketing and Distribution for Paramount Pictures, and his wife were sitting at the dining room table (at opposite ends) eating dinner. I think his kids were there too.  (I know, weird huh?  During MY party in MY house!  LOL  Whatever, that’s why it’s a dream!)  I quickly put my cigarette out and moved into the next room so I could continue to set things up for the party.  I think at this point it was an hour into the official start time of the party because I thought to myself, “thank god people don’t come on time!” because that gave me more time to prepare.  But then what was I thinking?  I was JUST putting couch covers on?  And dusting?  And putting food out?  An hour into the party??  What the hell.  And I wish I could say that this is something I have never done before in real life but… back to the dream.

So I’m out front and this is where the house doesn’t look like my mom’s house nor my grandparent’s house but MY house.  It is a hybrid of my grandparent’s house and some big ass Los Angeles house – just like the kind I picture myself living in someday.  It had a gate and then a long circular driveway with parking spaces all along the circle that faced out.  So I could have like 20 cars parked along the long circular driveway and still have cars pull up and go around the circle.  I love that!!  That’s actually a big part of what I will be looking for in my ultimate “Sky Home” – parking.  Because what’s the use in spending millions of dollars on a house where you plan to do a lot of entertaining and then have nowhere for your guests to park?  That always annoyed me and this is a more prevalent issue here in Los Angeles than in Scottsdale due to land availability and costs.  I guess for the right amount of money, I can find a big Los Angeles house with a long driveway and parking spaces.  I just have to be willing to pay for it.

So there were already some very nice cars parked along the driveway and there were two valet parkers standing by ready to work.  One was very tall and had dark hair.  He was very respectful when speaking with me.  He asked me if I should have my dad’s BMW moved into a proper parking space.  First of all, my dad doesn’t drive a BMW.  He has driven a Pinto, a Celica, an El Camino and a random pick-up truck, but BMW, no.  Although, when we first moved to Scottsdale, Arizona from Geneva, Switzerland, my father ordered a Ferrari to be delivered to the house in Scottsdale from Europe.  He said it was for an investment because it was inexpensive to ship them overseas but then people would pay good money for them once they were here.  I just heard that story recently which I have to say, sort of busted my bubble.  The bubble I had about the reasons behind the silver Ferrari with red leather interior in the garage in the middle of the desert was because my dad was cool, plain and simple.  I thought he was stylish in a quiet way and I liked that.  But then cut to his pooh brown Pinto during the divorce that he used to pick us up in and take us to our Sunday dinners.  God that was depressing.

NOT a Ferrari

But back to the party…

So the nice valet parker asked me if he should move my dad’s BMW so that nobody tried to lift up the back seat.  What??  I know, it didn’t make sense to me either.  And apparently, it didn’t make sense to the valet parker either because when I looked at him like, “what?” he said, “I don’t know, that’s what your father said”.  I told him it was okay for him to move the car into a parking space.  The driveway, as I had mentioned previously, was a long, circular driveway, but there were trees planted all along the driveway on both sides of the circle.  It was an oblong driveway really, not necessarily “circular” but that’s just semantics.  The point is, when I look at it right now in my mind, I can see the blue light of the full moon illuminating the light grey cement that makes up the oblong driveway, and the reflection of the moon on the roofs and hoods of the nice cars littering the driveway as I am standing there discussing my father’s car with the valet parker.  It’s really nice.

So as I’m talking to the valet parker outside, I look into the double glass doors behind him and I see that there is a huge walk-in wine cellar and I want to turn the light on inside of there because it’s a beautiful feature of the house and I can’t believe I didn’t have them turned on already.  I also start thinking about all the cabinets in the living and dining room that have lights inside of them and I become obsessed with going back inside and turning all of those on.  So I am finally able to leave the driveway and I immediately head into the living room to turn on the cabinet lights.  It’s such a good feeling because now the party starts to come alive in my mind.  It’s interesting because until this point, the living room had been dark and empty!  It’s weird because that’s the room where all of the entertaining normally takes place.  But there were other rooms near the dining room (not real-life rooms from my grandparent’s house but dream-style rooms, rooms that I made up for the purpose of my “dream party” I suppose) that were filling with people, but not in the living room.  As I enter the living room from having just been outside with the valet parker, I am turning on lights and I walk by the grand piano and I can’t believe I haven’t gotten that going!

It’s like the magnitude of what is available to me for this party is like a clown car.  What starts off as a one-room party at my mom’s house in Scottsdale, Arizona mushrooms into this sprawling Los Angeles mansion mixed with my grandparent’s estate in Winnetka, Illinois!  And then as it is expanding in front of my eyes, it is up to me to “turn on the lights” and bring life into each previously ignored area.  It makes me think about how we limit ourselves in thinking about what the possibilities are in our lives.

And so right when I saw the piano I remembered that my mom had converted the player piano to play midi files/discs and she had purchased The Nutcracker disc – true in real life and in the dream.  It is the coolest thing to watch and listen to a player piano play something as beautiful and holiday-inspiring as The Nutcracker on a grand piano in a room with hardwood floors and great acoustics.  I dream of being able to have live piano at one of my holiday parties!  And so before I could turn it on I turned on all the lights in the living room and headed all the way to the cabinet all the way in the back.  I pulled a chair over and I stepped onto the chair and I opened the cabinet and I turned the dial inside the cabinet.  As the cabinet filled with light, I stepped off the chair to admire the way it lit up the room and I felt filled with possibility for this party.  I could see how much room there was for the party to get really big and fun.  I felt really good about it.  And with that, I woke up.  That was it.

That was my dream party. ☺  Except if I could do it all over again, I would already be 100% ready for when the guests arrived.  I mean shit, if I had that kind of money, why wouldn’t I hire people to help me clean and set up from like a week prior?  You know what I mean?  Shoot.  Maybe the meaning in the dream was for me to open my mind to all of my resources and utilize them all fully – to not limit myself.  And also, that prosperity is alive and well and it is on the horizon!  Woop woop!  In all seriousness, whenever I dream about my grandparents, their house, Jim Carrey, Madonna or Oprah, it’s always a good sign and after the depressing day I had yesterday, I’ll take it.

Bling

Originally uploaded by SkyGirl25

I’m testing out my new Flickr-directly-to-blog feature. This is a picture of the purse I had lent to me for walking the red carpet at the Emmys in 2006. I call this BLING.

Check out the trailer:  http://www.madagascar-themovie.com/