The D-Word's life is one of glamour and riches, as only a documentary filmmaker can live it

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On Sunday night I peruse the tv listings and discover that The Heck With Hollywood! is being re-broadcast on Bravo yet again this week.

How strange. The film consumed four years of my life. Now I see it listed and think, “Oh, that’s nice.”

That's because a new project consumes me now. I’ve spent over two years filming and editing it. It’s finally picture locked. Which means (for technical reasons that you don’t want me to get into, believe me) if I touch one frame, Debbie (the editor) and Beo (the sound designer and composer) will chop me up into small pieces.

Debbie now sits in the editing room doing thrilling things like redigitizing the footage over and over again because somehow or other our goddurn non-linear editing system has been reading wrong time code numbers.

Beo is finally off his previous job (a month late) and gets to play around making funny sounds and putting music into places we never imagined music going. He’s doing it to precise timings. Any significant change wrecks havoc and creates a tidal wave of extra work.

So I sit here dying to screen the film and get reactions but I don’t dare. Because I don’t want to tempt fate and find we need to make any changes.

Don't get me wrong, I know I've made a spiffy little film and that it will find an audience (and thank you Cinemax and ZDF for approving it without making an issue of time length).

It’s just the insecure artist in me will never be satisfied. Now that we’re picture locked, I’m haunted by editing choices we didn’t make. Did we introduce Justin properly? Do we need to establish that New York City is my home? What could we have done to make my story arc work better?

It’s like the awful nagging feeling you get in the cab ride to the airport when you’re going away on a long trip and you think you've forgotten to pack something critical. You may have planned the trip for months, made a detailed packing list, crossed off all the items, re-checked it a number of times over, yet still...

Still, I have to show the fine cut to some people. For, among other things, I need to find some more moolah in order to finish it.

One of the first people I give it to is Jackie Donnet, a no-nonense lady who oversees a small, little-known foundation called The Donnet Fund. She’s a former filmmaker who came into some money and had the enlightened idea to give away some to help documentary filmmakers complete their films.

Needless to say, I love Jackie Donnet.

What I love most is there’s no formal application with her-- just a short proposal, a finishing budget and a rough cut, which you simply drop off with her doorman. She’s very picky but if she likes it enough she’ll give up to $10,000 towards the final finishing, like she did with Jupiter’s Wife. And while some foundations take months just to get to the first round of consideration, with Jackie you get an astonishingly quick and to-the-point answer.

Sure enough, I call into my office answering machine from home recently and there’s a message from Jackie saying give her a call. This is a very good sign. If this were a rejection she’d probably have left it on the machine, a device seemingly invented for painless rejections.

As I dial, I try to keep an even keel -- a character trait inherited from my father -- but I can’t help salivating over the many fine uses I can make of $10,000.

In a dour voice, Jackie apologizes for taking so long to get back to me.

“Yeah, I know.” I tweak her. “It’s been five whole days since I dropped off my tape. You should be ashamed!”

She cuts right to the chase. “I just called to say I’m gonna pass on this. I watched about a half hour or so but I just couldn’t stay with it.”

Damn.

“Well, you turned it off just before all the great sex scenes, Jackie.”

At least she laughs. “I’m sorry, I just didn’t like the people.”

Not like Justin? What’s not to like?!?

Or is it me?

Nick Fraser from the BBC doesn’t seem to like the people either. He faxes the following day to say he likes Home Page, but that it won’t quite work for his Storyville time slot. He writes: “It is not a question of filming style or preoccupations - which is excellent - but the people you show.”

Maybe he means my mother.

I guess I’ve always figured audiences will love the people in the film because I love the people in the film. Well, at least there's nothing I can do to change that now.

Of course the terribly uninteresting people in the film I love most are my family members and I almost manage to pull off a full family screening amidst the chaos of Passover, but then we start horsing around during the Seder and it gets to be too late.

Mom keeps nudging and nagging so I eventually lend her the cassette to see alone later with my father. I'm not at all sure this is a good idea.

The next day they call and I brace myself. I flash back to the image of Dad falling asleep (and snoring) at the family screening of my very first film short. I recall the time Mom paid me the ultimate backhanded compliment after seeing a off-off Broadway play I directed: “Gee, I never knew you had it in you to do something so good.”

No, we don’t carry grudges in our family.

Mom gets on the phone first. “I was really surprised by how much I came to like Justin,” she remarks. “I was shocked,” my father adds. “It just kept getting better and better.”

Gee, they really liked the people. Go figure.

The reaction I fear most, though, is from Mona, the Consulting Editor. She’s been so busy she hasn’t been able to give the fine cut a thorough last look, but the other weekend she makes some time and, of course, the last thing I want to hear is that it needs any changes.

When I call a few days later, I silently beg her to please, pleeeease tell me it's fine.

“It’s fine,” Mona says enthusiastically. "It's great."

But I look for, and hear, the slightest hint of hesitation in her voice.

“It's great, but...?”

She pauses. “But you’re blowing it with Marjorie!”

Oh, piss. I don’t want to hear this.

She proceeds to give me three very specific places to move Marjorie’s first three interview comments.

“But we’ve locked picture, Mona!” I moan, and vehemently defend all the reasons why we have Marjorie where we do.

“I understand all that,” she replies soothingly. “But by putting her up front you’re setting up something that you don’t deliver. You’ll win in the short term but lose in the long. Trust me!”

"I do trust you, Mona. Ahhh, shit!" I stew silently.

“Just think about it, okay?”

I do think about it. I only have to think for a few minutes, though. Mona’s absolutely right.

The next day, I run the changes by Debbie (God bless our non-linear editing system!) and we agree -- it’s a vast improvement. The story now unfolds much more like it did in real life. Until my home page became more personal, Marjorie wasn’t really part of the picture. Now the film reflects that. And the emotional punch she provides comes at much more appropriate moments.

Beo is reasonably understanding. It's hard to tell, though, if he suspects it's probably not gonna be the last change.

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