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

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I'm sitting on the tarmac at Heathrow Airport (that's England, mate) ready to return to New York. We've been away for two weeks.

My lady fair was invited to present a paper at the 1st International Conference on Therapeutic Jurisprudence (phew!) in Winchester, so we built a family vacation around it. London, Winchester, the Cotswolds, Wales, the Lake District…

At the time we planned the bugger, we figured it'd fall well after my post-production work was finished on the film. Wrong. So everything had to be bloody intensified in order to free up the time, and we'll have to compress work on the music and mix after I return.

I don't mind admitting, boys and girls, there were days there when things got a wee bit testy on the home front.

Then, just before I leave, I get word from Jane that we didn't get selected for Sunny Side of the Doc (or, Vue sur les Docs, as the French say), a prestigious festival/market in Marseilles.

I'm surprised. Jane had warned me that we faced stiff competition, that the American documentaries are considered very strong this year. But she's also a member of the Selection Committee. Although she had to leave the room when the vote was taken, I figured... well, you know how these things work.

(A brief example of HOW THINGS WORK: When Jupiter's Wife, which I co-produced, won the Special Jury Prize at Sundance in 1995, the five-member jury included Ross McElwee, best friend and former collaborator of Michel Negroponte, the film's director; Peter Gilbert, one of the producers of Hoop Dreams, of which Yours Truly wrote a highly flattering account of its making for Filmmaker Magazine; and Susan Todd, an old buddy. Now, do I think they voted us the prize because they genuinely felt the film deserved it? Absolutely. Did it hurt that we had such intimate connections? Not one bit. It's called human nature.)

I don't let on to Jane, but I'm mightily relieved. As a ZDF-Arte co-production, Home Page has effectively been licensed to broadcasters in six European countries. Jane's also made a presale to YLE in Finland. I fear that if she sells any more territories there won't be enough pieces of the pie left to entice a U.S. theatrical distributor, which makes its profits largely through foreign sales and television (and U.S. television is already tied up for the next year with Cinemax).

Not being at Sunny Side also buys me an extra week of post-production time. I can relax a bit. Truly vacate.

Only I can't.

It's not like I don't enjoy the first week away, but I also fight enjoying it. I know I've worked like a dog lately but I feel I don't deserve a vacation, abandoning my film like I have.

I'm also allergic to England. I get off the plane sneezing, eyes burning, nose running. My antihistamines make me drowsy, a bad state to be in when driving on the wrong side of the road, stick shift in the wrong hand.

Near the end of the first week, though, I finally get through to Beo and hear all's going well with the sound work. Esther and Chris are on top of things at the office. Everything's fine. I knew it would be, knew we have enough time, knew I should stop doing this to myself.

Suddenly, I just let it all go. As if for the first time, I realize the film is basically finished. I could die tomorrow and the film would live on.

I've fucking done it!

Suddenly, the countryside is stunningly beautiful. I realize that I have a week left to spend quality time with my rapidly-growing daughter, still not even nine, away from the Web that so dominates her attention. A week to be with my ever-loving, ever-patient wife, to show my affection and appreciation.

I drive by day, at night we drink and eat and curl up in bed with novels. I lose myself in a host of literate crime thrillers. Only now I truly enjoy it.

And -- finally!-- I sleep. We never get up before 8:30.

We go for long walks in the hills, say hi to the sheep and cows, take in the all the varying shades and intensities of green. We continually get lost on the back roads. No e-mail. No news from the States. A few flashes of local atrocities on the radio but mostly music. Lucy and I watch France win the World Cup in a pub in northern Wales. Not once do we miss our computer.

I continue to call in for messages every day or two but they seem like they're for another person leading another life.

Then, the night before last, I find out my new 24-hour "non-drowsy" antihistamine, Clariton, may work wonders for my allergies but really does work as advertised. I awake at 2am in our dark, claustrophobic b&b bedroom and can't go back to sleep.

Thoughts race through my head. The synopsis for the IFFM catalogue had needed emergency pruning to 100 words that day, which I accomplished via the phone with Esther. Now I question every last word of it. Esther had casually mentioned we've been rejected by Telluride. Now I feel intense anxiety over Toronto. I want to be there, badly. I haven't really admitted to myself how much until now.

I think about how life will change for the three of us if the film is successful. I think about what I want to do next. I think about where this is all heading. I think about why I was ever born.

Non-drowsy stuff like that.

The last day is great, but just an hour or so ago, right before we board the plane, I call my machine and get an urgent message from Jane. Everything's always urgent with Jane. I still have two pounds left on my BT phone card so I call back.

She doesn't have time to explain, but it turns out the film has been accepted to Sunny Side of the Doc after all.

So much for any pad for the sound work. Our finished master must be delivered to ZDF in two weeks.

When the flight attendant comes around with the free drinks, I ask for two bloody marys. I've written this under the influence, to be bloody flank-- er, frank.

But for now I'm flanked by the two loves of my life with a new crime thriller in tow. A serial killer with remarkable powers is causing great mayhem. And the Chief of Detectives, just an ordinary guy, is looking for him. And redemption, of course. All is well with the world.

Tomorrow, it's back to real-life mayhem.

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