I admit that my years in sketch comedy left me a little burnt out. I am not the dynamo I once when it comes to producing, directing, acting, editing, publicizing, sound designing, ticket-taking, and doing whatever else it takes to get my writing made. I had refocused my energy on TV writing, a light having come on for me that this was my ultimate career path. And so, I thought, I’ll just keep writing. Eventually someone ELSE will do the producing.

So far, not so much.

I’ve realized, though, that this is not just some signal from the gods that my writing isn’t good enough to get made. (I hope.) But the fact is that during the time I was focusing on just writing, other people weren’t getting to see that writing. So it’s time to don the producer hat once again and make my work visible

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been posting on craigslist and elsewhere that I’m interested in building a collective of aspiring filmmakers. The goal will be to create tight, professional comedy shorts. One of the downsides of the years of stage productions is that I don’t have anything tangible to show anyone in exchange for years of sweat and sleepless nights. Hopefully this will fix that.

I’ve been insisting on quality people with a strong work ethic. I don’t want to mess around. Half of the indie video shorts you see out there are crap. That’s not what I want to spend my time on. What has amazed me is that I’ve had quite a response, and from good people. It turns out I’m not the only one who is tired of posers talking about doing, but not actually doing. Writers write. Producers produce. Directors direct. At the risk of sounding like a Nike commercial, it’s really looking like strongly skilled artists will be happy to help me out, for no reason other than the fact that I’m not an idiot and I have the strength of will to see projects finished. Sweet. The first very short project is scheduled for late April.

Let’s face it. Self-producing has a real advantage: you get produced.

And so, once more unto the breach. This time around, my pledge to myself is to serve no more than two positions on any project, usually writer/producer. We’ll see how long that lasts.

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