the local gelato store

I moved into a new neighborhood about nine months ago. I didn't choose the neighborhood, it came with the house I bought. But it's a good neighborhood. A lot of people choose it. My only complaint would be that it's a bit far from the part of the city I used to call home.
It could be worse though. A lot worse. I've lived in worse neighborhoods.
About ten years ago, I was exiled from my home. I'd lived in a particular neighborhood for almost ten years, felt at home there and then I got evicted. I couldn't find an apartment anywhere close to where I wanted to live. Actually that wasn't quite true. When I did finally find an apartment, it was close to where I wanted to live. Close. But no cigar.
It was about a ten or fifteen minute walk from a part of the city I felt at home in. It was about a half hour walk from the part of the city I'd left. The problem was, if I left my house and walked those fifteen minutes to the part of the city I felt at home in, it would be what you might call a "dead walk". I could walk down one of the residential streets and see a lot of nice homes, kids playing, and maybe wave to a distant acquaintance. Or I could walk down the main drag, past a whole bunch of stores that I had no interest in, alongside a lot of car traffic and very little foot traffic.
In other words, where I lived was nowhere. It was only close to somewhere.
Now don't get me wrong, this particular neighborhood was very desirable. A number of my friends live there now and are very happy to be there. But they're happy for the kids. They're happy because they can walk to work. They have different priorities than me.
I don't need to live in the heart of it. I don't need to live in what I recently heard someone call a "destination neighborhood". But I prefer to live in or close to one of those neighborhoods where people sit in cafes and on patios, buy groceries, go for a stroll. Somewhere you might run into someone you know.
That sort of describes where I live now. I don't love it here like I loved that place I was exiled from ten years ago but I'm more than satisfied. My house is on a kind of a sketchy street, not one of the really beautiful leafy streets in this neighborhood. But on the other hand, it's about as close to the main street as you can get without being right on the street. And I like that. I'm lazy. If I just want to go for a walk, I like to walk where other people are walking. And I don't like to walk for ten minutes to get there.
Anyway back when I lived in exile, there were a few occasions when a nearby business folded. The best example was probably the variety store a couple of door from me, we used to call The Elvis Head Store. It was one of those fell-off-the-back-of-a-truck stores that sold different brands of cigarettes on different days, filled with knicknacks from eras gone by. And as the name suggests, it was filled with Elvis heads, which no one I knew ever saw anyone buy. But it usually had milk and pop and smokes and interesting old birthday cards and the owner was a character and he actually had a revolving gang of sidekicks who would hang out with him all day. It was a hangout as much as a store. And it definitely made a contribution to my daily life.
It disappeared one night. A truck must have pulled up while I was sleeping. Later I heard that they were running some kind of bookie joint in the basement and the cops came by and made them an offer they couldn't refuse.
So began the wait for what would replace the Elvis Head Store.
I was hoping for a coffee shop. A Second Cup or even a Starbucks. It stayed empty for a long time and then it became a dentist's office. On the rare occasion I go to the dentist, I'm willing to drive.
And so it went. Everytime a business would leave, it would be replaced by something equally or more useless to me. A local bar went out of business and was replaced by a lawyer's office. A framing store was replaced by a winemaking store.
I hated this area so much I actually made a film about how much I hated it. It wasn't a very good film; it was kind of a challenging subject for a film. But I hated it enough to try.
Anyway a couple of months after I moved to my new neighborhood, a store that, as far as I could tell, sold slightly groovy upscale furniture, went out of business. I didn't pay much attention. I certainly didn't begin the "what's this going to become" countdown I used to engage in back in my exile days.
That's partly because I'm more or less satisfied with the neighborhood. But it's also because of the particular mix of stores in this neighborhood. For every restaurant, bar, store and cafe I might occasionally patronize, there are four more I'll probably never set foot in. This includes a number of fancyish restaurants as well as sports bars, a framing store, a bead store and a place that apparently teaches children how to cook.
But a few weeks ago when the newspaper finally went up on the empty store windows and the abandoned spot was finally about to become something, I felt a little flutter of anticipation. I couldn't think what I wanted to see there but I was hoping for the best.
They put up a little sign a few days ago. It's going to be a gelato store.
The kids will like it. And there are a lot of kids around here.
Myself, I guess I'll try it out. Maybe they'll have a good lemon gelato. I like tart things. But I try not to buy too much ice cream or sugary things so I won't be there too often.
It could be worse.

I meant to talk about women in this post. But the gelato store kind of reminds me of my fortunes with women these days. I can't say exactly what I'm looking for but whatever it might be, I think it's too much to ask for.

tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my life

This is the third blog I've started in the past year. I can't even remember how to find those other attempts. I don't know why I didn't keep them up but if I don't keep up this one, I'll stop trying.
My new film "Lovable" premiered at Hot Docs in Toronto two weeks ago tomorrow. Then it showed again a week ago yesterday. Then it had its TV premiere this past Wednesday. It will show one more time on TV tonight (in Ontario only).
Of course that won't be the last time it's ever shown. There will be more TV plays in six months or so. And I suppose there will be some festivals. But effectively the Lovable whirlwind will be over for me and so... tomorrow will be the first day of the rest of my life.
What am I hoping for in the rest of my life?
I hope to make a living and pay the mortgage. I think that's number one.
I bought a house last summer. I still had money left over from my inheritance. Then I spent all my leftover money on the renovation. I should have kept a blog about that but suffice to say that I've always been bad with money and I had no idea how much work was going to be required when we started the renovation.
A year ago I felt rich. Now I have a house but no money.
But if I can make a modest living - and find an upstairs tenant - I should be okay. That's easier said than done though. I haven't always made even a modest living.

What else do I hope will happen in the rest of my life?
I guess I hope I'll make a few more films that I can be proud of, though pride does not come that easily to me. I guess another way to put it is, I hope that, while I'm making a living doing whatever comes along, I'll have a chance to make a couple of my "own" films.
But at this moment anyway, that's not a priority.
For the moment, I feel satisfied creatively. I feel like I've made a few decent films and gotten a lot more attention than I ever believed I would get. So now I don't need to be an "auteur" anymore. Or so I'm telling myself. If I can just be a working filmmaker/writer, I'll be satisfied....assuming of course that a working filmmaker makes more money than an auteur.

In my thirties and early forties, I was filled with inspiration. I would write a screenplay just for the pleasure of working out a story that was banging around in my head. I would work on an idea even if I had no real expectation of ever making the darn thing. I had all this stuff I needed to get out of me. Or so it seems.
It was also a lot of fun, in the larger sense of the word.
Or maybe it was more cathartic?
If you took everything I ever wrote in my life and subdivided it into categories, I'm pretty sure you'd find the highest page count listed under "breakup diaries". Writing down everything that happened was a surprisingly effective way of dealing with the pain of relationships ending.
I never wrote a script that was specifically about my love life or even all that autobiographical. But I think that I wrote screenplays for many of the same reasons I wrote those breakup diaries. It was about getting stuff out of my head. Expressing myself.
It was also about learning to write. And I did make a bit of a living from it.
And even though writing a script isn't the same as making a film, it can satisfy a lot of the same urges.

It's been a long time since I wrote anything or worked on anything just for the sheer need to get it out of my head and on to paper. And probably the biggest reason for that is that I've actually made some films, rather than just writing scripts for films that never get made.
But it's also because, in my best writing period, from about 1990 to 96, I wrote a few pretty good scripts that went nowhere. So why write more?
I had two interesting, nagging script ideas in the last couple of years but I never got past making a few notes.
That could change. I have been writing something for the past few months. But the difference is I've been writing it with a director that has a pretty good chance of getting the film made. And two, there was a promise of some money, a promise which subsequently paid off.
Maybe my days of working out ideas speculatively are gone. Maybe it'll be all about money and deadlines and making a living. That wouldn't be such a bad thing.

This might even explain why I've had so much trouble keeping up a blog. I'm not sure I have it in me anymore. Before there were blogs per se, I had a website and I posted huge long diary pieces. I obviously still have the impulse to unload my thoughts and stories onto an unsuspecting world but maybe the impulse is not strong enough to do more than start a new blog every six months.
Then again, I've had the thought that now that I'm no longer making confessional or autobiographical documentaries, if I'm no longer blabbing into a mirror with my camera, maybe I'll need a place to tell those stories.
It's a reasonable theory.
I'm going through something with a friend right now and I do have the urge to write about it. It's almost like writing about it helps me think about it. Or it helps me stop thinking about it.
Anyway I got carried away there. Let's get back to how I hope to spend the rest of my life.
Number one, become a professional filmmaker (and maybe writer) and make an adequate living from it.

What else?
I'd like to lose weight, eat well, learn to cook more (take advantage of my lovely kitchen), keep up my exercise routine, get into yoga or pilates.
I'd like to make my backyard into the oasis it could be.
I'd like to quit smoking. I'm going to try one more time this year or before my next birthday. I have to. I think it might be too late for me but just in case it isn't...

Then there's women, relationships, sharing my life. That'll be my next post.