The road less traveled

#6 Nonlinear Film School - version 4

Greetings from Chicago where we’re showing “Kaval Park” for the third time. All the while another film is on my mind and heart - my newest doc “Spoke”. Editor Fred Beahm and I are on our fourth version. The fist one was complete just after Thanksgiving. The second one before Christmas and the third one before I left for Bulgaria. We screened all of them to a mix of friends, family and strangers. Every time the movie started, within seconds I knew it was not the movie to last forevermore. Some invisible force demands that I keep chiseling. It whispers: Bogdan, take the road less traveled. So here we are and as Fred and I have come to define our excitement: We are SPOKED!

You’re about to read a glimpse of my process which is one of constant reduction. To get to the core of the story we’ve come up with a new log line: After getting a cancer diagnosis, firefighter Rudy cheats Death and finds his CALLING.

The image bellow is what our workspace looks like as of today. We’re using Trello to organize the new version. Each column scrolls up and down with cards that have images and writing. I suppose this could be the equivalent of writing a script. These first two columns together with the writing that follows will energize the first 5-10 minutes of the film. The process is meant to inspire my closest collaborators in this stage - editor Fred Beahm and composer Brian Baron. The idea is to solicit deep emotional, philosophical and spiritual inquiry from those working with me.

Enjoy!

PROLOGUE: The road less traveled

Rudy was riding on the road less traveled. Travelled by a man struck down by cancer. A man who might or might not have been healed once upon a time. Traveled by a firefighter who could tell a story or two about dying only to live again. A story about washing your body parts off the highway, there where just a few minutes earlier you told a joke, your daughter’s belly laughter and then - THE IMPACT. You loose control; your hands grip the steering wheel; you take your last breath. Past and present marry. Rudy doesn’t know you. You didn’t know him. He is the firefighter who is hosing down the road, washing parts of you away. What goes on through his mind? Washing you away into the gutter… You didn’t know each other, but you are now forever connected in DEATH, until LIFE does you apart.

Like Moses Rudy must walk through the desert. The only difference is that, two thousand years later, Rudy rides a bicycle. He is a 21 century chimera, an extension of his bike. Man and forward motion merged to give context and peace. The road less traveled prompts Rudy to converse with his soul. Rudy would seek out the promised land on every continent, in every corner of his being. He refuses to rest until he finds his promise. Something was, is, has been wrong. 

Their last dinner together replays in his scattered mind. Did he give his wife and three children his best? He certainly gave his best to the firehouse. Twenty nine years of best. But in matters of his family he lacks sound judgment. His parents… A butterfly flutters in his peripheral vision. His parents traveled from Austria to Canada in search of a new home. He misses the comfort of their touch. A child is always a child to his parents. So Rudy will return to the place his memories inhabit, before he is reborn, on a road less traveled.