Dear Mr. Doyle:

I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy...

Jared Leto is the cover boy on the current issue of Out, promoting the upcoming "Alexander." Expectedly, many supportive comments were made in the interview, all done in a straight-boy-teasing-gay- cock-but-would-never-lean -over-and-suck-it sorta way.

I hereby salute all my hetero friends who loved me before homo-friendliness became such a trend. You know who you are, and you're a sexier being as a result.

~

Holy moly, isn't this just a remake of this?

Congrats to [url=http://www.livejournal.com/~boyracerdavid/]Mr. Ninh[/url]. He's one major step closer to his dreams. I shall miss his daily doses of catty humor in our carpool.

Casting is completed for the staged reading of "Pit Stop." Rehearsals will begin shortly. I can't wait.

~

Had dinner with my creative peers at the usual joint last night. [url=http://imdb.com/name/nm110813...]Jim[/url] crashed at my place and on our way home, he expressed to me how much he enjoyed our company (namely me, [url=http://www.road-dog-productio...]David[/url] and [url=http://bconfusion.blogspot.co...]James[/url]). I wonder where each of us would be at ten years from now. Still working on each other's stuff I hope. And talk shit about big-name actors we have to put up with. But most importantly, that conversation will not occur in Dallas.

I've started writing the first part of the gay maturity trilogy. In addition, I'm putting together another potential adaptation that's gonna require a lot of preliminary research and reading. Plenty of work ahead, but it's a no-brainer to choose between staying busy or feeling lousy.

I can't stop because I don't have that option.

~

Time: 10 to midnight. Setting: my kitchen.

Jim: Let's talk about "[url=http://yentan.moonfruit.com]Happy Birthday[/url]."

Me: (no! no! no!)

Jim: I was insulted that you didn't ask me to help out.

Me: Oh?

Jim: Just think how different the film would be.

Me: Yes. I know. (I was stupid, reckless and had low self-esteem.)

Jim: So what happened?

Me: The truth is, I really thought you guys were better than me. I wasn't confident enough in my own ability to think you would work on my film.

Jim: You assumed we wouldn't.

Me: Right. So I didn't ask.

~

OH MY GAWD! Why did it take me this long? Why did I not see it in the theaters? Why did I not listen to David then?

"[url=http://www.sonyclassics.com/a...]All The Real Girls[/url]" is fantastic. Must work with Paul Schneider. Must work with Paul Schneider...

Danggg...

~

Notes of encouragement: James' recent entry about drive and passion, Jim's punch to my arm when I sighed "if I do make a next film," Marc Foster's philosophy about the pendulum ("if you push it, it'll bounce back") after a screening of "Finding Neverland", and Kat's e-mail to "fuck it and fuck them (festival rejections ) and keep submitting and keep making movies."

Gracias amigos.

~

I read David's latest "Henry Lee" and didn't quite know what my feeling was afterwards. Sometimes I'm guilty of allowing my preconceive notion to shut down my inner critic. David's mentioning that it was a "western" sorta threw me into a loop. It was certainly a genre I wasn't entirely familiar with, and any recommendation from anyone to watch a John Ford or John Wayne usually makes me cringe in horror. Therefore, I felt unqualified to comment constructively.

But it wasn't really a western. At least not the kind of western I know of anyway. Perhaps a reinvention? I don't know. I need to speak to David about it further to figure out where he's coming from and offer a more substantial feedback.

What I do appreciate about David's style is that he doesn't make things easy. You read it, you expect something, and that something may or may not occur. I think it's very brave for any artist to do that, and I envy his ability to construct such imagery-driven scene descriptions. That's one of my shortcomings, which I blame on my laziness and my assumption that I'll figure it out when the day comes. If the day comes. Yes, please punch my arm again.

~

I wasn't the least offended when Jim (David chipped in as well) did an impression of me directing. It was uncanny how accurate his depiction was. I laughed really hard. Good god, do my postures really look that awkward?

I've started to audition actors for the staged reading, which as it stands now, may take place on October 6th at the Four Day Weekend Theater in downtown Fort Worth.

I need to readjust my mindset completely and solely concentrate on voice quality, since none of the people I'm considering physically resemble their characters. It's a challenge nonetheless, but one I welcome with open arms.  

While waiting for an appointment* to show up yesterday, I flipped through this birthday gift from David and started reading "Touching Him" by Nasdijj. A little background info: the author grew up a migrant worker and learned to write on his own in migrant camps by writing journals. His avocation is adopting children with special needs, and these are currently the human subjects he writes about.

In "Touching," Nasdijj's subject was Awee, who was born with AIDS. Here are some memorable excerpts from his caretaking routines:

At first, my biggest fear was over shit. The smell of it. The feel of it. The disgust. It was not like having a baby. Or changing diapers. It was a lot of shit. The boy was twelve. He was far more disgusted (with himself) than I could ever be. There were times when he was in control of his body and his bowels. But there were other times, the not-good times, when he wasn't in control of much. Finally, we evolved this struggle into a ritual, which helped. It helps to put there horrible things into rituals. I would pick him up and put him in the tub. I would wash him, touching him, and we did not talk much.

In time, I did not think about his shit, or the smell of it. I do not remember it. I remember him.

~

Finally, I made them take the catheter out (from his penis), and I would pick him up, and set him on the toilet so he could pee, and I would hold him. I tried not to look at his penis. It was just a silhouette. Boys his age have usually discovered masturbation, and not as some comparative vernacular, but as the artillery of flesh. "I won't have children," he told me. Discovery comes at strange and inconvenient times. "I always thought I might."

"No, but you'll have other things."

"Like what?"

"Like sunsets. Don't we already try to see the sunset - even from the window - if we can?"

I could make him smile. I could make him smile like no one else on earth. Only I could do it. Often, when I made him smile, he would reach out with his fingers and he would gently touch my eyes, and sometimes my lips, just to see if we were real. We were so real, we burned.

~

*Mr. P showed up 10 minutes late. It was my fault however: I've given him a wrong direction. We sat down and talked casually, allowing him to calm down from the rush-hour traffic he was caught in.

Ms. P was supposed to come with me and be his scene partner, but she had to work late and couldn't make it in time. No problem. I'm used to one-on-one sessions anyway, reading opposite the trying actors with my monotonous voice. Only this time, I've forgotten the nature of some of the scenes Mr. P has prepared for.

One of them had to do with his character professing his love to a woman.

I had to play the female part. He looked deep into my eyes and said, "I like you, Shannon."

"I like you a lot."

"I think I may be in love with you."

I got out of character and quickly looked away. And then we did the same scene two more times.

This acting thing ain't easy.

~

I found out about the Korean flick "A Good Lawyer's Wife" from David's blog and am surprised I have never heard of it. It sounded really interesting, and I was more enticed knowing Moon So-Ri (who I think gave one of the most groundbreaking performances of all time in "Oasis") played the title character.

I was delighted to find the DVD sitting in the Asian section of Premiere Video and called David promptly after.

I think I can now officially claim that Ms. Moon is the next big thing of Asia. Give her another five years and she'll easily kick Maggie Cheung to the curb. Like "Oasis," she has once again displayed a truly astounding commitment to her character. There's a highly-charged (explicit both physically and emotionally) sex scene towards the end when she's doing the deed with a much younger neighbor that makes you look at her in the most naked sense. She was baring them all: her body and her soul. More challenging than arousing, it made me reevaluate t he spiritual transformation we experience during intercourse. It could inflict damage on us, or we could be&nbs p;healed beyond imagination. Perhaps that's why we fear it so much, in real life or in film. It's when we really see ourselves, when we're confronted with an image that mirrors us. We can look both pretty and ugly, and that idea scares us enough it makes us wanna run to something unfamiliar in the realm of our reality: people jumping through tall buildings, people throwing bombs at mutant beings, people killing other people. Anything but us moaning. Us cumming. Us being human.