The 30 Minute Experiment - Introduction
You may or may not have noticed that there hasn’t been a Weekend Warrior the last few weeks, and I’m not 100% sure that I’ll finished what I started for a movie column this week, because honestly? Writing about box office and theatrical releases and repertory series has been my only joy about writing a weekly column since leaving the Beat since I’m not making any money with the time it takes to write a column. But we’ll see. Most of the movies coming out tomorrow will be available digitally and On Demand forever so there’s no need to rush out a column I’m not happy with. But that brings us to what I’m doing now and what this is...
Maybe it will be obvious what my “30 Minute Experiment” will be after a couple days, but let me explain. This is something I’ve thought about doing for a few weeks now, and it’s my ongoing attempt to write about other things than movies in the time when there are no movies or at least no movie theaters in which they can play. So this is what the 30 Minute Experiment will be.
Every day (hopefully), I will sit at my computer with Tumblr open and start writing for exactly thirty minutes. I will set a time for that 30 minutes and wherever I’m at when that 30 minute elapses will be where that day’s column ends.
This experiment will have me writing about anything on my mind, but each day will have a specific topic that I might want to write about, and these might be topics where my take differs from you. Some of these topics might be exceedingly personal and intimate and maybe you’ll find out some stuff about me that you never knew before. Who knows? It’s called an experiment for a good reason. Oh, yeah, and the other thing is that when those 30 minutes are over, I will not go back and read over or edit anything i wrote. I kind of have done this before with one of my Oscar pieces last year and my eulogy to my friend William Wolf reminded me that I can really write quite quickly and efficiently when I just sit down and do it.
And that is actually the advice I give anyone who wants to write about ANYTHING. I think I stole this from “Throw Momma from the Train” but it’s true... A writer writes... always. Whether you have anything to write about or not. Hey, I have a penpal in prison who is probably as bored on a daily basis as some of you are quickly getting during the current self-quarantines . I really have to make an effort to write him so I don’t lag behind by months as I did lst year. Usually when I write to this penpal it’s using a similar method where I write him about what I’m going to write him about (or answering one of his previous comments) and when I’m done, I mail it out. I do this because he writes to me, sometimes PAGES of thoughts, in pencil or pen. He doesn’t have a computer or Word or a way to edit his thoughts, and I feel it’s only fair I do the same even though I can type out my letters.
But that’s what I mean. I think we all take for granted all the good things we have in this world right now including spell check and ways to overwork our own writing to the point where we no longer want to ever read what we’ve written. I’ve been there many many times...
Who knows? Maybe I’ll put a call out to people on FB or Twitter for ideas or topics that maybe someone wants me to write about, and I’ll add it to the long list I’ve already created for myself. But the point is that I’ll pick a topic, start the time, and start writing and when the 30-minute mark arrives, it’s done. I hit “send.”
By the way, I set the time on this introduction and I have 19 minutes left!!! So okay, maybe this intro will be a little shorter and I’ll start for real tomorrow.
But I guess I can use my remaining time to talk a little about writing in general. If it isn’t obvious, writing has been a passion of mine for over 25 years. Obviously, i prefer being in a situation where I get paid for my writing (and I sort of am right now) but I also have tried to maintain a weekly movie column for over 19 years even though I only had four places that were paying me for said column during that time. I was hoping to start a new MONTHLY movie column at one of the places where I sometimes write for but that was quickly by all the movies being delayed, and that still seems to be the case. Maybe I’ll even finish the movie column I started this week, but honestly, my passion is theatrical releases, even when it’s smaller movies -- indies, docs, foreign films -- and knowing that all the people I know at my favorite theaters like the Metrograph and Film Forum and Lincoln Center are not working right now just really bums me out more than the fact that I can’t go see movies in theaters.
Believe me, I have PLENTY of movies to watch and write about as far as screeners, although I try to use my evenings after writing my current assignments to relax and enjoy some of the work of others that are trying to keep us all entertained while we’re stuck at home.
Honestly, being stuck at home is not a big deal for me since (this may be hard to believe) I’m not really that social, at least in terms of riding the subway and dealing with my fellow New Yorkers. When I get to the screening room, there’s plenty of friends, colleagues and acquaintances that I love to talk to and catch up with, and I’m missing many of them as much as I did in 2013 when I got stuck in Columbus, Ohio fighting cancer. If you don’t know about this adventure, I might talk about it sometime in the next few weeks or months or however long I decide to do this. Right now, what’s going on in the world feels very much like when I returned to NYC in 2014 and in that case, I was the one worried about getting sick since I had a very weak and new immune system from a stem cell transplant. But more on that later. That’s not really what I want to talk about right now.
Oh, yeah, and if you read this and think “Boy, Ed really likes writing about himself” ... fine, that’s a fair assessment. I mean, I’ve always been a bit of an over sharer in the 25 years I’ve been on the internet, which was the point where I finally declared myself to be a writer and was already writing weekly comic book reviews. Oh, God... just thinking about what’s going on in the comic book industry right now. That’s a 30-minute column in itself. So I have 12 minutes left... what else? I definitely would love some feedback as this experiment continues as well as thoughts on topics you’d like me to cover. I think the worst thing a writer has to experience is having a lack of feedback, whether it’s from editors or readers. Every once in a while, it’s nice to know that someone read something I wrote and it touched them or it made them think about something that they hadn’t thought about before, and yes, even if something I said makes them angry. I always appreciated people reaching out and telling me this stuff. Since I have... 10 MORE MINUTES?!?...I’ll also mention that I’ve been using this downtime to reach out to people I don’t see or talk to as often, just to see how they’re doing during this national crisis. Just seeing how it’s affected so many people both in positive and negative ways has been really interesting to me as someone who likes to analyze people and the human condition.
I also want to use this time to work on some of the screenplays I’ve started developing since that was part of the point of leaving ComingSoon 4 years ago. In hindsight, that may have been a mistake but the idea was that I could use some of my time working on more personal projects like these screenplays. What instead happened was that I was scrambling to find freelance work and struggling to make a living with the piecemeal assignments I’m getting.
To be perfectly honest, I’m still in that last position as I haven’t had a proper full time job in almost two years now, although I had a part-time job most of last year on top of my movie writing stuff.
Who knows how things will pan out after this whole thing is over, but this is a much bigger topic that definitely can wait since we’re nowhere close to the situation in New York right now. Maybe i’ll write a bit more about that in the next few days since a lot of my friends and colleagues from other states and countries have been worried about me. Some of it was for good reason if you knew what I personally was dealing with my ghost town of a neighborhood, but believe me, I’m doing fine. No symptoms, no qualms... just want to get back to some semblance of normal life even though I’m gonna have plenty of time to rethink whether “getting back to normal” would be a good thing in my case. I only have five minutes left so not sure I can get into that idea of “the new normal,” something I know about all too well from my experience with cancer, since that’s 30 minutes in itself, so instead, I’ll say... thanks for reading up to here (if you indeed have) and I hope you enjoy this experiment and don’t find yourself bored by my droning on. The above is what I can write in just 25 minutes so imagine how much worse this might be with that extra five minutes. :)