Once

Saw a very magical movie with a client last night: Once. The movie is a huge inspiration to anyone trying to make movies. It's probably the most beauty, honesty, joy and truth, you'll see in a movie this year. It cost $10,000.

The script is magnificent -- built on the kind of conflict that happens between actual human beings. Scene after scene of simple, honest, strong writing. It's the kind of film that people say you can't make. And those people are mostly right. Most of us can't make them. We dress up the conflicts and build big sets and worry about all the crap that screenwriting gurus and film schools insist is all that truly matters. Then somebody goes and finds more drama in going to buy batteries than you saw in a billion dollars worth of blockbusters last summer. And you know you're in the right profession. And you know why.

Last night was a tremendous evening. Good movie. And we had a nice bottle of sipping tequila to wash down a true meeting of the minds around the movie. We finally left the building late -- 9 PM or so, hours after we'd planned. And walking in was none other than the man himself: Francis Ford Coppola. There was a grunted hello and clear drive to get through the door we stood in the way of. I was drunk enough to kiss the man. But I didn't. It was just a nice, tipsy kind of touchstone to think that this man made great big movies like The Godfather and Apocalypse now when I was still a kid. And now he's getting back to small movies that fit in a van -- nothing more than a beautiful story, nothing more than the only thing that really matters to any of us.