Here's an account of a film program casualty. Dave Thrasher (pictured). He and I made a year's worth of public access t.v. episodes and got a couple of awards along the way. The show, "Art Roamer's TV Round-Up", was sketch comedy, and featured Des Moines radio personality Cal Bierman and Lee Cole, stand-up comedian and magician.
Dave also created the set, and helped produce a t.v. pilot for, "The Little Woody Show", that made it to national television on the TMZ show.
Dave and I have co-written several short films and he edited those and co-produced them, too. One made it to a national film festival in New York and California, and Dave got a nice award from the festival in California.
He worked on a movie shot in Iowa, "Splatter", and made a tidy sum which helped him catch-up on some bills.
Then the film freeze came along and now he's just doing his ordinary job again, knowing that the next film he'll work on is out of view, below the horizon. Sad stuff, because Dave loves the art of movie-making.
Wish some of the people in Iowa's acting community would share their stories. It would help in the fight to get a new film program going again. Remaining silent is not a good thing.
gino
Since the film freeze I've thought there is little chance that I might be able to work in film without either moving somewhere other than Iowa or by doing it on a strictly voluntary basis (on films of less than stellar quality most likely). I never left my ordinary job - a museum guard - because I was uncertain that it would be possible to make a go of working in feature films full-time. I wasn't sure yet if there was a place for me. Now I'm pretty sure there isn't, but then again there doesn't appear to be much of a place for anyone, since feature film productions - the kind that pay you - appear to avoiding our state like a bad disease. Instead I'm trying to find another area where I can use my creative abilities without giving up and going for the usual opportunities in Iowa (an office drone at an insurance company or a bank, a low-level support person at a casino, or any soulless occupation that Iowa seems to promote.) Although this may sound like a silly way to go, rather than looking at working for someone in any of Iowa's "growth industries" (prisons, casinos, hog lots), I'm working on becoming a builder of ventriloquist dummies. Maybe not as glamorous as film but with certain satisfactions if I can pull it off. Thanks Gene for telling a bit of my story.
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