On Traveling & New Experiences

chicago bean summer time

Let’s talk about traveling for a moment.

All throughout college people would say over and over “You need to study abroad. It opens your horizons and makes you aware of other cultures!” Lots of the study abroad representatives would always say the slogan “You won’t know until you go.” They would give me pamphlets detailing trips visiting the Eiffel Tower, backpacking through Europe, touring the Irish countryside, visiting some castle in England, helping build things for kids in Colombia. You get the picture.

When people in class talked about the things they wanted to do, a recurring theme would always be to travel because they loved traveling. Where to? They would respond with far off places like the Greek Islands, backpacking through Europe or teaching English in an Asian country. When I’m older I’ll regret not having travelled when I was younger. Traveling can be expensive but the money is worth it to have the experience!

I always had a problem with these things. I wondered about some things. Why do people think that they need to go off to far away places to experience more of the world? Can’t you just do that by going to Canada, another state in the US, or maybe a place in Central America? To me, “experiencing new cultures” and “broadening your horizons” could be done by simply going out of your comfort zone and seeing how other people approach things.

Back in 2013, I felt discouraged. I had only ever been outside of Texas (where I live) three times. As part of a 2014 New Year’s resolution, I committed to getting out more and meeting new people. And I did. From March 2014 to March 2015 I went to South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas for the first time, New Orleans, then on a cross-country trip to Chicago and New York City with stops in Memphis, Tennessee and Cleveland, Ohio. Other visits for the year included Chicago for a second time, Twin Peaks, Colorado, and New York City two more times.

My full list included:

March 2014: South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas: I met celebrities like Melissa Fumero and Stephanie Beatriz and I sat/got sandwiched between Seth Meyers and Olivia Munn after a panel.

At the festival I got to meet a role model of mine, Mindy Kaling. She signed some photos for me and jokingly agreed to be in a movie of mine that I said would be like “a new age Sex and the City…but better and with less ego”.

While sitting in the hallways of the convention center waiting for a panel, a lady came up to me and asked if she could use the plug next to me. I said yes. In a weird twist of fate, she turned out to be a childhood friend of a famous film director I admire, Joe Swanberg.

April 2014: New Orleans, LA. Encountered copious amounts of horse poop and drunk people on Bourbon Street, saw the plantation from the movie Django Unchained and went to a WWE wrestling match.

August 2014: Cross country trip to Chicago and New York City: Tight on money, I decided to ditch taking a flight and instead took a MegaBus to Chicago and New York City. I scheduled meetings with seasoned improv professionals and visited with a communications agency I admired. The route let me make prolonged pitstops in Memphis, TN and Cleveland, OH.

On the 18 hour bus ride to New York City, I talked with a 63-year-old woman who was going to her 45 year high school reunion in Ohio.

“I want to look hot when I walk through those doors! Do you think I will look good in this dress?” (she hands me her phone with a picture of the dress. Amused and happy by her confidence, I nod in agreement).

While in NYC, I stayed at a hostel-type place and met a 19-year-old girl from Hungary. She talked about studying at university and how much she loved to study languages and cultures. She said she had always wanted to visit America but was unable to because of the cost. After several months of saving up money, she finally made the trip and was visiting NYC for a few days and then Chicago. She had such delight in her eyes as she talked about all the places she was visiting and food she was trying.

September 2014: Traveled to Chicago again to make a talk show appearance on Steve Harvey for an article I had written that went viral. The shows producers sat down with me and talked about their career experiences since college. I got to meet the other guest of the show, a 64-year-old cancer survivor who had beaten up a guy with, get this…a neck scratcher, when he tried to rob her house. Her adult daughter talked with me about the frustrations she had with the college system, how expensive it was, and how good-paying jobs were hard to come by.

On the flight back home to Austin. A woman came up and sat down in her seat beside me. We started talking and she mentioned how she had just visited her boyfriend in Chicago where he was working as a sound engineer for a great company. She had lived in Chicago while going to college but moved to Austin. For seven years she worked at an environmental agency as an editor. There was no upwards mobility in terms of promotion for her so she quit and started her own company.

The company, Austin Editing, had been something she was working on as a freelance side project for over a year before quitting her day job. I was surprised when she told me she didn’t have a lot of clients lined up when she quit her day job, just enough money to cover rent and a few things each month. Slowly but surely, with a lot of hustle, she built up a client list and today she had several team members that she manages as part of her company. She said something that stuck with me afterwards.

“Sometimes you aren’t fully ready and you just have to have this fuck it attitude and do it.”

November 2014: Twin Peaks, Colorado. I visited relatives and stayed in a freaking awesome cabin (I really love architecture so staying in the cabin was super fun). While in Colorado for a few days, I climbed mountains, sled down the hills, and had snowball fights. One of my cousins wives was studying to become a forensic photographer. She talked about how she had arrived at her desired career path and the way she loved photographing things to unravel a case.

January 2014: Visited New York City again for an interview. I got to see the inside and workings of a company whose site I read on the daily. By a stroke of luck, I got to meet with a seasoned PR professional near her workplace’s Williamsburg office.

March 2014: New York City for the third time. On my flight I met with a women named Denny who talked about how excited she was having just visited her son in North Carolina where he was graduating from Air Force training school. She said she loved Austin for all that it was and didn’t like the crowded, non-stop nature of New York City. She had a knack for solving crossword puzzles and sudoku.

Next month I’ll be going on a cruise with stops in Yucatan (Progreso) and Cozumel, Mexico. For the summer I will be going to Italy.

I traveled a lot in the timespan from this time last year to now. Did I go to some far off place, backpack through Europe, or help kids built houses in Colombia? No. Instead I just went out of my comfort zone, the safe nest of my apartment in Austin, Texas and visited places all across the US. I met a lot of people, learned their stories, their struggles, and how they approached life.

Many of the people I talked to who have gone on study abroad trips say it was great but they never seem to pull out anything other than talking about the different monuments and tourist spots they visited.

A girl once told me “Yeah, I just studied abroad for useless crap. I got to see some tourist spots and stuff but that was about it.”

You see? When people say they want to travel to “broaden their horizons” they usually think of visiting tourist spots rather than meeting people and seeing their walks of life.

My point with all of this is that you don’t need to go to Europe or study in England to broaden your horizons, sometimes the easiest way to do it is by going out your backdoor and talking with new people. I’m not discouraging international travel, if you have the money and resources, then by all means, go do it. I’m speaking to the people who say they can’t afford to travel, the ones who think it’s out of their reach.

Traveling can be as expensive or as cheap as you make it.

I used to think it was out of reach until I discovered that traveling can be as simple as going to another state. See the Grand Canyon, go to the Golden Gate bridge, see the nature of Washington state. You don’t have to break the bank just to broaden your horizons. 

There’s something more I have to reveal. Some people know about it but many don’t. Right now (and for the past several months) I’ve been writing a novel. I don’t talk about it much but it involves a women graduating from college and joining a support group.  The novel features people from all age ranges and walks of life. Throughout all of the flights, bus rides, and car rides while traveling, I was writing and working on the novel. The people I met along the way and interacted with have influenced my book in a great way. I can’t wait to share more about the book soon. For now I will leave you with the title’s initials (#LOTR). Can you guess what it is?

Also, if have an urge to travel, don’t let it go vacant. Go out to somewhere in the US you’ve never been, meet up with people you might know there, strike up conversations while in the coffee shops. Just get out there.

Happy trails.

Mindy Kaling at SXSW 2014
Meeting one of my TV writing role models, Mindy Kaling at SXSW
Imagine Central Park John Lennon
At Strawberry Fields Central Park dedicated to John Lennon.
message in a bottle coney island
Found a bottle on the beach at Coney Island. No long lost message in it.
chicago bean summer time
Rare photo of the Chicago Bean without a bunch of crowds around it. I woke up early and took this photo at 7:30am to beat the crowds
sitting on the Chicago skydeck
sitting on the Chicago skydeck
Chicago skyline from the Willis (Sears) Tower skydeck
Chicago skyline from the Willis (Sears) Tower skydeck
chicago skydeck
looking down from the skydeck. 103 floors high!
twin peaks colorado
Twin Peaks, Colorado
monica gellar apartment building
Monica Gellar’s apartment building from the TV show “Friends”
colorado cabin
Cabin view while in Colorado
My green room name display while getting ready to appear on Steve Harvey
My green room name display while getting ready to appear on Steve Harvey

 

Evolution of the Romantic Comedy

“Boring”, “Overdone” and “haven’t I already seen this?” are some of the common comments that sit below a YouTube Trailer for an upcoming romantic comedy. People are getting tired of the predictable genre and are moving on from it to cinematic romance movies.

Romantic comedies used to be viewed in a positive way for most. They were easy to follow, had a predictable but nice ending and made you feel a mushy gushy warm feeling inside. For the most part, women would go in attendance to these types of films. Now it seems as though no one wants to see the dying genre anymore.

The 2012 film What to Expect When Your Expecting, even with a star studded cast, made only $41 million domestically against a budget of $40 million. The Jason Segel and Emily Blunt romantic couple comedy The Five Year Engagement grossed $27 million domestically against a budget of $30 million.

Studios seemed to try to take on a different approach this year with the guy-centric romantic comedies That Awkward Moment and Cavemen. That Awkward Moment seemed more like That Awkward Movie to most viewers due to its lack of a clear theme. The movie’s success seems to be attributed mainly due to the star power of its leading stars Zac Efron, Miles Teller and Michael B. Jordan rather than any compliments to the actual movie.

The cinematic romance and romantic dramedy have faired well recently. 2013 featured the films Enough Said, The Spectacular Now, Before Midnight, Drinking Buddies, and many others. Enough Said and Before Midnight  went on to gross more than $25 million each.

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Movie goers seem to divert from the clique plots and happy endings of rom-coms in favor of the realistic portrayals of romance in the films like Enough Said, Before Midnight and others. The films feature characteristics like natural lighting, complex conflicts, *real looking* people and natural dialogue (particularly in the case of Drinking Buddies which had largely improvised dialogue).

So in the times of decreasing box office returns, studios should look into romance films that people want: ones that show there isn’t always a happy ending to relationships…and that’s okay.

 

 

Film Review: Happy Christmas (2014)

Do you ever watch one of those movies that deals with a person that’s down on their luck and makes bad life decisions? Happy Christmas is one of those.

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The story involves Jenny (Anna Kendrick), a no so responsible 27-year-old who has recently broken up with her boyfriend. With many options and lacking direction, she arrives in Chicago to live with her older brother Jeff (Joe Swanberg, who also wrote and directed the film).

Life Choices: Passing out on a stranger's floor
Life Choices: Passing out on a stranger’s floor

Jeff makes and produces films for a living. He lives a relatively happy with his novelist wife, Kelly, and their two-year-old son. Once Jenny arrives, things start to get a bit hectic. Her first night of living at the house, Jenny goes to a party to meet up with her friend Carson (Lena Dunham). Getting a little to festive, she gets smokes pot, drinks and ends up passing out in a bedroom, requiring Jeff to come pick her up.

After the passing out incident, jenny starts to form a bond with Kelly at the house. She notices that Kelly feels overwhelmed and wants time to write her novel. Trying to get her creative juices up and flowing, Jenny suggests an idea for a book that Kelly can write. Throughout the days, free-spirited Jenny and Carson get Kelly to open up, prompting a evolution of relaxation in Kelly.

At a quick glance, many will wonder why the heck a “christmas” movie is being released in June/July. Despite its title, Happy Christmas features very little of actual Christmas. The Christmas theme is meant as an accessible way to bring family together and show their interactions. A quick Christmas day scene is all that is featured in the 78 minute movie.

Director-writer Joe Swanberg is known for having his films center on the ordinary, daily interactions of a group of people. Happy Christmas features fully improvised dialogue. No set script was used for the film. The actors received outlines for each scene.

Life Choices 2: Smoking pot
Life Choices 2: Spending hours mindlessly surfing the internet

Happy Christmas is a “slice-of-life” type film. The film appeals to the viewer that likes movies heavy with improvisation, realism, and the scenes with the interactions of everyday life. Despite its slow pacing and lack of clear resolution, Happy Christmas goes above with witty dialogue, quotable lines and examining the nature of family dynamics. Happy Christmas might even give new meaning to the term “Christmas in July.” A

Happy Christmas is currently on video on demand platforms (Amazon, iTunes and others) and is scheduled for a limited theatrical release on July 25, 2014.

SXSW: Day 3 Recap

Things were planned for the day of Sunday March 9th: Mindy Kaling’s panel, Brooklyn-Nine-Nine and the Fifty Shades of Creativity panel. Getting to the convention center around 8:10am, I thought I would get to the Mindy Kaling event early (and get a front row seat!). One problem: forgotten badge.

A 1.5 hour round trip bus excursion later and I had my badge. First up was the panel Running the Show: TV’s Newest Queen of Comedy. Mindy Kaling, Ike Barinholtz and Adam Pally from Fox’s The Mindy Project were in attendance. The discussions included the changing nature of the television landscape. Streaming services like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu changing the way people watch TV. It was discussed how cable and network shows differ, process of writing an episode and the increasing diversity of people in TV.

I toted a good ol’ point and shoot camera to all of my events for the day. I’ve gotten a few looks from people, suprised that I have an actual camera and not just an iPhone with a camera app. One of my professors even called me out on it the other day. This is how to conversation went:

“So I noticed you have an actual point and shoot camera. “-Professor

“Yeah…”-Me

“…”-Professor

My Apple-fan professor who likes content
My Apple-fan professor who likes content

As you can tell the conversation went very well! Anyways, the Mindy Kaling panel went great. Despite the funny looks I got with my camera, it took some great pictures with it’s 20x optical zoom.

I prefer my Canon SX260 zoom over some iPhone 5s
I prefer my Canon SX260 zoom over some iPhone 5s

Kaling was sitting at a lounge after the panel to do an interview. People hovered around closely. Many tweets from Twitter had similar message: “Breathing the same air as Kaling/In same room as Kaling” with a boatload of exclamation points afterwards.

Since I sat at the back of the crowd, when it was time for autographs, I got to be one of the first in line! I got to take a picture with one of my TV writing role models.

I asked if Matt Damon or Ben Affleck ever contacted about her play "Matt and Ben." She said no.
I asked if Matt Damon or Ben Affleck ever contacted about her play “Matt and Ben.” She said no.

I was content after this picture. I could die right at that second and be happy. You know what I mean? After the picture was taken I thought about going to a data journalism presentation by a Texas State alumna. For some reason I felt this urge to stay. I had no idea why but decided to go with it. I sat down outside of the lounge and started doing some work on my laptop.Actors Melissa Fumero and Stephanie Beatriz from Fox’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine would be there at 3pm so I stayed. I’m so glad I did.

“Can I plug in next to you?”

A woman stood next to me as I was sitting against the wall with my laptop plugged in.

“Sure” I agreed.

She plugged her phone in and turned and asked what was going on in the streaming lounge. I told her about the people from Fox’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine doing an interview there. She talked about how her husband liked the show. When asking where she was from, she said Chicago. I told her I maybe wanted to move to Chicago after my graduation in December 2014. She asked about what my college major was and what kind of work I wanted to do. This is where things got weird and cool at the same time.

I pulled up my about/portfolio website that I had been making for my Web Design and Publishing class. I showed her my Twitter bootstrap site covering mumblecore film.

“Oh, one of my friends does that” she said.

“Cool. Who is he?” I asked.

“Joe Swanberg.”

My body simultaneously went numb and filled with excitement at the same time. I had Joe Swanberg featured on my mumblecore website (located here). Only seeing two of his movies, Joe Swanberg was already one of my favorite directors. The woman was suprised that I knew who he was and even more suprised that I liked him as a director so much.

The next 10 minutes I got to talk with her about her high school days with Joe. The early films he did. The projects he has going on now. It was great. It was more than great. It was perfect. She was really happy that I coached her into taking a photo and getting an autograph from the Brooklyn Nine-Nine actresses.

“My husband’s going to love this!” she said.

By the end of the day I was pretty happy. Getting to meet Mindy Kaling, Stephanie Beatriz, Melissa Fumero, and a longtime friend of one of my favorite directors? Sunday, March 9, 2014 will go down in my personal history. South by Southwest is freaking awesome!

Brooklyn Nine Nine
Talking with Melissa Fumero and Stephanie Beatriz about Seth Meyers wanting to guest star on Brooklyn Nine-Nine