Cinema and Filmmaking

The year is 1998. I work at an advertising agency as a Creative Director. They give me 30 seconds to tell a story. I feel suffocated. The tale doesn't fit. I need more. More time. The narrative deserves it. Screw synthesis! So, without knowing exactly what I'm doing, I write a story. Years later, I would learn that's precisely what Coppola advises aspiring students at his Zoetrope school: "a film begins as a story. So, write the story first."

And I wrote it. And I submitted it to a screenplay competition. And I won. The feature film was called "The Red Nail." I never managed to turn it into a movie, but I did turn it into a noir novel. From that moment on, I haven't stopped writing. Shorts. Features. Sometimes, incredibly long ones. Impossible stories, good ones, bad ones, whatever comes to mind, wherever it takes place, however I can. On a Mac or on a napkin.