Looking for Inspiration in San Pedro

Last night Bryan, Mel and I piled into the bug and headed to San Pedro in search of location-driven inspiration for a script we're working on. I think we found some along the way. Here are some of the (better) images from the journey.




San Pedro always makes me think of Bukowski, so I thought I'd add one of his poems to this post. The following is used with no permission whatsoever (sorry!)

Be Angry at San Pedro

I say to my woman, "Jeffers was
a great poet. think of a title
like Be Angry At The Sun. don't you
realize how great that is?

"you like that negative stuff." she
says

"positively," I agree, finishing my
drink and pouring another.
"in one of Jeffers' poems, not the sun poem,
this woman fucks a stallion because her
husband is such a gross spirit. and it's
believable. then the husband goes out
to kill the stallion and the stallion
kills him."

"I never heard of Jeffers," she
says.

"you never heard of Big Sur? Jeffers
made Big Sur famous just like D. H. Lawrence
made Taos famous. when a
great writer writes about where he
lives the mob comes in and takes
over."

"well you write about San Pedro," she
says.

"yeah," I say, "and have you read the
papers lately? they are going to construct
a marina here, one of the largest in the
world, millions and billions of dollars,
there is going to be a huge shopping
center, yachts and condominiums every-
where!"

"and to think," my woman says smiling, "that you've only
lived here for three years!"

"I still think," I say,
changing the subject,
"you ought to read Jeffers."

Drifter Pictures goes to the Theater

For those of you who I haven't talked to about this yet, I'm creating a branch of our company that will focus on filming and editing theater performances. Given the 8 million plays and one-man shows that happen in LA every year, and given how actors always need material for their reels, I think there's a market for this service. I've watched several producers scramble at the last minute to try to find a friend who has a video camera, and I can only assume they end up with a DV tape they never deal with. With our service, they would end up with a nice finished DVD with titles and menus.

To that end I'm working on our initial advertising. I'm thinking the best/cheapest way to go is to distribute postcards to all the rental theaters and spaces, not to mention coffee shops, around town and see if we get any bites. Bryan and I agree that the postcard should be extremely simple, so simple that it will stand out in a crowd of photographs and graphics. Here are the two options I've come up with. I would LOVE any and all input as I'm looking to send these out to be printed at the end of this week.


This is the basic idea which we believe to be eye-catching because of the solid color with small text. The idea being that you would have to pick up the card to read the text. I know the quality isn't so great here so what the card says is "A performance lasts a night. Film lasts forever. Make your performance last." On the back will be information about our service and our website to go to for pricing info. Here's the 2nd version:


This, clearly, has a little more going on. Now leaves don't really have much to do with theater, but I feel like they give the sense of time passing, or the ephemeral nature of theater or some other pretentious ideas. At any rate, they make the card more interesting, in my opinion, but maybe they also make it easier to pass over.

So please, I would love any and all input on these graphics or any other ideas you might have. I'm trying to avoid doing something cheesy like a video camera pointed at the theater happy/sad masks (I know that has a name, I'm just blanking at the moment)

You can post comments here or email me directly if you'd prefer ashley@drifterpictures.com