While I was traveling around the world with Remote Year, I took a much needed cleanse from all things cinema. I had lived, studied, and worked in the film scene since I was a child actor and it was a surprising and liberating experience to step outside of that bubble and discover that not everyone cares about movies that much. I didn’t even watch the Oscars… can you imagine!?
But then one fateful evening on our second third month in Prague Lisbon, I made a joke at a party with my travel mates that would unknowingly lead to my ultimate cinematic masterpiece. I simply observed that one of our group members was sort of the “mother” of the whole group — like if we were a 90s sitcom she would be the overworked but endearing single mom raising a massive brood of hilarious and precocious children. The analogy stuck, and we spent the rest of the evening inventing and debating who everyone else’s characters would be in this fictional family sitcom.
We got through about half of the 50 person group that night. And then a couple of months later, when we were in Sofia, Bulgaria, our group had a talent show and I didn’t know what to do for my “talent”. I decided to finish the character descriptions for the sitcom and just read them aloud during the show. My bit ended up taking nearly 20 minutes, but I got through all 50 wacky characterizations and the reaction was pretty amazing. In fact, my travel companions liked it so much that demand started to grow for me to actually write the thing! One of my friends even came up with a perfectly fitting and perfectly cheesy 90s sitcom title for the show, Excess Baggage.
But writing an entire sitcom starring 50 people based on an inside joke seemed like a ridiculous waste of time. And anyway, I was on a film cleanse, and that included writing films as much as watching them!
Months later, when we were close to the end of the program in Latin America, people were still pestering me to write it and I started to realize that it really meant something to them. Over the Christmas break back in Canada, I couldn’t help but imagine different scenarios for the pilot and when I came up with a perfectly fitting idea for a pre-credit sequence, I decided to just start writing and see how far I could get.
When I rejoined the group in January in Colombia, I started writing in earnest and before I knew it, I was turning down paying jobs to focus on Excess Baggage. It took the entire month, but by the time we made it to our final destination, Mexico City, I had an entire pilot in hand. In fact, the script was an absurd 73-pages long, which at roughly one page per minute is actually the length of a short feature film. When I told the rest of the group the script was finished, it was decided that we would unveil it for the first time as a cold table read at our final farewell party of the entire year.
On the night of the party, I thought we might get through 30 minutes of the reading but we ended up finishing the entire script. While I had hoped that it would be funny at best and worried that it would be dull and selfish at worst, the reaction completely blew me away. It turned out to be an uproarious community bonding experience like none other, in which everyone got their moment to shine. It revealed the level of trust, comradery, and connection within the group that everyone was so committed to their roles, so supportive of each other, and so ready to laugh and cheer and cry. It was one of the most memorable moments of the entire year for me and I realized after the fact that it was actually the most satisfying artistic achievement of my life! Which is crazy, because it was “just a joke”.
But clearly, there was some magic to the fact that it had no commercial value, potential, or intention, and that it was not made as part of my conscious “artistic practice”. Yes, it was a joke, but a joke made for and about a very specific audience of people that I knew and loved, which also made it a gift. And it made me want to rethink my artistic aspirations so that they always come from this pure and naive community-centered place. As a gift to others rather than a gift to myself.
Note: this episode makes more sense if you listen to my podcast about Remote Year first.
