I don't always a direct my movies with my sunglasses on.

One of my students, who so far is a ball busting troublemaker, had the gall to ask why I had my shades on?

Simply, I told him, because I wanted to be surprised by the video later when I edit it. My sunglasses are dirty and smudged, so as I'm filming the actors I'm not getting the full image. There is nothing to distract me from their performance, other than when I tripped over something because I can't see.

I Tivo-ed a great show, excuse me, I Moxi-ed a wonderful documentary called, "Edge of Outside" about independent filmmakers. It wasn't really anything I hadn't seen or heard before, but there was a memorable bit with cinematographer Frederick Elmes talking about working with John Cassavetes and how as Fred would be shooting, John wood walk up behind and elbow him so that the camera movement wouldn't be smooth.

People I know wouldn't understand that, but I do. Nothing pulls me out of a movie more than perfectly in focus, smooth shots with perfect acting and beautiful people. Nothing in my life is like that! When I walk down the street I'm not on a dolly on tracks like Spike Lee is in his films.

Also, there is the need to be surprised with a fresh image when I see it later. You've already seen it performed live and in 3D when you shot it, it's nice to be surprised with something different, because you will already be depressed about how different it is then what you imagined it would be.

Everybody is different.

I watched two very inspiring DVDs.

"It Happened Here" from 1965, a film from one of my heroes, film historian Kevin Brownlow, who was only 18 years old when he and a friend made this film about a defeated World War Two era England and how the people deal with a London populated by Nazis.

This film is amazing!

It looks like a documentary, a nightmarish documentary that must have been so groundbreaking when it was released. Pauline Murray plays a nurse who at first seems completely clueless politically, her friends are aiding a resistance fighter, she needs to support herself and joins a British organization that has merged with Germany's plans, but I believe she is wandering through this movie completely shellshocked after a truly frightening sequence where a Nazi has his face blown off right in front of her by British freedom fighters who inadvertently kill all her friends.

Finally things seem to be going good for her when she is demoted and sent to a country hospital where she accidentally discovers she has helped in the atrocities performed on Russian and Polish hospital patients.

I can't get enough of those crazy Holocaust movies!

I followed that up with another story about the Holocaust, Sarah Silverman's "Jesus Is Magic!" this movie is so oddly inspiring that it made me want to get up and go perform a one-woman show! You know what I mean!

I used to have a huge crush on her, but now I've replaced her with Joanna Angel, because I think she might be more approachable and less dirty than Sarah Silverman.