Oct 27th, 2007
The Phoenix and the Lion
Towards the end of my time in London in 2006, I got a small group of friends and acquaintances together and produced a short film based on a reverie I had about five years ago when I was living in San Diego.
I got a call in the middle of the night from a friend who had been pulled over by the police. The person that had been driving the car had pulled it over at the first site of sirens, and then dashed into the woods nearby, leaving my friend behind. The police officer refused to let my friend leave because she was intoxicated but allowed her to call me to pick her up.
Annoyed that I had been awakened, I got into my car and began driving over. While on the empty San Diego highways, this strange story began to play out in my head completely unprovoked.
Five years later I decided I wanted to produce the story in video so I wrote up a short screenplay and asked some people I knew to help me. I don’t think anyone clearly understood what the story was about although they all had the good grace not to poke fun at me for wanting to produce an incomprehensible short.
At any rate, the video is split into three parts. In Part 1 of the Phoenix and the Lion, a man is eating pills while poring over a photograph of someone he once knew. He lays down in his bed. Before he falls asleep, he makes a phone call.
In another part of town, a dark-haired woman awakens from a bad dream she was having. She moves over to the sink and begins mulling over something while she inspects her reflection in the mirror.
