A Little White Lie will be screened at the Newport Beach Film Festival on October 14, 2022.  Tickets are available here.

The title change from Shriver to A Little White Lie was a marketing decision, but as I've been reminded, the film is still the film.  I hope you all get to see it.

Things continue to happen for us at A Short History of Decay. The image above is from a live interview with me, Bryan Greenberg and Linda Lavin at the Apple Store in Soho. The interviewer is critic David Edelstein from New York Magazine. He seemed to like the movie. A lot. The discussion will be available as a podcast shortly.

We've also had a ton of other media this week.

• Here’s Bryan Greenberg on The Today Show.
• And on BIG MORNING BUZZ on VH1.
• Here's Part 2 of that interview.
• Bryan and I were interviewed on Huffington Post Live.
• And then Bryan, Harris Yulin and I spoke with Leonard Lopate on WNYC. • On Friday May 9, tomorrow, Linda Lavin will be on Hoda & Kathy Lee on during the 10 o'clock hour of the Today Show.

And there's been a lot more.  This is extraordinary for a small film going into limited release, and it's happening because people are really responding to it.

Just a reminder, you can PURCHASE TICKETS for any of the shows next week in New York. Please come to one of the shows or pass this along to friends in New York.

Also, please sign up for our newsletter. We won't bother you too much.

I started keeping this occasional blog back when all I had was a few ideas on paper.  It's been a long, strange journey.  And now we begin another phase as A Short History of Decay opens on May 16 at the Village East Cinema in New York City.

We'd love for all of you to be there opening weekend.

We're thrilled to announce the release of A Short History of Decay by Paladin.  The announcement received coverage today in Variety,  Deadline Hollywood and Indiewire.

Here's the full press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, PLEASE
Contact: Shannon Treusch (917/225-7093) / Betsy Rudnick (646/713-4367)at Falco Ink.

PALADIN TO MAKE 'HISTORY'
Michael Maren’s Directing Debut “A Short History of Decay” to
Open in Spring, 2014

NEW YORK, NY – JANUARY 17, 2014 -- A SHORT HISTORY OF DECAY, starring Bryan Greenberg, Linda Lavin, and Harris Yulin will be released this spring by Paladin, it was announced by the company's president, Mark Urman.  The film, which had its premiere at the Hamptons International Film Festival last fall, has been charming audiences on the festival circuit throughout the winter, with a theatrical opening planned for April.  Noted author (“The Road To Hell”), war correspondent, and journalist, Michael Maren, makes his feature directing debut with the film, which also stars Kathleen Rose Perkins, Benjamin King and Emmanuelle Chriqui.

SHORT HISTORY tells the story of Nathan Fisher, a thirty-something Brooklyn “hipster” (Greenberg) whose writing career is stalled, much to the chagrin of his ambitious live-in girlfriend, Erika (Chriqui). When she unceremoniously dumps him, Nathan retreats into a depressive funk, not knowing where to turn-- finish the novel? work on the play?-- when he gets a call from his brother in Florida telling him his father has been hospitalized.  Racing down to "snowbird" central, Nathan finds his father (Yulin) on the mend (albeit grumpy), and his normally addled mother (Lavin) a bit hazier than usual.  His quick visit turns into an extended stay during which he discovers that his aging parents are actually in much better control of their lives than he is.  He also meets a woman (Perkins)--his mother's manicurist, no less-- who is the polar opposite of Erika, but who may just be exactly what Nathan needs.

About the deal Maren says “we’re thrilled to have Mark and Paladin behind this release.  His enthusiasm for the film and understanding of the effect it has on audiences, as well as his experience in the business, told me that he was the man to shepherd it into the world.”

Urman says, "whether you call it a serious comedy or a funny drama, A SHORT HISTORY OF DECAY makes for marvelous entertainment.  Bryan Greenberg is completely winning as a rudderless man who needs to figure out who he wants to be ‘when he grows up,’ and he is surrounded by a terrific trio of actresses portraying the women who help him get there, particularly Linda Lavin, who is alternately hilarious and heartbreaking as someone whose love shines through even though her lights are dimming, and who still seems to have the right answers when it really counts."

Tony award-winner Lavin, currently co-starring in the NBC series “Sean Saves The World,” will be returning to the New York stage this May in Nicky Silver’s eagerly anticipated new comedy, “Too Much Sun,” having received her fifth Tony Nomination for Silver’s “The Lyons” last year.  Perkins, portrays the ditzy network executive, Carol, on Showtime’s hit series, “Episodes,” the third season of which premiered this week, and Chriqui will be recreating her role as Hollywood princess Sloan in the forthcoming feature film of the long-running HBO series, “Entourage.”  Greenberg numbers among his feature credits “Friends With Benefits,” “Bride Wars, and“ Prime,” and is also well known for his starring stints on the television shows “One Tree Hill,” “October Road,’ and, most recently. HBO’s “How to Make It In America.”  Veteran character actor Yulin was most recently seen in last year’s acclaimed film, “The Place Beyond The Pines.”

The deal was negotiated by Urman and veteran entertainment attorney Alfred Sapse who also produced the film.  Deals have also been entered into by Sapse and Bobby Gerber of ARC Entertainment for all post-theatrical domestic rights.

Okay, I'm a crappy blogger.  For the past year (I don't even want to know how long it's been) all of my energies have been focused on making this movie.  And now we're done.

We premiere at The Hamptons International Film Festival  on October 12.  Come on out and see us, and send your friends. Check out our website and watch the trailer.

A Short History of Decay from Michael Maren on Vimeo.

Every table in the coffee shop is occupied by young people furiously pecking away on laptop computers.  Nathan scans across the room and from his POV each of them seems to possess the talent and self-assuredness of young of a young Beckett, Joyce, or Hemingway.  He walks through, staring at computer screens.

This was was a scene description from an early draft of A Short History of Decay. In the story, Nathan’s girlfriend has just pointed out to him that he’s only pretending to be a writer, not doing the hard work, and she’s sick of it. Nathan heads off to a coffee shop to get down to business to prove her wrong.

The scene is meant to be part fantasy, a glimpse inside of Nathan’s fears. When he attempts to write he feels that all the places at the tables are taken and everyone is doing it better than he is.

The original idea was to fill the set with extras and coach them to to behave like writers, absorbed in their own work, soaking up the vibration of human activity in the cafe, and then to have them peer at Nathan as if to say, “you don’t belong here. You are not one of us.”

For months I thought about how to shoot this scene. What would I tell the extras? How would I get them to behave like real writers, not movie versions of writers. And then, well, I remembered that most of my friends are writers and could just “act naturally”

Real writers playing themselves in A Short History of Decay

We shot the coffee house scene on the final day of photography on a beautiful fall day in Brooklyn.  Almost everyone I asked showed up at 6 AM. The coffee was ready. We had some company: New York Magazine and The New York Times covered the shoot, which became something of an event.

More writers. Leave comments with the names of those you recognize.

The footage is beautiful, the performances natural and, from Nathan’s point of view, intimidating. And it was a perfect way to wrap my directorial debut. And, mostly it was fun.   This filmmaking business is hard work. The potential financial  rewards of making an independent film are highly uncertain.  The doing is the reward, and so I tried every step of the way to make the doing rewarding.  Every day was, particularly this one.

Photos by Heidi Gutman

On my list of priorities over the past few months, blogging has been pretty far down there.  Since my last update we've gone through a month of pre-production, a month of production with a crew of around 50, and now we've entered a post-production phase.

We started shooting downtown Wilmington, doing our best to make little edited slices of it look like New York City.  Then we moved to a "Brooklyn Apartment," a house in Wilmington that our art department turned into a brownstone walk-up. Bryan Greenberg and Emmanuelle Chriqui were in those scenes and I knew immediately that we had something special going on. Their incredible chemistry made the scenes sing, and it gave me the confidence I needed to really start working with the actors as they showed up on set.

The director with Emmanuelle Chriqui and Bryan Greenberg

On day three, Linda Lavin joined in quickly followed by Kathleen Rose Perkins, Rebecca Dayan, Benjamin King (a comic treasure, if you ask me) and Harris Yulin. The pleasure for me on the set every day was watching what these actors did with the words on the page and with each other.

The actors and crew worked very long days to get this done on time and on budget. There were days we reported on set at 5:00 AM and didn't leave until late at night. The Wilmington-based crew maintained an incredibly upbeat attitude throughout. Any thoughts of blogging about the shoot disappeared when I collapsed at night.

Wilmington is now wrapped, and editing has begun.  This weekend we're shooting a few final scenes in New York, including one scene in Brooklyn Monday morning that I've been looking forward to since I first wrote it in the script.  More on that later, as well as some pictures from the NYC shoot.

Within the next week or two, I will be sharing the entire cast of A Short History of Decay. I couldn't be happier with the direction this project is taking. The  production team is hard at work in Wilmington, N.C., where we will begin shooting on October 1. I can say with confidence that we are a GO film.  I just want to say thank you to every single person who has supported me on this journey.

I took a moment yesterday, amongst the barrage of phone calls and emails, to consider how far my film project has come.  It was born out of frustration and intense creative desire and a need to change the whole way I thought of my work and my career.  I’ve done it my way, on my own, after a lot of years of thinking (or being told) that I couldn’t, or shouldn’t.  That I was thinking too big, or coming up with ideas that were too out there; that no one was making grown-up movies.  Or that no one would take a chance on a first-time director.  Well, of all the many mind-blowing things that have happened over these past few months, maybe the most amazing is this sense of what is possible.  Goethe once wrote this: “Whatever you dream you can do, or believe you can do, begin it.  Boldness has grace, magic and power in it.”

Tomorrow I’m heading back to LA with my producing partner for a few jam-packed days of meetings with actors, our casting director, agents, a cinematographer, and investors.  Several of the key roles in  “A Short History of Decay” have been cast with some staggeringly wonderful, remarkable, gifted and well-known actors.  I’m not being coy here – I’m just not comfortable naming names yet.  Call me superstitious.  But suffice it to say that I am beyond gratified with the response to the script, and with the support I’ve received from people in the industry.  I’ve come to see that casting a movie like this is like putting together a giant puzzle.  Or, as my wife has recently described it, like building a skyscraper from the top down.  We have most of the pieces in place, and still a few more key ones to go.

After my LA trip I’m meeting my producer/first assistant director Buffalo Mike Hausman in Florida where we’ll cover a lot of ground – from Jacksonville to Sarasota – location scouting and meeting with crews.  ASHOD has a start date.  Mind-blowing but true.  We’re set to begin shooting this thing in early June.

For the past last two months everything has moved steadily in the direction I’d hoped it would — which is why you haven't heard from me in a while.  This is what’s happened:

First, Mike Hausman finished my budget. The initial draft of the budget totaled about $4 million. That was too high. Mike and I both felt that in order to  secure investors’ backing of a film with a first-time director, we’d have to get it down below $3 million. And since we’re planning on shooting in Florida, it means that we “only” need to raise about $2 million in private equity. That’s because Florida offers a tax credit of between 20 and 30 percent, depending on a series of variables.

In order to work the budget down, we had to reduce the number of shooting days. Don’t ask me exactly how that was done, but Mike went back to the drawing board and produced a budget for $2.8 million based on 25 shooting days. That puts a lot of pressure on the production, but with Mike working as 1st assistant director, we’re confident that’s doable.

But now, the hard part. Where to get the $2 million?  On one level, the answer is simple, you ask for it. Several people have suggested the crowdsourcing model, but this is simply too much money to raise in that manner. And although this script bears all the classic hallmarks of an indie picture, I want to make a film that will be a commercial success, or at least make earn more money than it cost to produce. I wanted to be able to go to people and offer this as an investment. Crowdsourcing even a portion of the budget seemed to me a signal that this was not a viable commercial venture.

I know what I’m good at and what I need help with. I needed a producing partner who could explain the investment, the risks, the potential rewards, and could also talk film. Someone who could speak with authority about the script, the process, and the business.
I met him at a dinner party that I almost skipped. (I also met my wife at a party I almost skipped.) My wife was out of town, and my son was insistent that we stay home and watch The Hangover again.  He pouted and complained for the entire 15-minute ride to the party.  As Woody Allen famously said, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” That has indeed been my experience.

I’ve known from the beginning that in order to get this done, I’d have to talk to everyone I met and tell them what I’m up to.  (Which isn’t difficult because everyone eventually asks, “So what are you up to?”)  The hosts of the party introduced me to Alfred Sapse, who I’d known by reputation as an entertainment attorney. Alfred moved to Connecticut from Malibu looking for a lower key place to raise his kids. He’d been working for his old clients and quietly producing low budget films.

We hit it off immediately.  The next day I sent him a copy of A Short History of Decay.  Two days later we were partners. Last week we met in New York with Mike H, to move the process forward. And since Albert came aboard, things have been moving very quickly.

A corporation has been formed: Short History, LLC.

Our first investor is now aboard, a very smart investor whose presence we hope will convince others give us a serious look.

There’s more than that to tell, but I’ll do it in the next post, casting for talent.

Click HERE to see the first post in this series.

When I was on the set of Phil Spector a last month I got some great advice on directing my first film, A Short History of Decay,  from David Mamet. A week later, as I was heading to LA, it occurred to me that many of my friends in the business would also have some interesting things to say about taking that first daunting step into directing.

How does a neophyte walk into a situation crowded with experienced professionals and start running the show?  (Or, does one even attempt this?) How does someone who hasn't acted since stinking up a high school production of Othello talk to seasoned actors about their craft? So, camera in hand, I started asking them.  As Mamet had predicted, everyone was generous, supportive and helpful.

Techies P.S.: This was recorded with a Nikon D7000. Okay, some of these are a bit out of focus. When I realized that I couldn't really see through the camera's LED screen, I bought a Zacuto viewfinder which allowed me to actually see what I was shooting.  I recommend the product to anyone shooting with an HDSLR.

David Mamet

We were on our way to grab a quick bite, waiting for the elevator in a Brooklyn courthouse. David Mamet looked at me and said: “The best thing about directing your first film is how supportive everyone on the set will be. Everyone will be rooting for you to succeed.” Then he added, “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

For me, moving toward directing my first film, this was welcome encouragement from a great director, a director whom I’ve long admired.  Whose book On Directing Film, I’ve devoured.

But the more interesting story is how I ended up chatting with David Mamet in the first place. And it’s a story that starts, as does the story of my making this film, with a decision to follow my own instincts against all advice and conventional wisdom about how to make a movie.

This part of the story begins with Milos Forman. Milos was among a small circle of trusted friends to whom I’d given early drafts of A Short History of Decay. I was looking for any notes he might have as well as any tips he might offer on directing.  Mostly, I was looking for the reaction of a veteran multiple Oscar-winning director to my casual remark that I was planning on directing my own script. “I only have one piece of advice,” Milos said in his deep Czech accent. “Don’t listen to anybody. You’ll know what to do.”

I’ve followed that advice ever since.

Milos loved the script enough to pass it along to Mike Hausman. Mike is an amazing producer who often doubles as first A.D. (assistant director).  He’s produced films such as Amadeus and Brokeback Mountain, to name only two.  He’s also produced most of David Mamet’s films.  The first A.D. runs the set. I need someone who can do that.

Mike Hausman and Milos Forman

I’ve previously written about my initial meeting with “Buffalo” Mike Hausman.  So you can read it here.

Mike is now producing  and acting as first A.D. on a film for HBO, the as yet untitled Phil Spector biopic which stars Al Pacino and Helen Mirren. Mamet wrote the film and is directing.  I told Mike that I’d like to spend some time on the set, to watch him work and see how he runs the show.  His answer was to invite me to be an extra.  I would play a journalist in the courtroom. “Great,” I told him. “Because I still consider myself  to be a journalist.”

“I know,” he said. “That’s what I’m afraid of. You’ll probably overact.”

So, continually reminding myself not to overact, I arrived at “holding” for extras, which was set up in church in Brooklyn Heights. I joined dozens of other extras— or background artists — most of whom seemed to know each other from previous TV and film jobs.  They would be spectators, security guards, jurors, journalists and other other bits of what some referred to as “moving wallpaper.”

The  scene recalled for me the feeling of being a journalist and landing in a new country for the first time. I watched, learned, and immersed myself in a fully realized subculture with its own language and customs. And since most of the work of being an extra background artist involves sitting around, I got to know a few people. It was a blast.

I spent three days staring at the back of Al Pacino’s head as he wore some crazy Phil Spector wigs. I watched Mike Hausman run the set, which all of the extras agreed was one of the most relaxed and friendly they’ve ever been on.  And I got to meet some of the amazing people who work for him, some of whom I will work with on my film.

Al Pacino as Phil Spector

And I got to sit for hours and watch an extraordinary and accomplished director create his vision.

(My star turn was when one of the cameramen asked me to slide a bit to my left. Then a bit more. I asked him if he was trying to get me into the shot. "No," he said. "I'm trying to get you out of the shot. You're ruining Al's closeup.)

And as I sat there day after day, I thought to myself, This is good. This is what comes from giving yourself permission to do what you want to do. From taking Milos Forman’s advice: “Don’t listen to anybody.”

Or I suppose I should add to that, don't listen to anyone who tells you what you can't do.

First, a brief update on A Short History of Decay.  I’m awaiting the budget and breakdown from my producer. It’s a hugely complicated process that results in a document that is very often longer than the screenplay itself.  During this time I’m talking with potential investors. I can’t talk any particulars until I have the document, so we wait. And I turn back to several television projects that are on my board.

I keep a bulletin board in my office with the titles of various projects I’m working on, or want to be working on; It’s easy to lose track. The board also reminds me of why I’m making a film on my own. Every project on it has a back story that includes a litany of reasons why it can’t be made.

If you want to make a living as a screenwriter or television writer there are certain things you must understand: You can’t sell a television show with a female ensemble cast. Baseball movies don’t make money. Period pieces are too expensive to produce. You can’t show a sick child in the opening act. You can’t set the drama outside the United States. You can’t have more than one foreign character in your movie or TV show. The lead has to be an American. A television show has to be a procedural; you must resolve at least one storyline in each episode. And by all means do not write a baseball movie with an all Cuban, female cast set in the 1930s.

What you should do is figure out what was successful ten minutes ago, tweak it a bit and hit the streets with your script before the buzz dies about the thing you just ripped off.

I exaggerate, but not much.  This is a symptom of the climate of fear that has always gripped the entertainment industry but which has of late reached apocalyptic proportions.  Agents don’t want to go out with offbeat material, and junior executives don’t want to pass it along to the higher-ups.  If you’re working on something and you hear that someone else has beaten you to the punch with something very similar, write faster and wish them well. If their project crashes and burns, yours will never see the light of day.

A number of years ago my wife and I developed a medical procedural set in the world of fertility clinics.  We were partnered with big TV star fresh off of a mega-hit series who had a development deal with Warner Brothers.  All good. Except... we’re all buoyed about by the same zeitgeist.  If you’ve got an idea, and it feels good or commercial (or both!) then you can pretty much assume that half a dozen other writers were struck with the same epiphany in the shower this morning and are busy drafting emails to their agents.

That was the case with our fertility drama.  We learned, while sitting in a conference room at CBS, that there was another project that they were also considering that had been brought to them a few weeks earlier by a team of emmy-winning writers.  They went with the other project.

Several months later we turned on the TV and watched the show with something approaching paralyzing trepidation. It was -- pun alert! -- as different from the show we’d conceived of as possible. And it was godawful.  Just terrible.  And it didn’t last much beyond the pilot, from which I derived some smug satisfaction until I realized that it meant that nobody was even going to look at a show in the fertility “arena” for at least a decade. And that was the end of that.

Nobody wants to hear that a show or a film didn’t do well because it wasn’t well done.  That’s too hard to quantify, so everything is reduced to a formula based on facile and false equivalencies. There’s little room for aesthetic judgement in the economy of fear.

Two visions of doctors in the Third World look identical from Hollywood

A television pilot I recently wrote about doctors in a war zone (American doctors) was quickly conflated with a chirpy feel-good medical drama set in a tropical paradise from people who made Grey’s Anatomy. The only thing the shows had in common was doctors and Third World. I’ve actually spent years living in refugee camps in war zones. I was creating real characters and drama based on that experience. There was no confusing it with escapist entertainment -- not that there’s anything wrong with that.

People who liked my pilot were waiting to see how the other one did. It didn’t do well.
The lesson that producers took from that was you can’t take doctors out of the country.

But then there’s Slum Dog Millionaire. And there’s Mad Men and Six Feet Under and other films and shows that broke lots of rules, maintained their integrity and  did phenomenally well.  And when you hear what it took to get these things made and distributed you can only gasp in admiration of the persistence and singularity of vision that it took to fight through the resistance.  Ultimately it’s powered by respect for the audience and by the belief that what’s good is good whether your hero is an all-American masked avenger or a Mexican sharecropper.  It’s hard to keep believing that when you’re constantly fed that list of things you can’t do.  Until finally you just decide to do it anyway, which is why I am where I am, starting to raise money to make my own film.