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FOR THE BITTERNESS OF JACK HENRY When I was 14 years old, attending an amazing experimental alternative High School in Seattle called NOVA, public and so therefore free, based on the Summer Hill model in England, a friend of mine was reminded by his counselor that a new filmmaking class was beginning. The friend had to leave our pool game - an English teacher (who was the one who got me hooked on Shakespeare) had two billiard tables for us to use in his classroom - and no one else was around, so I decided to go downstairs to the film class and see what it was all about. From there, I fell in love with cinema. It could be argued that my love for films began much earlier, when as a toddler I sat in Laemmle theaters in Los Angeles where my father and mother worked and watched films from Italy, France, Japan, and elsewhere, along with independent films from the States. But it was that film class, taught by a recent graduate from the cinema program at Bard University in New York - one of many enormously inspiring, brilliant, and influential teachers at NOVA - that caused me to make the decision to become a filmmaker. Earlier that same year I had fallen in love with writing stories, fiction, literature, in particular Joyce, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, and Rimbaud. I began writing stories and then only months later fell in love with filmmaking and decided to make the switch to movies instead of books. This switch back to books from movies would happen years later when I was 26, after having been burnt out on the filmmaking process. I wrote countless scripts over the years, worked on many short films, acted on stage, participated in other people's projects, did odd industry jobs, created an underground zine with my father John Wisdom Dancer called The Hollywood Absurd, was part of a filmmaking and acting artist collective inspired by John Cassavetes, and worked on my first feature film, The Bitterness of Jack of Henry, for three years. I was not able to find access, no open doors, despite the appreciation of the film by the likes of the brilliant and under-appreciated African American filmmaker Charles Burnett, the controversial yet popular Oliver Stone, excellent film critics in LA, and others, and yet no distributor, no film fest (except one) took the film. It was by the time I finished the script for my second feature film, an adaptation of Moliere's dark comedy, The Misanthrope, that I was depleted of cinematic energy. I was done. The business side of filmmaking was too distasteful and disheartening, and in the end, too time consuming. Life was short, I had too many stories to tell. I needed to continue telling stories, but wanted to do it through literature, through books, to have it on my shoulders and only my shoulders, to see it become realized. In the process these past 20 years, I've written and published 18 books, books that I am extremely proud of and love and to me will stand the test of time (and which can all be found on this site). I am also not done with telling stories through books, as I am in the midst of a project of writing 78 short stories for the 78 tarot cards, The Human Drama (go to the page here on this site to find out more). But late in 2024, I was inspired, I got the filmmaking bug once again, intensely so, and I thought maybe it would go away, as it would happen over the years that I would become interested in filmmaking again usually after being inspired by a filmmaker, but it would drift away. This time though, it did not drift away and perhaps it was because I had accomplished so much as a writer already with those 18 books, and in particular completed a 30 year mission to tell the story of how the Shakespeare Canon was created (the four Anonymous Agnostic Antichrists novels, which can be found here on this site) that my mind and body and soul felt it was ready, it was time for me to get back into the making of cinema again. I decided to upload and share my first feature film, The Bitterness of Jack Henry, onto YouTube, and was delighted to enjoy it after not seeing it for 20 years. It stands up well after two decades, thanks to the work of my collaborators, the cinematographer Kristina Nikolova, the music by Pete Meyers and Mike Grindle, the cast of Joey Cassino, Peter Hale, Helen Dion, and Joey's family, the sound recording of Jonathan Heidelberger, and everyone else that worked on the film. I also became inspired to work on my second feature film, and made the decision to explore my past struggles with addiction. I've finished the screenplay, not only is it inspired by my own personal experiences, but also by the work of others, specifically Roman Polanski's 1970 film about an alcoholic, A Day at the Beach, Carl Theorore Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), Samuel Beckett's play from the 1980's, What Where, and Ingmar Bergman's film from 1966, Persona. But I've also been inspired recently by the films of Robert Altman, and other films by Dreyer as well. The art of making cinema, of movie-making, of filmmaking, is one which I was not sure I would even get back into. Now in 2025, I now know for sure that I do and have. Keep a look out for more information on my second feature, Visionary. In the meantime, may you enjoy The Bitterness of Jack Henry. CLICK HERE FOR THE BITTERNESS OF JACK HENRY |