My Goodness, What a Story.

          I Recently heard My friend Joel Schneider reveal a few personal details about his past that included his time living with me on a radio interview. I figured since he broke the ice, I can now write about my relationship with him and tell some stories from my perspective. For those who don't know, Joel currently fronts a band called "My Goodness" in Seattle. They aren't on the cover of Rolling Stone (yet) but are doing quite well these days and are about to release their official debut album. My filmmaking has blossomed into a professional realm over the same timeline that Joel's music has and that's no coincidence. It's because the top three milestones that represent clear leaps forward in my art were all music videos for My Goodness. This wonderful artistic collaboration that has benefitted both of us wasn't just a chance encounter. Joel was the star of my first short film over ten years ago and I directed his first music video for his first band while he was in high school. Those projects never went very far but they were the building blocks for what was to come. Looking back now the stories that fill in the blanks are full of hilarity, humility, and inspiration.
          I might as well start from the beginning, I've known Joel all my life, well...all his life. I'm four years older. Our parents were friends and My mom often babysat Joel when we were young children. When I was ten and he was six our dads took us up to Alaska for a fishing trip and that's where this story really begins. There's something about Alaska that will drop your balls. It's like a country within a country. A land that's mission is to make men from boys. When I got off the plane in Anchorage I was welcomed by a taxidermied Grizzly bear standing on his hind legs about 12 feet tall permanently frozen in the "I'm going to eat you now" pose. Next to that was a video playing on loop of a bear chasing down a Jack Rabbit in a field and catching him with ease. The message I got: "Welcome to Alaska, if you plan on going hiking here, you better be faster than a Jack Rabbit, good luck!"
          After a couple of days we camped one night in a field on Kodiak Island where true to the warning in the airport, a bear had shredded a cow a few days before. Although any size bear that was charging at me would cause me to brown my pants, it's important to understand that bear hierarchy goes like this; Polar bears are bigger than grizzly bears. The only bear bigger than a Polar Bear resides exclusively on Kodiak island and is fittingly named the Kodiak Bear. Guns are of little use when faced with a charging Kodiak bear because bullets only slightly slow them down. We first heard about the cow incident from the locals then on our way to pitch the tent we saw what was left of it. It looked like someone tried to make a rug with a chainsaw. To avoid a similar fate, Joel's uncle (who was a resident of the area) took the next half hour to catch about 40 salmon, which is not hard in Alaska. He didn't even use bait in favor of the more efficient Alaskan weapon of choice: the "snagging" hook. He proceeded to place them in a circle around our camp creating a 50 yard perimeter of tempting snacks to distract the bear if he returned. Somehow this gesture genuinely made me feel better.    
         While the adults were fishing the next day, Joel and I invented a fantastic game that looking back was something so ingeniously gross, only six to ten year old boys would be able to come up with it. We first caught two bullheads (a common bottom feeder fish). We then whacked them dead like we were taught to do at the beginning of the trip. The next step involved our newly acquired responsibility of wielding survival knives. After a brief scientific dissection we discovered that bullhead intestines were very tough and could be pulled out about six feet or so. As the fish dried out they became quite sticky. We already had our shirts off because of how warm the day was so it was the logical next step to wrap the end of the strung out intestin around one hand and start swinging the dead bullhead club around in an effort to fish-slap each other. Come to think of it, that might have been the name of the game; "Fish-Slap". If contact was made the fish would slap onto our skin and stick. Once pealed off, it would leave a red fish stensil welt as a badge of honor or a score for the other person (I feel like that last detail was less clarified). Needless to say, It was certainly more about the thrill of playing the game than who won although I'm sure Joel's version would end with me hand carving him a trophy and kissing his feet begging for mercy.
         Joel and I stayed close over the years and as we got older, as most kids do when they reach the age of rebellion we clashed more and more with our parents. Our shared religious upbringing multiplied the clashing and gave us a struggle even more in common than typical teenage angst, especially when we developed our mutual love for metal and punk rock. I remember getting in trouble for lending Joel a Greenday CD that my parents didn't know I had. As I got older, my parents gradually accepted my interest in alternative culture and gave me more freedom to make my own choices. Without going into further details, it seemed that Joel's situation was not improving when he entered his high school years as mine had. It finally came to a point where he could no longer continue to live at home but he was still a year shy of 18 (and graduation). I was 22 at the time and had an Apartment in Seattle. My roommate was gone for six months so I invited him to live with me. He accepted and finished out high school by commuting across a few towns while working almost fulltime at a construction job. Somehow we balanced a regular routine of partying almost every night amongst all this. I should mention that his friend Evan became a permanent fixture in our living room during this time which didn't bother me. I had just quit community college film school not having passed a single quarter because I felt it was a waste of my time and money (I still do). I knew if I was going to quit school I would have to do it on pure self motivation so I began shooting music videos for punk rock bands on VHS tapes. Even early on I was pretty ambitious given the lack of any budget whatsoever because I really wanted my video concepts to stand out since nice equipment was out of the question. Joel and Evan were always eager to assist often appearing as extras. One video involved building a set with large sheets of wood painted to look like an office that the characters could break into. When my roommate finally came back from his trip and reclaimed his room, we kept Joel around and built him a bedroom in our living room with the fake walls from the office set. Joel didn't own a guitar at the time so he would borrow my acoustic frequently. I knew if he had been playing it because he never tuned it back to standard when he put it down. This was annoying at the time but was laying the foundation of an innovative sound that would years later be fully realized as My Goodness.
          I eventually got married to my longtime girlfriend and moved out. My wife had drug addiction issues that would come and go throughout our marriage and would eventually lead to the end of it. About half way through my five year marriage, my wife and I moved out to the small town of Deming, Washington to get away from the city after a particularly terrible bout with her substance abuse. I quickly realized that moving to a small town does make it harder to score but it does not solve the problem when someone's facing addiction. A few incidences later she was court ordered into a rehab clinic which left me broke, depressed, and all alone in a small house with no neighbors. My Pizza delivery job that was 40 minutes away left little to spare after it paid for the commute. I spent a lot of my time during the days walking my dog along the river bank near my house. There was a particular bend in the river next to an open field very near my house that was a popular spot for Bald Eagles to fish aptly named "Eagle Park". One time I decided to count all the Eagles I could see from a single vantage point and got to around 70 when it started to get confusing. The breathtaking nature I was surrounded by wasn't enough to distract me from the turmoil in my life and I usually sobbed myself to sleep in a half panic attack.
          When she got out of rehab she introduced me to a guy she met in the clinic who needed a place to stay. I reluctantly granted him our spare bedroom because we were going to be evicted without some financial help in paying our rent. I found out later that he was an Iraq war vet that suffered from PTSD and claimed to be who one of the characters in the book "Jar Head" was based on. Anthony Swofford, the author of Jar Head was near the top of a "People to kill" list I found in his bedroom once.
          Things between my wife and I didn't improve and I couldn't handle my helplessness over my life situation anymore and told her we needed a break from each other. I left without a plan and drove the two hours to Seattle where Joel and Evan took me into the house they were renting without a moment's hesitation. A few weeks later I returned to the Deming house to collect the rest of my stuff and my psycho ex roommate pulled a gun on me and for a second I was certain he was going to pull the trigger. My wife had moved out leaving him there alone, it wasn't long after that incident that he defaulted on the rent and left the place. A few months later the Earth swallowed up the vacant house with a tremendous landslide that came off the over-logged hill behind the property. We all would have been buried alive had we still lived there. I saw it in a newspaper and recognized the yard, did some research and found out it was in fact the same house. It was almost like a mysterious force beneath the Earth was causing opposing energy in the house, dramatically driving the three of us away in separate directions before it got to the breaking point where it could hold on no longer.
          Due to the struggles in my life that led to me moving in with Joel and Evan, I had not made any videos in a while. Evan had been pursuing a career in sound mixing and landed an impressive job at a popular club that booked well known touring bands almost every night. Joel fronted a band playing organ instead of guitar and was writing tons of songs. Their positive artistic energy motivated me to pick up the camera again and I made my first short film "Secret Agent Shopper". It was a comedy based on my experience of being a secret shopper who got fired because another secret shopper was appointed to follow me secretly to make sure I did my secret shopping correctly. Secret shopping secret shoppers was such an absurd and hilarious concept to me that the script basically wrote itself. Joel was cast as the lead and Evan ran sound naturally. I cast my friend Felipe and a guy named Michael from craigslist as the other two actors. We shot the entire thing in one day for about $50 with a borrowed DV camera. I showed it later at a filmmaker open screening and got a great response from the crowd, much bigger than they guy who spent ten grand on his short that played before mine which made for an awkward Q and A. It was a huge motivator for me to keep going with film and to start taking it more seriously. I recently reminisced over this film greatly because tragically, Felipe passed away because of a serious heart condition he had been battling for years. Joel and I ran into him a few months ago as he was loading his band's equipment into the very club that Evan ran sound at years ago. We had a good laugh and talked about Secret Agent Shopper for a moment on the street. It was a brief encounter but I'm glad I got to see him one last time.
          I lived at Joel and Evan's for about six months before repairing my relationship with my wife who had proved herself clean over that span of time. Together, we moved to Portland for a fresh start. To make a long story short, we struggled considerably financially, most of it being my fault for not being able to hold down any job for more than a couple months. I blame my chronic back pain as the main culprit but there certainly were other responsibility/maturity issues I needed to conquer in addition to my poor physical condition. My wife, relapsed a few more times and by the last time, I could tell that it was a pattern that wasn't going to have a happy ending if things kept going the way they were. I left her when I found her stash after warning her that I would if she relapsed again.
          I was in the lowest place I had ever been. I told myself the only way to go from here is up but I knew it all had to be different. I could not go along anything that resembled the same path that led me to where I was so I bought a van and moved into it. I hadn't seen Joel or Evan for a couple years so I drove to Seattle and found out that they were both in new bands and were booked one after each other for a bar show that night. Joel's new band was My Goodness. There was only a handful of people there when My Goodness took the stage as the first band of the night. The show was incredible. I knew from the first song that there was something special in front of me. I confessed to Joel when he got off the stage that my socks had been officially blown off and that I think he's going to make it big with this new sound. Joel shook my remarks off humbly but I could tell that he recognized the potential as well.
          I knew that even though Joel was my good friend, I would have to act fast to make the first music video. I also knew that I would have to follow in Joel's footsteps and up my game considerably if I didn't want to get left in the dust. With no budget for a video between us, I had to think outside the box and ambitiously. Instead of thinking reasonably because of our lack of funds, I came up with an idea that involved 40 cameras and a warehouse. Joel told me he could afford to pay me $200 to do it. Since I needed all $200 for survival money I decided to try and make my concept happen without spending a single dollar. I did some research and found a small community run warehouse that had art workshops and gymnastics throughout the day. When I went to inquire about usage I was greeted by a man wearing a full body dog costume who claimed to be the operations manager. Talking to him about rental fees was difficult because along with the dog suit I was constantly being distracted by his ten year old son who was cheering loudly while driving large holes into the wall behind him with a fork lift. I called it to his attention a few times but I could tell that the man-dog-dad was more annoyed at me for pointing out what was happening than what was happening so I did my best to ignore it. He was very excited about the idea of a music video being shot there and told me he would waive the rental fee before I could ask him to. The only stipulation was we couldn't turn on the heat.
          My next stop was Widmer brewing. I had heard that Widmer had supported local film events with free kegs before and if I was going to ask 40 people to show up with cameras for no pay; I needed to give them beer, bill it as a networking event, and get the vid shot in under an hour. Widmer provided the keg with hardly a question asked so I started littering facebook and craigslist with cameraman recruitment ads. I was completely honest about what was going down and that the pay was in beer. Instead of 40 I got 20 which was still quite impressive. Twenty proved to be a more ideal number once I got to post production anyway.
          As I predicted My Goodness got signed to a label three days after we shot the video and they were already trying to hook him up with different filmmakers. I finished the video a week later and the label loved it. They didn't give me any money for it but down the line My Goodness became involved with a different label that saw it and ended up funding the next one.
          The band wasn't officially signed to the new label so they gave me a very small "starter/tester" budget to see what i could make with it. Once again I decided to over shoot my means and make it a period piece that took place in the 1940's. One week after I wrote the concept it was cast, shot, edited, and delivered for under a thousand dollars. This was an unbelievable feat for how good the video turned out and I owe at least half of that success to my newly acquired powerful teammate who has worked with me closely on every film project since. That person is going to be my wife this fall and goes by the name Rachel. The label was so impressed they gave me an additional stipend as a reward.  
          When it came time for the next music video, they approached me again, this time with a typical professional indie rock video budget. This made me happy but I also knew that expectations were increased as well as funds. With pen in hand staring at a blank page, I found myself second guessing wether making the last one so good was such a good idea after all. The new song had a deeper more emotional tone than the last two which helped guide my inspiration. I decided to reach within myself to come up with a meaningful story that was mostly fiction but based loosely on a series of otherwise unrelated events from my past and then spice it up to cinematic proportions to match the intensity the song had. I sent the overly complicated treatment to Joel for his approval and to my dismay he responded by telling me that he liked the idea but since he had replaced his drummer with a new one he wanted a video that showcased the band to introduce the new lineup visually. His logic made sense to me, you don't want two videos floating around youtube as you climb the charts with an old drummer especially since My Goodness is only Joel and a drummer. I told him that I could incorporate both the concept and the band. Given the complexity of the story, I really didn't understand how this would work as this new plan would cut my already pinched time in half to tell my story. However, I also knew that Joel knows what he wants and compromising was the only way I was going to be able to execute my idea. He agreed but made me promise that I was confident I going to be able to pull it off.  
          Rachel and I spent a month in preproduction this time. We cast my cousin John without an audition because I was already familiar with his stage acting talent which ended up working out great. Somehow, we pulled it off and the video has gotten some great write ups including one from a DJ I used to listen to religiously when I was younger.
          The same label sent Rachel and I on a complete U.S. tour for two months with two other bands they also represented. By coincidence or fate Evan was hired to be our tour manager and we were reunited once again. My ex wife got clean for good the day I left her and is currently leading a much healthier life as an exception to the statistics, thank God. Joel is my best man in Rachel and I's upcoming wedding and I'm sure we'll be close for the rest of our lives. One of the most powerful lessons in maturity I've learned from growing up with Joel was how to make the transition from big brother figure to an adult with equal standing. I feel if I had not humbled myself in those crucial few years I might have missed the ambitious wisdom that he had been dying to share with me and now together we bring each other up to higher and higher levels professionally and beyond. If I could sum this whole story into some advice, I would say to surround yourself with people full of capability and ambition who aim higher than what seems feasible and make sure you listen as much as you teach. The best part about writing this all down and reading it back is I know that someday it will all be considered chapter one in a much longer story.
          I referenced a lot of videos in this post, instead of listing a ton of links I'm going to leave you with one. I've chosen the first My Goodness video because it has been removed from Youtube recently to not be confused with the new version of the song (this one features the original drummer, Ethan). It still lives on my personal account on Vimeo and is a lot harder to search for.     www.vimeo.com/22049997