So here's where we are

I can't believe it's been almost two weeks since my last post...

The good news is I have finished a draft of Heterosexual Jill! (you can read my other post about the script which is much more descriptive here). I still have a good amount of work to do on it, but at least I have it down on paper instead of floating around in my head. Right now I'm in the process of getting feedback from people to help me re-think some changes for the next draft. The script is one of the most important things to get "right" before moving on to the next stage of production, so as eager as I am to get things going, I know I need to take my time and not rush things. Right now I'm looking at a 2010 production date if everything goes well...

As for Butch Jamie, it's been out on DVD now for 4 months. I don't want to jinx it, but it's been in the top ten lesbian best sellers list for Wolfe Video for the past 6 months! (which includes the 2 months prior to it being released)


If you're still looking to watch it, here's the lowdown:

Rental:
- Netflix
- Blockbuster online (not in stores)
- Your local independently-owned video store. If they don't have it, you can request it and they may purchase it to carry. I actually just got a myspace message from someone in Michigan who wrote to tell me how much she enjoyed the film and that her local video store ordered it for her to rent when she asked about it.

Purchase:
- Wolfe Video (really the best place to get it because they're the distributor and more of the sale goes to the filmmakers, especially if you use the above link; the rest of the sale goes to supporting an independently-owned GLBT film distributor, so all in all I think it's money well spent)
- TLA Video
- Amazon- LOGO
- Barnes and Noble
- Borders
- Best Buy
- Virgin Megastore
All of these companies only sell the video online and not in stores (I can't say that for sure, although I would be surprised). For that, I recommend supporting your local GLBT book/video store if you have one.

You can also rate and/or review the film on many of the above sites, as well as on IMDb. Any good word you can spread about it is much appreciated!

XMAS and New Year's!

Last week I got back from a two week holiday vacation - a week with the family in Missouri, and a week with some friends in Upstate NY. It's the longest I've been away on vacation in over 10 years and it was a nice long break. I realize that Missouri and Albany aren't quite as exciting as Taiwan or Korea, so I'll skip the day-by-day recap and give you a brief overview.

Missouri:

Christmas morning with my twin nieces -






Bald eagle spotted on our ATV ride -



Me as Aunt -


Albany:

Foster kitties under the Christmas tree -



Snow on New Year's Eve Day -


Rockin' New Years Eve -



Day trip to Northampton:

Smith College campus -









Snowboarders on the railing -



Butch Jamie featured in the gay bookstore -



I also got to see my old cat Huey (aka Howard) for the first time in over a year and a half. I was happy when I could tell he remembered me. I also saw some old friends who worked on the movie, and my ex and her new wife and I all played Rock Band into the wee hours of the morning. I discovered that drums and singing badly with enthusiasm are my specialty.

Taiwan Day #3

My guide and I started the day off by visiting an authentic tea house in Maokong, an area on top of a mountain where there are a lot of tea farms. The gondola ride up was out of service due to a recent typhoon, so we took a taxi to the top.


From the tea house, we had a great view of the city -



We also had a view of this huge temple.


Legend has it that if couples go to the temple together, they will break up soon after. It has something to do with the god being jealous.




At the tea house, we ordered traditional Chinese tea which you brew yourself in a tiny tea pot and drink out of tiny cups.



The miniature size of everything made it feel like we were at a kid's tea party (I told my guide this and she thought it was really funny; you never how some of this humor translates culturally).


We were given a tea pot with water on a hot plate to continually refill the mini teapot. The water soaked in the mini teapot with the green tea leaves for less than a minute before we transfered it to another container where it waited until we were ready to pour it into our shotglass-esque tea cups.


My guide also gave me a quick Chinese lesson. She explained to me that Chinese was originally based on picture representations of people, animals, and other things. Over the years the language has morphed so that most of it is no longer picture-based, but with some characters you can still see the image of what is being represented, such as with "farm" and "horse."


Inside the teahouse, I found this sculpture made entirely from the exoskeletons of lobsters (click on it to make it larger) -


After Maokong, we went to Din Tai Fung for lunch, which is famous for their dumplings and xiaolongbao (pronounced vaguely like "shalombot.") Xiolongbao are similar to dumplings but have a different shape and a different sort of filling.



Din Tai Fung is a chain restaurant (there's even one on the outskirts of L.A.) and is inside of a mall, however in 1993 the New York Times voted it as one of the ten best restaurants in the world!

The wait was an hour long and we needed to be back at the theater for a screening of Butch Jamie, so we dined in style by getting an order to go and eating it on a bench in the mall. The xiolongbao we ordered had a really excellent flavor. I'm not sure how it compares to the Din Tain Fung restaurant out here, but I plan to go someday to compare.

After lunch, we went to the screening of Butch Jamie. The Women Make Waves Film Festival scheduled three screenings of the film, however there was only one while I was in town.


The screening went well - people seemed to enjoy it and I took a lot of photos with fans and signed autographs.

Afterward, we gathered in a separate room for a Q&A. Sitting next to me is the translator.




After the Q&A, we went to two of Taipei's famous night markets. I took a lot of photos at the markets, so I'll be back soon with part two!

Jsh-amie le Butch

Butch Jamie is now officially on DVD! Here's David and I at the release party last Wednesday (OK, so the photo's a little cheesy. But kind of cute, right?) -


We had a fun time at the party. I had a friend of mine who I haven't seen since my Freshman year of high school unexpectedly show up, as well as a couple of fellow Smith College alums. I ran into a representative from Here TV who told me that they're buying the TV rights (they've been in negotiations for awhile, so it hadn't yet been official). They raffled off some free DVDs and David won Season 5 of the L Word which he gave to me.

Earlier this week, After Ellen published an interview I did with them -

"Michelle Ehlen is a cinematic jack (or should we say jill?) of all trades. For her debut feature, Butch Jamie, she wrote, directed, produced, starred and edited the film, which centers on the adventures of a struggling butch lesbian actress in L.A. who lands a male role and runs with it. Shot on a shoestring budget in upstate New York, the film landed Ehlen Best Actress accolades at the 2007 Outfest film festival in L.A., and the laughter of just about everyone in queer festival audiences around the country."
--Click here for the rest of the article.

Also, I found out that my French distribution company, Optimale, will be releasing the DVD soon. Check out the totally pimped out, bling-bling DVD cover they designed -



As for the U.S./Canadian DVD, you can order it through several different retailers, including Wolfevideo.com. You can also rent it through Netflix, Blockbuster, and many independent stores.

DVD release party!

This morning I went to the protest against prop 8 in downtown L.A. - I'll be posting photos from that soon. In the meantime, I wanted to announce the DVD release party that's happening for Butch Jamie here in L.A. My co-star David Au and I will both be there. Hope to see you there!

I'll Be Back Again Someday

Last weekend I went to Santa Barbara for a screening of the film. I had no expectations and ended up having an excellent time. Butch Jamie has been on the festival circuit for a little over a year; during that time I've attended ten festivals, and have traveled around the world and back twice. Sitting in the movie theater during the show this time, I knew that things were coming to a close. And I was ready for them to.

I took a Psychology class when I was 14 and we were supposed to come in and discuss what our favorite fairy tale or story was when we were younger, and what that possibly said about us. My mom told me I loved "Frosty the Snowman"; that as soon as we'd finished reading it, I'd want to read it again and again. As you probably know, Frosty comes to life and there's all this fun and magic that happens, and at the end of it he melts. But before he does, he tells the children "I'll be back again someday."

It's interesting when I look at the way I've chosen to live my life - almost in seasons, with projects, people, places, and things coming and going. I'll confess to you that it was always my fear, as a creative person with a lot of ideas and interests, that I would never finish a project of any longevity. That I would end up with half-written scripts and partially formulated ideas. When I think back on the process of this film, starting nearly four years ago, my endurance has been the most rewarding for me.

For the past year, I've been asking myself "what's next?" "When's it's coming?" "I'm ready for the next chapter of my life. Hello, hello, where is it?" I have been in limbo for awhile - much longer than usual, and it's been a bit uncomfortable for me. I see this film as a sort of bridge from my past life to my future life, and it's been a very long bridge. But I know that part of embracing change is learning to sit with the stagnancy. I always tell myself that things wait to happen until we're ready. We may want to be ready and we may think we are, but most of the time we're not.

I don't believe that life is random and chaotic. It's smart - much smarter than us. It knows when we're ready, and sometimes it gives us a moment of clarity if we're able to listen. As I was watching the film for the 100th time, sitting alone in the third row with the audience completely behind me, I said to myself - "It's now. I'm ready now."

A big lezzie butch dyke with a nice set of balls

Today's title comes from the lyrics to one of Butch Jamie's songs, "Nice Set of Balls." Of all the things I can't do, singing is one of them (dancing, drawing, and sports are high on that list as well). But after several takes and a lot of editing, I'm happy to say that I managed to record my own voice for the song (and even happier to say that we had real singers perform the others).

The original soundtrack for the movie is now available to download through our SNOCAP store -



Tomorrow I'm heading out to Taipei! I'll be back next week with photos and hopefully some good stories about my adventures.

It's Here and It's Queer!

Butch Jamie is now on pre-sale from Wolfe Video! The DVD officially comes out on November 18th, but they're already taking orders. It'll soon be making its way to other retailers, but since it's so new, right now it's just at Wolfe and TLA Video (although if you do want to get a copy, I recommend using my link here to Wolfe because it's better for the filmmakers that way).

Wolfe is in the process of sending out press releases, so hopefully soon the film will get some good coverage. Festival activity will probably taper off after the release, but right now there are several upcoming screenings scheduled.

The cover art turned out a little differently than I had thought, but I like it - I think it looks like a fun movie. I'm also glad they were able to incorporate the photos of Lola and Jill. But guess who isn't on the cover? ...Howard! They had to get another cat, a "cat double," because none of the photos we took worked. I think this cat looks just like Howard, except the real Howard seems to have sort of a smile...

Out of the Closet and into the Movies

The past ten days I've been busy going to screenings and parties at Outfest, where Butch Jamie made its premiere last year. Since the festival is in L.A., Outfest is really the best GLBT festival in terms of networking - you get to meet film distributors, network executives, producers, other filmmakers, actors, crew, etc. And every night of the week there's a party!


Here are some pics of the colorful spreads from opening night (I feel like those ladies who take photos of the dining room table at the holidays. I guess when you get older some things start to make sense).




Since I didn't have a film in the festival this year, I've been promoting Butch Jamie's DVD release, which is scheduled for November 4th. I also met up with Wolfe Video to do a photo shoot for the cover art. The other actors, including Howard the cat, will all have separate photo shoots since they're in Upstate New York and we'll Photoshop them in depending on how it all looks. Howard is already becoming the star - what I wore, (it couldn't be black because he is black), what my arms were doing, what my face was doing, how I sat (can you slouch down a little so we'll be able to see the cat?) all revolved around him. It reminded me of how Jamie might feel when she shoots her next movie with Howard in Heterosexual Jill.

I also went to see several movies this year, including the much anticipated adaptation of Sarah Waters' Affinity. The two other movies based on her novels, Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith, were so much better that I was disappointed with this one. The movie isn't bad, but it's not great either.


My favorite this year was the newly restored Word is Out, a late 1970s documentary about gays and lesbians that'll be making its way to DVD soon. Despite the fact that the documentary is 95% sit-down interview and was more than two hours long, I wasn't bored at all (which is saying a lot, considering my attention span and long movies). In addition to the great 1970s kitch value, the humor and honesty of everyone's stories in a time when the closet was a much more populated place made it really fascinating to watch.


It was also interesting for me to learn that the film was considered funny when it came out 30 years ago - I thought a lot of the humor came with time (and some of it did - the music, outfits, interior design, chain smoking, mid-day drinking, and the P.O. Box listed at the end of the movie to mail in audience members' comments were all amusing reminders of the past), but it turns out that most of it was timeless. Even then, when positive portrayals of gays and lesbians on-screen were rare, it seems that we had the ability to laugh at ourselves.