All about Textual Healing

Baby, I woke up this morning, Blackberry storming beside me... TEXTUAL HEALING!

So first of all, our silly little parody video, in case you haven't seen it:

TEXTUAL HEALING

A few people have asked how we made this, so I'll share some of the process here. We're considering making a "making of" video, since we do have some behind-the-scenes footage and such, we'll see if we have time, with all the other good stuff coming up!

I don't remember exactly when, where, or why I was inspired to write the new lyric to Sexual Healing. Sometimes my brain is just odd that way. A lot of times, an idea will come into my mind, like a title, or sometimes even entire fully formed lines of lyric, or melodies, and I'll lazily let them sit there for months on end, doing nothing about it until one day, I sit down at my piano and actually come up with a melody (or figure out which melody has been playing in my head all this time.) TEXTUAL HEALING was pretty fast, as I recall- I had the idea, wrote the lyric, and just had a feeling that if I didn't act on it right then, it would become another one of those "great ideas" we all have that we talk ourselves out of, or share with the wrong people so THEY can talk us out of it, but basically, squelching creativity rather than running with the inspiration.

I looked up TEXTUAL HEALING online and was amazed to find that no one else had yet written this parody song. That's when I knew we HAD to do it, and fast.

I called my friend Maria Rusolo, who is a great actress in NY who also owns and runs ROAM PICTURES, which is dedicated to producing projects having to do with women's issues. Maria has become quite the director and producer, and I had seen some of her short films in which she wrote, directed, and acted (and generally acted as a jack-of-all-trades makeup person, key grip, editor, and caterer...as we all do on these "indie" projects, much of the time!) "Hey, I wrote this parody, it might be super stupid, but it might actually be funny," I said. "Send it over with the lyrics," she said. So I did. And she laughed. And we began planning the vid. "What's your budget?" Maria inquired. "100 bucks," I said, figuring she'd immediately laugh hysterically and hang up on me. But instead, she thought for a minute, and then started planning..."Well, maybe Sean will shoot it for us, and Mark might be willing to direct it, he's been wanting to do some of this kind of thing..." I guess that's what 7 years in New York, committing to friendships and developing relationships does. Over time, we all actually trust that we're really gonna help each other out, and that the work will beget more work.

So we had a couple pre-production meetings with Maria and Sean (the Director of Photography) and I, talking about the possibility of me lying in a pile of cell phones that all started vibrating at once, or maybe borrowing a taxi cuz Maria knows a girl who knows a guy who has a taxi, or maybe taping on top of my roof, all the while with Obama's State of the Union address blaring away in the bar. Such patriots, we are. We reached out to a few of the locations we were interested in, including the great Italian spot Bricco on 56th between 8/9th ave. Surprisingly, everyone was on board from the get-go, with few questions asked, and donated their space, provided we shot on their schedule.

So on a rainy morning in February, we started shooting. A bunch of awesome friends came thru on super short notice, showing up to play office workers and restaurant patrons. We shot on a Canon 5D, with Mark Cabaroy directing, Maria producing, Sean shooting. Of course, all the usual hilarious things that could go wrong did...like Maria and the entire Staten Island gang getting a flat tire on the way over, or getting there and realizing no one actually thought of bringing a playback device for this music video shoot. You know, the non-essentials. We spent the AM at an office in the Flatiron District, which is, of course, the boardroom super-boring meeting section of the video.

Then we company moved to Bricco, and spent a frenetic couple hours there, cramming in the group singalong at the bar (which, sadly, got cut from the final footage) and me beginning a date with Dave Neal about 12 times.

After our incredible extras were released (THANK YOU GUYS, YOU ARE THE BEST...EVAH)- the main crew and I descended upon my apartment, where I promptly ordered Thai food for everyone (which is how most movie professionals prefer to be paid, BTW), and we did the scenes of me waking up and the ones that show up at the end of the video (me disappearing behind the leaf trellis). Extra props to Sean for making it look like there seriously was early AM daylight filtering in thru my window, when it was the freezing dark of Winter outside. 12-hour Day 1? Complete.

The following week, we took over a studio at Gibson studios and showroom, which used to be the Hit Factory, a very famous recording studio. That's where we shot the piano and vintage mic portions of the video, with the (almost together) backup singers crooning and swaying behind me! I love Gibson, and we had a blast doing the classic makeup and joking around with vibrating phones (check out the end of the vid and you'll see what i mean).

One of my favorite things about some of my movie projects is how no-holds-barred the crew is (it was also the case when shooting "Clear Blue Tuesday", another movie musical I was in). As in, "let's just walk into Starbucks and start shooting." Or, "Times Square would look really good at night, let's go there." And then we just DO. Again, gotta commend Sean for his total willingness to indulge every location, from the subway to Times Square, in winds that whipped so hard, i most definitely could not feel my hands when we were done!

But, it was worth it.

And now, it's out there, commenting on the ubiquity of our cell-phone-obsessed culture, entertaining a bunch of people, and pissing off a few people, too. Which is usually what happens when you create something and actually put it out there, rather than keeping it to yourself. But, NP.

G2G 4 now, TTYL- and thanx 4 watching!
Cassandra