David’s best book yet and my favorite book of the year. Heartbreaking, thrilling, dazzling. David Levithan is the most empathic man on the planet. Read Every Day twice already, the kind of book you’ll go to every year or so, just to revive your faith in the human spirit. An unforgettably beautiful character caught up in a rocket ride of a plot.



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Making this video was a family endeavor and an absolutely great time. My cousin Eileen played Céce, and my nephew Trevor was Mack. Eileen is from my side of the family, and Trevor from my wife Risa’s. They’d met once before, at our wedding, nearly fifteen years ago. Trev, tallest kid frame left, was ring bearer, and Eileen, pipsqueak frame right, was our flower girl.

Neither had ever acted, and both were amazing—just so natural and open, beyond easy to work with and enthusiastic, brought lots of laughter to the day, a scorcher with the real feel in The Bronx topping 110 degrees.

We shot up here in my neighborhood, Washington Heights, and then a mile or so north, just over the Broadway Bridge, in the Marble Hill area, one of my favorite neighborhoods, a great spot for dog-walking.

We shot over a few days. A couple of weeks before our shoot day with Eileen and Trevor, I took the camera to Marble Hill and grabbed B-roll, or scenery shots. That pigeon in the bridge struts was an interesting bird, no fear. He or she dropped down from the bridge to right between my feet and looked up at me, into the camera, maybe looking for a takeout food handout? I tried to cut that shot in, but it didn’t work.

Risa did all the production coordination for our shoot day with our principal talent, Eileen and Trevor, and she did such a beautiful job shooting. She made sure to get what we needed from my storyboards, but Risa is an award-winning documentary moviemaker (see wingsofdefeat.com), and she stole B-roll shots here and there. Risa puts a premium on capturing those little moments in between takes, when the actors are relaxed and just hanging out. She says, “B-roll is A-roll,” and in the editing, I scrapped storyboarded shots in favor of Risa’s on-the-fly grabs, e.g., Eileen’s cooling off at the hydrant is the opening to the video, and Eileen and Trev’s hanging with our pit bull Ray-Ray became the trailer’s final shot.

My friend Steve Mallorca lent us his camera, a 7D. Back in the late 1990’s I directed a 35mm feature. Making that picture was an unbelievably fun time but it was a challenge: We needed to raise $250,000 for just a two-week shoot. Lots of camera and grip trucks, big crew. But now all of that equipment—or what it can do—fits into a backpack. This is a great thing: Now that making pictures is so cheap, anybody can make a movie, and because of this movies will keep getting better and better and more diverse in subject matter. Many of the crew members who worked on that picture back in the 1990’s are now making their own movies.

Josh Prete was our awesome on-site production assistant. Josh and I went to the same high school, though he went 23 years after I did. My brother John did a beautiful job singing the theme song—more on that in another post.

The dog-fighting shots were iPhone grabs. I walked Ray-Ray (the pit bull), Buddy (the Boxer) and Eddie (your guess is as good as mine as to what Eddie is) down to the Inwood ball fields, where many years ago Manny Ramirez used to play, west of the Henry Hudson parkway. The day was windy, and I suspected the place would be empty.

I got the dogs running around, wrestling with me and then each other. They were having a ball. Ray has a pretty vicious-sounding bark, but he’s pure cupcake, totally submissive. Buddy has a nasty-sounding play-growl, but little 20-lb Eddie, the alpha of the pack, is the one with the nastiest bark. Running the three dogs’ “voices” through Garage Band and fiddling with EQ and a few filters resulted in the dog-fight audio.

WARNING: VICIOUS PIT BULL

Ray and “You’re not the boss of me” Eddie

Ray and Bud logging time at the office.

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