Not suggesting that Reality IS Non-Profit, just that I’ve been doing a little of both lately. I collaborated on two videos for charities, the first with Full Circle Learning for an orphanage and educational NGO they run in the mountainous African kingdom of Lesotho, called the Louis Gregory Centre. Will post link when viddie is on line. Full Circle occupy the office next to me here in Topanga. The second collaboration is above, a video for the Sri K Pattahbi Jois Charitable Trust which I worked on with the good peeps at Change For Balance Productions. The Trust funds philanthropic activities in the Southern Indian town of Mysore which happens to be where I met my wife back in 2001. We are both students of Pattabhi Jois and the Trust is designed to bridge the gap between Western yoga students, like us, and the local community. It has been very successful. Sadly though, Pattabhi Jois’ health is currently faltering. He is in his early 90’s. He is an incredible teacher and we send him all our love, our gratitude, and our support! [IMPORTANT UPDATE BELOW]**

Also on the non-profit side, I slaved on another edition of our Topanga Children’s Festival to support the Topanga Coop Preschool. I dearly love this over 45-year-old 501(3)K institution, and have been President of the board for TWO YEARS. The mysterious world of the Co-Op is fascinating and transformative - turns out to be very challenging for a bunch of adults with our cultural conditioning to cooperate on an honor system without money or payment as a guiding factor! Even though I deeply believe that figuring out how to do this stuff spells the future of the planet … IT SURE IS TIME CONSUMING!!!

Luckily, on the Reality TV side, I produced on a fantastic invention called Sprint Business Fantasy Camp. See episodes at this location. There are actually very valuable business lessons in here, valuable information as we all find ways to cope with a very sluggish economy …

Speaking of which, how ’bout some Twitter!? Check out my feed here, or back on the Lucky 8 homepage. I dig this service and, have to admit, have been focussing some of my “update energy” there lately. But will post more news here soon. Stuff’s a-brewin’ - how much of it is FOR PROFIT remains to be seen …

** UPDATE
Sri K Pattabhi Jois passed away on May 18th at the age of 94, a few days after this original post. Our lives were deeply transformed by this teacher and we feel both very sad about his physical departure, and immensely grateful to have spent time with him while he was here. This is a very good obituary from the LA Times; and, for those interested, here is a wonderful Flash tribute made by fellow student Barry Silver.

A film made from a story by my five-year-old son Sam. Along with his four-year-old brother, Levi, we shot it in our front yard in Topanga Canyon Calif. over two days. Sam and I cut and finished the film as a homeschooling project. The story is totally, 100% his, and that’s his voice telling it as well. The “climate change” theme was not conscious until later, and since making the film he has gained much more awareness into what might actually lead an Iceman to melt.

I love the storytelling worlds kids create with such spontaneity and immediacy. Any landscape can (and must!) be transformed into a space where drama can unfold. Physical aspects - scale, verisimilitude, even vague resemblance - are completely relative. A rock can be a spaceship, if a spaceship is necessary. Or, a rock can be a boulder, if a boulder is necessary. Or, a rock can be a rock - and an extremely convincing rock - if a rock is necessary. Reality is fluid. What is important is what is always important in storytelling: the motion, the tension and, ultimately, the transformation. Things happen. My sons will frequently begin a game by one referring to the other as “Other - ” something. “Hey, other worker!”; “Other pilot …”; “Other driver …”. That’s the seed of a story. They are casting each other as fictional characters, but also, by dint of the fact that there are now two of them, instantly creating an alternate universe in which they can both exist. Two workers with some tools in a world of giant cliffs (steps). Now what happens?

I always feel honored to witness, let alone participate in, a kid’s story as it unfolds. And turning one into a movie certainly has its challenges. For example, even though it is pretty quick to shoot with a consumer video camera on auto-everything, it still isn’t fast enough. Near the end of our shoot, Sam decided that actually the iceman should be a “kind of a monster”. If we hadn’t been trying to make a movie, if this had really been “play”, the iceman would have become a monster, for sure. “But what about our script?” I pleaded. What a boring old grown-up I am!

I look forward to working on more projects based on child-generated narratives. In fact, I am working on a TV show proposal based on the idea. Kids coming up with stories and then making them with the help of grown-up filmmakers. Because kids are natural filmmakers already, and everyone can learn something in the process!