Blog Interrupted, a blog justification post by Darius Stevens Wilhere

Sooooo you are probably wondering how exactly I lost my mind? Read on.... (or you can read a different version here.

Well. Suddenly a year passed by and all my glorious plans for having fun sharing adventures in film making through DareCinema seemed to just disappear. Was I caught in a black hole? (No.) Kidnapped by aliens (Nope.) Lost in the jungles of Africa? (Worse.) Actually none of those. Just got a ton of writing and film work that took over. Got a good job on a major film as a VFX producer and all sorts of other good stuff. And I turned 40.

I'm pretty good at a lot of different parts of film making, but you know what I'm bad ass at? Carpentry. Yep.

We had just moved into a new place, which looked...like... a diamond in the rough. My wife hated it because the previous tenants obviously had destroyed the place. I thought, no problem, my bro's got some awesome tools! I can fix it!!! In my best Jeff Spiccoli voice. But it needed a lot of carpentry and painting work.

My daughters wanted a play house more than anything and the back yard look like the lost world with weeds up to six feet high so I got to work with a hoe and cut them all down so I could see what I had to work with. No dinosaurs but definitely had to get rid of mutant vegetation.

The backyard of the new place after getting rid of dino-weeds.

You weren't expecting that right? I did a lot of scenic and prop work in my younger years and sometimes carpentry (or any hard physical work) is an amazing way to tap into creativity.

You know what? While you're at it, carry all this too. You're 40? hahahahahahahaha.

But you know what I really thought a lot about when I was hammering in all those nails? I needed to get a damn move on. After all, I was almost 40 and despite hundreds (actually thousands) of commercials, PSAs, short films, corporate videos, cinematography and VFX projects, TV shows and work on other people's films later: I still hadn't made my own feature film yet! Focus dude!

And so, putting aside good sense and reasonable intelligence I began writing another screenplay, one that I could produce for nothing or almost nothing.

The lady who keeps me together and smiling

By the time I hit 40, I had my screenplay basically completed, it was called "The Hollywouldn'ts" and was largely based on the struggle independent filmmakers have when trying to make low-budget films.

What's my family trying to say here? I'm getting mixed messages!

I pitched it to a friend who I knew occasionally had spare cash and who wanted to act and he loved it. Alright! Getting somewhere!

After a lot of sweat, tears and some blood...

Unbelievably enough it looks like I'll begin shooting this next month. Things are looking up! It's an indie low-budget script being shot on a micro-budget. So it'll be crazy stressful and hopefully a lot of fun. I know it's not going to be the film I wished it could be. There simply isn't money for that. But I'm going to make the best film I can and I know that I'm going to learn a lot from it.

So what about this blog? And the videos?

The other part of this business I've always loved, is talking with peers, meeting amazing people with similar passions, sharing knowledge with newcomers and learning something new every day. So I looked over the Dare Cinema project I had started a year ago and thought, it's time to brush the dust off of it and bring it back to life again. More importantly, I hope to find people as passionate and hard working as I am to make movies with.

I'm going to start up the tutorial machine again and also start putting together courses to hopefully help fund the stories I have that I want to tell while I still have time to do so. So I've rewatched all my favorite pump-me up films (Yo Adrianne!!!) and am getting back in the ring. I hope to be able to share with you fun stuff that I've been up to (like going out and shooting in the desert in the middle of a heat wave summer!!!)

Ready to kill. My new short film. Coming soon.

I don't know if anyone will ever even see this blog post, but it certainly will live here as a reminder of yet again when I said "Dammit! Once more unto the breach!"