Ok. So I’m driving my Daddy’s $800, 1982 Dodge Ram truck in the middle of Georgia farm country, hauling a quarter of a million dollar’s worth of movie camera, and a slew of friends who are either actors or crew or both. We are being followed in a car by my wife Lisa and our friend Taylor who constitute hair/make-up/wardrobe/executive producer. Behind them and driving my ex-boss Jack’s Winnebago, which serves as production office, honey wagon, and motel room for Eddie, is my friend Duff Dugan out of Brooklyn, New York, who was coerced (lied to, really) into coming down to Georgia on sort of a working vacation. The only tourist site Duff saw was the Waffle House and that was always before dawn. So there we were, running out of daylight…again, and desperately trying to capture some cows on film with a look of surprise. Heck, we’d settle for slight interest. The problem was that we had been blowing the horn at these bovine pecker-heads for the last hour and they couldn’t care less. So now we were screaming at them, questioning their pedigree, threatening to turn their babies into flank steak. It was vicious really. Grown men and women, spittle coming out of their mouths. Even our production designer, Chris Jones, was yelling and he’s a vegan.

So now I will tell you that we had one last chance to get this shot before the sun dropped from the sky. That it was now or never. And that may well have been the truth or maybe it makes for a better story. I can’t remember. What was true, what is still true is how rich that November day in Georgia was. How the colors seemed more striking. The smells sweeter. The sounds clearer. How everything seemed more alive. Especially me. And then I thought of my mantra. The one I made up. The one I would say to myself when I lost faith or perspective about all this. "I’m gonna die anyway. Might as well make a movie." And by God, that’s what we were doing. We were making a damn movie! We were yelling at cows and making movies and it was good fun. Don’t let anybody tell you different.

See, once it was just a dream I had. Then my dream joined with Lisa’s dream which joined with Walt’s dream and Jolly’s and Blake’s and Eddie’s and…hell, maybe those cows had a dream, too. And it doesn’t matter if the dream costs fifty thousand or fifty million. Not while you’re in the middle of it. It’s all the same. It’s just as important and just as worthwhile. It ain’t brain surgery but it does matter. And when it was all over I just hoped we could do it again. Oh yeah, we got the shot.