What a wonderful day! Andre and I headed for a day trip to Asbury Park, to attend the Garden State Film Festival. There, I got to see Rockingham: The Road to Peace, a documentary I’d written the screenplay for two years ago. The film tells the story of Washington’s time at the Rockingham estate in central Jersey, where he was when the Revolutionary War ended and where he wrote the farewell address to the Continental Army. Little is popularly known about this episode of Washington’s in New Jersey, the state where the most battles took place during the war.
It was especially great to see the film’s director, Fred Frintrup, and his wife Loraine, the parents of my NYU film school cohort (and partner of Flickering Duck Producktions) Peter Frintrup. After the Thrashers, the family I owe the most to is the Frintrups, who supported and believed in me and my ability for years and were the first people to ever pay me for my creative work.
Equally great at the festival was screening our film with Atlantic Crossing: A Robot’s Daring Mission. The feature documentary was about an oceanic glider crossing the Atlantic Ocean for the first time. I was absolutely riveted, and shocked at how fond I became of the anthropomorphic robot. The 75 minute film was about 20 minutes too long, I thought, and director Dena Seidel confirmed that the broadcast version will be 57 minutes. But I loved every minute of it anyway, and was enthralled. It reminded me of how fun it can be to be screened in a film festival, when you’re getting feedback on your work, and giving it to works-in-progress by other filmmakers. It made me miss the group camaraderie of filmmaking. Writing is great because you control everything – at least until your editors get involved – but it can be lonely. My years making films with Peter and the Frintrups were some of the best years of my life.
Asbury Park – or Ass Bury Park, as I’d grown to think of it when a gay boss of mine moved there years ago, and bragged about what a homo-paradise it is – was delightful. I’d never been before. It’s full of beautiful houses, which are a little run down. It has the kind of lonely emptiness I adore in a small town on a Sunday night, which matches my melancholy mood as I think forward on the week ahead and back upon Sundays past spent with loved ones no longer in this plane.
Andre and I bonded over the decaying architecture. There is a wonderful ice cream shop, where a former owner died (perhaps scooping chocolate chip?) The original Methodist campground abuts the town, the ancestor of my own summers in Methodist campgrounds. At twilight, a lone bicyclist rolled through eerily, as if in search of life after nuclear fallout. There were few lights on in the many, many windows behind many, many railed balconies –vacant with summer not yet here, and the weekenders gone.
The whole thing reminded me of Somewhere in Time, a film Loraine Frintrup, my mom, and my dear friend Gloria Knapstad all share a love of. I can’t get intro measures of John Williams’ theme out of my head.