Cactuses (Cacti!)
Cactuses was fucking rad. I was expecting something good, I was expecting to enjoy it, but I didn’t realize quite how well-crafted and involving the story would be. There’s really a lot of aspects to the success of this project. It was ambitious from the start, and the fact that it’s been pulled of at all is amazing, but the fact that the end result is so damn good, regardless of any of the circumstances of it’s production, has to be the most fulfilling to it’s creators. This isn’t a good first movie, it isn’t a good independent movie, it isn’t a good student-produced movie, whatever qualifier you want to throw ont here…it’s just a good movie. Period, absent all other considerations. That it was student-produced, that it was low-budget, all-digital, all-local, whatever….that’s all just icing on the cake. Important, yeah, but none of that would matter if the heart of the project, the story and the characters, didn’t connect with the audience.
I had fun driving out there and back with Michelle, although we hit some ugly weather on the way there. We could be driving on dry highway one minute, and then hit sheets of rain the next. We passed a few accidents, and even did a brief bit of hydro-planing (eek!) but we got there OK, and the ride back was clear all the way.
I’m close to making my big laptop decision. Not that it’s really a decision….I’m almost ready to bust up the screen and bring it back. Probably this week sometime….wish me luck.
More later….
