Roadtripping with Dia

Hello! If you clicked into this top secret page you’re in the club. Nice work!

It’s been five years since I wrote/ produced and directed MYSTIC COFFEE. That film was licensed by Gaia.com (a streaming service like Netflix), has been very positively reviewed, and has been seen by tens of thousand of people around the world. Yeah!

Films and stories are incredibly influential ways to transmit ideas. Instead of the typical Hollywood crap, it’s my mission to bring positivity, hope, love and goodness to the world. I’m super-psyched to make my next short film, ROADTRIPPING WITH DIA.

As you may have guessed, it’s a road trip of self discovery— touching on themes of love, sex, death and relationships. Gaia is already asking to see it, even before it’s produced. This is seriously cool!

I thought you might be interested in helping to fund this project since you stepped up last time, and/or are an amazing human who wants to help spread a positive and powerful message in the world. Besides a huge heartfelt thank you to everyone, I’m offering one level of prizes whether you invest a buck or a thousand. I’m doing a private kickstarter program this time—  the kickstarter website takes 15% and don’t really do much to help out.

Okay! Here are the prizes—

• You’ll get access to behind the scene photos, videos and commentary. 
• You’ll see your name onscreen listed as a contributor in the credits of the film! 
• You’ll be among the first to see the finished film before it’s released to the rest of the world. 
• You’ll know that you helped create a powerful vision that potentially affects tens of thousands of people in positive ways.

Below is the finished script, a few test shots on the green screen, Dia’s audition and the rough budget. We already have one of the two actors lined up, locations set, a director of photography, an editor and other pieces of the puzzle. This is happening. It’s in progress now. Time to get onboard.

As an independent artist, I’m funding this film with money straight out of my own pocket because I believe it holds important ideas that the world needs right now— messages of love, connection, trust, beauty and healing. I hope you agree. And I hope you consider kicking in. I really, really, really (really!) appreciate it!

If you have any thoughts, ideas, questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you.

Thanks so much. You rock! See ya on the road…

~Jeff

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ROADTRIPPING WITH DIA

BEDROOM

Red (30’s) hears the beep on his phone. It’s a voice mail from DIA. It’s 5:12 AM. He gets up, hurries to get ready to leave— brushes his teeth, grabs a bagel, walks quickly to his car. Drives.

DIA: (VO)  Hey, Red… Wake up! I’m leaving at high noon on a fantastic journey and I  kinda doubt I’m coming back any time soon. Maybe even forever. Can you meet me at our special place? I wanna give you something. You already have it, but I wanna give it to you again anyway, ok? Don’t call me back. Don’t text. I won’t answer. You know it’s true. Just meet me there at noon, ok?

Seriously, Dia? Mystery and drama. All. the. time.

You certainly know how to stir up trouble. And gold. Love and darkness. You love me and destroy me again and again. Forever and ever. Like freaking Kali, right? Is that Kali? Goddess of creation and destruction. Or was that Shiva? I never get those straight. 

ONSCREEN POETRY

Dia, creator and destroyer

bring me your gifts of gold

and trouble.

Red accelerates. 

DIA: (VO) Everybody gets it wrong. It’s a dimension that people don’t really understand.

Understand what? Your wild spirit? The hint of self destruction, chaos? Sort of like thanatos, right? The drive towards death. Maybe old Sigmund knew what was up. Who knows? Who knows? Maybe we’ll all know in the next life. You said from the very start that we were connected in another lifetime. Sometime, somewhere. 

I love first dates, ya know? How everybody shines up their sparkle and sugar coats their shadow. You said you wanted stability but you were like nature, like a storm, like the weather. More like a freaking hurricane. Blazing winds with a quiet center. And another storm in the center of that.

FLASHBACK— walking on a trail in the woods

DIA: I hold the essence of the divine feminine. 

RED: Oh yeah?

Dia dances around a little bit. Does a little spin. 

DIA: Yeah! I feel it all. I breathe into heaven, dance with demons. I love from the deepest parts of my heart, my body. I feel so much. Want so much.

RED: What do you want, Dia? 

DIA: Deep love. Unselfish love. I wanna help people see the beauty within themselves. Help them heal. Maybe heal myself in the process. I hope. I wanna paint and write and take pictures.

She steps ahead and pretends to be a photographer, snapping pictures of him.

RED: I’m a photographer too, ya know.

DIA: Cool. What do you like to shoot?

RED: I like to capture moments. This world is so fleeting. I have this photo on my fridge that kind of blows my mind. It’s a picture of my grandmother as a little kid in like 1925 or something. It’s crazy.

DIA:What’s so crazy?

RED: I look into her eyes and I see this young girl who’ll grow up to get married, have a daughter. She’ll grow up and be my mom. My grandmother will live her life, experience so much joy, pain, love, tragedy, triumph. And then, like everyone else, she’ll die. So now I look into the eyes of that girl who had no idea what her life would bring. And that she would be my grandmother. 

DIA: She loved you. Even then. Before you born. Love is forever, ya know.

REALTIME in the car

I wish I had a camera to capture the state of our hearts in that moment. Before the first kiss. Before the first storm.

What if I could really see the state of everyone’s heart? Would I be attracted to people with bright shining hearts? Or ones with dark spots? Or both? I guess everybody is both, in one way or another.

I know I am. Sometimes so free. So radiant, so joyful. And sometimes so screwed up. My head just flips around in circles. After years of meditation you’d think I’d be enlightened by now. But I guess it’s true. We’re basically a bunch of mammals reacting to stimuli. With hearts of God.

ONSCREEN POETRY

we dream ourselves a mammal

nearly all of everything 

is reaction to whatever—

fear, sex, salty

all of this just the actress

reading lines, crying

beating herself into various hells

—when underneath it all

a river of truth lives quietly

The trouble fires up when we get close. Especially if her name is Dia. I guess what they say is right…  We subconsciously select partners that are gonna amp up our fears and expose our deep childhood wounds. At first they soothe our pain. It’s bliss, sex, and on some level we believe all the hurt that’s buried in there so deep is gonna be healed by our new love.

DIA: (VO) Love kills the demon.

Love and demons. The human experience. Light and darkness.

Dia killed my demons. And fed them. Her wild heart, her infinite love, beauty and surrender, crash and flow— destroyed and deconstructed me. For sure.

Red drives. Looks at the time. 10:41.

Time, time, time. Keeps on ticking. Into the future.

FLASHBACK W DIA— on the couch

DIA: It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor. It’s non-negotiable. For every human who ever lived.

RED: What is?

DIA: Time. It’s literally our most precious commodity. You may have another fifty years to walk the earth or you might get run over by a bus tomorrow afternoon. You don’t know. 

RED: True.

DIA:: But that’s not the whole story. We only live one year as an eight year old, a year as a sixteen year old, a forty-six year old, an eighty year old, if we’re lucky.

RED: I get it.

DIA: But that’s only part of it. It’s the perspective of that time. Hopefully, an eight year old is largely unscathed by the world. Hopefully still full of beauty and wonder and magic. A sixteen year old is fearless, clueless, searching for an identity and revved up on hormones in a way that isn’t gonna last. 

RED: What about a forty-six year old?

DIA: I don’t really know. My mom died when she was forty-six.

They embrace.

RED: She still loves you, ya know.

ONSCREEN POETRY 

as hours whisper through this life, i try 

i try to dismantle, to peel 

away the layers 

of pain that have crusted

the space between myself

and myself.

The ultimate question, right? Like, am I what or who I think I am? I doubt it. Sometimes in the stillness of mediation or sex or nature or just whatever, sometimes it gets so quiet. Then I watch the mammal they call Red. 

Even weirder, I watch the mammal’s thoughts. I can see myself, if I actually am myself, and then the whole thing sort of collapses for a minute. And all this pain, struggle, lonliness, drama that just goes on and on every single day, it feels kinda comical. Like a high def 3D movie. Virtual reality. And then it snaps back. And I feel it all. Again.  

FLASHBACK— BEDROOM 

Dia paces around the room as they fight. Red follows her and confronts her face to face.

RED: All the guys who hurt you. Everything with your mom. The people you thought were friends in San Francisco. They are not me. You want a guy you can trust? Here I am. Here I am! I know I don’t match your story of neglect and betrayal. You know why you don’t trust me? You don’t trust me because I’m actually trustworthy.

She shakes her head ‘no.’

RED: Look at me. 

Dia looks at him. Searches his face for the truth. Turns away from him. She holds back tears.

Red: I’m here for you. No matter what.

She tries to speak but can’t get any words out.

Red: Don’t quit on us.

She dashes of the room and into the bathroom. We hear the shower turn on.

SHOWER

DIA stands naked in the shower. Red, fully clothed, steps into the shower. They embrace. 

Red:(whispering in her ear) I wanna give you what you need. I wanna learn to love you better.

Red drives in silence.

FLASHBACK— at the kitchen table with Dia

DIA: We don’t have to stop loving each other just because we aren’t going to have sex anymore.

RED: It’s not the same.

DIA: It’s only not the same because it’s a limit, an idea, that’s been smashed into your brain by the culture. I dare you, I dare us, to love each other with everything in our hearts even though we’re not gonna sleep together anymore. Our old pal Buddha preached this stuff. Non-attachment, right? It’s the deep truth of forever. It’s the deep truth of love.

RED: I still love you, Dia.

DIA: I love you in the stillness.

She takes his hand at puts it on her heart.

DRIVING

Red looks at the time. 11: 51

There’s no way she’ll wait. Maybe I should bail.

ONSCREEN POETRY

in this life we may not finish, but

the quiet karma of the open 

road knows, love pours 

and glitters. between us. decisions

pressed with love and fear

float in an endless ocean

we try to control. trying 

to know

the unknowable.

Red pulls up to a quiet bridge on a country road. He looks at his phone. 12:37. He gets out of the car. Walks to the center of the bridge. He sees an X scratched onto the railing. He feels around the underside of the railing. He doesn’t find anything. He looks puzzled.

FLASHBACK AT THE BRIDGE— Red and Dia laugh, dance and play around. 

She runs to the car and gets something as Red scratches an X in the railing of the bridge. She writes on a little piece of paper. We can’t see it what it says. 

Dia: Everybody gets it wrong. It’s a dimension that people don’t really understand. And when you touch it with someone it goes through spacetime and never lets go. Real love is always connected. It doesn’t matter if we break up, die, never see each other again. Our hearts connect through lifetimes, through galaxies.

Red: You are a galaxy. And from a far way galaxy.

They kiss. She gently pushes him back and shows him the little paper square. We still can’t see it. She tapes it to the underside of the railing, below the X.

Dia: Ya know what? If you really want something to last forever, you don’t tape it to a bridge.

She un-tapes the paper from the underside of the railing and pulls a lighter from her pocket. She holds the paper to the flame.

BACK TO REALTIME on the bridge

Red looks around in contemplation.

FLASHBACK

Dia holds up the paper. We finally see it.

“Love is forever.”

She drops the flaming paper off the side of the bridge.