A Story and Short Film about a Beautiful Afternoon in New York’s Central Park.
A Short Film About a Perfect Spring Day in New York City
It was a beautiful spring day on the Upper West Side by Lincoln Center. I had just finished a long lunch at P.J. Clarke’s with my former college roommate, Terry Larsen. We both majored in Theatre at Valdosta State University, though our paths diverged—he went to New York, and I went to Los Angeles. We hadn’t seen each other in over 20 years, except for photos on Facebook, so it was a thrill to catch up and share our lives.
FILM – AFTERNOON IN CENTRAL PARK
FILM – AFTERNOON IN CENTRAL PARK
After we said our goodbyes at the corner of Broadway and 63rd, I decided to take a stroll through Central Park and maybe have a cocktail at Tavern on the Green. Those plans quickly changed, leading to one of the most beautiful days I’ve ever spent in New York.
The weather was perfect—70s with no humidity, a slight breeze, and everything lush and green. I wandered from the West Side to the East Side and back again, taking in sights like Sheep Meadow, the Lake, Strawberry Fields, the ice rink, the Chess and Checkers House, Belvedere Castle, and the outdoor Delacorte Theatre. The views were simply amazing.
Since returning to the Atlanta area, I’ve made it a point to visit New York City every year to catch up on theatre and Broadway. This time, I saw Uncle Vanya at Lincoln Center, Home at the Roundabout, and a new play on Theatre Row, The Actors. While the theatre wasn’t particularly impressive this time, that afternoon in Central Park will stay with me for a long time. If New York City were always like that, you’d never want to leave. I ended the day listening to excellent jazz on the crowded patio at Tavern on the Green, sipping a superb Sauvignon Blanc. It was an excellent day!
I took so many photographs that I decided to make a short film to showcase that singular day in the park. If you’re a fan of the band Chicago, you can almost hear their famous song, Saturday in the Park, as the film plays. Hope you enjoy it!
Watching the monitor as actors Alix Efaw and Jon Rust film a scene from Love Potion
LOVE POTION is a psychological horror story with supernatural overtones written and directed by award winning filmmaker James Carey and starring and produced by Lainie Smith. The Cinematographer is Ahren Steis and Melissa Steis serves as the Production Coordinator.
DIrector James Carey works with actors David Caprita and David Lee Garver
The cast includes David Lee Garver as Chris, a young man obsessed with getting his ex-girlfriend, played by Alix Efar, back at any cost. David Captria and Lainie Smith play the two people who can help realize that dream by selling him a magical love potion. Yet what is the price to your soul for making a person love you again after they have moved on.
Director of Photography Ahren Steis films a scene
The other cast members featured are VJ Roberts, Aubri Ebony, Shannon Thomas, AnaLisa Patterson, Elizabeth Gibbs, Rebecca Lambrusco and Samantha Goodell. Our 1st AD was Justin Nicholson, sound was Rio Richardson, HMU was Samantha Goodell, and costume coordinator was Todd Graham.
Before I start my account about Positano, I owe my subscribers a bit of an apology. I promised this story to you almost three months ago and yet here it is the first time you’ve heard from me since August. My professional life has gotten very busy recently but that’s not an excuse. I just got lazy. Between directing a show, pre-production for a film, some acting jobs and being asked to write a film for a producer here in Atlanta, I just kept saying I’ll do the Positano story tomorrow. And of course I’m just getting to it now. So please pardon me and expect a lot more articles on Trips With James in the coming weeks.
Positano is the first village that you come to as you leave Sorrento, Italy on the Naples side of the Amalfi coast. It can be reached by bus along the cliffs, or you can take ferries from Naples and Sorrento to reach it by sea. Positano is a layer cake of houses and shops and churches built on a cliff side that reaches all the way down to the Bay of Naples.
The photographs and the short film that are part of this article describe much better than I can in words how beautiful and colorful Positano is. There’s one highway that comes into Positano and connects you with the rest of the Amalfi coast, and there is one road that goes through the village all the way down to the shoreline. Yet Positano is a city of steps and stairways that lead in all directions as you walk through the village. These steps and stairways and paths lead to plazas, elegant shops, beautiful homes, small churches, large cathedrals and everywhere restaurants. Each one of these places has a magnificent view of the Bay of Naples.
I have two brief tales of things that happened to me as I entered Positano. As some of you who have read this blog before know I am scared of heights. Not ones made by nature, but ones made by man himself. I am perfectly fine standing on a cliff or mountain but flying in an airplane or riding over a high bridge scare me stupid. Taking the bus from Sorrento towards Positano, I had climbed on board and sat on right side of the coach. The Italian roads around the Amalfi coast are very narrow but the bus drivers speed around those corners and curves like it’s the Indianapolis 500. To get from Sorrento to Positano you have to cross over a mountain and come down the other side and the views are incredible, but you are literally traveling on a road that is suspended over the ocean anywhere from 500 to 1000 feet above the Bay of Naples with all the views on my side of the bus. There was literally nothing next to us. We were completely supported on this tiny narrow road by man-made construction. There had never been a road there before and there really should not be a road there now. It was breathtakingly beautiful and incredibly scary as we whipped around those corners in this 30-foot bus.
As we arrived in the village an incident that took place was right out of any classic Italian genre comedy. What took place was so cliché that you almost would not believe that it happened, but it actually did. As I stated before the highway is very narrow and in the villages people actually park on both sides of the highway in many places so there’s only enough room for one car to get through one at a time, but Italians don’t wait for anybody they just keep going. As we pulled into the village there was a small pickup truck in front of our bus traveling in the same direction and coming from the opposite way was a very large Mercedes-Benz. They both arrived at the same place at the same time and neither one of them would move out of the way for the other. What ensued was 10 minutes of Italian drivers standing in the middle of the road screaming at each other and waving their hands around in that secret language of Italian hand gestures that only they understand. Our bus driver also got involved as he got out of the bus twice and went over to the group of screaming Italian men. He proceeded to yell and scream while jumping up and down a bit and then came back to the bus. With the cars stacking up behind us on the busy coastal road, drivers from 5, 6, 7 cars away would get out come to join the loud discussion and then walk back to their cars shaking their heads. Not knowing the language, I could only guess what the argument was about. It seemed that the driver of the Mercedes-Benz, a very elegantly dressed older man, seemed concerned that his Mercedes would get scratched by the pickup truck. The driver of the truck didn’t care and that seemed to be the main concern. Finally after 10 minutes of this comedy of errors in Italian, the elegantly dressed man got back in his Mercedes and actually could drive past the pickup truck. There had been really no reason for this entire kerfuffle to take place, but it was exciting to see that the cliches that you think happen in other countries like Italian drivers screaming at each other in the middle of a road actually do take place. No one pulled a gun, no one threw a punch, no one tried to stab anybody else, there was just a lot of yelling and screaming and gesticulating about who was supposed to go first or get out of the way.
It was a bright, clear and warm November day as I took my time wandering through Positano down staircases, across plazas, entering shops and the large cathedral there as I made my way down towards the shoreline. Arriving at the shore of the Bay of Naples, I turned around and realized what an amazing feat of architecture this was. It was a layer cake of colorful houses and shops, churches and plazas that are all built on top of each other. Places where people live and work and shop and eat and live their lives. It is incredible to behold, yet you wonder who was the first person to decide that we could build an entire village on a side of a cliff?
At the bottom of the cliff, the shoreline was filled with expensive eateries and restaurants that serve fresh seafood and amazing Italian pastas and wines. After lunch, of course, it took me a bit longer to go up the staircases to the road then to come down them. I almost missed the bus back to Sorrento because while there is a bus schedule it’s a little bit flexible in an Italian way. Most of these villages don’t have a bus station there’s just a place where people gather and if you miss the bus you may be there for another hour or so before one returns.
Positano is beautiful, colorful, and certainly worth the visit.
Positano (Campanian: Pasitano) is a village and comune on the Amalfi Coast (Province of Salerno), in Campania, Italy, mainly in an enclave in the hills leading down to the coast.
A Day in Positano, Italy
TRANSPORTATION TO POSITANO:
Positano can be reached by the SS163 Amalfitana national road, or by the SP425 provincial road. The nearest airports are the Napoli-Capodichino (NAP) and the Salerno-Pontecagnano Airport (QSR) and they have shuttle buses to destinations across the Amalfi Coast, including Positano. Ferries link Positano to other towns including Capri, Naples, Salerno, and Sorrento for transportation. The Sita bus links Positano to Amalfi and Sorrento.
Next Blog will be about Positano!
Film directed and edited by James Carey. All photos are by James Carey.Sources for the information are from Wikipedia and journals of James Carey. The film and this blog are copyrighted by CareyOn,LLC 2022.
For followers of the blog, you may know that I am a film maker and theatre director. I am very pleased to announce that my short film that I just released to the international film festival circuit just a few weeks ago has already won an award in one festival and is a finalist in another.
(There is a link to the film at the bottom of this page.)
REALE FILM FESTIVAL IN MILAN, ITALY
A Cost of Freedom was a short film conceived in 2004 and shot in 2005. The story is based on a short story by Italian writer, Luigi Pirandello, called War. Pirandello lived from 1867 to 1934. Pirandello’s basic story is a group of parents riding on a train after World War 1 all talking about how their sons died in the war. Some are proud, some are hopelessly sad, some are just hopeless. The story when I first read it in college has always provoked deep emotion in me about the futility of sending young men and women to war, while the makers of war never seem to fight themselves.
PRISMA FILM FESTIVAL IN ROME, ITALY
I was moved to make the film when I read about young men and women who were not US citizens but grew up in the States legally (green card holders) that volunteered to the various services when we were attacked in the 2001 World Trade Center attack (9/11). It has always been the policy of the US Armed Services to give full citizenship to these green card soldiers if they die in combat allowing them to get a military funeral and their families the few benefits that the armed services give out. Yet, when the Iraq War was started by the Bush administration they needed a lot of new soldiers because we were now fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq at the same time. President Bush got the law changed to now not only offer US citizenship to the dead soldier but to their immediate families as well. A lot of young green card holders saw this as a way to create a pathway to citizenship for their families so they joined the war effort. I took Pirandello’s story and mixed it with the stories of young non-US citizens fighting for us in Iraq to make a film which I felt paid honor to those sacrifices but also laid bare the hypocrisy of this system of using non-US citizens to fight in our wars.
ACTORS MORRIS SCHORR AND THERESE MCLAUGHLIN
Yet when I started to make the film, I found different people reacted to my little antiwar film script in very different ways, especially when I needed a real army uniform for one of my characters. The actor I chose for that part was actually a reserve officer but to use his uniform he had to get permission from his commander. To my everlasting surprise, the commander not only approved the use of the uniform but also gave us access to many other unit elements like official flags and posters and emblems.
ACTOR JOSE ANTONIO
And that has always been the reaction to the film. People have seen past my limited view of my own film to the human elements of love and grief and pride in these real life stories and Pirandello’s brilliant original short story.
ACTOR ABRAHAM CHAIDEZ
The film came out in 2007, a time where there was really no place to view short films. There were festivals back in the day, but it was an expensive and time consuming effort to get your films around the country and the world to be viewed with no real idea that it would be screened. So A Cost of Freedom just sat on a shelf for almost 16 years until a young film editor named Tal Anderson re-edited the film for me and updated the sound and some minor effects. Since its re-release, the film has won a Best Drama award at the Reale Film Festival in Milan, Italy and is now a Finalist at the Rome Prisma Independent Film Awards Festival (in Rome, Italy).
I want to congratulate my cast and crew from back in 2005 especially my producer, Vivian Best, who is now a famous feature photographer, plus my new film editor in 2021 for their hard work and efforts. The praise and accolades should have been there long ago, but at least people are now seeing and enjoying this story told by a lot of very talented people. There is a link to the film below –
Yours, James Carey – Filmmaker of A Cost of Freedom!
I am sorry for the delay in my short feature on Zion National Park in Utah. The final article is coming soon.
Online Virtual festival dealing with films that are about the Pandemic and its effects.
I have been taking care of the overwhelming response that my short film, Divorce During Pandemic has generated. In the last 3 weeks, my film has been accepted into 5 festivals and been invited into over 300 more. Now films have to pay a fee when you submit to a festival but when get accepted there the possibility of awards plus notice and the opportunity for other work if people like your film. So to be invited to over 300 festivals is very rewarding but also time consuming to read about each festival and decide to attend or not plus stay within the festival budget for a small film with no stars, just very good actors.
Famous festival based in La Jolla, California
The logos that you are seeing as part of this article are the laurels that you receive from a festival when your film is selected as an Official Selection. If you win an award, then you get another laurel stating what you won. The laurels may not seem like much but they are what the industry uses to let people know that this film is doing well or worth seeing. Many more films receive no laurels than get one.
Festival promoting film work in south Georgia, USA.
So this platform will return to travel related articles very soon, but as the progress of this film continues, we will also let you know about that as well.
Festival in Istanbul, Turkey
Thank you for your continued support and understanding.
Yet another festival in Istanbul, Turkey.
James Carey, Senior Writer,Tripswithjames.com and Director of Divorce During Pandemic.
When you are a director of either film or theatre, or any other type of live or filmed performance art form, the ultimate excitement is to be able to do your project with a truly excellent group of professionals. Professionals who are dedicated to their craft and actually know what they’re doing. That was my experience recently when I shot the short film Divorce During Pandemic, a short film script that I had written based on real events and I had the opportunity to turn into an actually short film.
Crew shooting a close up of the lead actor.
Of all the types of directing that exist in the performing arts, directing film is the ultimate experience for a director. In any other form of live performance as much as the director wants to control the final product they cannot, because it’s live and the final product will change every single performance. Live performance is up to the live performers not to the person who conceived it or directed it or produced it. Yet with film, the director gets to choose how to tell the story because they control the edit of how the film will look. Now of course they had to get the correct shots and coverage in order to be able to tell that story but once you have that you can tell a story out of sequence, or you can change the narrative of who the story is about, or really the possibilities are limitless given the imagination of the director and the amount of footage that they shot.
Director of Photography Fernando Madero framing a shot.
Divorce During Pandemic is exactly that. It’s a true-life story of what happened when a married couple that is breaking up exchanges divorce documents during the early weeks of the pandemic. That could be sad, but the situation could be surreal as well, because the couple is wearing masks and gloves and practicing social distance. The film could be funny or a comment on not only the breakup of the marriage but the distance that’s created between a couple when they’re forced to wear mask and gloves to deal with each other. So in the editing room I was presented with the opportunity to either make a dark comedy or a sad tale of two people struggling to move on with their lives. I’m not going to tell you which choice was made you’ll just have to wait to see the film. Yet the opportunity to work with skilled professionals – a director of photography, a sound mixer, a camera assistant, a grip, a production manager and first assistant director who were top notch and a team of producers who gave me everything that I needed to shoot my movie under budget was amazing. Who could ask for more!?
The director discussing the next setup with the DP.
Yet we had the added element of shooting during a world changing virus, so we had to be concerned for the safety of the cast and crew who were truly heroic in shooting this short. My producers provided us with all the PPE that we needed and tried to keep following social distancing, but shooting a film is so all encompassing when you are doing it that it is hard to always remember to stand 6 feet apart. Yet, we managed and all are safe and well, and the film looks great.
The talented Laura Walker (The Wife) waiting for her next take.
So the film is currently in post-production as we do color correction, fix the sound, and work on the opening title and closing credits. Hopefully, the film will be on the festival circuit in the next few weeks and we’ll be talking about it more here at TripswithJames.com. I would like to take the opportunity to thank my cast and crew for the outstanding work that they did that day, and to thank them for the amazing ultimate experience of directing – shooting a film with professionals on a script that you have written and watching it all come to life beautifully ! What more could have film artists ask for? My answer – absolutely nothing!
The gifted David J. Phillips plays The Husband.
More to come on Divorce During Pandemic in the coming weeks!
Special thanks to Corbin Timbrook, Shelby Janes, David J. Philllips, Laura Walker, Fernando Madero, Garrett Stone, Reece Miller, Genaro Magana, Kirk Bruner, Attic Studios.
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