People smile and laugh, and they think "We've done it!"
But you never get it back again. You assembled a family and you shared a purpose and you ate chocolate bars at 3am and you had in-jokes about the producer and now it's done, finished up, gone.
Because this family never comes together the same way again. The actors move on and the make-up girl dumps the director and everyone goes back to their homes where they eat lots of fruit and you help pack the lighting kit into the van just as the sun rises through the ice cold fog; and you realize it's truly over.
You make the film and it acts like an old photograph, providing a memory of a time when you were happy and had a purpose. But you never get it back again.
You can do a sequel or a reunion show or invite everyone to a party but not all of them will show, not all of them really care. Some actors think they're bigger than it and some crew members get sick and retire. That moment in time that you felt so strongly at 2am in some gone September when you waited outside the studio with the broken camera and crazy crew survives only as some warm spark in some barely reachable part of your brain.
Most of life we're in coffeehouses talking about it, and it's meaningless. When we're finally out there, shooting a film and working with mad passionate souls, it's everything. Delve into it and feel everything because before you know it, it's gone and distant and that snapshot of life reveals itself to be temporary and as fictional as the story you're creating.
