Me and Riv @ the old Bayou in DC. 

“The planet often mourns the loss of great talent who have gone to the wayside in the Rock n’ Roll-Hollywood party scene and at the end of the 1900’s we saw a lot of that. I was a teenager in the 90’s and my favorite film was My Own Private Idaho.

When River Phoenix died it felt like I was losing an old friend. I had met him just twice, in my hometown of DC, when he played with his band, but like a lot of people all over the world it felt like we knew him. He was all-real. No Hollywood BS. Jump forward 25 years later and I am working in Hollywood as the DP for the father of all video art- Paul McCarthy and his son, Damon. He has me shooting James Franco for a project about Nicholas Ray and the making of Rebel Without A Cause. James pulls me aside and says he has another project for me. Something with the raw dailies from My Own Private Idaho. I end up editing Franco’s remake of the Gus script called, In A Blue Funk. (A dream come true to watch all those dailies and edit River in a renewed project.) Jump to 5 years later and I’ve been editing and shooting for Franco all this time. I walk down the street to the little Los Feliz Free Library in my neighborhood and Pink is sitting in there. Imagine my surprise to find a book by Gus that I didn’t even know existed. I knew at that moment that I wanted to make it into a film.”