The Wild Will Show

Im Wild Will, and this is my show. Thus, the title. The Wild Will Show is a platform for fresh, underground talent to be seen and heard. We're the real indie filmmakers, the ones without $300,000 budgets and Fox Searchlight as our producers. The Wild Will Show is underground, artists with more ambition than money; handy-cam-and-a "smile" guerilla filmmakers--we're the long awaited answer to your frustrated prayers to the gods of film: "Why, oh why, must it be so hard to buy a camera and a computer and editing software and mics and lights and licenses and make a film that people will actually look at?" Come to daddy; Wild Will loves you. Wild Will feels your pain. He's been there....
I had the deck stacked against me from the beginning. Born on Staten Island, a.k.a. The Wasteland Across the Water, to parents who were devoutly unsupportive of my artistic predispositions ("Honey, what do you wanna do when you grow up?" --"I wanna make movies!"-

-"What's that? You wanna invest our money in a reputable 4-year university where you can lay the groundwork for a lucrative and stable career, proceeding from there into a noteworthy graduate program after which you'll be hired immediately by a Fortune 500 company and be able to support us in our old age? We're so proud of you!")--I found my own way into filmmaking. Sitting in class in highschool one day, listlessly engaged in my two favorite activities, daydreaming and doodling superheros and boobs in my notebook, i perked up when the teacher announced that we could opt for a creative writing class, instead of the usual drudgery of English. Easy 'A', I thought; maybe i could put my aimless daydreams to some sort of use...
...to my dismay and delight, Creative Writing was much harder than conjugating verbs and diagramming sentences, but it quickly became my favorite class. Artistic stimulation had finally arrived.

Writing my way through highschool, I landed myself in college in Ohio, with my own campus radio show, my first encounter with broadcast media. I'd realized long before that I was highly opinionated and would gladly divest myelf of my opinions to any captive audience I could find, and this was facilitated when I discovered that the campus also had a TV station...
...Somehow, after college, I found myself in corporate America, in the banking business. Don't ask me how--I think at some point someone told me to take a reality check and I foolishly listened to them--Id moved to Florida and piddled around with film in Miami, convinced of my own brilliance--Miami wants an art scene but "booty-shaker" videos are about all it has to offer the film community. Now, dont get me wrong, filming beautiful women shaking things is not a bad gig, and it works well for some, but a true artist, like moi, needs an outlet for a deeper kind of artistic vision...

So there I was: salary, health plan, a company car, and no soul, my heart freshly broken by The Love of My Life/Hag From the 7th Circle of Hell--a down-on-her-luck stripper named Tabitha. She'd toyed with me for three years; Id pay some bills of hers, she'd move in and act maddeningly noncommittal while she "got back on her feet"--we played that game for awhile. Finally, it came to this: get the hell out now, or put The Dream on hold indefinitely while I fawned at the feet of some sketchy trollop who consistently mispronounced "voluptuous" as "voLUMPtuous." I mean, honestly.

...I packed up the Camry with my GL1 (hot shit at the time) and my MacBook and enough snacks to last til W. Virginia, and stacks of porn. Thus amply prepared, I set out. By the time I emerged from the Holland Tunnel I had all of $15 left to my name. The snacks had run out by Georgia and my money and most of my self-respect had been left at various strip-joints along the way. I have a weakness, all right?

Of course, in my fevered state, I expected that as soon as I arrived in NYC, Id be beset upon by hoards of clamoring industry types who'd heard of me and were holding Ultimate Fighter-style death-matches amongst themselves for the chance to work with me. But as the Camry lurched along in midday traffic, and the only people that approached my car were bums voraciously offering to clean my windshield, I stared wildly about, realizing that I had exactly zero idea where I was or what I was going to do next: my reputation obviously had not preceded me.
Then began the lean times, almost immediately. Fortunately, my father lived in the city. Unfortunately, his girlfriend lived with him, and it became rapidly apparent that she and I were not going to get along. After a strained few weeks of crashing on their sofa and not finding a job, I finally did land something, as a baristo at Starbucks and subsequently decided to take my chances on my own. I reasoned that it was probably best for all involved if I stopped living at my father's place before he awoke one morning to find his girlfriend hog-tied and drowned in the bathtub. So with a job but nowhere to live, I slept on subways for awhile, clutching my camera bag to my chest like some desperate, frightened child of mine. Needless to say, I didnt host a lot of parties during that time.

As much fun as living on the subway is, there came a point at which I decided that it was important to me to not have to crap in a hat, and to cleanse myself regularly, and this desire prompted me to get my act together and move into the Roosevelt, which, for those of you who dont know, is the kind of place where homeless subway bums go when they accidentally stumble out into daylight.

Suffice to say, New York almost got the best of me the first time around. After spending a few more months following around wanna-be "filmmakers" , shooting their videos and getting paid in lunches, I slunk back to Florida, confused and broke. The corporate world opened its arms to me again, like the wide road that leads to hell and for awile I just let myself cruise. The living was easy and I churned out a few more years there, at night dreaming of making films, before I allowed myself to realize that my biggest obstacle was thinking Id already had my one chance. Bullshit--who says you only get one shot? New York was still there last time I checked. The best decision I ever made was to try again. This time, Id have a plan.
And now Im back. Im a graduate of the Digital Film Academy and The Wild Will Show is up and running.



Ive already produced my first film "Sex and tha Black Man." I wake up every day with my brain brimming with ideas. I walk the streets of the city looking like a well-dressed lunatic as Im constantly mumbling notes into my ever-present little voice recorder that Ive nicknamed Stanley. I go to bed each night and toss and turn for hours, analyzing scripts, camera angles, movie plots, ideas, ideas, ideas. Ive learned that filmmaking doesnt have to stay a dream; not for me, not for anyone. The Wild Will Show is the life of an urban filmmaker. This is how its done; this is what it takes. Writing that one singular story, seeing that one perfect tale come to life, nurturing it from idea to page to screen--goddamn!--Its better than sex with strippers, and trust me, I know.
Wild Will is here.