We made it! After an emotional roller coaster over the past few weeks with extreme highs and lows and much burning of the midnight oil, Sean and I finally submitted our documentary to the Tribeca Film Festival on Thursday afternoon. It has been quite a journey with Joey. We were filming up to the last minute, having become addicted to spotting a slice of perfect light and running to capture it for the film. But when Sean dismantled the camera so we could focus on the final edit, he was drawing a line in the sand, and just as well. We could have gone on forever adding to and perfecting the cut, but time was running out. On the last day we had to render the film to DVD, then watch the film over a few more times to make sure there were no glitches. So I know the words and the songs off by heart, in fact I wonder if I will ever be able to sleep again without the cinema in my head playing back to back sessions…

During the past couple of weeks as the city went quiet and cold for the festive season, I imagined we would be able to catch up on all the lights and decorations after December 28th. But by the time we emerged from our creative cave it was a little shocking to see that people had already started discarding their Christmas trees. Piled on sidewalks along downtown Tribeca were trees stripped of their adornments and left waiting for the truck to collect them. It didn’t seem fair that Christmas could be over – we missed it! I received some comfort in the words of a friend when she said that Russians celebrate Christmas on January 7th, and so some of the perfect pines would be retrieved and decorated all over again. How good. Anything but the sound of the hooves on the road sounding out ‘Going to the tanner, going to the tanner…’!

Even though Christmas decorations were on their way out, graffiti is a constant in the city, and our walk to the Film Center was coloured by some original street art. I especially liked the ‘Dedicated to being medicated’ Bart Simpson sketch…

‘Joey’ had been the name of the film from the beginning, but we wanted to change the title to reflect more of the story. As I wrestled with the linguistic economy of a tagline of 20 words, and a synopsis of 50, it suddenly dawned that the perfect name for our film was ‘Larrikin’.  It describes Joey himself, and will create a few questions, causing many to pick up the dictionary for an explanation. We just might be adding something new to the American vernacular…..