I’d been writing, had finished four features in the past eight months, in fact. A high-school football film, a “post-traumatic stress return from Iraq” drama, an SF set parable focused pointedly on the soaring HIV/AIDS epidemic in the African-American community. Put simply: things beyond the scope of a filmmaker with no assets or connections to speak of.

 

And then something very ordinary happened: I opened my eyes and saw the images happening around me in San Francisco. The proximity. The very real notion that, if I had a camera and a few friends, we could unobtrusively capture the “stories” I walk through everyday right here in this city. My friends Chris Wells and Amy Seimetz had done it. I did a little research and, holy

shit, some guy named Joe Swanberg had done it over and over and over again.

 

I keep a list of story ideas in a word document begun sometime in 2002. Some of those ideas are no more than a line. Others run five or six pages. In March of 2007, after the painful dissolution of my first interracial relationship, I opened that file with the goal of making something to address the reeling dizziness of my breakup while capturing the elusive atmosphere of modern

day San Francisco. Jotted down after seeing Clair Denis’ Vendredi Soir, the idea lay dormant on my hard drive for four years. It reads like this:

 

The Morning After

Set in Chicago or New York. The story of a man and woman that wake up in bed together having no recollection of how they got there. From the appearance of things it’s clear they’ve had sex. They do the most mundane things. This is a hotel room. Neither has a toothbrush. They stand side by side at the sink, both thumbing toothpaste across their gums. They dress. Outside on the corner, they both decide to have a cup of coffee at a nearby café. They sit together. While awaiting service they realize neither knows the other’s name. They introduce. After the coffee, they both need a cab for the trip home. “Uptown” they each say to the other of where they live. They share a cab. The female is dropped off first. They shake hands. Part ways.

 

Now, from here, it could go either of a few different ways. Later that day they randomly cross paths again and decide to spend more time together. Or maybe the man discovers the woman’s coat strewn across the backseat as he exits the cab... her wallets inside. He must return it. And so we stay with them until they understand why they’ve been brought together. The longer they’re together, the more curious of the other each becomes. This entire film could simply span from when they wake up together knowing nothing of each other until they fall asleep together again the next night, lovelorn and lost in conversation. Open for interpretation at that point.

 

Medicine for Melancholy is a simple, straightforward film that illuminates the modern complexities of living as a declining minority in America’s major cities. With mass media’s representation of the African-American experience being limited to unprecedented degrees and gentrification displacing African-Americans from the cultural centers of American cities with

unchecked speed, being African-American demands a struggle to assert and identify oneself on one’s own terms in a manner on par with historically lesser represented minorities. In this meek story of a random encounter, the film explores the process of negotiating one’s identity by illustrating how the effects of gentrification make it virtually impossible for minority urbanites to just “be.” Jo’ and Micah represent two sides of a conversation heretofore missing from cinema’s

representation of the black experience.

 

Artistically, the film is an affirmation of so many things. When I say that, I speak not to the quality or merit of the film itself nor our abilities as craftsmen and women, but to the notion that if ever we desire to do something, fuck it: all if we have to do is take that first step and do it. I’d completely given up on the prospect of ever making another film, and then Justin Barber threw

himself behind me, willed this thing into action. We weren’t many but, but damn if we weren’t able. Cast and crew included, there was never more than eight of us physically making this film; most times there were six. I worked for eight months as a director’s assistant on a film who’s crew hovered near a hundred persons. Never in the course of production did our eight-person team feel less significant.

 

With the love, support, and participation of my friends, I was able to articulate the confusion robbing me of sleep. And that…was nothing short of a miracle.