A new venture is launched ... Entandem Productions

In my birthday post, I made some cryptic comments about new projects. It's time to introduce New Project #1: Entandem Productions, the new Fresno film company founded by my partner Christine Mitchell and myself.

The goal of Entandem is to create unabashedly smart films for smart people, with uncompromising standards of originality and quality. And if that wasn't ambitious enough, we want to build a successful independent film studio right here in Fresno, using San Joaquin Valley locations and talent.

Our first production will be a documentary about Fresno itself, and its past, present and probable future. Fresno is a paradox: a small town that's a big city, a backwater with an amazing arts scene, the fruit garden of the world set in a desert, a place that everyone is dying to leave, but everyone comes back to.

Our new documentary will try to capture Fresno in all its contradictions and complexity. We start filming tonight, at the Fresno Art Council's Horizon Awards, where we'll observe the movers and shakers of the Fresno art scene in their native habitat.

We'll be filming all this summer -- you can watch our progress by checking out the updates on Entandem's website and blog.

Birthday

Today is my birthday. I'm one year older and about 10 years wiser, or so I like to kid myself. This has been the most intense year of my life, with all kinds of developments, personally and professionally: the death of my mother, the ending of a 5-year relationship, a lot of acting work, a little bit of writing and comedy, and one show that I'm nearly entirely satisfied with.

This year has been so full of events and significance that it's impossible to summarize it neatly and say "This is what it all means." I have yet to figure any of it out. I wouldn't want to repeat 2006, but it's been an interesting year, in the Chinese sense.

My friendships and working partnerships have changed a great deal in the last year, mostly in positive ways. Old friendships have sustained me through difficult times; ongoing friendships have transformed and deepened; new friendships have developed. I'm moving away from projects that, while of merit, did not have a lot of personal significance to me, and I'm starting new projects that are about expressing my ideas, not someone else's. (More about new projects in a later post.)

I'm now 39 and I've lost a lot, but right now my life is mostly full of beginnings rather than endings. And as I've always said, you are only as old as you look, and I easily pass for as young as 32 these days.

I will be celebrating my birthday tonight at the Starline Grill from 8 p.m. onwards. All three of the people who read this blog are cordially invited to attend.