great Q&A featuring Lucy Liu & Lawrence Shou following a screening of the powerful, deeply moving Rosemead, which opens this weekend-Go see it!...As a foster kid/adoptee & former immigration lawyer, this film resonated for me as a powerful reminder of the parallels between foster kid/adoptee trauma & immigrant trauma, which I've spent the past decade exploring in my debut memoir Killing Justice, which we are currently adapting for the screen...so kudos to Lucy Liu for creatin

my safety poem for last night's aim4theheartorg heart sessions urbanpoetry workshop

hanging out with the co-creators of the truly transcendent visual album masterpiece Songs from the Hole, Director/ Producer Contessa Gayles, Writer/Music Artist/ Protagonist JJ’88, and Producer/Music Producer richie reseda, featuring a truly transformative vision of how art truly saves lives, & their 3 part collaboration reminds me of similar transcendent, transformative visions, including Ramell Ross' rapturous adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Nickel Boys & Barry Jenkins' wo

Love this darkly comic short film ,The Guy Who Got Cut Wrong, which, like my debut memoir Killing Justice, wrestles playfully with questions about the price of belonging, the repetition of unhealed trauma, and the role of humor in helping with the healing of trauma.

my renewal poem for Aim4the HeArt Heart Sessions urbanpoetry workshop last night...next week's topic is safety ...hope u can join us

Hanging out with Jia Zhangke, after a screening of his masterpiece Ash is Purest White. Among the greatest filmmakers working today, Chinese master Jia Zhang-Ke is the foremost cinematic chronicler of the vast changes that have transformed his country over the last half century in its transition from communism to a globalized, increasingly market-based society. Beginning his career as an underground filmmaker working without state approval, he first attracted attention for hi

I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear...I don't know what I think until I write it down. Joan Didion This is also a central theme of Hamnet  & my debut memoir  Killing Justice.

D u a l i t y 3 From                                                         To Double-Minded & Destructive                  Unworthy & Unloveable                          Tragicomic Troubadour           Abandoned & Abused                              Lost Lawyer                                               Resiliently Radiant      Isolated & Infantilized                               Interdependently Immortalized           Sentenced to Stillness                             

Duality      2 Damaged & Deranged                    &       Daringly Different Underground & Unmoored          &         Unpredictable & Uncontainable Abandoned & Afraid                    &         Affirmed & Affirming Lost & Lazy                                  &         Liberated & Laconic Insecure & Incomplete                 &         Interdependent & Inquisitive Traumatized & Terrified              &         Torn apart & Toughened Youthfully Yielding                  

Duality Double-minded, DoubleSpeak, Doubling Down Uprooted, Unmoored, Unstable & Unconscious Angrily Absent Lost Lawyer Insanely Idealistic Terrifyingly Trusting Youthfully Yearning

hanging out with Claire Goh, lead singer of Paper Citizen, during a wonderful Friendsgiving event in Thousand Oaks that she headlined Monday night, along with Songs for Sabotage and Reliza...and given all the parallels between adoptee and immigrant trauma, Claire is hoping to find inspiration from my debut memoir Killing Justice to contribute some music for the soundtrack for the screen version

hanging out with Hikari, writer/director of the wildly entertaining, deeply moving, truly transcendent Rental Family, after last night's Film Independent screening at AMC Century City, which resonated with SO MANY of the themes of my debut memoir Killing Justice, especially Abandonment, Belonging, & Forgiveness... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0pqP6ClcE8... Hikari’s Rental Family is an ode to all the people out there who are lonely, grieving and in pain, a lesson on how h

“One must give value to their existence by behaving as if ones very existence were a work of art.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

hanging out with Nia DaCosta, writer/director of the wildly entertaining, deeply moving Hedda, after last night's LACMA screening at the DGA...the film does an amazing job in externalizing Hedda's rage, complexity, and messiness, especially with the use of breath sounds in its magnificent score, as I also hope to do in adapting my debut memoir Killing Justice for the screen... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3lgD59KrTw

hanging out with Shai Carmeli-Pollak, writer/director of the powerful, deeply moving The Sea, after this morning's screening at Soho House...The Sea isn't just another drama-it's a film that stays with you long after the credits roll. What makes it special is its courage to tell a deeply human story set against one of the most complex backdrops in the world. The film flows like the sea itself-sometimes calm, sometimes stormy-but always pulling you in. The performances are raw

hanging out with jt mollner , screenwriter for The Long Walk, which he adapted from a Stephen King novel he wrote when he was just 19 years old, and which goes beyond being a good adaptation : it's an emotional journey that blends physical horror with poetic sensitivity , with its central theme of generational trauma parallelling that central theme in my debut memoir killing justice

hanging out with Tarik Saleh, after Tuesday's 11 am screening of his darkly comic thriller about the role of the artist in authoritarian times, (which is also a theme of my debut memoir Killing Justice), Eagles of The Republic, Sweden's Oscar submission for best international feature, at Soho House West Hollywood

D A T E S From                                                        To Naively Needy                                        Humbly Hopeful Ecstatically Enmeshed                          Entwined Ecstatically Escaping Emptiness                               Acknowledging Abandonments                                                                   Listening Lovingly Deliverer of the Damaged                     Tenderly Truthful                                               

hanging out with my fellow Canadian AliReza Khatami , writer/director of the raw, provocative, visionary, Lynchian truly transcendent masterpiece The Things You Kill, which opens THIS WEDNESDAY, 11/19, in LA...GO SEE IT!!!...as it's a darkly comic, haunting psychological thriller involving generational trauma, as is my debut memoir & upcoming film Killing Justice/Orphan Rising... here's a link to the official trailer ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A71FXSFggs0 Alireza

hanging out with my fellow Canadian Steven Grayhm, writer/director of the powerful, deeply moving Sheepdog, a powerful portrayal of military PTSD, just as Killing Justice/Orphan Rising features a powerful portrayal of non-military PTSD, after last night's screening & Q&A at AMC The Grove