Frame by Frame:
Through the Unique Lens of Filmmaker Forrest Naylor

Story by Denice Breaux

We all like to see deserving talent flourish and succeed, but perhaps most especially when the talent is accompanied by perseverance and vision. For Fort Bragg filmmaker Forrest Naylor, the artist’s path has been circuitous and surprising, at times a little like an exotic fairy tale, but always traveled with spirited pluck and determination.

Forrest grew up in Sebastopol, California, spending the last two years of high school in Idaho where his family had moved. As soon as he could, he returned to Santa Rosa and enrolled in a junior college acting class, dropping out after a few weeks. He thought to pursue acting through modeling, which in retrospect he admits was a naïve approach, and decided to leave the States to do so. Amsterdam had impressed him on an earlier trip to Europe, so, with one hundred dollars in his pocket, in 1989 he moved to Amsterdam where he knew no one and had no prospects.
“Everyone at home thought I was insane,” Forrest recalls. “They all thought I’d be back in two weeks.”

Instead, on his first day in Amsterdam Forrest was befriended by a group of people in the park, and through them he found a place to live and made artistic connections. To support himself, he tended bar but also performed at big raves “choreographing weird dance pieces in strange costumes,” says Forrest. He continued to pursue modeling, but to no avail. “I didn’t have ‘the look’. I was way too bizarre,” he continues. “I may have been naïve, but it led me to where I am today, so it can’t have been that big a mistake.” Within two years Forrest auditioned for Muzenis Theatre Company in Amsterdam, and, even though he had no portfolio and only minimal acting experience at Santa Rosa Junior College, he prepared and performed a piece for the producer and director. “They told me that I was a real amateur, but, that I had something to harness,” recalls Forrest, “and they invited me to join the company. So, my first acting gig was a paid job, and for a year-and-a-half we toured around Holland performing at schools and community centers.”

In a workshop offered by Vladimir Koifman, Forrest was cast as the lead character in an adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. He was invited to join Koifman’s company, The Amsterdam Chamber Theatre, and after working with them for two years, Koifman asked Forrest to write an original play with another actor in the group. “I used to write little skits for the company to perform just for fun, and from that Vladimir thought I had a talent for writing,” says Forrest. “I had never written a play before but thought that if Vladimir had faith in me, I’d do it.”

In just two months, Forrest and his partner wrote Playing with Shakespeare. In the audience on opening night were scouts from The Cairo International Theatre Festival who, to Forrest’s shocked delight, chose the play to represent Holland at the 1994 Festival in Cairo. It was a heady, all-expenses-paid experience, and he was treated like a celebrity; nevertheless he realized it was time to return to the States “to get more into film and writing screenplays. I’d discovered that I really loved the writing part.” Of his acting abilities, Forrest reflects, “I was not a good actor. I kept at it, but I had no self-confidence, and it was torture for me. Where everyone else in the company seemed to be having a good time, I was a nervous wreck. I had confidence in everyday life and so thought it should carry over in acting, but it doesn’t work that way. Obviously, it wasn’t my calling, but it was important at the time.” He also recalls that everyone else in the company, who all had trained at places like St. Petersburg Theatre in Moscow, “dwarfed me in experience.
They were Grade A pros, and I’d had no training. Yet, they kept me for four years, so I must have done a passable job.”
When the rest of Koifman’s company returned to Amsterdam, Forrest stayed behind in the Middle East to explore and from there returned stateside to pursue film school. Once back in San Francisco, however, he decided to write, direct and produce a play before going to school, and the resulting Cusp ran at The Exit Theatre in San Francisco for four weeks. Forrest never did go to film school, though, realizing that “I’m not a very good student and learn much faster by the ‘jumping in and learning to swim’ method, as with everything else I’ve done.”

After the run of Cusp had ended, though, Forrest was finished with live theatre because “as the writer, I lack control of the material once it’s on the stage and in the actors’ hands,” he explains. “Then it becomes strictly up to the actors, even if I’m directing. And each time is different. But it can be really beautiful, too, because sometimes the actors will work things out much better than I had intended. Still,” he continues, “there were times when I thought of an actor, ‘You weren’t supposed to do that—if the audience could only see how it was really written.’ With film, I can re-do it again and again until it’s just right, just how I see it.”

With theatre behind him, Forrest wrote his first screenplay, As There Are as Many Stars, and began familiarizing himself with the daunting but necessary process of pitching an idea and “shopping around” a story. An art form in itself, the one-page query letter “must be interesting and flow well like the story behind it,” says Forrest. He finds contacts in the Hollywood Creative Directory and Inktip.com, sending queries to anyone accepting electronic submissions. And, even though his query letters have piqued quite a bit of interest, he knows that “as a first-time writer, I’m butting my head against a wall.”

The wall may be dissolving finally, as Forrest’s most recent screenplay Within a Glance is now getting attention. Two production companies, one in India, have shown serious interest in the drama/thriller in which, according to Forrest’s website, “Trepidation ensues when a news journalist travels to Bombay for an assignment on the eunuchs of India.” Of the two interested parties, Forrest chose to work with Akram Hassan, assistant director to Indian superstar Aamir Khan.
Familiar with the taboo topic of the very feared hijra subculture of India, Mr. Hassan would like to direct Within a Glance as his first feature film. For several months he has been raising money for the project while showing it around to his
many contacts and will give it his full attention in December when his current Aamir Khan project is completed.

Even though he is optimistic about the promising future of Within a Glance, things are far from final. There are many inherent details to work out as well as deals to be struck, and Forrest insists on being on the set as well as doing any rewriting. He’s also realistic about the tenuous nature of the business and has had near-deals fall through in the past. Nonetheless, he’s poised for success. “It’s been ten years since I wrote my first screenplay and for many years before that was involved in theatre; now it’s time for a pay-off.”

Whether fame and fortune smile on Forrest’s professional life soon or not, he already feels like the luckiest guy in the world when it comes to his domestic scene. “Sam is hugely instrumental in my work,” says Forrest of his aesthetician wife Samantha whom he met in 1997 when they were both living in Haight-Ashbury. The two married in Samantha’s native France, then continued living in San Francisco until moving to Los Angeles in 2001 to further Forrest’s career.
But just two months later the events of September 11 changed everything and, as with many people, their livelihoods suffered. Seeking a new direction, the couple came with their young son to Fort Bragg where Forrest’s parents now lived and ended up staying on the coast. In 2004 Sam opened Belle de Jour whose success has allowed Forrest to quit waiting tables and devote himself to full-time writing while minding the house and by now two sons. It’s a nifty arrangement, and the family all seem to root for one another. “Thanks to Sam, I was able to write, direct and produce three short films in two years’ time,” says Forrest, adding with a glow, “and I’m blessed with two beautiful, mellow, cool kids.”

Although Forrest’s intention at first was not to make movies, he believed that if he sold a screenplay or two he would be given the opportunity to direct his own work. But after years of not selling anything, he realized that he should write and direct his own movie. Forrest heard about the inaugural Mendocino Film Festival just six weeks before its submission deadline, and challenged himself to write, direct, film, edit and submit a short feature film. The resulting Calla Lily made it into the Festival, and the following year his Favorite Color Pink also screened. His next idea turned into Hallelujah, another unique short demonstrating that his films emerge from scripts “about the human condition and real life issues,” explains Forrest, “not shoot ‘em-up blockbusters with car chases and guns. I have to be passionate about my projects.”

Many creative hands and minds go into bringing a script to life, and Forrest’s production company, Fog Line Films, includes anyone who works for him. He is grateful for and continually amazed at the wealth of coastal talent that has contributed to his moviemaking, from actors to cinematographers to editors. The appreciation is mutual, and the consensus is that he in turn is a great guy to work for. Sandra Hawthorne, a local actor and director who co-founded Gloriana Opera Company and the Mendocino Theater Company, played a delusional mother in Hallelujah, a very fractured fairy tale with psychological twists. Sandra appreciates that Forrest “has a clear vision about what he wants to do and how he wants to do it. Yet he’s flexible when we come to shoot and is alert to how things might change and work better when we’re in the field. This is about the best combination you could have from a director. He’s organized and doesn’t waste our time and is unfailingly considerate and respectful of everyone and their various talents—cameraman, actors, everyone. He works with kindness, humor, encouragement and appreciation—all things which allow him to get the best out of everybody. As a director, I know this, and Forrest does it par excellence.”

Sandra also enjoys working with Forrest’s scripts which she finds to be “so unusual and so uniquely Forrest that, even if you’ve read the entire script, it is almost impossible to tell where he’s going or what he’s trying to bring out in the overall picture until you see it. His writing is that original and free of clichés which makes it fascinating. It shows the uniqueness of his mind and his approach.”

Working behind the camera on Forrest’s crew is just as fun and satisfying as working in front of it, according to local cameraman Dory Breaux who assisted in Forrest’s direction of the 2008 Spring Dance Concert. “He has a collaborative way of working and welcomes input from everyone,” says Dory, echoing Sandra Hawthorne’s experience. “He’s open to modifications of his ideas and at the same time knows what he wants. Forrest is very
creative.”

Like Sandra Hawthorne, Dory looks forward to working with Forrest on future projects, the latest of which is still in its early stages. “Sundays” is a series of ten-minute webisodes with a new installment airing each week on the Internet and on local access television. It’s a continuing story about “a hodgepodge of characters with intertwining lives in a small coastal town. One episode leads to another, and I never have to write an ending,” explains Forrest. “For filmmakers, the Internet is the up and coming thing. You have full distribution and can develop your own audience while maintaining creative control. It’s a lot of ongoing effort, but I love it.”

In early October Forrest attended by invitation the screening of Favorite Color Pink at The Brooklyn Coffee and Teahouse in Providence, Rhode Island, a venue that presents independent films once a month, including the well-received Hallelujah in September. And of course Forrest hopes to be on a movie set in India early next year. In the meantime, if you see a tall, slightly eccentric artistic type purposefully wandering the Mendocino Headlands or Main Street Fort Bragg accompanied by an eager film crew, it’s probably Forrest Naylor bringing another unique script to life frame by frame.

Contact Forrest Naylor and Fog Line Films at 707-813-0999 or forrest@foglinefilms.com. Forrest and his crew are available to videograph events large or small.