I have started over four times.

The first time was 2003. I left Enron in 2001, just before the collapse, and went to Compaq. Got laid off about a year later. Spent twelve months unemployed in a Houston job market that had been gutted by the Enron fallout. When work finally came, it was oil and gas. Automated ultrasonic testing. I traveled the world inspecting new construction pipelines. First as a technician, then working my way up to Operator, Supervisor, Project Manager, and now QA Auditor.

The second time was 2018. I was forty-seven, divorced, and looking for somewhere to be that wasn’t where I had been. I moved to Medellín. I spent three years there.

The third time was the return. I came back broken hearted and completely broke.

The fourth time is now.

I left oil and gas at fifty-two and moved to Atlanta to try acting. I took a job at Delbar in Buckhead because actors need day jobs. I worked as a bartender and worked my way up to beverage manager in less than a year. Two years of late nights, wine lists, building a program at a Michelin-recognized restaurant. The job took over my whole life and I felt I was losing the dream.

I started Page 4 Films in April. The LLC paperwork is filed. The bank account is open. I am producing a short film and a feature in the next eight months. Legacy shoots in Augusta in August. The Session shoots at the end of the year and I am playing the lead. I am self-funding both with rotation work as a QA inspector in oil and gas, on a four-week-on, two-week-off schedule. My old industry pays for my new one. I am proud of it.

People ask about the name.

The honest answer is that I keep starting over and I have stopped pretending that is a problem. Most company names try to suggest permanence. Founded 1923. Family owned for four generations. The brand promises you a settled thing.

Page 4 Films promises the opposite. It says the story is on its fourth page. It says there were three pages before this one and there will be more pages after. It says the protagonist is the kind of person who keeps writing.

I like that more than I like the alternative.

There is a screenwriting reason too. The first three pages of a screenplay are setup. The world, the character, the tone. Page four is where something happens. Page four is where the story starts moving. If you are still on page three at the end of your second act, you have written a bad script.

I have spent enough of my life on page three.

The films I am making are about people who are also somewhere in the middle of their story. Legacy is about a son and a father and a soup recipe and what gets lost between generations. The Session is about a therapist and a patient and the difference between what we know about another person and what we let ourselves believe. Both films sit on page four for their characters. That was not an accident.

I do not have a five-year plan that ends with a yacht. I have a slate. I have a company. I have a short film and a feature I am going to make whether or not the industry pays attention. The oil and gas job gets me the funds to make the films. The company funds the films. The films, eventually, fund themselves.

If you are also somewhere in the middle of a reinvention you do not know how to explain yet, I see you. Subscribe to the newsletter and I will send you what I am working on, what I am watching, what I am learning. One email a month. No selling.

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