It's Friday!! It's finally Friday.
To celebrate hiking trails being open again and the beautiful Sunday we're all anticipating, we turn to Ahamefule J. Oluo, who created this message while walking in the woods, and whose name you might be familiar with from pieces he's written in The Stranger.
Or maybe you know him from his work in the band Industrial Revelation. Or maybe you know him from the stand-up he's done at venues like Comedy Underground. Or maybe you saw his show Now I'm Fine at Town Hall or On the Boards or the Moore. Remember when we all used to be able to go see shows at Town Hall, On the Boards, and the Moore? We thought nothing of it. We had no idea how lucky we were.
"I grew up in Seattle. It's been my home my whole life," Aham says in his message. "And I am now realizing there are so many things I have taken for granted."
For his message today, he says, "I wanted to share for the first time a short musical sequence from the film Thin Skin. Thin Skin is a film that me and a bunch of other people made in Seattle. It was directed by the great Charles Mudede. We had hoped it would have premiered at a film festival somewhere by now, but film festivals are a thing that don't exist anymore. So I decided I wanted to share a little piece of it with you here."
How did Aham's acting debut come about?
"After watching his Now I'm Fine performance at Town Hall in fall of 2013," Charles Mudede says, "I texted him and asked if he wanted to make a movie out of it. He said sure. I hardly knew him. But we began writing a script. Lindy West joined the writing team in 2017. Film was shot in fall of 2018."
You can attend a virtual screening of the production of Now I'm Fine at On the Boards here.
The big stars of the film adaptation are Aham (he plays himself), his sister Ijeoma Oluo (she plays herself), and the comedians Hari Kondabolu and Dwayne Kennedy. Just last week, Kennedy, who is based in Chicago, had a record released by Ahamâs record label, Oakhead Records.
The cinematographer on Thin Skin is Sean Kirby, who also shot Police Beat. Here's a behind-the-scenes look at the makeup artistry in the film:
Thinskin Movie Makeup Test Parts 1, 2 & 3 from Kevin Philbin on Vimeo.
Thank you, Aham, for the message today, and for that beautiful walk through the woods, ending at that unexpected beach.
And thank you for sharing this sequence from your film. The way your trumpet sounds as we look out over downtown? The way it interacts with the orchestral music that floats in on top? Unbelievably beautiful.
Have a good weekend, everyone.
Try to find a socially distant way to enjoy the weather.
See you again with another message on Monday.
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Previously in this series:
