1. My dopamine stores got a huge boost this past weekend. It all began with an early morning, a drive out to Eastham, and a trip down Memory Lane of sorts. For a few years, my producer friend Frank, of the Lady of the Dunes documentary film, has wanted to do a short film about the story of Sydney Monzon. Sydney was an alleged victim of notorious Cape Cod serial killer Tony Costa in the late 1960s. More so, she was emblematic of the culture of the time as well as the loss of innocence of youth that happens in your late teens and early twenties. Her story is a bit of a continuation of the Lady of the Dunes story, mainly due to proximity and the time period. It’s interesting how deep the true crime on Cape Cod goes in the 1960s and 1970s. You had Tony Costa, the Lady of the Dunes, and also serial killer Hadden Clark in the area. These last five and a half years of working with Frank on various projects have definitely made me see Cape Cod, especially the Outer Cape of Eastham, Wellfleet, Truro, and Provincetown, in a different light.
2. I had always said that when he got time to shoot the Sydney project, I was on board. I was early for the shoot but late compared to the rest of the crew. They had started shooting when I got there. The director was named Kalima, and she was deep in shooting scenes around the cemetery where Sydney Monzon was buried. Nicole was the actress who played Sydney. She had been a part of the Cape Cod Cthulhu film I was also in, so I remembered her from being on set in Provincetown in 2025. I did my best to stay out of the way of the scenes being shot but also wanted to be useful. After all, Frank had invited me to be a part of it, so I should be doing something, right? Well, maybe I should have kept quiet. Kalima asked me if I could get some b-roll of the cemetery. She had a few specific things for me to shoot, which was easy enough. Then she handed me her spare camera to film with. I played it off like I had it under control, which was another mistake. Moments later I was fumbling, trying to figure out how to shoot video, without having to ask for help. Eventually I gave up and asked her where the button was to start recording. Yes, it was very easy to find, but I guess my brain wasn’t fully functional at 9am. After that, it was all systems go for getting some, hopefully, good b-roll footage of the cemetery.
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| A photo of Evergreen Cemetery in Eastham |
3. A reporter from the Cape Cod Times newspaper showed up to ask some questions and get some photos of the movie shoot. It was pretty cool that the Sydney project was getting some attention. Kalima and Nicole ventured off to get some shots all across the cemetery. This left Frank to chat with the reporter. I mainly stayed in the background since I was not a huge part of the production. When asked, I did come over and chat a bit, telling the reporter who I was and such. I got more comfortable and started regaling her with some of the stories from Frank and my previous adventures. She did seem interested in our stories and the Sydney project as well, so all in all it was a good experience. From there we had a few more spots to shoot around Eastham. The idea was to have Nicole portraying Sydney in areas she might have visited while she was alive. We all left the cemetery in a caravan headed for the nearby high school. There, it was a similar process. I went and got some b-roll, trying to earn that camera assistant credit on IMDb, while Kalima and Nicole got the most important shots. We had permission to film at the school on a Saturday, but we did seem to draw an interested onlooker who came out of the school. He didn’t say anything, but he did have a ‘mean old man walk,’ as Frank said. We went all over the school grounds. One of the highlights was Frank driving down a road, at least we think it was a road, and coming out of an open gate near a football field. Hey, we’d never been there; give us a break. Plus, we made it with no issues, so it all worked out.
4. I live by the credo ‘dedication to the craft’ when it comes to photography. This also carries over to film. I put this into action at our next location, Nauset Light Beach. Kalima gave me my marching orders for b-roll, and I was off. She wanted some video of the waves crashing but then also the darker sand that’s left when the waves retreat. I went as far as I could to the shore and crouched down. The waves had behaved up until then, but of course once I got close, the ocean decided to send a few rogue waves my way. Of course I could have stood up and moved back, but, you know, dedication to the craft. I was filming, and the wave came right up on me. I stood my ground and got the shot, and also soaked shoes. Oh, but that wasn’t the end. I had walked back up the beach to share my brave story of getting the video despite the ocean’s objections. My shoes were coated with sand, and my socks were squishing. One shot not on the list that I wanted was the waves crashing around a rock and then pulling back. I put all of what had just happened out of my head and walked back down to the shore. Take a wild guess what happened. Not only did the rogue waves come back, but instead of just soaking my shoes, this time it was a wave above my ankles. It was as if the ocean said, ‘Okay, you didn’t learn your lesson?’ I cleaned my shoes of all the sand so I didn’t mess up Frank’s car, but I had to spend the next several hours with wet feet. The video had better have come out good, that’s all.
5. Sometimes I end up in the right place at the right time. Before we left Nauset Light Beach, I suggested we grab a shot or two at the nearby Three Sisters Lighthouses. They are three 15-foot-tall white lighthouses located in a field about 1/3 mile from the shore. They weren’t always there. They actually used to be out on the bluff at Nauset Light Beach before eventually being replaced by the current Nauset Light. It is a forgotten attraction in Eastham. It paid off going there. The center lighthouse in the field is the only one still with a lantern on top. The other two had been sold and combined into a cottage about a century ago. When we got there, I was shocked to see the door to the center tower wide open. I could barely contain my excitement as I’d never been inside one of the Three Sisters. I got my chance and did a full walk from outside to the inside, and then up the stairs to the lantern room. There was even a bit of a trap door that led underneath to the basement, but I didn’t want to push it and get stuck in there or something. I did try a few times to open the hatch in the lantern room to get outside at the top of the lighthouse, but it wasn’t to be. I figured that would be my luck. I’d get to go inside the lighthouse and proceed to damage a historical site at the same time.
6. Last but not least, on the Sydney shoot was a stop at Fort Hill. This is the area that, in my mind, she would have visited most when she was alive. It has a beautiful sweeping view of Nauset Beach and the Nauset Inlet where boats, kayaks, and stand-up paddleboarders like to play. One thing I kept forgetting was that it was a holiday weekend. There were more people around than I expected. Luckily, we got the last parking spot at the lot on Fort Hill. Of course there had to be one car that didn’t know how to park, and they were right next to us. This lady in her SUV parked diagonally in the spot, leaving me little room to get out. Not sure what her deal was, but she was sleeping in the front seat when we arrived and still was when we left. As we walked around the ground getting video, we were unsurprisingly gawked at by others wondering what we were doing. One older couple thought we were taking senior high school photos. I guess it’s not that unlikely since Nicole looks like she could still be in high school. We got all of the shots we needed and wrapped the shoot after a little over five hours, not bad. I am sure there will be more information to come in the weeks and months ahead about the Sydney short film project.
7. The other big happening over the long holiday weekend was a Zoom interview with filmmaker Frank Durant and author Liza Rodman. We got together to talk about Cape Cod true crime for a special podcast episode as well as a YouTube video. Obviously, those who have followed my journey know that I have worked with Frank on the Lady of the Dunes projects, and you just read that I was a part of the Sydney short film. Liza Rodman wrote the book The Babysitter, which covers her life growing up on Cape Cod, but more specifically the fact that her childhood babysitter was none other than convicted serial killer Tony Costa. The book is fascinating, and she made sure to stick to her story and not delve into rumors or sensationalize the Costa murder cases. The interview was a blast. I tried my best to be a competent interviewer, but you can be the judge when you watch or listen to it. How do I know the interview went well? On Zoom, you only get 40 minutes of meeting time. We were up to about 35 minutes, and I knew I couldn’t just cut it off. So I went during the meeting and signed up for a month of Zoom Pro, which gave us unlimited time. It was $16.99, but I think it was worth it for the extra 30 minutes that we chatted for. In the end, the raw meeting was 65 minutes. I am sure I will whittle it down a bit to be less than an hour. Overall thought it was a great interview that I can’t wait for you all to see. Hopefully I get to do it again with Frank and Liza sometime soon.
8. The last several years of my life have mainly consisted of me working on a bunch of creative projects all at once. This is in addition to having a full-time job to pay the bills. It is all in the never-ending quest to create the best version of myself and my life. I joke at times that I feel like I am the bus from the movie Speed. If I slow down, it will be a disaster. It’s only a half-joke. I often feel like the only time that I am of value is when I am chasing dreams and goals. If it’s me, just me, I never do, and never have, felt like it was enough. Some days I feel like I am close to whatever the ultimate achievement is that will make me feel like I have succeeded. Other days I feel like I have no idea what I am doing and that every step I take gets me further from success. I am terrified of failure, and that keeps me from taking big risks in life like I did in my 20s. I don’t have a wife or kids or a house, but still I feel at my age there is more to lose and less room for error. With my birthday coming in a few weeks, it is hard for me not to look back at the last ten years and wonder where my life has gone. I am getting close to starting the last year of my 40s, and it gives me this overwhelming sense of desperation. It’s like I need to make something of whatever gifts I have before they are truly squandered. The scariest part is if the day comes when I have to give up chasing my dreams, I honestly don’t know who I’d be or what I’d do with the rest of my life.
9. Maybe it’s just me, but I find it incredibly weird for someone I hardly know at all to find it appropriate to tag themselves in photos of mine on social media. It’s even weirder when they not only aren’t in the photos, but weren’t even there when the photos were taken. Anybody else ever have this happen? I know on Instagram people tag bigger accounts in their photos in the hopes of getting spotlighted. Is that what this was? Some sort of sad clout chasing? To be honest, this person I met through the production of my film The Cabin. I met them for maybe a few hours combined. Their friend request I figured was fine since we’d all worked on the film together. They almost immediately began tagging themselves in photos I’d been sharing of my time out in Pennsylvania. I’d have been cool with it if they had been there for the photos, but when you’re tagging yourself in a photo of just me, that is way too creepy and off-putting. I loaded in a big batch of photos of my filming experience and tagged everyone in the album that I was friends with on Facebook. I figured that would be satisfactory. Nope. This person again began tagging themselves in the photos. I reached out and asked them to please stop doing that. Then I went and changed my settings so that if anyone tries to tag themselves in my photos, I get an alert and have to approve it. Only a few hours later, this person AGAIN tried tagging themselves, even after I asked them nicely not to. I denied all of their tag requests, which made me happy. At this point I am just waiting for an excuse to delete this person off Facebook. Oh, and when the time comes for the next feature film, I will make sure there isn’t a part for them.
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| A photo of only me but this weirdo thought they needed to tag themselves in it. |
10. As we get deeper into October, it was time for me to get my annual pumpkin. It has been a tradition over the last 5 years to buy a small-ish pumpkin, draw a face on it with a Sharpie, and take it around Cape Cod for some fun photos. This year’s pumpkin is probably close to twice the size of a typical softball. The face I gave it was a simple smiling face, but with one catch, I gave it an eye patch. So the pumpkin looks like Snake Plissken from Escape from New York. I even called it Snake Pumpskin. The first batch of photos consisted of a sunset shoot at Englewood Beach in Yarmouth, aka my Nana’s favorite beach. I am lucky where I live to be able to get beach and sunset photos with the pumpkin before hitting up a few creepy cemeteries for the more traditional Halloween-style shots. This shoot ended up being even better as the sun went down and created a fiery sky. It was a wash of hot pinks, yellows, and oranges. I ended up taking a long walk down the beaches in Yarmouth, watching the colors change. If it hadn’t been for the cold wind and temperatures in the upper 40s, it would have looked like summer. There was even a girl standing up to her waist in the water, saying she was training for the Polar Plunge. Even better was since the sun now sets before 6pm I got all of the photos I needed and was home having dinner before 7.
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| A pumpkin and a sunset. |
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