I am currently working on a feature film called "Begin the Beguine" which we will be shooting this summer! I am very excited that the screenplay I co-wrote with my friend Elizabeth Bull will soon be coming alive with actors of the highest caliber in grace and talent. Please tune into my personal website www.arigoldfilms.com for more information, and if you are so inspired to support my work, please click the contribute link above or leave me a message! Thank you very much.

Please click "My Life Story in Short" to read more about my endeavors as an actor (I won “Stoner of the Year” from High Times Magazine for my performance in the Sony Classics release Groove.) and musician. I play the ukelele with my twin brother, Ethan Gold, in a band called The Gold Brothers (www.thegoldbrothers.com) and with my friends in a folk contemporary band called The Honey Brothers (www.thehoneybrothers.com).

Thanks!

Please check out my charity, Power Saves the Music, to support and preserve music education in public schools. In association with Vh1's Save the Music Foundation.

www.powersavesthemusic.com

Check out a video of my visit to Jersey City, where the talented young boys and girls played their new instruments, donated from the earnings of the Power Saves the Music Charity Auction! http://bit.ly/PowerVh1SavesMusicNJ

When I was twenty, my mother was killed in a helicopter crash with rock music promoter Bill Graham, whom she had recently begun dating after a nearly two-decades courtship. To many rock musicians and fans, Graham was a god; to my brother, my sister, and me, who hardly knew him, it seemed his death was so big it just took our mother with it.

"Helicopter" is a recreation of the emotional aftermath of sudden loss. Nothing could have prepared me for the loss of the person who knew me better than anyone in the world. Nothing could have prepared me for the absurdity of a "famous" death.

My sister Nina performed the voice of our mother, and my brilliant twin brother Ethan composed the music for the film, but, not wanting a documentary, I used actors (actually friends of mine) to play the three of us on film. The movie combines re-enacted scenes--and a few photos and videos from reality--with several kinds of animation which are close to how I actually experienced the truth.

I made "Helicopter" with so many different unreal elements in order to draw a chalk circle around a very personal event, in the hopes that by the last frame of the film, a viewer sees through the circle to his or her own life. I wasn't interested in presenting objective reality--I preferred the subjective reality of a young man, still wanting to talk to his mother about romantic troubles, who suddenly finds that his mother no longer exists. This is the reality of a person trying to comprehend death.

Finally, the film is about the way the mind can filter through any cacophony to find life's core, the one thing that matters: love.

If you're interested in reading more about my journey in the development of this film and perhaps a bit more precisely, my reasons for deciding to make movies my life, read here: http://arigoldfilms.com/news/4/60/On-A-Quest-For-Student-Gold/

HELICOPTER, which you see here, was called “the best short film of the year” by Film Threat and won top prizes at festivals in the US, France, Germany & Brazil, including the Student Oscar. My previous film CULTURE was the inspiration for a filmmaking collective in the former Yugoslavia, which I later joined. Later, in 2008, I created an absurdist feature film ADVENTURES OF POWER, in which I starred alongside Jane Lynch, Michael McKean and Adrian Grenier. It premiered at Sundance, won best-of-festival prizes at eight film festivals and is currently on Showtime, Netflix, and sold on Amazon. It was the audience’s top-rated comedy at Karlovy-Vary and was called “one of the funniest films in recent years” by New York Magazine. I have written and directed videos & short films for various artists, for Showtime’s “United States of Tara,” and for Nickelodeon star Lucas Cruikshank, and I continue making movies my life. My next feature, "Begin the Beguine," shoots this summer 2012.

In other non-directorial realms of my life, I am an actor and musician. As an actor, I won “Stoner of the Year” from High Times Magazine for my performance in the Sony Classics release Groove. (Feel free to read that sentence again.) I sing in the band The Honey Brothers (with Adrian Grenier) and Gold Brothers (with my twin brother Ethan) and, I play ukulele, piano and sometimes the drums (also the air drums). I was raised in San Francisco and have lived at various times in New York, Los Angeles, New Mexico, Montana, Germany and Serbia.

My name was, uh, "borrowed" by a TV show, and I do hope to someday get a free drink out of it.