PETE ANDERSON MOVES ON WITH THE WAIT >>>

This year I've decided to watch safely from the sidelines as the gift-giving game heats up. Everyone seems to want a piece of the action - while Aunt Darlene knits the pinky on your new pair of gloves, filmmakers like Pete Anderson check twice their own handmade works of art before shipping out copies to festivals everywhere.

And in return, Anderson has just one item on his wish list: an acceptance letter.

With Anderson's feature ensemble Break completed this past fall, he has his fingers crossed on getting the thumbs up from two major fests in 2012, Cinequest in Silicon Valley and the Seattle International Film Festival. The former possesses some nostalgic value, as Anderson grew up in San Jose. And Break bursts with enough local spots to hopefully please the folks at SIFF.

"It's kind of (the film's) hometown," Anderson says. "We made a lot of the movie right around where the film would be screening ...(near) Seattle Center."

When he and I last spoke in September, Anderson was just rolling into production on a new feature called We Have the Weekend. For several weeks the project soared: "We had half the movie shot. Awesome locations, awesome footage," Anderson recalls.

Then difficulties with a main actor surfaced, and he had no other option but to shelve Weekend. On a hard drive it remains, Anderson's efforts never to see the light of day. But don't feel too bad; he for one refuses to cry over spilt movies.

"You have to look at the alternative: Am I going to waste more energy on it?" he asks.

If only we could all move on from our passion projects with the same resolve. (The tree can't take any more ornaments, Dad! Just walk away!)

While he waits on word from the festivals regarding Break, Anderson forges ahead with pre-production for the aptly-named The Wait. This Rashomon-type tale (which Anderson wrote) deals with a dead woman as seen from three very different perspectives: the parents, brother and boyfriend she left behind. Shooting begins in February. Like the Break Facebook page here.

LINK: We wrote about Anderson's film Break