Reflections on making this movie...

...from the Director

In General
In general, we were blessed on this project. I vowed to think positive and proceed no matter what happened, and I believe this attitude not only carried us past seemingly impossible obstacles but also gave our entire film serendipity, a fantastic brush of luck. Don’t get me wrong, we suffered. Yes, we worked and toiled and got yelled at so that saliva was shooting in our faces. But, we made the film.

Funding
When Chris (the writer and lead actor) and I thought we finally had a solid script on our hands, we decided to make the movie no matter what it took. We wrote a great business plan and we started asking everyone we knew to invest in our picture. We hit up family, friends and lots of companies who claimed to invest in movies like ours but really seemed only to talk about investing in movies like ours. I also personally asked everyone (and I mean everyone) if they just happened to know any millionaires willing to invest in a movie.

Then, the luck began. Our business plan had found its way into the hands of the good people at Island Gateway. They had been looking for a project to invest in and they too had been meeting with lots of flakey people who liked to have endless meetings. When they contacted us, we told them we were ready to make the movie and that they had to make a fast decision because our production machinery was already starting to roll. They liked our “no bullshit” attitude and, within two weeks of meeting them, gave us the money to shoot on film. Needless to say we were thrilled…and shocked. After trying so hard for so long, we had resigned ourselves to a very, very small production and now the money had come in from an investor who gave me complete artistic control and who wrote checks that cleared the bank. We pushed back our start date in order to ramp up for the larger production then we got to work, lots and lots of work.

Casting
Casting directors are odd. In my experience there are two types: either humble and sweet or carrying around a huge attitude. The first casting director we approached, a friend of a friend, was the latter type. She was doing us a favor just meeting with us, even though her main credit to date was a bad melodrama produced by PBS. After we met her, I decided to save our money and cast the movie ourselves. We had the help of two great friends, Betty and Michele, and we set up interviews with over 250 actors for the 30-some-odd speaking roles. We saw lots of bad actors – you always do – and we had some great surprises. The two greatest were William Gregory Lee and Billy Morrison who ended up playing the parts of Tripp and Sweaty Steve. Both of these were hard parts to cast. Tripp, the crazy best friend of the main character, had to be a long list of adjectives: charming, funny, wild, petty, funny, good looking and funny. He also had to be a “gamer,” cool with working long hours and pumping out high energy the entire time. Lastly, because Chris was playing the lead, we all felt that it would help the distribution of the film if we cast a “name” to play Tripp. So, we put our casting notice on Breakdown Services and, when we start casting, in walks Greg Lee. In the audition he did a great job with Tripp. He was a nice guy and seemed totally committed to the craft of acting – this is rare in Hollywood, especially with good-looking actors. Both Chris and I liked him immediately. And, he had had a nice run on the TV show Dark Angel.

The part of Sweaty Steve had one basic challenge, the actor playing the scary, gay drug dealer had to play it understated. Well, we saw a lot of great actors for Sweaty Steve, but none were understated. They all did the lines really gay or played them for laughs, even after I would ask them not to. When Billy Morrison auditioned he started off understated and, being a rock star he looked great, with his tats and his stringy-ass black hair. After he did a great job with the first read, I gave him an adjustment at the call back to see if he could go deeper with the darkness of the character. He did such a good job that everyone in the room felt their skin crawl. He was cast.

Around this time we met our casting director Lisa Hamil. She was so cool. Not only did she take the project but she gave us a great rate for all her work. She started helping us make offers to “stars” and arrange auditions for “names.” She also educated me on the secret language of casting Hollywood name and star talent. I can’t tell you the secret language because then it wouldn’t be secret. Kidding. What she taught me is that many “names” will audition for little films, as long as they go straight in for a meeting with the director. Great! No problem. So, that’s what we did.

Pre-Production
In pre-pro, when I looked at my schedule for the shoot (14 hour days, six days a week for four weeks), it was clear that sleep would be a highly prized commodity. But, as the first shoot day drew near, the stress and excitement built up to a point that I couldn’t sleep much. My mind was racing on the shots I was planning. I stayed awake recreating shots each time our location fell through. And, I spent many late nights pacing my kitchen worrying about the day-to-day dramas that come from trying to make an ambitious film. But, as they say, you can sleep when you’re dead. Production began on schedule and with lots of enthusiasm.

Production
We started out with six days at the boy’s apartment, doing all the interior and exterior scenes that happen there. For the most part we got great stuff. We did do a scene where Tripp tries to catch a cat with a shoebox and that didn’t work – it’s cut from the film. But, most everything else was going well.

If you see the film, you’ll see that we traveled all over LA, from downtown to Malibu to Los Feliz to way north past Valencia to a house that had an indoor racquetball court. After all the hassle of finding and securing them, we had some great locations.

My favorite location was San Pedro pier. Everywhere you looked was a beautiful sight. Huge cargo and cruise ships came and went in the background and giant cranes whipped freight boxes around like they weighed nothing at all.

Other than the regular problems of indie film making, things went pretty smoothly. But, twice the weather boned us. We shot in July and for some bizarre reason there was a ton of fog. When were out by the beach we had to completely rearrange our schedule because the marine layer was so thick that it was dark until one in the afternoon. The two night scenes in Griffith Park were supposed to look completely different. The first, the one where Ford and Tripp run away from the Blow Up Man, was supposed to be foggy. So, we rented an Ajiba, a big-ass fogger that looks like a flame-thrower and sounds like an enormous chain saw. But, we didn’t need it. The fog rolled in all from the ocean just after dark and then was so thick that it made it hard to see someone a hundred feet away – for the first scene it looked great. Unfortunately, the next scene, the one where the boys reflect on what to do about the hit-man, was supposed to look like the view from Mulholland drive, with the lights of the city in the back ground. We parked the picture car on a helicopter pad, which usually has an awesome view of downtown. But, by the time we got to that scene, the fog was so thick that it looked like the boys were parked inside a cloud. Well, the scene wasn’t as pretty as I would have liked but at least the performances were good.

Post
After we wrapped, we went right into post. We worked hard and fast and finished the bulk of the edit by mid-November. Then, I went to Guatemala for a month. I was nervous about leaving the project for so long, but now know it was a good decision. By the time we had a rough cut, I was burnt out and did not like the film. The jokes were old and the story boring to me. I had no objectivity. But, after a month away from it, I liked it again. I had the energy to do last tweaks and then get into the music with the composer.

As I’m writing this, we’re not done with the audio post, so stay tuned for more info once the film is completed.
 

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