Hello again,
Well, we seem to have made it to another month. I can't complain about the weather, the movie is coming along, and life is busy but in a good way. Order 86 is going to start filming at the end of the month. We have our big table read coming up in a couple of days. The script is going through some last minute changes and I'm sure there will be two or three more changes before we're done filming. These are good things and the changes don't alter the story line so it shouldn't take long. After casting we decided that we could put in a knife fight to help develop a character. The actress really seemed to warm up to the idea, so I'm working on choreographing a knife fight as well as a few gun battles and some hand to hand fights. Spy thrillers aren't as easy as they look.
The sci-fi comedy I'm working on for IX Productions has two more shooting days! It's called Zoink! and will hopefully be playing at a festival near you in the not too distant future. Also, keep your eyes out for She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not. This is another film from IX that I recorded sound for and is my first producer credit!
There's an independently produced short that I'm doing stunt choreography for called Rivals that will start filming next month. I had a fun conversation with the director the other day, I'm a little surprised that Homeland Security didn't show up.
Me: Hi, I'm filling out my calendar and I'm wondering when you're shooting?
Director: (this date) in March and (that date) in April.
Me: Got it. What day are you killing the family?
Director: Ha! I don't know that anybody has ever asked me that question. It'll be on the first day.
Me: What kind of weapons did you have in mind. Will it be a knife like last time?
Director: Yeah, I figured at most the character would have two knives. I don't have my location locked yet, but I figured you'd probably get some ideas when we finally have the space.
Me: Yeah, I tend to work best when I know what kind of space I'm dealing with.
Okay, here's the fun part, read that again, omitting her side of the conversation and imagine that you're in the middle of a coffee shop and this phone conversation is happening at the next table. I have a fun job.
In sports news, The Roller Warriors are hosting a co-ed game tomorrow night at our new home in Memorial Hall! You can follow all of the action by going to The Wheel Press' new facebook page or just visit the website and the story will be there soon.
Speaking of websites, don't forget to visit www.order86movie.com and Merry BanD Productions . Before I sign off for another month, I'll leave you with this thing I wrote last week when I was having a crisis of creativity. Take care.
We finally decided on a cast for Order 86. After spending several hours in an all -night hash house, my co-producer and I were still stymied as to who should be our female lead. The choices for male leads were relatively easy. We both had a short list of two to three names for each role, some only one name, and through process of elimination, we were able to agree. When it came to Jen, our female lead, we had the same three names on our list but we couldn’t decide which one actress was better qualified.
Eventually, we decided to sleep on it and come back to it later that day. I got five restless hours of sleep and finally just got out of bed. In an effort to take my mind off of things for a while I put a movie on. This was a mistake. I was watching Girl On The Bridge. I hadn’t seen it since the theaters, sixteen years ago, but I remembered that I really enjoyed it. If you’ve never seen it, watch it, it’s still amazing. Patrice Leconte was so on top of his game when he made this one. Some of the trick photography doesn’t have the same impact it did back when the digital age was in its youth, but the cinematography is still pretty incredible. The story line also has a refreshing spin.
Unfortunately, this did not help me to forget my troubles for 91 minutes, it only reinforced them. Vanessa Paradis is the title character and the more I watched, the worst I felt. Through the script and the camera and no shortage of talent and beauty on her part, you as the viewer really start to feel something for this character along with Daniel Auteuil. If you don’t fall in love with this character, just a little bit, the whole movie becomes a waste of time. The producers really knew what they were doing. I started wondering how long they had to look to find the right girl. How long was I going to have to look? My problem wasn’t that I couldn’t find one but that I’d found three.
I started thinking back to earlier in pre-production when I’d had an actor set back. I came up with the brilliant idea to scrap the whole spy story and just do a nature documentary about penguins. People like penguins and you can get them on their marks by waving fish at them. No drama, no problems. After bringing this idea to the creative team, we decided it would be cheaper and easier to use puppies. People like puppies almost as much as penguins. We toyed with the idea for the better part of a half hour and they eventually persuaded me that we could actually make a spy film with human actors.
The more I basked in the glory of Girl On The Bridge, the more my addled, sleep deprived brain started to find solutions to my problems. I could scrap the whole popcorn movie mentality and make it in black and white. If I changed the DP’s last name from Bolen to Bolier, I could probably get away with artistic camera angles and subtitle the whole thing. It could play twice a day for a week at that twin plex down the street that everybody knew about but nobody went to. Instead of Order 86 I could call it Girl With The Chip. Of course, then reality tapped me on the shoulder and reminded me that I still didn’t have a girl…oh, yeah. I’ll bet Selznick didn’t have these kinds of problems.
The upside of this story is that while I was watching a film to escape my problems, my co-producer spent his morning re-watching the audition tapes. When we met up for our scheduling meeting, he told me about his epiphany. It was more productive than mine. We went back to his place and had a three woman Enter The Dragon death match where we scrutinized every nuance of their performance and for a while we were still at a stale mate. By tape number three though, we were starting to drink the same kool-ade. I still can’t say that we’re not going to film it in black and white with subtitles and artistic angles but I can tell you that Girl With The Chip will be Laurie Winkel.
