Here’s what we learned this weekend. If a character has to eat a taco in a scene, and you do 40 takes of the scene, the actor has then eaten 40 tacos. How Stephen Hale managed to not get sick is still a mystery.
After a long Friday night of shooting, myself, Elisha, and Bryan Irving slept on the floor of the set for a couple hours. Bryan snores like an old man.
We started shooting last Saturday on a deserted beach in Oxnard. 5 pages in the can, 88 to go.
Thanks to our friends Todd Sklar and Brock Williams, our HD Camera package arrived on Friday. In order to test it out, we shot this little video set to Brad Breeck’s song.
The idea for the video comes from a real woman who parks in my neighborhood, sits in her car, and listens to music real loud. Last time I saw her she was blaring Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.” I think she has problems. Whenever I walk by her car, I want to approach her and ask what’s wrong, but always chicken out. We put this scenario in the context of our film, and while it probably won’t make total sense to people who are unfamiliar with the script, my hope it that it at least creates a strong sense of intrigue.
This is a true story. Yesterday, as I was leaving work for the day, I saw a clear “Washington Mutual” bag lying on the ground. I opened it up, and there were several envelopes, stuffed with hundred dollar bills. A lot of them. Not a split second later, a girl runs by, looking intensely relieved from being intensely distraught. “Oh-my-god-there-it-is-thank-you-thank-you-thank-you.” Before I knew what happened, she had grabbed it, hopped in her car, and peeled out.
For a brief moment, I was literally holding the budget of the film in my hands.
I almost made a feature film last year. I had a script. I had all the financing. I had all the actors. It was a horror-comedy, and it was all set to go. Right before I was about to pull the trigger and take all my vacation time from work to make it happen, I realized that I did not want devote a year or more to that particular story.
It’s no surprise that making an independent film is a hell of a lot of work, and takes a hell of a lot of passion. In thinking of the year in front of me, I realized that I would rather not make a film that year, than potentially make a film I wasn’t completely emotionally invested in. That wouldn’t be fair to myself, to my crew, or to the audiences watching it.
So instead we wrote ONE TOO MANY MORNINGS. This film is personal. It’s about us. It’s about our problems. And we put every ounce of emotional truth into it we possibly could. While on the surface it deals with familiar themes of alcoholism and relationships, to me it’s more about a much more difficult subject: realizing that your closest friends and loved ones can be total strangers. What’s even more difficult: it’s also a comedy.
Now that we’re in the position of asking people to invest money and resources (nothing terrifies me more), I’m a lot less afraid. We’re going to make this film no matter what, shooting it on nights and weekends. We simply can’t afford to do it any other way, and that doesn’t bother me. In fact, even though this is going to be 100 times harder than that horror-comedy of last year, I’m looking forward to it 100 times more.
And even though we are making this on a tiny scale, we still need help. We still need support. We still need to find a way to buy a can of paint so that we can make the walls of the donated location we’re shooting in not white. Maybe you can buy that can of paint? Maybe that can of paint is collecting dust in your garage? Please contact us if you think you can help.
We have no idea exactly who is going to see it, where it’s going to play, or where it might lead us. We certainly do not have nearly enough money at the moment to see it through to the end. It could take us a year or longer, but right now I’m just hoping that the process of making the movie will be the most rewarding part of the experience.
-mike