Pre-Production (sorta)

Sometime earlier in 2007, March maybe, we helped out on a project by Alicia Faucher. Wait, I’ll have to back up a second.

After my latest revision of the script, 2006 maybe, I sent it to Logan Brown, saying something like “hey, what do you think of this? I think I want to do it.” The ball never really quite got rolling as I was more or less on the fence about it. I never really brought it up, other than “something I’d like to do at some point.”

So then we ended up helping out on Alicia Fauchers “Loose Lips,” which later became “King of Hearts,” which is a film noir. Shooting this flick, it reminded me of how much I love the genre, and how much I’d love to shoot a noir. It’s because of this shoot that got me really pumped to shoot this project, which I consider a modern day film noir. That got the fire lit under my ass, and I really started pushing for this project. Yes, for everyone asking that question, it was a big fire. Assholes.

It comes up during the shoot that Theresa Thompson, the female lead in King of Hearts, would like to work with us, and she’s somehow seen our first feature “Streets of Wonderland.” I’m flattered that she’s seen it and somehow got a hold of it, but she won’t tell me how. I start toying with the idea of having her as the female lead in this project as she’s got some chops and seems like a super cool chick.

So I ask Logan if he wants to play the lead. He says he would but he’s not sure how much time he’ll be able to have to A) do the project, and B) devote to learning the script, lines, nuances, and whatever else an actor does to prepare. Logan has gone back to his roots (I think they’re his roots anyway) and stared devoting a lot of time to improv and performing again. I can’t blame him; the way we work(ed) lately is to shoot a couple of projects a year, all of them in summer. You don’t keep sharp and you don’t occupy your time by doing nothing.

There’s a whole slew of reasons why we decided to shoot in the summer as opposed to other seasons, and it involved for the most part, waiting for people to become available. Anyways, we’re not doing that anymore, and we’re more focused to putting out projects year round. It’s hard quitting a project, then waiting almost a year, then getting geared up for another one. Fuck that.

I ask Dan Bowers, a tremendously talented actor that I worked with on Episode 3 of our online series Lot B, if he’d play the lead role. At first he says yes, but then realizes that he can’t commit the time to do it as well because he’s got quite a bit if shit going on too. Damn, is the script that bad?

Bill Reilly, my ever constant driving force, gets involved, and this project really gets rolling. Bill Reilly is my producer and camera operator. In fact, he is such an unstoppable force on this project he’s going to get sole producer credit on this, and he totally deserves it. That kid is so powerful on this, he can look at Hurricane Katrina and call it a pussy.

We both agree that we want Logan for the lead role. When I rewrote it the last time, I believe I wrote it with Logan in mind. We both know that Logan’s super busy right now, what with his life and all, so we toy with the idea of having auditions. Stupid actors and their stupid lives outside of my stupid film world.

So we have our pros and cons about holding auditions. On the pro side, we’ll have a bigger talent base to pool actors from which we will definitely need if we want to ramp up the quantity of our productions. On the con side, we’ll have to wait longer to start principle photography, and organize auditions.

Auditions are a pain in the ass. Anyone that ever held or organized one of these before knows what I’m talking about. Lucky for me, Bill took the bull by the horns and jumped on this like a fat kid in a cake factory. But before we get to that, I have a date.