My Movie Making Nightmares - Part Deux

Less than two months after I shot my first short film, I auditioned for and was cast in two feature length digital movies.   Digital has changed everything.  Now anyone with a video camera can make their own movies...AAAAAANNNNNNDD they do.  We are talking extremely low budget here.  And since I was non-union with little on camera experience, I did these movies for the footage for a reel.

 

The first film was produced by a young man with his own production company. His sister ran the auditions and did all the paperwork (i.e. signing your life away since there is no union jurisdiction) and she was also the caterer (she did all the cooking).  The film was shot on location in a vacant flower shop in Pomona, California, which is about 40 miles east of LA! The flower shop in effect was our studio, but only until December 5^th, at which point it would reopen for the holiday season to sell poinsettias. Exteriors were shot in the alley behind the shop where some homeless people had set up a little cardboard shantytown. Oh! Did I mention that our director’s father worked as the accountant for the florists’ owners?

 

The movie was about a young guy who has taken a job as a production assistant on a low budget vampire flick.  It’s his first day on the set and shows all the characters involved in the making of the movie and actual scenes from the vampire movie.  I played the part of the director of photography who speaks very softly, so softly in fact that no one can understand him when he speaks, except for our leading man, the PA.  I had a supporting role in this one and was only required for maybe two days of filming and both of them were just a few hours long.

 

My first day, I was called at 7:30 a.m.  The only other person who was there at that hour was our makeup girl.  Our leading man showed up a few minutes later, but our director didn’t show up for about 45 minutes.  He apologized profusely.  He never did this, but he had been up late the night before since the shoot ended around midnight and then he had to go home and prepare for the next day’s shoot.   There was a third actor involved in our scene as well.  When we were in makeup, he explained that he wasn’t prepared for the scene we were shooting because he had forgot his script on the set over the weekend and so he had not prepared.  So while we were in makeup, he was running his lines.  

 

We shot the scene in the back room of the shop. It’s our leading man and me. He’s supposed to be painting some props for the next scene that’s being shot and we talk about his girlfriend and their imminent breakup.  The third actor plays the part of the director and star of the vampire film, a former 1970s action star.  He comes into the middle of the scene.  We set up, rehearse and shoot the scene up until the third actor’s entrance.  He has to enter through a door that is shut.  We get to his entrance and nothing happens.  The director calls his name, “Curtis! Are you there?”  “Yes.”  “Did you hear your cue line?”  “No!”  “ Do you know what it is? It’s…”  We do it again.  Curtis does not enter the scene.   Director to writer/producer, “Go out there and cue him.”  We shoot again.  Curtis enters.  He delivers his lines to the wrong actors.  He doesn’t know which lines are to me and which lines are to the other actor. We cut and shoot again.

 

Incidentally, his line readings are awful.  I hate to sound unkind but they were very amateur.  The director got tired of cutting so finally he just kept the camera rolling and asked the writer to give him line readings and they asked Curtis to just repeat after Erik.  It worked.  He actually sounded convincing.  

 

BTW, in order to give you an idea how low budget this film was, the director was also the director of photography and the cameraman.  There was one light instrument used in this scene.  And the battery on the camera was out of power when we started.  Yes, that’s right, real big time movie making here.  

 

I had to wonder about Curtis.  He was a nice enough guy and all but I got the impression this was all very new to him, acting that is.  But it wasn’t just that, there was something else.  A few weeks earlier, we had a table read of the script with the entire cast present.  He sat next to me.  There were words that he kept mispronouncing. Not just difficult words, but easy ones too.  I thought maybe he was a little slow, but that didn’t seem right.  The more I thought about it, the more I realized he must be dyslexic.  It was the only explanation I could come up with. At one point he leaned over and asked me what ___ was.  I told him the word and he proceeded to mispronounce it. 

 

He was supposed to be this threatening character in the movie and he had none of that when he read his lines, until he was given a line reading by the director or writer and he copied them, then he sounded menacing.  It was great.  He was a big soft-spoken man in his mid-late thirties I’d say.

 

During a break my second day of shooting, I asked the director what Curtis’ story was.  Was he in fact dyslexic? No, he apparently only had a sixth grade level education. Thank you US education system!

 

Incidentally, the second day our leading man was over an hour late!  This did not go over big with the director, who was also late that day but only by a few minutes. And then he had the same problem with the camera, the battery was dead when he started to shoot the first scene.

 

Like the previous film, I was given little direction.  I wasn’t quite sure how soft spoken I should be.  I mean I had to be heard by the audience right?  But I couldn’t be too loud or the joke would be lost.  It was more a question of the character being that indistinguishable.  So I had to play him really low key and as if he had very little personality so he just kind of blended in to the background.

Film was never finished. Never saw or heard from the director after about a year.

Next week, my magnum opus...Wally Sitch Private Dick. Oy vey!