Premiere Pics

As promised, here's some FOC2 premiere pics, never seen before! I may even have some video coming up! Here ya go, picture-palooza! The best game to play is, who's in the background?

 Frank and date, and me--preparing to board the limo!

Hey, a line! Sweet!


Frank's date(I apologize, but the name eludes me) and the gorgeous Cici Carmen!

Leanna Chamish, me and Rob Long. 

We're not smiling much because we know how ugly we look next to Leanna
(also, Eric Thornett right behind me!)

 

The gang! I miss these guys! 

Clarence, Lars, Adam, Mark, Frank, Rob and of course, THE Tom Proctor!

The super-hot Savannah Costello!

Brandon, Cici, date, Frank, and Adam

The man, the myth, the legend! Bullet in the center! 

Vincent Brown, who played Sargent Raup, to the right with his wife.

Savannah, Mark, Cici, Tom and Krystal

Some of the crowd waiting for the film to start!

 Mr. Producer himself, Lee Doll, with Mark, Brandon, Adam and Tom. (Lars in the background!)

Jarod, looking like a baby! So young and innocent. 

(And is that Joel Denning in the background?)

 

Johnny Alonso and friends/family, plus more of the crowd!

BFFS! Off-screen, naturally. On-screen, ENEMIES!

The after-party at Gardel's. I remember parts of it.

Somebody, Savannah, Joanna and Noah!

Frank holds court! In the background, Luke, me and Zig.

Somebody, Clayton Myers(he's the head punk in the flick, but you wouldn't recognize him from this pic!), Johnny, Somebody and Al Sotto

Tom, Mark, Somebody, Cici and Adam after the show

Tom finds some adoring fans!

July/August 2007: The Premiere & The Abyss Beckons

JULY 19th, 2007: FOC2 Premiere:

Yep. It's done. And I don't mind telling you that it's easily the best movie I've done. With the score in, pieces of it are actually pretty damn good.

That's not to say it doesn't have its problems. There's a few things I wonder if people will pick up on, but I bet we get a lot more positive reviews for this one.

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NOTE: Will have a special Premiere Post with All New Pictures!

AUGUST 21st, 2007: The Abyss Beckons

Okay. I'm in a dark place right now. Not literally, but mentally.

Those who know me may be thinking, "Why?" And it really does show that everything is a matter of perception.

My premiere went well. There was between 350-400 people. We got some good press. People geniunely seemed to love the sequel.

But for me, still a partial failure. Even with all those people the theater cost more than I made in ticket sales. That's a very bad thing right now, as I've sunk all my money plus some into FOC2. I can't afford to go any more into debt.

And you have to understand; I am a deeply cynical and pessimistic person. I really am. I had the thought a while back that if I was Steven Spielberg you know what I'd be thinking right now?

Not "Wow, look at all the great films I've made and the millions of filmmakers I've influenced with my style."

I'd be thinking, "Why did I have to go and make Hook?"

Believe me, this is not how I want to be. I don't know why I think like this. Perhaps the opposite of "Ignorance is bliss" is true.

Regardless, I stand now on the brink of a giant decision. I feel like I did just before I shot "Hunting Humans". I was terrified. I was a twenty-six year old writer with minimal training in actually SHOOTING film. I had $11,000 saved, and a credit card with a $4000 limit. I had an amateur actor buddy who I thought was pretty good, but no other real actors that I had confidence in. I had hired a director of photography that I'd only talked to once; his reel looked good though, but who makes a reel with crappy footage?

There was this point where I thought--if I take this chance and fail, where will I stand? What will I have? No place to live, no money, and another failure on my list of failures.

But I jumped off the cliff on that one, and came up okay. Here I am again.

FOC2 doesn't have a distributor. Lionsgate wants it, sure. A couple of other companies have also contacted me. But I can almost guarantee none of them will pay me what I want for it.

What appears to happen is that the distributor makes all the money on the movie and throws scraps to the actual filmmaker. So for the past year I have been doing pretty extensive research into what it would take to become a distributor.

It's expensive. It's time-consuming. It's risky.

But if it pays off, it pays off BIG. So I'm sending out a screener of FOC2 to my rep tomorrow but I'm standing at the brink of simply going ahead with the plan to distribute and get the movie into Blockbuster/HV/Netflix/Amazon/Best Buy/etc on my own.

Scary scary stuff though.

July 13, 2007: The Cooler Part of Being A Filmmaker

Yeah, working with hot chicks is one of the cooler parts...

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So you're done your movie. You've cut it, you're relatively happy with it. Some shit is good, some shit is okay, some shit is as good as it's gonna be.

Not quite.

Then you get the score. You lay it in. All of a sudden scenes that were okay are super-cool. Other scenes all of a sudden have an energy they were lacking. NOW they're starting to feel like what you envisioned when you were slaving over the keyboard.

That's where I'm at. I have all but three scenes of FOC2 layed in. The flick is DAYS, yes, DAYS away from being complete.

It feels like it's been a whole lot longer than 14 months since we shot it...but finally, the end is near.

April 27-30th, 2007: L.A. Looping

Some people ask me what looping is. They say, "Why don't you call it ADR?"


Well, ADR stands for Automatic Dialogue Replacement. The big studios have machines that will automatically do the dialogue replacement for you, taking out much of the work. I have no such machine.


When you don't have a machine, it's called looping dialogue.

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Weekend In LA, Day 1

I'm back from the L.A. trip. Here's the recap.


Jacky picked me up at the airport. My first trip to L.A., and the weather is as nice as expected.

After a stop at McDonald's for a fish sandwich, we headed over to Jacky's. I'd be crashing on her couch for the weekend, because this movie is out of money, and a hotel was out of the question.

We figured we'd dive right into the looping. I set up the equipment and we tried, but it was SO noisy in her apartment complex that we couldn't do it. We figured we'd try the following night.

Sat around catching up with Jacky, shooting the shit. Showed her some footage. Went to sleep.

Night 1 on the couch did not net me much sleep. Couches are not comfortable, and I don't normally sleep until 5am my time, which is 8am their time...

Day 2(Saturday)

Jacky and Mun wanted to go on a hike. I figured, what the hell? It was going to go very near the Hollywood sign, so...

The trail was VERY steep--not so bad if you're doing the leisurely-walk, but Jacky was walking briskly. I haven't done exercise in like 2 years, and have been eating around 1400 calories a day(and have lost 40 pounds in about 3 months).

So I was having a hard time keeping up. I'd say we walked about 2 miles, but much of it was at a 30 degree incline.

Afterward we ate some chicken and went back to Jacky's to try the looping. No go, too much noise.

Jacky had to work, so Mun and I went to a local pool hall/bar and shot pool. (Me so sorry, Mun! 6-2 baby!) Had vodka, but didn't help my night of sleep on the couch.

Day 3(Sunday)

Jacky and I went to Mel's Diner for lunch. They shot American Grafitti there. Okay food. She drove me around, showed me where Aaron Spelling lived, the Playboy mansion. A few other sights.

That night we again did the looping. Not sure if I'm going to be able to eliminate the noise or not. It was almost comical how every time I hit the record button that was the exact instant the birds would chirp, or someone would start hammering, or a party would start, or someone would turn on a stereo, or a dog would bark. Insanely frustrating.

Chad, the composer for FOC stopped by--I had never met him in person, so that was very cool. He even showed us some stuff about how the "Lost" score is created. Even showed us a brief clip to an upcoming episode(top secret!).

Not much sleep on night three either.

Day 4(Monday)

Plane was set to leave at 10:30pm, so Mun got us passes to go on the Paramount lot where he works on "My Boys", a TBS series. Cool place. We went inside and watched them running through some takes. Lot of crew. Lot of equipment. (insert wistful sigh here...)

There was a giant backdrop of a sky that was as large as the drive-in screen at Bengie's. Mun said it was for some new Samuel Jackson flick...

 

We ate at the lunch place where cast/crew people eat. Felt like one of the crowd.

Later, I met up at The Coffee Bean with my buddy Oscar-nominated Josh. He used to be just Josh, but the Oscar changes people...

But seriously, he had some great stories. He moves in much bigger circles than we mortal folk. Perhaps some day...

An interesting anecdote is that the Coffee Bean we were at is across from the DGA(Director's Guild of America).

Mun took me to a mall in Century City and pointed out the Nakitomi building(Die Hard). We ate dinner at Fuddruckers--love those burgers, and then he dropped me at the airport where I had my only star sighting(if you can call it that).

I was at the boarding gate for my plane and the plane arrived and let off some passengers, two of which were Rhea Perlman and Danny Devito. Not too exciting. Then, the red eye flight.

Anyway, am back home. Will be busy checking the audio over the next couple of days.