Here's the thing. Not many of my customers know about the website. It's not that I'm keeping secrets or am shy about it. With the types of people I see a lot of, there just isn't much interest. The community I live in is largely blue collar. Farmers, construction workers, electricians, truck drivers, etc. If I mention a great indie film I saw, I get a lot of blank looks back. If I talk about running a website, I get a lot of blank looks. So there just aren't that many customers I talk movies with. Online, I've received tons of feedback on things I write for the site. Nothing strange their. But the other day a customer commented on my plans to shoot a movie in the store. What I'm sure was a truly dopey expression took up residence on my face as I tried to make some sense of this comment. I've only talked over the project with a few people and this was not one of them. As I stuttered some incomprehensible response, she said she read it on the site. Suddenly my brain clicked back into gear and I was able to stop looking like a gibbering idiot. After eight years of running this site, this had to be the first time a person has out of the blue spoken to me in person about what I wrote on the site. There is clearly something of an unconcious internal divide in my head between the real and online worlds. When something jumped that line without my action, I couldn't process it. Truly weird moment. The mental divide is obviously strong because this was a person I knew to have visited the site in the past and yet I still stumbled badly over her comment.
Anyway, she doesn't want to be in the movie. Which raises a concern that had slowly been rearing its ugly head. I don't want to have all men in the movie. Optimally I'd love to have a large collection of people of all ages, races, appearances and personalities. It had become apparent to me recently that men are much easier to talk into appearing before a camera than women. My cast list is very small so far but the batting average splits are really ugly. Asking men to appear, I'm batting 1.000. Asking women, I'm batting .000. My own wife has so far not accepted an invitation to appear in the movie. I'm sure this is a broad generalization (no pun intended) but women seem to be far more self-concious about their appearance, which makes video cameras unwelcome items in life. Most guys don't seem to care at all. Mind you, I haven't approached any actual actors yet. I'm just filling small roles that I want actual customers for. Talking to actors could make for a very different result. We'll see.
Writing the script is going well. The short film script, tentatively titled "Customers," is about half written now. Once I figure out the ending, it should be a quick sprint to the finish. I know that sounds backward but I need to figure out how to get out before I pick my path to that point.
Now, for those of you who might have considered making a movie, even in passing, I want to talk about Robert Rodriguez. It's his fault I went over the edge. A few months back I was cruising the movie section of Barnes & Noble when I came across his book, Rebel Without a Crew. I was a mild fan of his work at that point, so I almost didn't buy it. I had enjoyed El Mariachi and Once Upon a Time In Mexico, didn't care much for Spy Kids or The Faculty, but loved Desperado and Sin City. I also thought his section of Four Rooms was far and away the best. But I picked up the book and was blown away by it. It is essentially his personal journal as he went through the process of making, selling and promoting El Mariachi. If you don't know, it was his feature debut and cost about $7,000 to make, an insanely low figure.
The book starts with his idea for making El Mariachi and how he raised some of the money by taking part in medical experiments. It then details how the movie was shot with virtually no crew. He filmed it all himself and any additional help was from the locals playing parts in the movie. The book then goes through the editing process and the truly strange way he acquired an agent and sold the movie while getting most of Hollywood to engage in a bidding war for his future services. It finishes up as he preps the movie for release and takes it on the film festival circuit prior to a small national release. It's the damnedest story I've ever read and if it was made into a movie I wouldn't buy the story at all.
But what it really did was light a fire under me. Suddenly it didn't seem so crazy to want to make movies. When I saw an opportunity to make a small documentary, I pounced on it. That experience was like switching from wine coolers to crack. I was hooked immediately and desperate for more.
After reading the book, I rented El Mariachi (which is bundled with Desperado) and watched Rodriguez's Ten Minute Film School extra, fascinated to see how much he wrangled from a battered camera and a non-existant budget. I snapped up the Sin City extended edition when it finally arrived (shame on Dimension for putting out that stripped down disc first) and devoured all the extras. Most "behind the scenes" extras on DVDs don't really give you much practical imformation on movie making. The exceptions are Rodriguez and Peter Jackson. Rodriguez seems to be actively teaching and encouraging others to take up filmmaking with his extras. Jackson isn't as encouraging but he has no hang ups about showing the process in considerable detail. Where most filmmakers hide behind the glamour of movie making, these guys actively break it down to the nuts and bolts.
So that brings me to this week, when I rented Once Upon a Time in Mexico. As I said, I mildly enjoyed the film, mostly for Johnny Depp's performance. But the extras on this disc are some of the best ever for aspiring filmmakers. There is the now standard Ten Minute Film School segment, a tour of Rodriguez's personal studio (his converted and expanded garage), a discussion of shooting with HD video cameras as opposed to film cameras, the highly detailed commentary track and a second audio track that emphasizes the the music and sound effects by turning off the dialog. Great stuff. I sat through all of it a couple times. You could literally see the light bulb turning on over my head as ideas started to hit me.
So what have I been working on this week? Figuring out how to shoot on green screens. So far what I've learned is that good lighting is key. More on that another time.
So right now, let me thank Robert Rodriguez for the inspiration. I made a point of not gushing over his movies to make it clear how much my fascination with the guy is about inspiration rather than idolization. What I do love is his passion for making movies and his talent for figuring out new and often cheaper ways of getting it done. My copy of his book is at this point heavily dog eared and ratty looking from being read repeatedly. If you want to make movies and don't know how, go get it. Simple as that.
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