A True Story...

If you don’t think you know more than everyone else about everything, I would not recommend becoming a movie director. It doesn’t matter if this pathology comes anywhere close to the truth, it is very important that you believe it. It is essential that you believe that you know what you are doing, so you must present yourself with an unnatural passion and a disquieting amount of drive and determination at all times. 

I wrote the script to Last Call while I was drinking for a year in Los Angeles. It was a good script. No, let’s be honest, it was a great script, it was the best script ever created by man. It was written in the form of a play, and when I moved back to San Francisco three years later and considered staging it, I realized that I could film it for the same amount of money. It was only 30 minutes long, shot in one location with two characters. Easy, right? At least I wouldn’t have to beg people to sit in a theater for 40 minutes and watch a play. I’ve staged two very successful theatrical productions, and people seem to hate that. A bad movie is so much easier to watch than a good play. So give the people what they want. Theatre is dead.

The first thing I had to do was find people who did know how to make a film, and a lot of people who didn’t who would do things for free.

I found the actors first, long before crew and location. I don’t care what any one says, if the acting is bad the movie is not worth watching. I found Chris Meehan, the supporting actor first. Joe Madero was the second actor we auditioned to play the lead. After two minutes into his first reading, my jaw dropped and I knew I had a movie. We called him back to read again as a formality, and to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating due to sleep deprivation. No, I wasn’t. He was that good.

I was excited. I started looking around for someone to help me produce the film. I never found that person. I was on my own. Location was next. I toured bars, and asked everyone I knew. My roommate was a bartender who, after a long month, introduced me to Amy, the owner of The Argus. The bar was perfect - beautiful, dark, red and big, with little street noise. The Argus was a working bar, which meant short filming days, but it was free. We had free reign as long as my roommate accompanied us every day. I prayed to God he would. I don’t think he had woken up before noon since he was in high school.

In an amazing turn of fate I found out that two friends of mine owned the same high-end mini-DV camera. Both cameras were new and reliable. My friends, and their lack of skill, came along with the package.

So far I had done pretty well. I had cameras, actors, and a location for free. Now I needed a crew. Where do you find those people? Obviously I wanted the best, for cheap. I asked around and got very lucky. I found the director of photography, or DP, through one of the actors. He came up from Los Angeles; it sounded very impressive to say, “the DP is coming up from Los Angeles.” I found the sound tech through a friend who owned a production company. I recognized his name-he had auditioned for the lead role, which made for an awkward phone call. “I know you didn’t get the part, but can you do sound for way below your rate?” He said yes, gosh bless him. The gaffer was a highly skilled professional who just happened to have the week free. I begged. I pleaded. I lied. Mostly on the strength of my script, and with thanks to some highly creative false truths about whom I knew professionally, I was able to gather a mighty and professional crew of 11, all for under $3,000, which is exactly the amount of money I had. 

I knew I needed food. Food was more important to me than location. I figured if I could keep the crew happy, they would show up. In San Francisco, it is key that you do everything you can to assure that the people, who have looked you in the eye and promised on the graves of their ancestors that they will be there on time, actually show up. You do this with food. My friend and savior Gail Epps, a highly skilled food guru, was gracious enough to cater the affair. She had worked for Bill Graham catering to the stars for years, and fed the likes of Bob Dylan. I gave her $400. She cooked a gourmet breakfast and a delectable hot lunch, for four days, on that budget. The crew showed up. I honestly think some of the crew would have undoubtedly bailed on me without that incentive. 

The shoot went. It always just goes. It keeps going until time runs out. There is always more to shoot, and there is

 always more to do.The key is to keep moving. The hardest job a director has is deciding when something is done and when to move on. The third day was the worst. I was just exhausted, and all of the stress and months of toil caught up with me. I didn’t lose it, but at the end of the third day I was virtually certain that we would not finish. I went home and fell apart. The crew agreed to come at 6 a.m., bless their hearts, and the last day we ran like a marathon. It worked. We finished the movie. We shot 34 pages in 48 hours. On the last shot, minutes before the patrons wandered through the door to start drinking at four in the afternoon, I yelled, “cut” for the final time. As we were packing up I asked the sound tech if we got it. He said “you told your story,” which is pretentious film-speak for, “it’ll do, kid.”

The filming is the fun part. Post-production on a budget in San Francisco, the most precious and expensive place on earth, is a nightmare. But that is another story.

Watch the trailer on You Tube.