| It all started with my lawyer’s call telling me to get to the Sundance Film Festival. I didn’t have any films screening at Sundance and aside few scripts that I had written all I had with me was a DVD that contained the opening four minutes of one of my first feature films The Short Happy Life of Butch Livingston. But I knew that would be a memorable adventure. I only have one rule when it comes to these things: leave myself open for whatever is in store and go with the most exciting choice. I chew up life as much as I can and the more painful it turns out, more emotional, the greater my memories are.
I asked my lawyer, “Should I pitch my four minute film to people?”
“Fuck no, everyone is up here doing that, tell them that you’re writing an article for Rolling Stone , drink as much as you can, go to as many parties as I can get you into, just take a big bite out of Sundance and start planning your future accordingly.”
After that everything was a blur. Parties, women, drinking, screenings, filmmakers, actors, executives, agents, managers, hand-shakes, snow ball fights, skiing accidents, fights, bar brawls (which are different from fights), more women and more movies, movies and movies. Short films, documentaries, demo reels, upcoming projects, scripts, everything and everyone had stories to tell, to yell at everyone else. But what was not a blur, what made me want drive back to LA as fast as I could. The energy that I saw: raw energy; the quiet energy of individuals on a mission. It was this raw energy from Sundance that made it all come together for me. I am an adventurer, a world traveler, a god damn globe trotter; I leave my footprint everywhere I go. And I bend the universe to my will. I was overwhelmed with all the beauty around me as I hauled ass on I-15 South towards Los Angeles at break neck speeds on a cold January morning of ‘08. I had just spent seventy-two whirl- Page wind hours at the Sundance Film Festival and now was trying to get back to LA with the impression of the festival still fresh in my mind.
Once back in LA, I made sure that my momentum would not stop until I had a project in post production, I turned a 45 minute short film that I had written into a feature script, that came to be The Harsh Life of Veronica Lambert. I knew I would be filming this on a small budget, and this is when Truffaut’s words were ringing true for me: Truffaut said in the 60’s that “The Films of the future will be made by adventurers” he was speaking of the French New Wave. In the early 70’s several young American Raging Bulls and Easy Riders also made some waves of their own in American Theaters and it was only a decade and a half ago that several young Directors changed the face of Independent Cinema once more. But the future, that I think Truffaut was talking about is upon us now; we are the generation of adventurers, directors, writers, cinematographers, actors, the real Auteurs that create films from scratch, from nothing but small digital cameras and laptops.
Production Notes
My actors all added something unique and special to their characters. Ed O’Ross, who I always had in mind for Mr. New York, was great as always, even though his back was killing him the whole time during the shoot. He would still come in and on each take and he would give us something completely different, that was one actor I never had to ask anything of because he was just that damn good, he knew the scenes so well that few times when actors in the scene would forget their own lines he would feed it to them from memory.
The rest of the cast just blew my mind; we had some amazing talent come on board the film. But for 90 percent of the film we had amazing performances from everyone. We always knew that we would be able to deliver a good film, but as the shoot went along, and we would see the dailies we realized that we were getting something very magical, but none of us wanted to say it out loud.
Locations Notes
Once we got about two weeks away from the shoot date, my house was turned into a rehearsal house, casting studio, restaurant, and a mobile command center. At any given time we had between five to twenty five people coming in and out of the house: Actors, PA’s, interns, new crew members, friends and family members.
But it always started with Espresso shots, no matter if it was 6:00 am or 4:00 p.m., we never got anything started until I made Espresso shots for Tari and John Lee from a rudimentary espresso maker that I had gotten as a gift from one of my Italian friends. If I wasn’t making them, John Lee would make them, and if he wasn’t around then my brother George would take the helm. I think I caught Tari making a shot for herself, but only once. No one else on our crew drank coffee so that made things a little easier for us.
After the first two days behind us everything was smooth sailing. If we lost a location then we found a better one right away, if one of the grip trucks broke down, which it did few times, then we found other crew members cars to take their place. If we didn’t have something like a book, or a prop that we needed for a specific scenes we always managed to get it because someone knew someone who had the prop to borrow. Basically we had the attitude that if something went wrong (and we knew that many things would go wrong) don’t panic, don’t get flustered because we will find a solution and it will be better then what we had, and that happened every time.
Often, we shot in the dreary cold LA November daylight. We used locations in parking lots, older mansions in Studio City, and just the plain dirty streets of Hollywood to create the tough gritty atmosphere needed. We were lucky enough to shoot at the famous Intercontinental Hotel in Century City to depict the glamorous LA lifestyle as opposed to the dingy apartment life where some of the characters lived. We also shot on Melrose Ave, and the Santa Monica Promenade to capture the truly LA city atmosphere. |
