Pigeons. Again.

Got a post through NYCPRC about a pigeon in a park, in Kew Gardens. So, OK. I might jump around a bit because the last three days are a bit of a blur. Bear with me.

Bare with me? Shit. I have no idea.

Anyway.

I take the A train to Penn Station. I get to the LIRR ticket agent and I ask for a round-trip ticket to Kew Gardens. The agent says there is no stop for Kew Gardens.

Tell me if you see where this is going.

I say, yeah, there is. Kew Gardens. I’ve been on the LIRR more times than I can count. I used to live on Long Island. I don’t like to talk about it.

Sorry sir, no Kew Gardens.

YES, there is a stop at Kew Gardens!

No, there isn’t.

I go into my phone and I find the stop and I show her the stop on my phone and she says, oh, I was looking at the Q stops. Sorry, I’m new.

Uh huh.

I get on the train, I get to Q–SHIT Kew Gardens. The park where the pigeon is supposed to be, well, it’s behind a movie theater. The woman who saw it was feeding them and said the pigeon didn’t move when the others did. OK. Plus, she was disabled (the woman) and went to the movies. Like you do when there’s a hurt animal.

So, I get to the park, I see a bunch of pigeons. I move around them. They’re pretty comfortable with humans. I get them to fly, and they all fly away. So, OK. Nothing to do here. Sucks, but it happens and I’m happy that there isn’t an issue.

I go back to the train station. Next train is scheduled for eight minutes, but it’s delayed another 15 minutes. Well, shit. So, I see this restaurant and I go over to get a beer and right there, right in front of me, I see two just out of the nest babies standing on the walkway.

Shit. Not a great place for them to be. Foot traffic, dogs, a restaurant. Etc.

I ask this guy who works at the restaurant if anyone is taking care of them, and I find out that this guy is. The parents are watching them. The parents feed both of them while we’re talking. So, OK. But, I notice something on one of their faces and I’m worried it’s pox, which is a viral infection that only hurts pigeons.

Both are getting fed (parents produce a milk in their stomachs for the babies), and I’m like, OK, I’m just going to leave them.

I get home, and I can’t stop thinking about them. I’m worried that it is actual pox. So, the next morning I get back on the goddamn LIRR and I get there and they’re not there, of course.

I find out the restaurant opens at noon (it’s just 11am) and so I decide to wait. The manager of the restaurant (saw her from the day before) stops me and says ‘Carlos (the waiter) put one of them in a box overnight. He was worried that it would get hurt. The other one flew away.’

OK, great, can I see it?

She brings me to the box, I put on rubber gloves, I open it up, and the baby’s got a white sore on its beak. OK, so I’m taking it to the Wild Bird Fund.

The other one, I see it, but it’s 20 feet up and getting fed by one of the parents. Nothing I can do. Shitty situation, and one that makes me physically ill. I don’t like leaving potentially hurt animals to suffer.

I get back to NYC, drop off the pigeon, and go home.

In my neighborhood, I’ve been trying to catch a juvenile for the past three days who has sores on its face. Fucker won’t come near me now, which really sucks.

Last night, I see a notice on the NYCPRC board about a white pigeon in the Bronx. Considerably closer than most calls I go on, so Karen and I eat dinner, we watch the rest of Uncharted (meh) and I take an uber and go out there. The bird is somewhere near some bushes on Webster Avenue. Uh huh.

Yeah, well, there’s like two full blocks of bushes and it’s 8pm, so I can’t see shit. I call the original poster and I leave a message. She calls back and tells me it’s near this one building. She wants to send me photos, but my goddamn phone won’t download anything. I don’t understand why I can call people but not search anything or download anything. I ask her when was the last time she saw the bird and she said noon.

NOON.

Not that it’s anyone’s fault, but I’m starting to get pissed. The bird could be hanging out in the Caribbean at this point. I go into this ring of bushes and I’m looking around and all of a sudden I see this flash of white and there it is, about five feet from where she saw it.

So, I put a net over it, bag it, and Karen is able to call a car for me. I get home, put it in a carrier, place it in the bathroom tub, give it some water, and I relax for the night. Or so I thought. Another bird alert. This one is hanging from an underpass on South Street.

Well, fuck. Nothing I can do about it at that point, and I have to put it out of my mind, which sucks but is necessary. I go to sleep. I have a hard time of it, too.

Wake up at 5:45am. That’s normal now. I get up, feed my cats, I grab a bunch of bird seed, and I go out and feed birds. One of the flocks I take care of, one of the birds is doing a weird neurological walk, like stumbling a bit, can’t fly. Thankfully, I had my net because I was going to give that juvenile who hates me one more go. I bag this other bird, head home.

Well, for some reason, this morning the humidity was really bad. I was drenched by the time I got home. Put the bird with the other in the tub, next to the white bird, drink a shit ton of water, and I go back out to try and catch this fucker. No go. He’s clearly on to me.

Get home, wait a bit for the Wild Bird Fund to open, and I can’t stop thinking about this bird hanging upside down. So, I take both pigeons to the WBF. Drop them off. I call the South Street poster, they don’t pick up. I text, hoping I can get texts. They write back that they had to go to work, but the bird is directly under a homeless person (seriously), and they’d be surprised if it was alive.

Still, I gotta check.

I take the 1 train to 42nd Street and wait as four trains pass that aren’t express trains. A 5 train shows up, for chrissake. What the shit?

Finally a 3 train arrives. I take that down to Wall Street and am given the wrong directions to South Street. I finally ask the right person, they point me in the right direction. I stop at a deli and get a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich (I have to stop eating those), and I eat half. My stomach’s doing flip flops because I’m worried about how I’m going to get this guy. As I walk, I see a scissor lift. Just sitting there. Must be able to go up twenty feet at least, and I’m thinking I’m gonna steal this fucker. Then I see a cherry picker and I’m like, nope, that’s the fucker I’m stealing.

I get down to South Street under the FDR. Industry Kitchen is right there. I find one homeless guy. I search above, but all I see is just a regular old pigeon. I go to the other side of Industry Kitchen and there’s another homeless guy and, yeah, right above him is a bird. But I can’t tell what part I’m looking at. Not that it matters. The thing is 30 feet up and… yeah, it’s dead. Blowing in the breeze. Very sad.

I’m sorry to say, but I breathed a sigh of relief because only Superman was gonna get that thing down from there. The original poster said she called the FDNY to ask them to rescue the bird and the laughed at her. So, fuck the FDNY down there. It was four blocks away, not in another borough, and leaving a scared, stressed out living creature to die is not part of their fucking job description.

As I go to leave I go to the first homeless guy who honestly looks like he’s chosen the life. I’m not even being flippant. He had this whole set up with water jugs and recycling and a mattress and all. I asked him if he wanted my other half of the egg sandwich and he looked at me like I asked him if he wanted some cooked human flesh. He said no, and waved me off like a peasant. No shit.

I turn around to leave and… right in front of me, right down below a table, was a hurt pigeon. I go to grab it and it flies away, but it can’t land well and it hits a garbage can, lands on the ground. I sneak up behind it and put the net over it. Put on gloves, grab it, see that the string is tied tight around both feet, and I am not in a position to cut it off, even though I have small scissors. So, I bag it and I take it to WBF.

I get home only to find out that there’s two babies that were thrown in the garbage by some fucking asshole in Forest Hills, Queens. They were in the awning of his store and he took them down, threw them out. Someone found out about it and grabbed them, then tried to relocate them to another awning… without the permission of the store owner.

There was some back and forth and finally they took the babies down again and they called me. I was able to order an uber and they were picked up. 40 minute ride. Five minutes before they were to be delivered, the person who put them in the uber said the driver wouldn’t take them in the car, so he put them in the trunk. I saw red immediately and had to call WBF to let them know this asshole decided to put them in the trunk. When they were delivered, I called back and asked if they were still alive, or did I have to hunt this motherfucker down. They said they were alive. I said OK, then.

Shit is stressful, yo. But worth it. At least I’ll be able to sleep tonight.

My thanks to everyone at NYCPRC who does all of this for no money. They just do it. Jennifer and Rey and Amanda and Amy and Laurie and Valerie and others whose names escape me. I can’t thank them enough.

And thanks to the posters who care enough to want to help.

Some crazy shit

Lately, I’ve been rescuing pigeons. Not writing, rescuing pigeons. I put out book 3 of The Blue Files with the intention of finishing off the series. I’ve spent the last year honing scenes in my head, bookended by a fantastic beginning and ending. It’s as ready as it will ever be, and I cannot bring myself to write.

Well, technically I’ve written 49 pages, so… not nothing. But we’re talking my magnum opus here. A crime novel the lengths of which are hitherto something something. Got it?

OK. Throw in that I’m not doing well financially. Low on the totem pole there because, let’s face it, I haven’t been doing well financially for over a decade.

No. The real thing that’s put the zap on my head is the state of this country. You want to be a nazi in your own backyard? Have at it. We’ll never be friends, and I pray you never find your way out of your own backyard, let alone breed. But… you want to be a nazi and overthrow our government because you can’t get it through your head that the rational among us didn’t want that orange turd in the White House again? Well, at that point I have to say ‘go fuck yourself.’ You want to be a nazi and take away women’s rights? Go fuck yourself. You want to be a nazi and say that the problem isn’t guns because you can’t masturbate without one? GFY.

When I was younger I never, not for one second, thought this country would de-evolve. Never. And every day I get more and more down about the decisions of a select few who hold our collective fate in their disgusting hands. I’m constantly depressed, anxious, and very, very angry.

So. I’m sitting here… well, laying here, day in and day out (because of my back), and nothing was making me happy. I have a supportive girlfriend and family. I have friends who have read my work and gone back for more. I have three cats who tolerate me and one who is completely devoted to me. I play CoD with new friends I made online to pass the time between dinner and sleep. I watch television, movies, youtube videos.

And I’m completely miserable.

One day, I go and look up the NYCPRC page. That’s the NYC Pigeon Rescue Central page. I’d contacted them before. In fact, they were the group that got me to rescue my first pigeon, many, many years ago. A stern ‘you’re right there, go save it!’ from one of the members, and that’s all she wrote.

Here’s a story about a baby I saved years ago.

Now, I don’t know how long this has been going on. A few months, maybe, but lately, I go out most days now to save a pigeon or some other bird that needs assistance.

Yesterday, though… yesterday was a whopper.

After picking up two pigeons at Herald Square yesterday morning at like 7:15am, I headed to Brooklyn to pick up a pigeon that a couple had found outside their home. The NYCPRC has an Uber fund for this kind of thing, but it was a straight shot on the A line and I figured I’d save them some money. Pick up the bird, bring all three to the Wild Bird Fund, and I head home. OK.

Make some coffee, relax. Play some Wordle, some Quordle, some Worldle, some NY Times Spelling Bee. Eat some lunch. I’m sore, sure, but who cares. Lay down with my cat Rusty… and I see a notice on the board that says the following:

“Hello, leaving work yesterday I saw a pigeon trapped in a broken window of the building next to NYP Columbia parking garage. I had seen the pigeon in the window that morning but thought it was dead. When I left work I realized it was moving and is trapped it looks like with its foot caught in between the broken glass. It has been there for at least 12 hours since I saw him on my way in as well. I’m not sure how to go about helping him but thought reaching out here was a good option.”

It’s less than 20 blocks from where I live.

Well… shit.

So, I go. I get to the building and I call the poster and I’m like, I’m here. She says OK, I’m not, but maybe my friend can come by. I say, where’s the pigeon? She says it’s all the way at the back of the building. The building in question is low-income housing. The building next door to it is 8 levels of parking for Columbia Presbyterian. She said she saw the bird from the top deck of the parking garage.

So, I go up there and I see this:

The window is broken, obviously, and is split on both the left and right side. The pigeon was hanging upside down with its foot caught on the opposite side.

Well, shit.

So, I go to the building and I meet this old woman and I’m like, hey, I rescue wildlife and there’s a pigeon up on the top floor of the building, can I come in? And she looks at me like, I don’t know, can you? I show her the picture. She says ‘oh god.’ I ask where the security guard is, she doesn’t know. I go looking. Can’t find him. I go back and say ‘how do I get to the roof?’

You know what she says? “Try the elevator.”

Genius.

So, I go try the elevator. I get up to the top floor and I look down the hallway and on the right at the end is a door to outside, so I go. I open it up and see that there’s no way to unlock it from the outside. But, it has one of those nifty deals where it stays open when you push it all the way open, so there. I go to the edge of the building and there’s the bird. I’m like, OK dude, I see you. As soon as I say that, a pigeon flies out of the room, straight through the glass opening. I scream, “HELP YOUR FRIEND YOU DUMB MOTHERFUCKER!”

The flying pigeon does not listen.

Now… I figure the pigeon is about ten feet away. See that scaffolding net in the picture on the left? Yeah, I was over there. So… I’m shit at distances. From the building I’m in, there’s no door to get into that other half of the building. In fact, the only way is a series of metal rungs that go up the far side of the building, at least two stories high. I got up on the ledge and put my hands on the rungs, looked up and said, “Nope.”

I go back downstairs, already having made a pledge to not leave until this thing is done, and I go to the other building. I talk with the ‘security guard’ who wasn’t much more than a body. Living, dead, it’s hard to say. But I explain to the body what’s what. He says oh, here are the maintenance guys. Literally walking towards us. I explain the situation. The one guy’s like ‘nothing we can do, it’s quitting time.’

Here’s where the anger started getting to me. I cannot abide that type of person at all. Who would allow a creature, any creature, to suffer because of what might have been a minor inconvenience? A fucking asshole, pure and simple. Someone who would say ‘I’m definitely not a sociopath,’ but deep down… yeah, they’ve got it in them.

So, the body brings me to this woman, who I guess was in charge at the time. A very strange situation because it’s one address but two huge buildings that aren’t connected. And the building I was in at this point had an NYC cooling station and senior center on the ground floor. But no elevator up. Not even a set of stairs they could point me to. I explain the situation to this woman and she brings me back to the main building. I said I already tried this. She said this is all I can do for you. I said, can I get your number just in case I get locked onto the roof? She said no.

OK.

I go back up to check on the pigeon. I’m walking all over that part of the roof to see if there’s anything I can do. I pick up rocks that are on the roof and see if there’s a spot I can break in the window from there. No go.

I go BACK downstairs and I ask the woman if I can speak to the super. There is no super. I say, you’ve got like three hundred residential apartments in this building and no live-in super? No. Can I speak to the manager? Sure. So, she gives me his number. I call. He says, sorry to say, but that part of the building is sealed off. With bricks. We couldn’t get in those rooms if we wanted to.

Well, shit.

So, I say, well, hypothetically, if that window was to break some more, would you care? No, he says. It’s already broken. I don’t care. Great. Is there a hardware store around? Yeah, two blocks away. Great.

So, I’m thinking ten feet, right? Twelve at the most. Because I’m a moron.

I buy one painting extension pole that extends to 12 feet. A heavy duty one, too. I buy a wooden 6-foot pole as an extender, along with some duct tape. I get back up to the roof, I tape it all up, and…

Dear reader. Say it with me. It was WAY FUCKING SHORT.

Sigh.

So, I go back to the hardware store. On my way out I see the old lady again. I ask her if she’ll let me in the building. She says yes. I swear, it’s the most excitement she’s had in a decade.

I get back from the hardware store. I’ve spent $120 at this point and I don’t give a fuck. I go back up to the roof, I extend both poles. I use the wooden pole as support in the middle, and tape it all up. A shit ton of tape. Three separate spots to make sure that it doesn’t snap with the weight because, if it does, it’s falling six floors and I’ll just dive after it.

I extend this thing out, having been cautious with my pole placement (not a euphemism) and… say it with me, for chrissake… I still can’t reach this thing.

So… I pull the poles back from over the ledge and remember I’m lucky enough to have a pair of scissors in my bag (I was trying to rescue a pigeon with string wrapped around its foot, but to no avail). I cut the tape, extend out the spacing of the poles, and re-tape. I go back to the ledge and extend the pole as far as possible. The pigeon’s like, what the fuck is that and what are you doing with it? I’m trying to use telepathy and I can tell it’s not working.

I start smacking the glass. Over and over. As I do, I get a better look at it and, I shit you not, the glass was a quarter inch thick.

Well, fuck.

So… I do the only thing I can. I put the end of the pole under the pigeon and push it up. I’m halfway off the building at this point. I’m using the scaffolding as leverage to push up on the pigeon. It’s flapping its wings (thank god), scared, pissed off, hurt. I keep pushing and… I had to stop. My back was killing me. It was 95 degrees on the roof. I was almost out of water, and I was hungry. So I ate, I drank, I took a deep breath, and I tried it again. I finally get this guy up and he flaps his wings so hard he falls back into the building. I can see he’s still caught in the slice. So I bang the fucking shit out of the glass. Over and over until it snaps.

No more trapped pigeon.

I take a breather and I look up at the sky. I felt pretty good.

I waited, and I waited. Nothing. And I get it. It was hurt. Starving. Dehydrated. Scared. But that bird was a goddamn fighter, and I know it’s not going to die in that fucking room.

At the very least, the very least, it wasn’t going to die a really shitty death.

I walked home feeling more accomplished than I have in a long time. Doesn’t mean I’m going to start writing straight away. I hope to soon. But the world was slightly less shitty than it had been earlier that day. We’re in a time where the bad things that happen are significantly outweighing the good. It’s exhausting. It breaks my heart.

My back is killing me. It’s something that will never be fixed. I don’t have too many of these rescues in me. But when I can, I will.

I hope you will, too.

If you want donate to the rehabbers, visit the Wild Bird Fund. They do great things.

If you want to donate to the rescuers, hit me up. I’ll give you the info.

J

PS – went back to this site this morning. No sign. Hopefully it’s ok.

I hate my mind

So, I wrote and self-published two books. Blue, Upstate, and Blue, Too.

Book 3 is actually just part of book 2, which I started while waiting for my editor to go over book 1. With me so far?

The thing was, after I finished it, book 2 was over 900 pages long and I figured, you know, no one was gonna read a 900 page tome from a nobody. So, I broke it up into two.

OK.

Well, I’ve gone over book 3, which is so cleverly called Blue, Trois, with a fine-tooth comb, in preparation not only for more self-publishing, but for writing book 4.

I cannot begin to tell you how much it helps to start work on a sequel before publishing the book that precedes it. Not only does it help you find errors, but it helps you create more convincing set-ups. Helps with arcs, both story and character. You get the drift.

The other thing it does is, it highlights some mistakes. Which I found. Which is awesome. Every time I figure out an issue, I write it down. Whether its on a sticky note or an email I send to myself, I make sure I write it down so I don’t have to remember.

Well. I had an idea and was like, oh, great, that’s a good add to book 3. Write it down.

Nah. Write it down. Come on, you can remember that. How can you forget it?

Yeah, you’re probably right.

And I went on my merry way.

Fast forward a day. Just one day. A blip in the timeline of ones life. And I can’t remember what I wanted to add. Not only can I not remember, I don’t remember how important it was to the book. How big of an issue was it? Was it so big that readers will say, jeez man, how did you not fix that? No wonder you’re self-published.

Racking my brain. Mentally beating myself up. And all of a sudden, depression sets in. Not only depression, but an enormous drop of self-worth and self-esteem. Twenty four hours of this, and I give writing book 4 a try and I’m like, why bother? You just entirely screwed book 3, you have no idea how to fix it, and you’re going to have to read the thing ANOTHER FUCKING TIME.

I wake up this morning and, completely out of left field, I come up with another set-up that I have to add to book 3. A good one, too. So, I write it down. I start doing my morning PT exercises and… the fucking thing I couldn’t remember pops into my head, clear as day. And it’s not a monumental issue. It’s not something anyone but me will care about. But there it is.

And so I write it down.

I’ll get back to writing, but clawing back to pre-depression and pre-self-worth and self-esteem levels is going to be considerably more difficult.

Oh, and BTW, that old lady gave me my book back. Yay.

Some Old Lady Stole My Book

So, every morning I have a routine. I get up, I doomscroll a bit on twitter and reddit, then I do my physical therapy exercises, eat breakfast, and then go out on my morning walk to feed pigeons.

This morning was no different, except I was gonna go to the library. Which is a longer walk. On the way is the post office, so I was gonna kill a bunch of birds (no birds were killed) with one stone. I packed up three books I had to ship, along with some DVDs for the library and as I made my way down the elevator I figured I’d use the bathroom in the laundry room so I didn’t have to find one on the way, just in case.

I had the books already boxed up and in a mesh bag. I put the bag down on some chairs in the laundry room, passed an old lady at the dryers and said good morning. Went to the bathroom, washed my hands (yeah yeah) and then grabbed the bag.

As I’m waiting for the elevator, this same old woman comes out of the laundry room and says ‘is that your bag?’ In her hand is an open cardboard box. Like, for recycling. Doesn’t set off any alarm bells, you know? I wasn’t worried about an old lady doing much of anything except for her laundry.

So I’m like, what bag? This one? The mesh one?

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s mine.

Ok! she says, and walks away.

Weird.

I take my walk, birds are all happy to see me. I get to the post office… and there’s a goddamn book missing! What the shit?

And it still hasn’t goddamn registered… I’m thinking I dropped it.

I get back to the building and I check the laundry room. It’s not there. I go to the doorman and ask if anyone found a box downstairs and turned it in. Nothing. I go BACK to the basement… and I find the discarded box in the garbage, and I’m like wait a minute. Wait just a goddamn–

And on the box is the name of my friend Al, who did the graphic designs for the covers to both Blue, Upstate and Blue, Too.

Motherfucker.

I go back to the doorman and I tell him what happened. He says, the laundry room? Oh, we’ve got a security camera that looks into the laundry room. He says, go talk to my dad, who’s the super. I’m like, ok.

I go to the management office and I talk to the super. He says, let’s pull up the tape. I’m like, hell yeah pull up the goddamn tape.

So we’re watching, we’re watching. The old woman comes out of the freight elevator and I’m like, she’s the one who was in the laundry room. And the super, straight away, is like, “Oh boy, that’s S.”

S is not her real fucking name. This is that protect the innocent shit, except she’s NOT innocent goddammit, so whatever.

Fucking S.

Two or three minutes later I come down in the freight elevator and go to the laundry room. Go to the bathroom. Well, the lights in the laundry room, they go on and off with a motion sensor. The lights go off. S goes and turns them back on and then STEALS A GODDAMN BOX.

The super’s like, oh shit.

I come out of the bathroom. Literally a minute has passed. I grab the bag. I walk to the elevator and we watch her walk up and talk to me and then KEEP WALKING with the box that has my book in it!

AL’S BOOK!

I leave up the elevator. She goes BACK to the laundry room and a minute later comes out with her laundry.

We rewind and watch again. This time, the manager of the property watches.

There she is, stealing my goddamn book.

I say ‘this bitch has got to die.’ Everyone laughs.

I’M NOT LAUGHING.

Another guy, the assistant manager, he comes up to watch. I’m like, let’s see if the book is in her laundry basket. So we watch her walk to the freight elevator. No book.

She turns to hit the button…

“THERE’S THE BOOK!” the super says. The shit was tucked under her arm.

We’re all dying laughing at this point, and I follow it up with, ‘well, I gotta get something out of this. I’ll take her apartment.’

They laugh.

I’M NO LONGER LAUGHING.

So, they said they were going to talk with her. Whatever. It’s not like she’s going to prison, which is ridiculous. At this point, this story is almost better than getting the book back.

I come back to the apartment and I tell Karen what happened. She laughs, says, wouldn’t it be funny if she wrote a review of your book?

And I’m like, yeah.

“Loved your book, would steal again.”

Four Bottles – Part 7

As I stated in the earlier post, I didn’t know what troubles lay ahead for on our last two major locations. I was very happy with everything we’d gotten thus far. Percentage wise, we were almost halfway done with filming the entire script. Not too shabby.

A big thank you to Black Dirt Distillery for sponsoring our production with their fantastic bourbon!

Our third location was at an apartment on 42nd street, in NYC. January 13th and 14th, 2016. This was the Ellie scene, the last of the four major locations in the film.

I had gotten the apartment through my friend Emily Kratter. The woman living there was a friend of a friend. High rise building, facing west. Not ideal, since it was a night shoot, but the views were nice.

Now, the woman who was renting us the apartment to shoot in had not given us any instructions on what we could touch, where we could go, etc. She had a two bedroom apartment, and we were shooting in the kitchen and living room, which I explained to her. She had a dog that she assured me would not be in the apartment, and she would be back around midnight.

Because sundown was around 5pm, and because we were facing west, we weren’t going to be able to start shooting until around 6pm. This presented a few problems because, since the place was all windows and we had to hide the camera and lights, but couldn’t see the reflections until it was truly dark, we were pressed for time.

As soon as I opened the door to her apartment, and we started bringing equipment into the apartment, I walked past her bedroom and noticed the door was wide open. And her dog was sitting on her bed.

Oh boy.

Now, that is exactly how I found the dog. It’s an important detail for later.

I called up the owner of the apartment and I asked about the dog. She said a friend was coming to pick the dog up, to board her for the two days we’d be shooting. I said ok, great. Originally, I had offered to pay for the boarding of the dog. Not sure if I had to pay for the friend to board it…? Fuzzy detail.

Melanie Ryan (Stacy) and Galit Sperling (Ellie) ran their lines while we blocked the scene and set up the equipment.

Once the sun was down and we figured out who and what went where, the place kind of looked like this:

The blackout curtains up top was to kill the reflection of the lights we had up. We used gaffer tape for the vinyl fabric, so that it would all come down without leaving a mark.

Marcin, our DP, figured out how to position the camera and lights so that they wouldn’t show up in the windows. That particular shot was a profile, so Melanie’s head was blocking the camera’s reflection. In the two-shot, Marcin had to cover the camera in black fabric, leaving only the lens showing.

Jalen Thompson, our sound guy, had some issues with the boom in these shots. He did a fantastic job, under the conditions.

The original script had Ellie and Stacy going to a liquor store to buy some bourbon, but it was easier for the production to change it so that Stacy and Ellie just went back to her place.

INT. LIQUOR STORE – NIGHT

The clerk is going over receipts.

CLERK
Closing soon.

ELLIE
Already know what I want.
(to Stacy)
You?

STACY
I’ve been drinking red all night.

ELLIE
Time to switch it up.

Ellie grabs a bottle of scotch.

STACY
Oh god.

ELLIE
You working tomorrow?

STACY
Yes. At 7am.

ELLIE
Ohh, too bad for you. And, no
cork… sigh.

She puts the bottle on the counter.

That dialog just went into the scene.

The shoot was simple enough. Characters come into the apartment, Ellie goes to the kitchen, Stacy goes to sit down at the table in that photo there. Two medium shots, both hand-held. Took a while to get all the timing right between the two, because of movement. Ellie pours them both a drink and goes over to sit down. They talk for a bit. Ellie goes to get the bottle of bourbon they’re drinking from, and goes back to sit down again.

One of the things we did was, there was an open faced liquor cabinet with a bunch of bottles on it. Because of copyright issues, we turned them so they were facing away from the camera. We had to take down three small posters from the walls, too.

Coverage was a wide to start, then over-the-shoulders and, finally, two tight profiles. Plus, you know, the three movement shots I already mentioned.

I’m quite sure we filmed it in order, and started with coming into the apartment, sitting down, and then punching in.

Video village (where the monitor was) was in the bedroom. It was the only place we could really do it, because the glass windows would have showed movement or glare. Or we would have made noise, whatever. We put a monitor on the dresser, and watched from the edge of the bed.

For meals we used the plates and cups in the cupboards. We made coffee, too. We cleaned everything as we were packing up, just like we did at the two other locations we rented. Our PA used the dishwasher to clean what we’d used. Pretty standard stuff, honestly. Exactly what we would have done had the apartment been an airbnb.

As we packed up, so she could have her living room back, we placed the equipment in the second bedroom. Normally, we would have left the equipment up. It would have been a huge time saver for the following day, but we decided to break it down.

Well…

The woman who owned the apartment came home with her boyfriend. First thing she said was, “Why were you in my bedroom?”

Well, the bedroom door was open.

“No it wasn’t. I shut and locked it myself.”

I pull out my phone and show her the photo of her dog on the bed.

“Oh, well, he knows how to pick the lock on the door.”

Jesus christ.

I explained that we put the equipment in the second bedroom, out of the way, so she could use the living room. She wasn’t happy about that, either.

I apologized and said we’d stay out of her rooms the following day.

We left, all of us. I was so glad to be out of that place. We get outside and Galit, who was giving me a ride home, said ‘shit, I left my keys in the apartment.’

FUCK.

I go back, I apologize, I get Galit’s keys, and we head out.

We go back the next day and there is tape on the bedroom door.

We shoot the footage and we get the hell out of there. Nothing special happened during that second day of shooting. Honest, I’d mention it if there was something.

She comes back that night, I give her the money for the shoot.

She asks if we used the dishwasher and her dishes. I say yes. She gets more upset. “I didn’t tell you you could use those.”

This woman literally said nothing to me about anything, the two times I went to the apartment pre shooting. Had there been boundaries set, we would have listened.

As she was looking around the apartment, she found a small piece of nothing, literally, on the floor. She said, “God, now I’m going to have to hire a cleaning service.”

I’m at my wits end. I tell her I’ll give her the money for cleaning person. I don’t even remember how much it cost, she had someone who came by. Whatever.

Five days later, I receive an email that her dishwasher was broken.

Now, I don’t remember the timeline of much. In fact, reliving this particular incident is giving me some anxiety. Did we run the dishwasher the first night? I think so. Did it work? Yes. Re-reading some of the emails, the woman who owned the apartment said that when she got home that first night, she was surprised to find the dishwasher full (she said she’d emptied the top half the day bfore), and got angry because she hadn’t agreed for us to use her dishes, and something something, bullshit.

My producer, Brian, first said ignore her. She just wants more money. Then he told me that our PA Meredith did run the dishwasher, but that the door was broken. And that the dishes in her cupboard had to be re-cleaned because they were filthy, and…

You know what? I can’t even write any more of this. The whole situation was so ridiculous.

All of this boils down to one thing, and one thing only. Money solves most problems on set. Had we had a dedicated location scout, they would have known what to say, and what questions to ask. Hell, even Brian and Julie would have known to ask them.

In my defense, I was thinking that if someone let us into their home and they didn’t want us doing X, they would say so. Plus, you know, they wouldn’t have a lock picking dog, since a locked door would have been an indicator of what not to do…

The stress of this situation was absurd, and the only way out of it was to pay for fixing the dishwasher, which no one wanted me to do. But what choice did I have? It was my fault for not being more thorough. Was she lying about the dishwasher? Maybe. Maybe it was already broken. Had we not used the dishwasher, and when she went to use it next it broke, would she still blame us? Probably.

I went there myself to check it out and actually downloaded an app on my phone to record the conversation, just in case she went batshit on me.

The door of the dishwasher was indeed broken. Instead of going down at a slow descent, it free fell and hit the floor of the kitchen. Maintenance in the building wouldn’t fix it. I told her I’d find a handyman because, in the end, I asked permission to use the apartment. I was responsible for what happened. So I paid for the dishwasher, I paid for the cleaning service. I probably paid for the friend to watch the dog, too, I don’t remember.

Lesson learned. These kinds of things never happen until they happen, and if you don’t roll with it and put it behind you, you’ll bring it to the next shoot and the next one. Better to let it go and just make it a story to tell.

Let’s move on to some good stuff.

Galit did a fantastic job as the anchor of the film’s four locations, as we knew she would. Same with Melanie, who had her big emotional moment, after an entire movie of other people talking about what they wanted to talk about. It was perfect.

We shot 13 pages in two days. I remember having a rehearsal session with Melanie and Galit, along with Brian, who took this photo:

This was one of the only scenes that I asked to rehearse with the actors. It wasn’t a trust issue, it was just I wanted to make sure we got the tone right early because we had only five hours a night to shoot the 13 pages. That’s a lot, even with minimal coverage.

Very happy with the way the scene turned out. We had a single day off between this scene and the next, our Becky scene, which was another airbnb find. It’s also where we almost got the tenant kicked out of her building.

Here are some behind-the-scenes photos from this shoot!

Galit with our make-up artist Heidi Pakdel-Payan, and Jalen Thompson writing his name on his cup.

Framing a shot with Melanie and Marcin.

Brian, standing in for Galit while she got her make-up done.

Final-ish frame of the wide shot of the scene.

Four Bottles – Part 6

Buckle up. This is a long one.

Today is January 9th, 2020. It is the four year anniversary of this particular shoot, which was from Saturday, January 9th until Monday, January 11th, 2016, in a loft in Chelsea.

The swinger scene.

I had found this particular location on airbnb, and secured it for filming by paying a premium for each day. It was one of, if not the single biggest expense on the film, but, locations are worth it. They help sell the movie.

Because this was a more complicated scene than the other three major locations, Brian hired us an assistant director, Kevin Pazmino, to help corral the troops.

I got there around 11:30am or so (with my wine prop bottles). We were able to start later because it was mostly a night shoot. Since it was January, sundown was around 4:45pm.

It also gave people a bit more time to sleep and to get to location.

We had Brian and our PA coming with the uHaul that had our equipment. I think Julie was there around that time, too. I only mention it because, productions stagger the times people get there. Producers and director first, or at least they damn well should be. Then crew, AC, gaffer, PA, etc… usually simultaneously, and then make-up and then cast.

Since we had nine actors for the swinger scene, and we only had one make-up artist, we had to get people into the chair as soon as possible. Four men, five women. Vera Stromstead did make-up all three days, and did a fantastic job. Here’s Vera taking continuity photos of the actors on day 1:

This is who we had with us for the swinger scene. In order on the couch, from left to right:

Kisha Milling (Mindy), David King (Paul), Katie Howe (Leslie), Brennan Lowery (Paul), Miles Duffield (Marc), Camille Theobald (Jennifer), and Andrew Southern (Kyle), who is standing behind the couch.

We also had:

Satomi Hofmann (Lisa) and Melanie Ryan (Stacy).

Just to set the scene, before Stacy gets there, the group all took some ecstasy (the characters in the film, not in real life). In fact, walking in, Kyle asks if she wants some. So, over the course of the scene, it starts hitting the swingers… except for Camille’s character, who is already high as fuck. She spent most of the time molesting Miles’ face.

I had mentioned working with Camille in an earlier post, where she played a drunk character. Some of the funniest moments of the scene come from Camille. She played it perfectly.

Chris Barone, our sound guy, mic’d up every single actor and recorded sound, along with booming them, on every single take. This was a great help when I edited and did post-production with CDM Studios, which I’ll get to in a later post. It allowed us to take audio from different takes, just in case there was a better word said here or there, or a whole line. Chris did a fantastic job all three days.

Because it was still daylight out, and the entire film takes place at night (except for the end-of-credit scene), I think the first thing we did was block out the windows. Then we set up the couches, into like a V shape.

Up above, on the ceiling, going along all of the walls, were pipes. Marcin had the gaffer start placing lights above, while setting up more at ground level. Meanwhile, our AC, Christopher Bradley was setting up both cameras, just in case we needed them. (we wouldn’t need them until day 2)

As the actors got into their wardrobes and out of make-up, we began placing them. Couples on the couch. Stacy and Lisa would be standing the entire time in front of them. Kyle would float, from introducing Stacy to being behind the couch the entire time.

We chose to shoot the swingers first. A two-shot on each couple, and then punch-ins on their dialog. That would be all of day one, especially since there was a lighting change (minimal, but still time consuming) for each couple with each camera movement.

We also decided to do this first, to give both Satomi and Melanie time with the material, since they had the bulk of the lines.

Now, the first issue would be, how to shoot a revolving conversation without constantly breaking the 180 rule.

The 180 rule is explained in this quick 2 minute video:

Basically, once you establish a scene, which we do when Stacy walks in, we are showing the audience where people are not only sitting, but how they will interact with the two main characters in the scene, Lisa and Stacy.

For the swingers, we figured we could shoot their scene(s) a couple of different ways. The camera could be inside of the V of the couches, and shooting the actors talking out and away from the camera and towards the main characters, or, we could be outside the V, where the position of the camera is basically in the direction of where the main characters are standing.

Even though we had a lot of pages to shoot in 3 days (24 to be exact), we decided to do both, and shoot all of the dialog for both camera positions, just in case. Glad we did this. It gave me a ton of options to edit with.

Insider the V. That’s Chris Barone, our sound guy, with the boom resting on his head. You can also see the windows blacked out in the background.

Outside of the V, with Melanie on the left.

With the windows blocked, we could shoot the scene as if it was nighttime and then, when it was actually night out, we removed the black curtains to include the window that was behind the couch, like so.

Now, I’m not 100% sure of exactly what else got shot that first day. I know the majority of it was the swingers, but I can’t say which shots specifically. Two-shots of the couples, yes. Close-ups, both inside and outside the V, yes. But as the days progressed, I know we shot some more on the swingers on day 2. I say this because, after some time with the material, we came up with some additional shots, and the actors came up with some expanded character choices. That could only have happened with time.

I’m going to stop day 1 here for arguments sake. Everyone changed, left their clothing. We secured the equipment, and, after some eating and drinking, everyone left. Then, I downloaded the footage onto my laptop.

During pre-production, I’d purchased three 4tb G-Drives. One as the master, and two back-ups. The plan was, I would edit off the master and keep a back-up, and Marcin would keep the second back-up as an off-site hard drive. The idea of an off-site hard drive is, just in case there’s a fire or something, and your main HDs get destroyed, another exists somewhere else.

So. After downloading the footage from the cards, I then transferred the files over to two of the three hard drives I had with me. The third hard drive was at home, and I’d transfer over the footage after the swinger shoot.

I spent the night in the loft. Creaky as hell, but comfortable enough. Woke up the next day, and got the most delicious breakfast and Pret a Manger, on 23rd and Park. It was an egg white and mushroom brioche. Never had one before. I don’t even think they make them anymore. My god, it was so good.

Got back to the location, watched some of the footage, and waited as cast and crew members trickled in.

Make-up must have ran long on day one because the women cast members were asked to come in a half an hour earlier than the men.

Blacked out windows again. Even though we were shooting away from the windows, you don’t want daylight to spoil what should be a nighttime shoot. Plus, you want the lighting from the previous day to match.

Lights get set up. Swingers could relax on their marks for the time being. They still needed to be where they were the day before so we could get the eye lines correct.

We shoot the entire scene of Lisa and Stacy standing, pre-movement.

The movement scene happens when Lisa peels off and engages Paul, who has walked over and sat down next to her.

Two-shot first, which allows Satomi and Melanie to get comfortable, again, with the lines. We then set up the two cameras and did double coverage in a medium shot on both. And then we did double coverage on profiles, since they engage each other a few times. Plus, it’s good for reaction shots.

Double coverage in this instance, if it’s not clear, is two cameras running at once on two different people.

19 pages. The two ladies did, at max, a 3:1 ratio for each shot on 19 pages… and it didn’t take the entire day. I know it didn’t because we had to figure out one of our big movement shots, and we shot it that day, among other things.

Now, 14 pages in, Stacy has her big moment in the scene. It’s a great little monologue about what she hates about New York City, and it’s one of the highlights of the film.

Kyle smiles, gets up, stretches, rubs his chest with his
hand, making sure that Adam and Paul see his bare stomach.

KYLE
I’ve got a question for you,
Stacy.

All eyes on Kyle.

KYLE (cont’d)
What do you hate about this
city?

Adam, goo-goo eyes for Kyle.

ADAM
Ohh, good question.

All eyes on Stacy.

STACY
I’m not sure… I don’t hate
much, I don’t think. It’s not
why I’m leaving…

—-

And from there, everyone starts bitching about the things they hate. And it builds up to a bit of a fever pitch. Stacy’s in this room with a lot of strangers. Things are getting weird. They’re all rich, she’s poor, she might have to leave the city, people are talking about what they hate, and she explodes with “I HATE TOURISTS!”

Very funny.

Two elements I was thinking about when I was trying to construct this scene in my head, in regards to the buildup. First, I wanted to have the camera pan from Mindy (Kisha) to Jennifer (Camille), who were on opposite ends of the couches, and have the camera finally swing around to Stacy, who then says her line.

But, we also had to get Adam (Brennan) from the couch, to Satomi, somehow, for their interaction later. And… I hadn’t written when that happens, or how. Wonderful.

And so I figured, let’s get him over there during this scene. And he can be the thing (person) that the camera follows to get to Stacy. Thankfully, that made sense. And so that’s what we did. It took us about eight takes to figure out the timing and get two or three good takes.

One of the issues we were having to make this work was, focus pulling. To do the pan around from Kisha to Camille, follow Brennan, land on Melanie’s face… Marcin was having a difficult time, and we didn’t have a dedicated focus-puller on set.

So I came up with a solution, yay me… and I have to tell you, it was one of my proudest moments on set.

I figured, let’s make the distance of Brennan while he’s walking past camera the same distance as Stacy from the camera. Marcin could pull focus to Brennan passing, and then wouldn’t have to touch anything when he landed on Stacy. So we figured out the spacing, marked the floor for Brennan to walk, and it worked.

Now, we just had to nail the timing. Not only were there lines that people had to say before Stacy says her showstopper… but I also wanted music in there, which was the second element to the buildup. Scott Hampton, our composer, just totally nailed it with that piece of music.

I held up my hand and counted to five, so that Melanie knew when to say her line once Marcin landed on her face. We did about four, five takes of that and got a really great one, where, after Melanie slaps her hand to cover her mouth, her hair kind of went flying. Very funny.

For those of you who haven’t seen the film, and for those who have but want to see this particular scene again, here you go:

After that, we did all of Andrew Southern’s (Kyle) shot’s and movement, along with all of the additional reaction shots and punch-ins on the swingers, from the ‘hate NYC’ part to Satomi’s scene ending monologue.

Now.

I had said in an earlier blog post about Julie and I finding Kisha Milling, who came in for the role of Lisa. We loved Kisha and, when we cast her as Mindy, I went in and wrote some extra lines for her. Because she’s awesome.

Well, Kisha ended up giving us one of the best improvised moments in the entire film. By this time in the scene, the ecstasy is hitting pretty much everyone, and, on her own, Kisha does something that completely cracked me up, and I only saw it once I started editing. I’d watched Marcin set up the shot. I’d watched a bit of the scene. Melanie was going through the ‘hate’ speech for like the tenth time, so everyone could react to it correctly… I’m editing, looking for reactions, and I find this unbelievable piece of gold.

Seriously. GO WATCH THE MOVIE. There are so many of these fantastic moments, I can’t even begin to tell you.

Day two was winding down. People stuck around as we secured everything. We drank wine that was opened. We ate leftover food. We talked about the shoot and so much more.

The fantastic thing about these types of productions, where you not only work with people you know, but with new people who become instant friends? You don’t want the night to end.

After everyone left, I dumped the footage again, fell asleep, woke up on our final morning at the loft, had that delicious breakfast again, and prepared for the rest of the shoot.

Day 3.

Pretty similar arrangement to days 1 and 2 when it comes to who arrived and in what order.

We had a handful of shots to get through before we tackled the final part of the swingers scene, which was both Stacy and Lisa out in the corridor, talking about Lisa’s life. Five pages, and in a much harsher light than the apartment, which worked. Lisa talks about some serious things in her life that, at first, seem rosy and great. The contrast was a little on the nose, but to me it was perfect.

The scene required a lot of movement for such a tight space, so we had to do it all handheld. A tripod would have made the transitions look weird.

Two-shot, two over-the-shoulders, then both ladies sit down on the floor, and we repeated the coverage. Then they stand, stick to only a two-shot because it’s a quick sequence, and that’s it.

So, three different parts to the scene. Seven camera set-ups. Five pages of dialog. We had to stop and start occasionally because of noise coming in from the apartment. It’s hard to keep a dozen people quiet. Plus we had the neighbor, who was sympathetic to us filming outside his apartment. And we had the elevator, which was not quiet. But, we got through it, and both Melanie and Satomi did an awesome job.

I’m not 100% sure when we did the opening scene shot, where Kyle takes Stacy to meet the group. But I’m going to say we did it on our last day.

On top of all that, we had three more shots to do. We had the wide of the entire scene, over Stacy’s shoulder on the swingers:

We had the wide on Stacy and Lisa:

And we had the close-ups on Satomi and Melanie. I’m pretty sure we scheduled the close-ups on them the last day because they’d done so much on day two, and it gave them a break from standing.

All in all, it went very smoothly. Everyone nailed their lines, our take ratio was quite good, and we got everything done that needed shooting. We had ourselves a bit of a wrap party that evening, had to go out and get more wine, too. We cleaned up the apartment, said our goodbyes, and our cast and crew headed out, headed home, their jobs done.

I don’t know about Brian or Julie, but, if I remember correctly, we were quite invigorated by this point. We had two big scenes in the can. It looked good. I prayed it sounded good. I was sure it did. And we would not have moved on had the actors not done a great job… so.

Our next location was for our Ellie shoot, on 42nd street in the city. January 13th and 14th, followed by our Becky shoot on the 16th and 17th.

As invigorated as I was, I had no idea the problems that would be heading our way over the next two shoots. Sigh. Part 7 coming up!

Here are some behind-the-scenes photos of the swinger scene!

Kisha Milling and David King. Again, so happy to have found Kisha, and we just love working with David.

Camille Theobald, Miles Duffield, Brennan Lowery, and Katie Howe.

Andrew Southern. An out-of-the-blue find. Very talented, he really brought the scene together.

Katie Howe and Brennan Lowery. Both of them helped us on Stuck, among other projects. I can’t begin to tell you how happy I was to include them in this film. They were both terrific.

Our group of swingers!

Watching a take. Vera Stromstead would tell me later that one of her favorite things on set was when she watched directors or producers in video village (which is where monitos show what the camera is shooting) and they were surprised and happy with what they were seeing. Loved it. Speaking of Vera:

Vera with Melanie.

Vera with Satomi.

Our cinematographer, Marcin.

Julie Sisson and Brian Sachson, my co-producers.

Melanie, Julie, and AD Kevin Pazmino.

Camille, Satomi, Melanie, and Julie.

The whole gang! A big thanks to everyone who made that shoot happen!

Four Bottles – Part 5

For those of you interested in seeing the evolution of a screenplay, here are the first and last drafts of Four Bottles.

First Draft – 6/11/15

Final Draft – 12/13/15

Before I get into the production side of things, I need to mention five hires.

First off, our cinematographer, Marcin Kaproń. I had worked on a short film in 2012 called Sketch. I’m not even sure what my position was. UPM, production manager. God knows. Anyway, I had wanted to work with him for some time, and after giving him the script (and him saying he liked it), he said he wanted to shoot the film. He’d just purchased a Canon C300 MkII and offered us the ability to use it. Awesome.

Second. Jalen Thompson, who did production sound for Stuck, was one of our first hires. We love working with Jalen. He’s got a fantastic attitude, and he’s very good at his job.

Third. Heidi Pakdel-Payan, our main make-up artist. Julie had worked with her on a reality tv show, and got her involved with the film. She did a fantastic job.

Four. Chris Barone. Chris was a Julie/Brian contact who does sound for reality tv shows, among other things. I mention this because our biggest problem of the shoot, during pre-production, was figuring out how to record sound for the swinger scene. There were going to be (in my head, at least) a number of shots that would require more lavs than Jalen had available to him. Not just that, but also a mixer that would allow them all to record. Chris had this, since, in his job, he has to mic up so many people who are on camera. He was an enormous help.

And finally, Vera Stromstead, who did the make-up for all nine actors in the swinger scene. She was fantastic to work with.

Plenty of other hires that came through Brian Sachson. Grips, AC’s, PA’s and more. I’ll get to them at the end of the production part of this retelling.

Ok.

I’m going to go through the production part of this film in the order of the scenes shot. Ben’s art studio was first.

Days 1 and 2 – January 3-4, 2016

Not sure how to begin this part, except to copy what I wrote on Facebook about finding this cat.

Had a bit of a strange day today. I got to set about 45 minutes early and, after waiting for crew to arrive, I went to go find the freight entrance, just in case they were there. Couldn’t find it. Went back to the front of the building and saw our DP Marcin Kaproń driving by. I got into his car, drove around the corner and got out of the car only to hear a meowing/crying coming from somewhere. Now, I hadn’t heard a thing the entire time I was there waiting in front of the building.

I go down the block a bit and see this cat, stuck up about 12 feet off the ground, stuck in a shutter gate. So, I get a ladder and our producer Brian gets up and tries to get the cat, but he can’t reach. Marcin gets up there, he’s a bit taller, and gets the cat.

She’s scrawny, but has no problem being held. Dirty, malnourished, but very sweet. I put her in the van we’d rented and decide to get in touch with an animal rescue place in Brooklyn, but they’re not open until 11am.

It’s 9am.

So we get ready for the film and I’m thinking the van is gonna be filled with piss and shit and yeah it’s insured, but jesus that’s gonna be terrible. I talk to Karen Snyder and she says maybe the cat is part of a feral group. We found out later she (the cat) wasn’t tipped, so it was unlikely.

Julie goes and gets some cat food while I fret over what to do with this cat.

By 11am I can’t get anyone at the rescue place on the phone, and I’m thinking this cat is missing her fellow free-range cats. So, against my better judgement, I let the cat go.

Well, she follows me. EVERYWHERE. I finally get into the building and she kind of just looks at me like ‘ok, ok, I’ll be right here waiting.’

And we start shooting the film. Two hours pass. I can’t stop thinking about the goddamn cat, and I’m supposed to be working.

Lunch happens and I go out to find the cat. If she’s around I’ll… shit, I don’t know. But if she’s gone, so be it.

Nothing over here. Nothing over there. Nothing there. Huh. Well, at least she’s not in the street, dead. I start walking back to the building.

“MEOW.” It echoes down the street.

Fuck.

Fuck. Really?

I go down the block a bit and there’s this cat, by the van she’d been in, and she just trots right up to me. Her face is like, “That took longer than I thought it would.”

I don’t believe this.

So I do the only thing I can think of, I call Karen again.

“Uhh, hi honey! Look, I know we have three cats (one’s a foster folks, I’m not insane), but you won’t believe this shit.” Long story short (too late), Karen brings the cat to the vet and, after spending money I do not have, she’s in our bathroom, quarantined for three days. No feline fiv or leukemia. Just some now dead fleas.

Now what the hell is going to happen tomorrow?

—-

Unreal. Karen ended up naming her Cotton. We fostered her until she was adopted by a woman who’s cat died. This woman ended up returning Cotton because, she said, the cat was bi-polar. It was hard to argue with her. Cotton was… well… semi-feral. Had no problems with her the day I found her. No problems the day after. Big problems from there on out, and so we just spent time with her and tried to bring her out of her shell.

A few months later, a guy came by with his friend to take a look at her. It was love(ish) at first site, and he said he’d take her. Cotton now has an instagram and everything.

—-

Ok, so I’m gonna try and remember everything that happened during the shoots. I know I won’t remember it all, but this will be as close as I can get it.

First off, it was cold. I remember that. Find the cat, and I do whatever I wrote up there. Ok.

The studio was maybe 12′ x 30′? Maybe. Tall ceilings. I remember that because we had to find a large ladder to attach the Kino lights to the three fluorescent banks that were already secured to the ceiling.

Colorful paintings on both sides of the room.

I remember talking with the artist, Yana, about them, the first time I looked at the space. Really nice. And I wanted to support her work, as a thank you for allowing us to film there. “This one. How much would this run?” It was a painting, around 3′ x 5′.

“That would be around $4,000.”

Holy shit. I look around. “The big one there?” Huge one, pinned to the wall.

“$20,000.”

Holy FUCK. I’m glad we had insurance, but jesus fucking christ, man.

I remember, that first morning when we all showed up. I told everyone not to mess with a single painting, and told them the costs. They said ok.

Adam gets into wardrobe, puts on the nice blue shirt we found. Melanie’s wearing what she’ll be wearing the entire shoot, and has the coat/hat.

Heidi does the make-up while Marcin, Brian and the gaffer secure the lights. The AC sets up the cameras and tripods.

Jalen mic’s them up. The poor guy. Thank god he was in such good shape. We were doing long takes from day 1.

We do a run through to figure out what should be where, so that the actors know what to do when they get where they’re going.

Marcin and I had decided on an ultra-wide first, then wide two-shots second, and medium cross coverage third. No need for close-ups in this scene, the dialog was at a fast pace and I knew we’d have enough coverage to make it work. We had two cameras for the over-the-shoulder mediums. I felt it was necessary because our schedule was nuts. It helped us save a lot of time.

Now, one of the reasons you do wides first is, to give your actors some time with the material. It also allows you to change choices the actors might make, so that when you get to the cross-coverage, which is where most of your editing will take place, they nail it.

The scene opens with Stacy going to Ben’s studio door and knocking. Thankfully, the lighting in the hallway were the new fluorescents, that would not flicker on camera. We’d spent about forty minutes trying to figure out how to light the hallway when Marcin checked to see what kind of lights they were. Older fluorescents show up as flickering lights. Makes for a big mess.

Door opens, they talk a second, Stacy goes in, door shuts. Camera moves inside. Going from movement to sticks (tripod) can be tricky. What I decided was, start with the ultra-wide that we were going to use anyway, and allow them to walk in. Cut in an insert of the wine bottle (so people could see my lovely graphic design work), and then do a two-shot (hand-held) that would follow their conversation for whatever it was, a page or so, and the follow them to their seated positions, and use one of the BEST scenes in the entire film as a cut-away. I won’t ruin it for you, but I’ll tell the story of it when we get to the Becky scene. If you haven’t seen the film, I’d suggest stop reading and give it a watch. You’ll enjoy this part of the blog much more.

From the cut-away, we could use whatever we wanted. And… they can be on sticks, because you no longer have the wonky transition from hand-held to tripod shots. It ended up being like so:

Ultra-wide:

Insert:

Hand-held:

And then the insert which shall not be shared. Trust me, go watch it.

Because we were shooting 18 pages in two days, the less shots the better. That hand-held two shot scene was a page and a half. No need for punch-ins. The actors nailed it in two takes or so. We were praying for a ration of 3:1, max. This means, no more than three takes to get the performance you want. You hear stories about films needing 100 takes or whatever. Yeah. That’s not us. Not at this budget, and not ever.

From the transition shot, it was two characters talking (seated) for 6 pages. No need to get complicated. Ultra-wide, which we’d already had set up, the wide two-shot, cross coverage with the two cameras, and move on, because what came next was definitely more complicated.

Adam and Melanie nailed those six pages in three takes on the over-the-shoulders. No more than two for the wides. We just weren’t going to use them as much. Those wides were used when you either needed to give the audience some breathing room, or, to solve an editing problem that happened during the cross coverage.

The cross coverage ended up working quite well when it came to editing. There’s a great shot where Adam takes a drink of wine and the transition of the edit was perfect. I was able to cut to his hand just blocking Melanie’s face and then coming out of frame. Very seamless. It’s very hard to replicate that kind of movement and timing when you’re not shooting with two cameras. Unless, of course, you’re only shooting four or five pages a day and you have a big enough budget.

For the remainder of the scene, we go hand-held on Adam. The transition is simple enough. From seated to standing. We use the ultra-wide shot where we see the Ben character stand up, and then we punch in to the hand-held and follow him around. Melanie stays seated for a while, and so we adjusted the camera slightly for a tighter shot, until she stood up. Then, it was all hand-held. A wide, medium two-shots, over-the-shoulders for cross coverage. Single camera this time.

I believe the hand-held shots were all day two.

Everyone was on point. Adam and Stacy played off each other perfectly. The issue with characters that are over-the-top is… there has to be an anchor. That’s Stacy. The Ben character lives in a bubble, and we get a full sense of the man, the artist, the friend… but also his charisma, style, and flamboyancy. There’s a balance in this scene, until there isn’t. Once Ben stands up, that’s when the drama really starts, so the hand-held helps with that. Once Stacy stands up, that’s when her character starts to change.

I think this scene worked out very well. Both actors gave fantastic performances. The location was PERFECT. The colors of the paintings, the aesthetic… all of the elements came together. And, I believe, we finished on time, and with no damage to any of the artwork.

It was the right scene to shoot first, because everything got harder from there on out.

Here are some behind-the-scenes shots from that first day.

Adam Dulin Tavares (Ben) and our cinematographer Marcin.

Melanie Ryan – Stacy

Our C300 MkII set up for our ultra wide shot.

Getting ready for a take. That’s Julie up there, script supervising.

Heidi Pakdel-Payan putting on some make-up for Melanie.

Reverse, with Marcin and Brendan Zoltowski, our AC.

Julie, with Adam and Melanie

Two knuckleheads.

I’ll be back for part 6 after I jog the old memory.

Four Bottles – Part 4

Spoilers for Four Bottles from here on out.

I think I’m going to start this part off with props, and end with wardrobe.

There were a few props required for the film. One painting, one piece of cork artwork, and the wine and bourbon that would be drunk throughout the film.

The first Hellraiser movie came out in 1987.

I know, I know, keep reading.

I didn’t get to see it in the theaters or on video for a long time. In fact, I can’t remember when I saw the first movie, but it was after the sequel came out, I know that. I definitely saw the sequel with my dad, and holy SHIT is that movie awesome. It’s up there with Carpenter’s The Thing and An American Werewolf in London, when it comes to practical effects.

I remember seeing the first Hellraiser being promoted at the Syosset 150 theater when I was a senior in high school. I remember seeing the VHS boxes for both films at the movie rental place my dad had an account at on Court Street, in Brooklyn.

Maybe I saw it with friends? I don’t know. The first time I saw The Evil Dead, I was at a sleepover while in middle school. A friend had like a dozen of us over, and I watched the film through covered eyes. Sniglets were a huge deal at the time, and one of them had to do with covering your eyes while watching a movie. I got called that for a few days.

I mention Hellraiser for two reasons. One, it became one of my all time favorite horror films. Two, from 1989-1993, Epic Comics created a Hellraiser graphic novel series, and I devoured every single book. It showcased art from the brilliant painters who’d come up over the decade. Jon Muth, Kent Williams, George Pratt, Alex Ross, Dave Dorman, Scott Hampton, Dave Mckean, Ted McKeever, and more. John Bolton, the artist, not the warmonger, did the cover art to issue one. It is an iconic piece of comic book art. Kevin O’Neill, Simon Bisley, Bill Sienkiewicz and more, provided not only other covers, but pin-up pieces as well.

The Hellraiser books were instrumental in influencing my artwork at the time. In particular, Dave Dorman’s work on Songs of Metal and Flesh. THAT was the kind of artwork I wanted to do.

One of the pin-ups in the books that stuck out to me was this one, by Bill Koeb:

I was lucky enough to purchase that piece, some time around 2002, 2003. Maybe off eBay. Maybe. Still own it. I always loved Bill’s artwork. And so, when I wrote the script for Four Bottles, there’s a part where Ben talks about being influenced by a painter, a piece that his parents bought when they were on their honeymoon.

Now, I need to backtrack some. It’s been so goddamn long since I’ve thought about a lot of this, and I had to do some digging on what happened when. I want to talk about the ending of the film, and how it came about. This all pertains to Bill and his artwork.

The original ending of Four Bottles was ambiguous.

INT. APARTMENT – NIGHT

They enter the apartment. She takes his leash off. He goes
straight to his food bowl. She feeds him.

Stacy grabs her groceries and puts them away, leaving out
a pint of ice cream.

She sits down at her couch, takes the top off, and starts
eating.

She looks at the four walls of her apartment.

Winter comes over, sits down next to her on the couch.
She pets him, looking out the window of her apartment,
which just shows another building.

STACY
(to Winter)
So. You had the whole night
to think about it. What do you
think we should do?

Winter curls up more next to her. She pets his head, grabs
the spoon in the ice cream, digs out another spoonful.

STACY (cont’d)
Me too.

She eats the spoonful of ice cream.

The end.

———–

That’s it. Lights come up. Everyone just sits there stunned as the credits roll, and then they come looking for me to cut my head off.

I had originally left it like this because I felt that New York stories don’t really end… which is a really shitty copout.

Later drafts had the camera following a gay couple as they find out that their surrogate had her first sonogram, and they were finally going to have a family. The idea was, that regardless of what Stacy’s decision was, life would go on, and another story in the city would take her story’s place.

Eh… a little better. Maybe.

A third version had the ambiguous ending, but then, over the credits, shots of the city in the spring time, which would culminate in a shot of the Brooklyn Bridge in DUMBO, and Winter walking down a path, with Stacy not far behind.

Better.

This last version was done in October of 2015. So, you can imagine, coming down the wire, with all the casting and crowdfunding done, I was still tinkering with the screenplay.

Well, it wasn’t until December 13th, 2015, that I shared the final draft of the script with the cast and crew. This had the new addition of the end credit scene that now takes place in the film.

Now, I mention all of this because, the creation of that new last scene meant that we needed a prop painting for Ben to steal. Before, it was just a thing that Ben was talking about doing. Not sure why it took five months to realize we needed to see that scene… but, that’s what time does for writing.

Enter Bill Koeb. I had wanted to work with Bill, or get a commission from him, or buy a piece off of him for a long time. My days of purchasing comic book art, which was a huge deal for me… well, they were way over. In fact, before the 2007/2008 economy collapses, I had to sell the majority of my collection, just to keep afloat.

I talked with Bill about some options, and we settled on a silkscreen transfer on top of a painted canvas. After going back and forth with some options, the finished piece looked like this:

It’s roughly 2′ x 3′, give or take, plus the frame, and now resides in Producer Julie’s apartment.

Ok, great. Got one taken care of.

Second piece. The wine cork artwork.

Stacy collects the corks from bottles she drinks from, and writes the names of the people she’s with on them. Kind of like a memory, and she’s making a collage.

I combed Etsy for a seller who did custom made artwork with wine corks, and found one that made some great pieces. Unfortunately, the store isn’t up anymore, but the artist ended up sending me this:

$80 plus $15 for shipping. Not too shabby. This piece, by the way, opens the film.

Last but not least, we have the wine and bourbon needed for the film.

I reached out to a bunch of companies, in the off chance that maybe they would want to donate their products for the film. Probably half a dozen wine companies, including two of my favorites Line 39, and Ridge.

Well, both of these companies got back to me and said yes. Which was awesome. Line 39 sent us two cases. Ridge sent us one.

Ridge also requested to read the script, to see where we’d be using their product. I sent it to them, and gave them a few options. Becky’s scene, Ben’s scene, or the swinger scene. If we used their wine in the Becky scene, it would also get showcased in the wine store.

Because of the subject matter of the film (swinger scene), plus the adult language, Ridge decided to pass, but let us keep the wine. Fantastic. If you’ve never had Ridge wine, you’re missing out. Seriously.

Line 39 didn’t care where we used it. So, it was featured in the Becky scene and the wine store.

For the remainder of the scenes, because we couldn’t showcase the same wines over and over, I came up with my own artwork. I put the wine bottles of both brands in water, took off their labels, and attached my own.

The Barolo bottle was for the Ben scene:

The second bottle design was for a pinot noir, used for the swinger scene:

Every once in a while, my 18 or so years as a graphic designer worked out for us.

Last but not least, I had gotten in touch with a company in Warwick, NY called Black Dirt Distillery. I told them about the project and that one of the scenes, the Ellie scene, required a harder alcohol than wine. They sent over four bottles of their bourbon, which got to our Ellie location the day of the shoot. Whew.

Delicious bourbon, by the way. Absolutely delicious. Stacy and Ellie drank some of it on camera, and then switched to apple juice. I gave away three of the four bottles to cast and crew members, and kept one for myself. I still have it.

Last of the props, and not as glamorous a story as the painting or the cork art or the bottles… candles. We needed a shitload of candles for both the Becky and swinger scenes. Not only for ambiance, but for practical lighting sources, too. I bought them at K-mart. The end.

Now, with the props all taken care of, the next thing we had to contend with was wardrobe.

Normally, on a micro-budget feature, you try and use clothing that the actors already own. On SAG films, if actors use their own clothing, they get money for it. This was a non-union film, and we needed all the help we could get.

So. If the movie takes place in the real world, meaning it’s not fantasy or whatnot, where you need robes or colorful bright clothing people normally don’t wear, you can usually get away with simple choices.

Most of the actors already had what we wanted them to wear. Camille Theobald sent us clothing options, and had a really nice red dress that she ended up wearing for the swingers scene. Same with Satomi Hofmann. She sent me about a dozen photos of outfits that she owned, and we settled on a very nice, tasteful black dress.

David King, Brennan Lowery, Britt Genelin, Galit Sperling, and everyone in the wine store brought their own clothing to the shoot.

Basically, what you want people to avoid when actors are providing their own wardrobe, are things without copyrighted slogans or pictures, bright colors, or patterns. Sometimes, cameras don’t do well with patterns, in particular fabrics with lines, like pinstripes. Plays hell with moire.

If I remember correctly, Katie Howe, Melanie Ryan, and Kisha Milling came with Julie and I to Macy’s. We picked out a great blue dress for Katie (that contrasted Camille’s nicely). I found a couple of different colored shirts for Adam (we settled on the blue one he wears on screen), and Kisha found a really nice top that looked fantastic on film.

I also purchased dress shirts for Andrew Southern, Miles Duffield.

All of the clothing we purchased for actors, they got to keep.

Melanie wore her own shirt and pants and sneakers… but the main thing she was missing was a really nice winter coat and hat. I felt that these two items she’d be wearing were incredibly important, since we’d be seeing them so often throughout the film. We had a number of exterior scenes in between each of the apartments, and it was January.

Since the character came from Wisconsin, the kind of coat I had in mind was something like an army coat. More specifically, a coat in the army green color. With a (fake) fur lined hood. Maybe.

Didn’t find anything at Macy’s. One we did find, it was too large. Ok.

Melanie went shopping during her lunch breaks and after work. Her, Julie and I combed Amazon and Macy’s.com. Couldn’t find the right one, and I was wary of purchasing something online without seeing it and having her try it on. Mel would shoot us photos of coats she found on her own:

Nothing doing.

So, just now, to refresh my memory, I went back and looked at Melanie’s and my text messages.

On December 29th, five days before filming, we had plans to go to Macy’s to see if we could find a coat that we’d liked, but couldn’t find in her size. Now, I know I’m misremembering something here. We did find a coat we liked, pictured below:

But they didn’t have her size. I believe it was a Lord & Taylor coat, and there was a L&T store not far from the Macy’s in midtown. We walked over and found the exact right coat. It was an awesome feeling to have one more piece of the puzzle nailed. That photo, above, was taking on New Years Eve, 2015. No idea where, though.

This was four days before we were to begin shooting.

The final piece of the wardrobe puzzle was Stacy’s hat. To contrast the army green, I thought we had to go with a mauve or maybe magenta. Something striking. I purchased her hat, which ended up being mauve-ish, at the Whole Foods – Whole Body store on 28th Street and 7th Avenue. Found it on a lark. No idea why I even walked in there. Couldn’t believe it when I saw it.

And that, dear reader, takes us to our first day of production. January 3rd, 2016. It’s a day I won’t soon forget, because it’s the day I found Cotton.

Part 5 coming soon.

Four Bottles – Part 3

Ok, so, yeah, yeah, we got the dog.

Casting.

Our favorite acting duo from Stuck, Brian David Sloan and Christian “Chopper” Jacobs, were an easy casting decision for the wine store clerk and the store owner. I adjusted the script for them both.

The wine store customer. We decided to give this role to Sumari Matthew, who we really loved reading with when she came in for the role of Lisa.

The scene at the store in the film is a cut down version of the original scene, which should have played out as follows:

INT. LIQUOR STORE – EVENING

A CASHIER in his early 30’s is behind the counter. HANK, the owner, is in the back tidying up as CHARMAINE, a customer, walks up to him.

CHARMAINE
Hank –

HANK
Hey Charmaine.

CHARMAINE
I need a wine to go with
dinner tonight.

HANK
Dinner, nice. What are you
having?

Charmaine digs through her purse, not paying attention.

CHARMAINE
I don’t know. Does it matter?

Hank looks at her for a second, and then…

HANK
You fucking heathen.

CHARMAINE
What did you just say?

Suddenly, Hank sees Stacy walk into the store.

HANK
Ah, shit.

CHARMAINE
Oh shit is right! Heathen?
You’re an atheist, Hank. And
why do you want to know what
I’m eating for dinner? Wait
until I get Cashmere on the
phone. He’s not going to believe
this.

—–

Funny, right? The ‘ah shit’ moment was supposed to be about Hank, the store owner, knowing about his clerk’s crush on Stacy, and how much of a pain in the ass he was about it. And they played it great, Sumari and Brian. But it slowed the pace down considerably, especially since the audience just watched the credits while Stacy traveled through Brooklyn. So, yeah. That got cut, unfortunately.

Everyone was great in this scene. You can see it here:

The only thing left to cast were the remaining characters in the swinger scene. We already had Lisa (Satomi Hofmann) and Kyle (Andrew Southern). The three other couples were Mindy and Paul, Jennifer and Marc, and Adam and Leslie.

Four out of the six people cast were people we’d worked with before. Katie Howe (Leslie), Brennan Lowery (Adam), and David King (Paul) had worked with us on Stuck. Camille Theobald (Jennifer) was/is a comedian who had MC’d a short film screening series, Katra, where 5AM had screened a year or so prior. I’d also shot a short sketch for her. In the sketch, she played a drunk, and it was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen. So, I wrote the character of the one person visibly high on ecstasy for her. She played it perfectly.

Mindy. We were so very happy to offer this character to Kisha Milling, who had also come in to read for Lisa. I was so happy she agreed to be in our film, and I ended up re-writing the swinger scene to give her more lines. She has what I think is the single funniest line in the film, but also does the most unbelievable piece of improv… it’s just hysterical.

And, last but not least, Marc. Miles Duffield, who came in to read for Kyle, was an easy fit for this role. We were so glad he accepted. He was the perfect straight-man to Camille’s high character.

We were finally fully cast.

After the crowdfunding campaign finished, we secured money from five investors. Two were found by Melanie, two were family members of mine, and one is a friend and ex-neighbor of mine. We raised a total of $29,500.

I have to backtrack a bit for a moment.

Before the investors came on board, I had to hire a lawyer to create an LLC, along with an operating agreement and co-production agreements for the investors. The lawyer was also going to give me production agreement for the producers, deal memos for the cinematographer and sound recorders, and contracts for the actors. This was one of the more stressful things that happened during production. The lawyer agreed to a price of $3,500 for the work. About two weeks after being hired, having furnished nothing, she came back and said she was doing too much work for too little money, and required an additional $500 to do two additions on the operating agreement. These two additions, mind you, were name changes. Yeah.

What a bunch of shit.

I received the majority of the contracts late, during production. Everyone was very understanding, but clearly lawyers are a get-what-you-pay-for situation.

Oh. One more thing. A pro-tip. If you’re creating an LLC in New York, get ready to get screwed. New York’s newspaper industry lobbied the state to demand that newly formed LLC’s have to announce they were formed in publications. Not sure which ones. I never saw them, but it’s a requirement. Better to get it formed in Delaware, where the majority of fraudulent businesses are formed. That and Panama, I guess.

Now, around this time, I had requested the help of Robin Singer, who came on as an associate producer. She gave me all around advice, in particular about the contracts and memos and location release forms, and helped with finding locations, which is next up on the list.

Let’s go in order.

Stacy’s apartment. Couldn’t find a place to save my life. At the last minute… Adam Tavares’s housemate had a basement apartment all to herself. Open, like a loft. Perfect. I think I went to go see it? Or I was given photos. Not sure. White walls, which are terrible to shoot on, but they also bounce light everywhere.

I did some research on what pieces of art were in the public domain. I found out that everything owned by the National Gallery of Art in DC is in the public domain. Which meant that I could buy prints of any of those pieces of art and, if they showed up on camera, we’d be find. I bought four prints. One Renoir, one Singer-Sargent, one Rembrandt, and one Monet.

Second location. The wine store. Couldn’t find one anywhere, so I put feelers out.

Now, some time before the campaign and the casting and all, in the summer of 2015, my friend Eva Kaminsky had shot a short film called Reunion. In the short film, they used a wine store called wino(t). It’s in Brooklyn and, conveniently, was around the corner from where Producer Julie was living.

I hadn’t seen the short, didn’t know about the wine store, but my friend Emily Kratter, who helped us with the July reading of the script, had gotten Eva the location. I asked Emily if she could ask the owner if they’d allow us to shoot there after hours. They said yes.

All right.

Now, in 2015, airbnb in NYC was a BOOMING business without the regulations there are today. I figured it would be a fantastic way to find some unique locations for our four main apartments. Julie, Robin, and I scoured the site and found three potential winners. Becky’s apartment, an enormous loft-type space in Brooklyn, and two options for the swingers apartment, which were HUGE lofts in both Soho and Chelsea.

The Brooklyn apartment, we locked down straight away. I don’t have any photos of that apartment, unfortunately, but here’s a wide screenshot to give you a sense of the place:

Now, the first loft I went to see for the swingers was the Soho location. Nice place. Huge staircase to get to, like one of those thin ones that you have to walk two stories, and the stairs are all metal? Yeah. One of those. The problem with the location was… there were two columns, right in the middle of everything.

Maneuvering the camera around those would be a nightmare. So, I went to Chelsea and found our location:

Completely open, one major window, so we could shoot reverses even in the daytime. And… there were pipes all up on the ceiling. Perfect to attach lights to.

I asked the owners for permission to shoot there. They agreed. The Chelsea loft charged a premium because of the film shoot. It ended up being our single biggest expense of the film, but we felt it was worth it for a number of reasons. One, it had to fit nine people very comfortably. Two, the characters of Lisa and Kyle have money, so it had to reflect that. Three, shooting in a loft allows us for space when shooting. And, four, the location was easy enough for everyone to get to.

Great.

The remaining two locations were Ben’s art studio and Ellie’s apartment.

Robin had posted on her facebook page about an artist, Yana Ushakova, who was subletting her art studio. I took a look at the ad and couldn’t believe how perfect it was. I went to go see it, talked to the artist, and she gave us permission not only to use the space, but use the artwork that was up on her studio walls.

Fantastic.

And, last but not least, Ellie’s apartment. We wanted the last scene of the film to have a view of the city. Not easy to come by, and certainly not cheap. Again, Emily Kratter to the rescue. She told us about a friend who had an apartment in a high rise on 42nd Street and 9th Avenue.

Spoke with the owner, had to go see the place at night, since that’s when we’d be shooting. Went by, explained the film and the situation, she said no problem.

The Becky, Ben, and Ellie locations were $250 a day. Each were two days of filming. The swinger loft ended up costing around $700 a day, for three days of shooting. Stacy’s apartment was $200 a day, and ended up being two days of shooting. The wine store allowed us to shoot there for free. Nice.

Locations would cost 15% of our budget. Not too bad, all things considered.

Got the location releases. Explained to the owners that we were fully insured. Everything was good to go.

I thought we were close to being done with the details. I had no idea there was so much more left to do before we started shooting.

Part 4

Four Bottles – Part 2

First things first, I beefed up the script. Got it to around 95 pages. Added some character development, and some characters…

Four Bottles has five main characters. Stacy (the lead), Becky, Ben, Lisa, and Ellie, and the only person we knew we were going to cast as one of these characters was Galit Sperling.

On July 30th of 2015, we had a reading of the script. Not a full cast reading, but one to hear it, so that I could fix any problems. Dialog can look fine on a page, but might sound awful.

A bunch of talented people helped us that evening. People from The Thing, and from Axis Theatre Company. So many of them were SAG, unfortunately, and could not be in the film. But we were very grateful to them for their help.

Melanie Ryan, Britt Genelin (from Stuck), and Galit were among the people reading. I knew I wanted all of them involved. I just wasn’t sure in what roles.

We gave Melanie the role of Becky to read, and Britt the role of Stacy. We gave Galit the role of Ellie, which she would end up getting.

The reading went quite well. No real complaints, thankfully, and we all went to get drinks after.

At the bar, Lynn Mancinelli would convince Julie and I to switch Melanie and Britt’s characters. Ended up being great advice.

Soon after, we offered Melanie the role of Stacy:

We loved working with Melanie on Zombie Project and Stuck, and were looking forward to working with her again. We discussed the production, how long it would be, all that. She had, at the time, two young children, so we wanted to make sure she could work the schedule. Not only was she fantastic as Stacy (and carried the film from beginning to end), she helped with fundraising, found us investors, and promoted our crowdfunding campaign. We couldn’t have made the film without her.

Two weeks or so after the reading, we called Britt in to read for Becky.

I remember this moment very clearly.

At first, Britt played the character straight, and after a page or two I gave her a note to play it whiny/sick. It took just a minute of her playing Becky over-the-top (like she is in the film) before I turned to Julie, nodded. She nodded back. I said stop and told her it was hers.

Britt’s portrayal of Becky is one of the highlights of not only the film, but of my career thus far.

Now, in September of 2015, I went to the Hell’s Half Mile Film Festival to screen Stuck. While there, I took part in their Crowdfunding Rally, along with filmmaker Robin Rose Singer. We were supposed to be two out of four or five filmmakers that were going to live-pitch their films to a crowd at one of the festival after parties. Well, when we get there, we find out that two or three of the other filmmakers dropped out, and it was just us two.

Emily Best from Seed & Spark helped us hone our pitches, and both Robin and I did our spiel in front of about 80 people or so. It was incredibly nerve wracking. I ended up winning (by 3 votes) and took home $300 for our film, plus a G-Tech hard drive. Yay!

When I got back, we put up our crowdfunding campaign. We attempted to raise $10,000. This was our video:

A lot of people came through and helped us raise $9,316. After taxes and fees, I think we had about $8k for the film.

Concurrent with the crowdfunding campaign, we continued casting. We put out notices on Backstage for the roles of Ben, Lisa (two of the five leads), and Kyle, Lisa’s husband.

Ben. The failed artist.

Julie and I decided, after a lengthy discussion, that we wanted Ben to be of Asian descent. We put the casting notice out and got only 33 submissions. We saw about 6 of them, but the standout was Adam Dulin-Tavares.

Adam came in and was completely off book on the five pages that we’d sent the actors. Melanie read across from them all, but Adam just nailed it.

Second round, we gave the four actors we wanted another look at the entire scene. 20 pages. I told them explicitly that they did not need to be off book. We just wanted them to understand the character they’d be working on.

Again, Adam came in and was completely off book. All 20 pages. With every line, every mannerism, he embodied Ben. Just like what happened with Britt and Becky.

Casting Adam made life incredibly easy for us.

Lisa. The swinger. Yeah.

We had asked Satomi Hofmann to be in the film, but she declined. Her work schedule had gotten a little out of control. Satomi was/is a swing on Broadway’s Phantom of the Opera. She also subs in for Madame Giry. She’s awesome.

So, Julie and I decided we wanted to find an African American actress for the role of Lisa. We received 72 submissions and saw 16 different women over the course of two casting sessions.

As we were narrowing down who to choose, at about 11:45pm, the night before we were going to make our decision, I get a call from Satomi telling me that she changed her mind and wanted to be in the film.

Well… shit. Ok.

We love working with Satomi. Not only had she killed it in Stuck and Untitled Zombie Project, but there is an expectation of loyalty when it comes to working with people who help you when they… well, when they get almost nothing in return. Experience is great and all, clips for your reel, yeah yeah. But if you’re going to spend the time learning lines for a pilot or a feature film, and then put in the hours on set, and you get paid below scale…?

I talked to Julie and we both made the easy decision to give her the part. Satomi, like Melanie, like Britt, like Adam, like Galit… in fact, every single person we cast? They were perfect.

Now… we’d spent two days reading with 16 African American actresses, and we found two very talented women that we wanted to work with. Kisha Milling and Sumari Matthew. I’ll get to them in a bit.

Kyle. The swinger’s husband… also a swinger.

We didn’t know what we were looking for when we sent out the casting call for Kyle. We had an age range. That was it. We opened the call to all ethnicities. We received 114 submissions.

We picked 18 people out of the group that submitted, and had them all show up in 15 minute intervals over the course of 6 hours.

Andrew Southern was the second person to come in. He was tall, looked like a cross between Jagger and Bowie, acted like a cross between them, along with having a great accent that seemed half British, half Australian. He walked in, he did the lines, he left.

I turned to Julie and said ‘Fuck. That’s Kyle.’

She said, ‘Shit! I know! But we’ve got all these other people coming. Let’s just wait and see.’

I counted four Shatner’s that day. Some others that failed to impress. Second to last was Miles Duffield. He was far too young for the role, but he had good timing and gave a good performance. We kept his info for later.

All right. Not too shabby.

So, we’ve got our leads and a husband. Fantastic. Who’s left?

There were the three couples in the swinger scene.

We have a wine store customer, and both the clerk and the store owner.

And then there’s the dog.

Christ, why did I write a dog into the screenplay?

It’s because Doc, my old, and by this time deceased cat, stole the show in Stuck. And, because people love pets in movies.

Now, producers and directors and everyone else will tell you; animals and children are the worst things to use in a production.

Well… the dog was the easiest to cast.

After Julie and I decided to make the film ourselves, she recommended we bring on Brian Sachson, who she’d worked with a number of times on different reality tv shows she’d been helping manage. He came with his own equipment, had access to crew members who could help us out, and had a great sound guy who could record the swinger scene for us.

Fantastic.

We all met, got along quite well. Brian had joined us for the July reading, for castings, and helped promote the campaign. Couldn’t have made the film without him, and…

… he has a dog named Pa-cha.

Part 3.