Movie Saturday Memories, Volume 5

Try Again

Rachel was in the director’s seat for the fourth production of Season 2, just like she was for the fourth of Season 1. Funny how that works out. This time, she was working from one of Trevor’s scripts. It was originally structured much more naturalistically – the various encounters between Harold, Kim, and Jim could possibly have been a series of events that occurred over time, as events are wont to do. It was only at the end of the script that the truth is revealed – Harold, an old dying man, is stuck revisiting variations of his greatest regret.

I had initially fought against using this script, because I didn’t like the twist ending. In particular, I didn’t like putting that revelation at the end because it didn’t give you time for the ramifications of what you’re seeing to sink in – just 30 seconds of revelation and you’re out. I also thought the various encounters didn’t flow together very well, especially if the viewer was meant to see them as an objective reality. Still, nothing better was available, so we moved ahead.

Shooting took place inside a sorority house at the Colorado School of Mines. This particular house had bylaws stating that men (or boys, as we were likely called) were not allowed inside. We therefore had the threat of being discovered and thrown out hanging over our heads the whole time, which added to the fun. In fact, the opening scene was shot in one of the bedrooms, which raised the scandal level to heights undreamed of. We were truly rogue filmmakers, venturing into unknown worlds near and far, sacrificing everything on the altar of –

Where was I? Oh, yeah, the cast. This was Rose’s first appearance in Movie Saturday, although she had previously thrown water on Jeff for Sustain. She was uncomfortable and shy about being on camera, but I think it worked well for the character. It would be nice if you could hear her better, though. Bruce was Bruce, playing a character that fit his persona, and Nick was playing against type as the suave, macho asshole. I think he was a little uncomfortable as well, but I can’t imagine anyone else delivering the line “I know. . . let’s go” as well as him.

Following our somewhat successful attempt at lighting in The Lamp, I tried to do the same for this movie. Unfortunately, with only three lamps, my ambitions outstripped my capabilities. I was going for magic-hour sunset light coming in through the window. Instead, I created dingy ambient light in a room with odd floor lights. Ah, well. At least it didn’t look any worse than good old sunlight would have, and maybe the artificiality of it helped enhance the atmosphere of artificial reality in the movie.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Somewhere in the middle of shooting, we found a way to satisfy my script problems without changing what everyone else liked about it. The answer was simple – move the old man Harold scene to the beginning so that the events are framed as being in his mind. Unfortunately, the scene wouldn’t fit at the beginning the way it was written, and Trevor was unavailable for a rewrite. I wound up throwing something together in about five minutes between takes, and we had our opening.

And what do you know, it looks like, despite my claim in the write-up for The Fortunate Ones, this is actually my last on-screen appearance. Hardly counts, since you can only see a bit of my hand in the corner. But I promise, no more after this.

Eventually, we made it out of the sorority house without alerting the authorities. Bruce and I had a blast editing this one, since Rachel gave us a lot of latitude to futz around with the transitions, using a lot of pieces of different takes and footage from before “action” and after “cut.” Luke wrote a great score, which had a real drive to it and did a lot to help tie things together. I think there’s a bit of an Aronofsky vibe to the way the whole movie flows, and the score is a big part of that.

If you couldn’t tell, I’m extremely fond of this one. It’s one of the few Movie Saturdays that really has a vibe, or a feel to it, and I still enjoy watching it now, years later. It was also a really good production experience, where every department added something essential to improve the whole. One could argue that we made better movies, but this was the epitome of what I hoped Movie Saturday could be.

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TICKING

This was kind of exciting because we got to shoot on location. The script called for a motel room, which I thought we’d have to fake or pay for– but in actuality, all it took was one phone call and we found ourselves in a real motel room for free. Granted, it was a used motel room, and we had a limited window between the check-out and the arrival of the cleaning crew, but hey – verisimilitude trumps hygiene concerns, right?

This was a very old script that had been passed up multiple times before. It was originally written for Season 1, and was the only Season 2 production for which that was the case. There was always a concern that the plot (man has to call kidnapper at a certain time to negotiate a ransom payment, but loses the number so the hostage is killed) wouldn’t come across. I’m still not sure it does. On the other hand, I think that everything going on in Try Again is completely clear, so take my judgment on this matter with a grain of salt.

Shawn really went all out as an actor in this one. He banged up his head pretty badly hitting it against the table. He cut up his hand tearing apart Tom’s bedroom. On the other hand, he also ad-libbed those lines at the end, which were not scripted. I guess, considering that he wrote the thing, that’s okay, but I think it’s pretty awkward given the lack of any dialogue in the rest of the movie.

I should also give credit to Tom for letting us tear apart his bedroom like that – and it was far worse in real life than it looked on-screen. There was no plan for this segment, we just started the camera and let Shawn go nuts. I wouldn’t have let us do that to my room.

Speaking of rooms, I also want to give props to the set decorator for making the rest of the house look so trashed, which reflected the disorder in our protagonist’s mind. Certainly, the place never looked like that any other time. Ever. Really.

Also, Bruce trying to pretend to smoke is one of the funnier things we’ve ever committed to magnetic tape.

In addition, this write-up is pretty disjointed, and has a lot of uncomfortable transitional clauses.

Finally, I don’t think this is one of the stronger pieces from Season 2, but it’s still a damn sight better than The Fortunate Ones.

PS. When I saw a bit of my old Subaru in the movie, it made me kind of sad and nostalgic. That was my very first car.

PPS. That’s all.

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Next Week: I finally direct Peephole, and Bruce teaches us all about The Economy.