Movie Saturday Memories, Volume 6

PEEPHOLE

Pull up a seat, kiddies, this is gonna be a long’n.

I finally got the chance to direct a project, completely and fully, from pre-production onward, thanks to a fortuitous once in a year event. That even was, of course, Halloween. We decided that, in the spirit of the season, we ought to do make a horror movie for the October Movie Saturday. And of course, if we’re making a horror movie, it simply wouldn’t make sense for anyone but me to direct it.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have any horror scripts, so we had to solicit new ones. There were three that we ultimately took under consideration. One was a Vincent Price-esque monologue written by Shawn that was okay, but didn’t have any spark. Nothing much to say about it. The second was one that I wrote, about a man who, after the death of his wife, took over for the ailing boogeyman as a way of finding new meaning to life. I was very pleased with how it came out and was very excited about getting to shoot it. Obviously, that didn’t happen. No one really thought it made sense and it was especially criticized for a stretch in the middle where the chronology broke down and several different time points co-existed in the same scene. This stretch happened to be my favorite part of the script. Ah well, c’est la vie. Maybe someday.

The third script, which we wound up shooting, was written by Trevor PinBlackJamesCockFord. I really didn’t like it much early on. Some of the dialogue was clunky, the pacing was kind of weird, and most of all, it just made me uncomfortable. But then a funny thing happened. When I submitted my top three picks for voting, I also wrote up a little description of what I intended to do with them, directorially speaking. That was when the potential of Peephole became clear to me. Earlier that day I had watched What Have They Done to Solange?, which coincidentally had a scene where a couple of perverts looked through a peephole into the girls’ shower room. This brought a single word to my mind, which solved all of my problems. That word was Giallo. Go ahead, look it up. I even provided a handy link.

Now, one could argue that, strictly speaking, Peephole is not a Giallo. In fact, you could argue that, in any sense of the word, it is not a Giallo. I wouldn’t disagree with you if you chose to do so. But that doesn’t mean you can’t give it the same sort of feel and atmosphere. The sleazy discomfort I felt upon reading the script could be an asset, not a detriment. This could be a whole lot of fun.

Thus, by the time I had finished posting the voting choices, I had already switched my vote in my mind from my script to Peephole. Everyone else was on board with the choice, and Trevor and I dove into what was probably the most comprehensive re-writing process of any of the Movie Saturdays. Looking back through old emails, it looks like I had Trevor do two rewrites based on my notes, then I did one, then back to him for a Final.

Before re-reading things for this article, I mostly remembered the big changes I requested – primarily the addition of a new opening. The original script began with the guys already in the secret room, looking through the hole. I also toned down the profanity (again! What’s the matter with me?) and de-contemporized and de-Americanized the names and dialogue. John, Kevin, and Valerie became John, Mark, and Eve. After looking back over the old emails between Trevor and myself, however, I see that we spent a massive amount of time discussing character motivations as well, and made a lot of little changes to the action and dialogue as a result. The major actions remain the same, but the rest of the script is pretty dramatically different from the first draft.

Now, I don’t mean to imply that I swept in and fixed up a broken script. Trevor was responsible for many of the changes made, and some of my suggestions would have hurt rather than helped, had he not fought them. But I think that I made him think a lot harder about his characters than he would have otherwise, and I know that he made me think harder about them than I would have. Also, now that the memories are flooding back, I’m starting to remember how positively giddy I was that someone was willing to have these kinds of conversations with me. This was the sort of process I was hoping for when I suggested that scripts be chosen ahead of time in order to allow for rewrites. Ultimately, the script was much stronger for it.

That said, looking back over the old emails, I see that Rachel seems to have thought the original script was better. Gah.

This brings us to production, which was a bit difficult. The main issue was casting the role of Eve. Although we did not intend to show any actual nudity on-screen, we still needed someone who was comfortable undressing in front of the crew. This is a subset of society that does not include any of the women who had previously been involved with Movie Saturday. I left the task of finding our Eve up to Trevor, since he was a college student living in Boulder. He pulled it off, and we were all set to go – until the actress cancelled out on us early Saturday morning. Back to the drawing board.

After a few irritable hours, he found a replacement, Brandi (last name withheld by request, as well as by my own poor memory). Unfortunately, she couldn’t make it until four or five pm. We shot around her as best we could, and ultimately had every shot that did not include her taken care of before her arrival. Even Luke’s blood-spattered appearance opposite her in the climax was filmed ahead of time. I have to say, Brandi was a real trooper. She hung around for hours, naked or in a towel for most of the time, covered in blood for part of the time, wet (and therefore cold) most of the time, but still soldiered through it. We did reach a point at the end of the shoot, when we were shooting the afore-mentioned climactic confrontation, where she clearly didn’t want to be there anymore. I just kept shooting, requesting take after take, trying to get it exactly the way I wanted, because I’m kind of an asshole that way. Fortunately, Trevor is not that kind of asshole, and he talked me down. I’m still a little disappointed with the scene – I think it plays way too fast – but sometimes you have to take your actors into consideration too.

I guess.

The geography of the house is pretty awkward, and it was kind of fun to try and piece it together. There are very few areas that have the same spatial relationship in real life as in the movie. The peephole room was actually in the basement, while the bathroom was on the first floor. The really tough part, and the part where I kind of blew it, was the interior of the bathroom itself. In order to get a proper peephole view, we set the camera up in the doorway and pretended it was the mirror. When Eve initially walks into the room, she’s walking from the actual sink/mirror. So when Trevor rushed in halfway through the movie, we had to fake the angle of the camera and the angle of the bottle being thrown so that everything would look like it was in the right place. This worked well enough to get by, I guess, but it’s not right.

By the time we got to post-production, it was already pretty late, and we came to realize that we would not have the movie done in time. We wound up finishing everything but the music, leaving that for Sunday. I edited the movie while Bruce (a late arrival) and Luke worked on sound. I kind of regret missing out on the sound effects, since they got to play with and dismember all manner of produce. They also created the TV program that Trevor was watching at the beginning, which they titled “Contemplative Bisexual.” Last I heard, VH1 was thinking of picking it up for a mid-season replacement.

Speaking of music, this was my first time behind the keyboard (not counting some minor, uncredited assistance to Bruce on Shadow). There were three reasons for this. One, I had some very specific ideas about the style of music I wanted to emulate. Two, I was using it as a test, to see if I would be able to compose music for my long-delayed feature, The Unwritten Rule. Three, I don’t think anyone else really wanted to. I’m generally pleased with what I came up with, although I think only the last piece, which begins when Eve hears the axing, was fully successful.

So finally, Sunday evening, we gathered for the screening of our first Movie Weekend. I’m very happy with the result – in fact, more so now than I was when I first finished it, despite the pacing of the climax and the crazy bathroom geography. And now, because I just haven’t said enough about this movie, here are some more random facts and stories that I couldn’t fit in above:

--I initially embraced the 70’s Eurotrash aesthetic much more fully. I was thinking of transferring the movie to VHS to give it a crappier look, and I even wanted to dub the dialogue, with different actors portraying the characters. Others (Luke, primarily) talked me out of this, and boy is it a good thing they did.

--I love, love, LOVE the blood spurt when Eve is killed. We watered down some of our blood and put it in a chocolate syrup bottle, which we then placed in her armpit. When Trevor pulled the knife away, she squeezed. I think it only took two takes to get it right. That said, why the hell is there a kitchen knife next to the toilet?

--I had to force Trevor to put the shower door with the towel in front of him. He kept trying to switch them. Not funny.

--As I was walking Brandi through the scene, I commented that she would be naked, but behind frosted glass. When we were actually shooting, she touched the glass and said “This isn’t frosted, it’s just dirty.” I am an idiot.

--For the record, my shower was in the other bathroom, so I am not responsible for the above dirtiness.

--Somehow, we managed to get blood on the ceiling of the bathroom. The vaulted ceiling, fifteen feet up.

--Trevor is watching TV in the exact same place where Shawn was waiting by the phone in Ticking. I really hated using that set again, partly because I hate to do that sort of thing in general, and partly because it’s really just a giant echo chamber, as I’m sure you can hear.

--I caught some flack for the lengthy opening sequence, but I’d do it again if I had the chance. And no one can stop me - BWAHAHAHAHA! Seriously, though, I think it was vital to have a period of peace and mundanity before the chaos began. It really wouldn't feel right without it.

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THE ECONOMY

Now that I’ve finished my book on Peephole, I figure I’ll keep this one short. We’ll see if that happens.

The most significant thing about The Economy to me is the fact that, for the first time, we were shooting on my brand-new Canon GL-2. It’s fortunate that I had been planning to buy a new camera anyway, because during post-production on Peephole, Luke kinda sorta broke the firewire port on my GL-1, which prevented us from capturing video to the computer, which prevented us from editing at all, which prevented us from making movies. I’m not sure there’s a tremendous improvement in image quality with the new camera, but operating it works much smoother.

As written, this was an oddly paced piece. The main titles came approximately halfway through the movie, at the end of the job application monologue. It’s still a little weird, being divided into two parts that are only somewhat related, but moving the credits to the beginning helped. Speaking of the credits, I take full responsibility for the fact that you can’t read them. It’s all my fault. I was trying to mimic a stock ticker, but side-scrolling text at that speed just doesn’t work. You can see the same problem with the end credits of many, many British TV shows. Well, live and learn. This opening credits sequence also involved our first use of a dolly – and by that, I mean we literally set our tripod on a furniture dolly. It took a bit of doing to make it work right, but a whole new world opened up to us in that moment.

Shooting this movie also required me to do something I swore I would never do again – shoot a dialogue scene in a moving car. You can see how awkward it is to get a shot of either actor without ramming the camera up in their face. In fact, I just went ahead and rammed away. Actually, the angle on Bruce isn’t so bad, since I was able to sit in the passenger seat – but Rachel took the full brunt of the ramming. It almost looks a bit like a fish-eye lens. Also, you can’t really light in a car – so the background is completely blown out. Fortunately, you have Rachel’s strongest, funniest Movie Saturday performance to distract you from the technical issues.

By the way, have I mentioned that I hate shooting in moving cars?

The opening monologue is kind of odd, with the bizarre cutaways to coffee cups and the like. We shot them at Shawn’s behest - he seemed to think he was the director or something – but I never intended to use them. Unfortunately, in the grand tradition of the score from Because it Was Dead, Bruce wrote a monologue he couldn’t recite in one take, so in they went. I guess that was foresight on Shawn’s part. I hate to admit something like that. On the other hand, it still looks weird, so in some strange way, I can say that Shawn was wrong.

I suppose that’s about all I have to say. I’m not a huge fan of The Economy, although it has a lot of really good parts. It’s certainly better than most Season 1 movies, but I think it’s a little below par for Season 2 (The Fortunate Ones excluded)

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Next Week:

Safety in Numbers, and the tragic death of Movie Saturday.