Hi all,
While I was shooting I sent a blog out to my friends about the making of "Adventures of Power."
I'm sending it out again now in case you missed it. Enjoy.
Tomorrow I drive to Utah with the production designer for 3 weeks of prep for the Utah part of our film, and I'm excited and terrified. We still haven't cast the essential role of my dad, and are waiting on a leading man, who has the script. It's a common and nerve wracking thing for an indie film to wait and wait on somebody big, often until days away from shooting. We're not allowed to make offers to any other actors (of any caliber) as long as we have an offer out, so we just have to bide our time, careen towards production, and hope something works out--and that if he says no, we'll have time to catch somebody else.
But I feel good to have a team of great people around me--DP, production designer, costume designer, assistants, and so on--selected over a grueling period of months where I had so many reels and resumes on the couch by my bed that they sometimes seemed like they'd fall and crush me.
Earlier this week I had lunch with Jane Lynch, who's playing my aunt, and was very sweet. I was relieved that she seems to think that I'm an okay person.
The last few weeks have been an incredible rollercoaster ride of excitement, panic attacks and depression. Until two days ago most of the main parts of my Utah shoot had not been cast and I was shaking at 5 in the morning in my bed in Salt Lake, but suddenly Michael McKean (the lead singer of Spinal Tap) signed on to play my dad, and I found a great 11-year-old kid to play my friend, after having searched the country from Florida to Alaska. Now we're two days from d-day, and there are dozens of people hired and working on this thing. A few of them have become real friends; most are incredible creative people; a few are incompetent jerks. I think this is standard. I'm glad there are people I really like and try to work with the people I don't. My girlfriend Liz has become 2nd unit director and will be directing the second camera on the edge of the action. This week would have been impossible without her.
By the way, when I say "my dad" I mean my character's dad.... I am trying to become my character... sort of...
We start shooting on Monday with one of the hardest days: three huge scenes inside a coal-burning power plant in the mountains. It is so loud there that we have to use hand-signals. We have 30 extras and the plant is in full operation. A good way to get to know your crew? We shall see. Though I was hoping, after my months of scouting that this Utah location would work for New Mexico-and the weather has been glorious during prep, the weather now does not look promising… so I will try to learn from the past few weeks of ups and downs to trust that nothing will be what I expect, but if I stay true to my intention, something good must come of this...
My brother Ethan has written a bunch of original songs in many different genres and is sweating it out in LA to get the songs ready in time for the shoot there. I'm happy to have him creating the musical landscape for the film.
I'll speak to you again in two weeks when the Utah portion of the film is done. Those of you with connections please ask the weather to be good, or if you can't, send me good vibes to enjoy it even when things go haywire. Haywire seems to be standard.
The sleepless, terrifying night before my shoot started, I received the following email advice from my brother: "Have fun, have fun, have fun." And my friend from Germany wrote that before he shot his last film, he told himself "Things will go wrong, not work out. I will be disappointed, frustrated and lost at times, but that’s not bad. Or wrong as long as I can lay in bed at nite and honestly tell myself: I gave it all I got. This is not about winning, this is about doin´ it. With all your might and love. Then the gods will look after you.”
I'd forgotten, as I wrote you at 5am before heading to set, how hard it was to let the screenplay--so labored after for 2 years, so "perfect"--go to the winds of fate, weather, casting, and so many other disasters (and blessings) out of my control.
They say you write a film 3 times: when you write it, when you film it, and when you edit it. The first and third times writing, you can be a perfectionist. But the second time you have to be a philosopher, because you're not the one doing the writing.
Normally I've had a problem, psychologically, of dwelling on disaster. The three weeks of prep before the shoot, I was a nervous wreck in Utah, seeing my casting plans go out the window, feeling I was making huge mistakes, and knowing with each perfect sunny day that the good weather couldn't last forever. Twitching in bed at night at 4 am, banging my head against the wall that 2 1/2 years of work were about to get destroyed by the weather and my own incompetence.
Our week in the Utah Mountains, normally mostly sunny this time of year, was hit with almost nonstop rain. As the day approached, I felt myself slipping into terror and doom as my idea of the "New Mexico" portion of the film (the orange earth, the blue sky!) dripped into the gulleys along with so much else I’d planned and imagined. And on the first day, noise was so loud in the power plant that the crew couldn't hear each other and my lead actors, I think, thought I was insane. Rain was pouring into the power plant, forcing us to move from location to location trying to get the shots done.
By the end of the first day we were already over 50% behind schedule. But somehow, amazingly--thanks to the love of my friends and family, and probably to my morning yoga which I've started using to replace coffee--I found myself feeling okay. Day two, we now had to shoot the remainder of the power plant scene, as well as the riot outside that was supposed to be a full day's shoot. To my amazement, we managed to catch up. My shot-list went out the window, but we got the story told.
Each day has been like this. Hours and a look lost to rain. Incredible tension as the daylight dwindles. Last night, canceling a whole scene because of a lightning bolt that blew up an 80-foot condor light that was supposed to light our little "desert" town and sent the electrician to the local hospital. (He's ok.)
But somehow I'm managing to remember that it's all a blessing to be here, and that as long as I address the disasters as creative challenges, the story will come through. It just won't come through how I thought. I guess it's a good life lesson, even if it's a hard one to learn. x Ari
I wish I could write more often, but things are so chaotic here that I barely have time to think. The end of our second week in Utah brought so much torrential rain that it actually threatened to stop our shoot for real. It was terrifying. Our rain set had fallen through, and as the day crept on we realized that the shoot was about to derail. A mood of quiet descended over the crew as 50 people worked on a tiny indoor scene which looked like it was going to be the only thing we could get in a whole supposed-to-be-outdoor epic night. My stand-in obsessively checked his cell-phone radar-weather-map and announced the storm's movement to the crew. People of various religious beliefs were mumbling prayers. We knew that if it kept raining the thing was ruined.
At 8pm, suddenly, the rivers of water flowing down the street were babbling without rain. The sky was glowing. At 8:30 the moon came out. We ran outside and started setting up for the night and by dawn we'd shot what we needed.
The second week was far less stressful, and though we finally got some sun, a lone fogbank settled on our fake Mexico set…and then it actually lifted and for the first time-we shot film under a blue sky! By the end of the week, when the unbelievable caterers working for our godfather-like line producer served us goodbye king crab, I felt in the swing of things.
Now a few weeks have gone by and I'm back in a different form of nightmare, but, having been through it before, realize I'll wake up.
Monday we begin phase 2 of the production. Preparing L.A. has proven to be no less of a challenge than Utah--sometimes for the same reasons, sometimes for different. In the past four days, I've seen as much planning go out the window as in Utah. This time the weather has nothing to do with it.
It's difficult when you think you've learned enough to have a Plan B AND a Plan C in case of any disaster, and even then you end up with a gun to your head and you have to make a decision based on Plan Zero because A B and C are gone. This has happened several times this week, and the only reason I'm not beating my head on the pavement like I did one day in Utah (literally) is because I survived Utah prep.
Casting a film in the LA Way is a really infuriating process. The highest tier of actors is "offer-only", meaning you don't have the right to meet them. You make an offer and wait and wait. These are the people who you supposedly want in the movie, because they are "names", and they help bring investment. While you're waiting for them to read, you're not allowed to even ask other actors to read the script.
The next tier is the people who'll meet for coffee. You meet them, you rent the movies or TV shows they've been in, but they won't audition for you. So you have to try to imagine, based on a 20 minute chit-chat, what they will be like in the role you've sculpted for 2 years. Not easy. These people aren't "names" but their managers usually think they are. I've loved some of these people, and lost them because I wasn't able to imagine them in the part so I waited to hire them. I may have been wrong.
The next stage is all the gutsy people who put themselves on the line and actually audition. I've seen hundreds of people over the past few months, and respect them hugely for putting themselves on the line. Most of them actors; some of them, in houses and apartments spread 100 miles around LA, non-actors such as Indian and Pakistani tabla players who had the courage to respond to my ad and try acting in a scene. (One Indian guy insisted he could act and therefore I had "no problem." He insisted I come to him, way way out in the valley. I was worried he didn't understand that he would be auditioning. He said, "I am great actor since eight years old. We will sit, and talk and I will play tabla." I reminded him I needed "air tabla" and said I was making a comedy. He said, "Oh, it is comedy? That is no problem. I can do comedy!" and then, to prove his point, shouted, "HahaHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!" He ended up being nice, actually, and not as heartbreaking as some of these other tabla men, but he didn't get the part.)
At the same time, I can't deny that I've chased the names too. How can I not, when we can't afford to shoot a little scene on a train-track because the LA location charges $400 an hour (unlike the generosity we met in Utah)... and a name actor would probably mean another investor puts in a few dollars, which pays for that train-track shot?
So the agents and the managers and the casting director plot and politicize with each other, and the end result, in both shoots, was that I waited and waited on people who were never going to act in a scale-level movie anyway--their managers just wanted to get them offers to make themselves look busy. Then we make an offer and wait and wait and can't talk to anyone else--even to put together a plan B. But it's not just managers: I've had actors I met for coffee and who told me how much they wanted to work on the film suddenly change their minds once we made an offer, because we weren't paying enough--even though pay was the first thing we told them about--or because they were "offended" that they weren't the first person we made an offer to.
All the while, of course, I am not allowed to meet these people (other than in the first 20 minute coffee months ago). I am not allowed to talk to them.
Somehow when this is over I'm going to have to train my brain to see people and not characters; places and not locations. I can't drive down a street without thinking "That would make a great Joanie's house, it looks like a small town!" and then remembering that not only do I not have to shoot Joanie's house in LA like I once thought, but I already shot that scene, weeks ago in Utah.
And the location-hunt (which has taken me across thousands of miles all over the west and east- rental cars, hitchhiking and often bicycle- and many many thousands of pictures on my camera) along with the casting hunt (hundreds of actors, many good, many bad) has haunted me with so many images and voices that begin to rattle in my brain as being "true". Sometimes that dream-version of the perfect face or voice or house or train-track does end up on film, but when you're making a low-budget film, more often than not, the incredible actor or location-discovery that I think means "it's fate!" turns out to be nothing more than a moment. Eight hours after offering bit parts to two comedians I adore--and their agent says they want to do the movie--I happen to meet them in person, by sheer chance! But then... it's not fate: they're too busy to be in the movie. In the end, as before, I have to surf on whatever wave comes my way in the next 72 hours. There is no backup plan but breathing deep and making the best of it. The waves are going to keep coming.
Next time I'd like to say I have to find a way to lock down my cast and locations earlier. At this point, I don't have the clout or the money to do it; and to some degree, I didn't have the skill to read the tea leaves. No matter: I'm going to make sure this stuff tastes reeeeeeeeal good no matter what my ingredients end up being. The footage from Utah looks great and I felt like I was stepping in front of a train before that shoot. I wish it didn't have to be this hard.
My fifth choice for one of the lead characters ended up being a genius, after so much chaos my gut seems to be working out ok; once I've cast a part it becomes hard to visualize anyone else playing it. But it felt like a train-wreck getting to that point.
At midnight the night before we started phase 2 of the shoot, the non-actor tabla player who I'd chosen left a message saying he could no longer do the shoot. Delirious, I began consulting with my producer and coach as to who might be best for the job, all the while lamenting that after going through the whole process of putting together the right combination of characters, I was now going to be forced to cast whichever non-actor happened to answer his phone at 2am and agree to come make a movie five hours later.
After inviting a few people who barely spoke English to come to set and (at the bare minimum) get paid for a day of maybe starring in a movie, I finally--after many calls--got through to my original guy, who explained that his commitments to dental school made it impossible to do the film. He offered to send a friend to my house to audition at 3am. Once the guy hit the road I felt my brain melting and I just called the original guy back and tried to talk him into doing the film again. We spoke for 30 minutes on spiritual matters and I finally left it in his hands, knowing that I needed at least a couple hours sleep before the shoot began. I went to sleep with no idea who was going to show up on set.
By a few minutes before set-call, my man had decided to take this "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" to be a star. I was deeply relieved though I didn't quite trust the guy to stay true to his word. He ended up working out just fine, though he drove the crew crazy as he realized he could demand what pleased him. He liked to change outfits.
The shoot went well; on one crucial day we managed to shoot 8 pages of dialog in order to stay on schedule. I'd by now begun to get used to the hardest thing about shooting, which was moving on (or being forced to move on) when another 60 seconds could get me a shot I really wanted. Several times a day, every day, I would ask for a shot and be forced to cut it. This drove me a little crazy because often I'd be waiting an hour for a shot to be lit, but then I'd have all of 5 minutes to get it right before being told my time was up. The boss of the set operations seemed to enjoy proving that he was right, and several times backed my schedule into a corner where I would be forced to cut something, in order to prove he was right about the shot being unnecessary. Ultimately he was a decent organizer but I will have a hard time forgiving him for that, when I long for those shots in the editing room. Sometimes it felt like sabotage.
But in general I became used to chaos, used to not winning all my battles. My cast was great, we really felt like a wacky team together, especially when we were jogging in our Jersey Krew uniforms through skid row in downtown LA, getting spontaneously cheered by the people on the street just like the script called for. Though I didn't get to run down all the streets I wanted the emotion will come through.
The best day was the day of the real air-drumming, when we had about 15 air-drummers, drumming to a pile of original songs in every genre written and produced by my brother. The first up was a woman of 70 air-drumming to a song called "Show Tunes"; my dad, at 83, topped her as a blind drummer. What started as a rock-n-roll movie has become a freak show, and I like it. I was finally able to sit back for a few minutes in the Palace Theater next to dozens of blow-up dolls pretending to be a crowd, and watch this crazy thing.
I'm going to edit for at least a month or two before finishing the final week of shooting. What's missing is the love story, though I did do my first screen kiss (the last scene of the movie). Shoshannah Stern, the actress playing the part, reassured me that it wouldn't be awkward, and said she would de-virginize me in screen-kiss land gently. Our characters' final kiss was the first thing we shot together. She said, "Don't worry, it won't feel real" before we started, and she was right. But she was great, particularly when I asked her to do fake-slow-motion, and every take was hilarious. I'll have to wait to finish her story.
Okay, I realize you were expecting a winter update, and its spring, but you try raising half a million dollars. Strange thing happened as we were editing together our footage -- we cut a trailer, and people liked it so much that a bunch of companies wanted to invest in the movie. Hallelujah! Except that it turned out they all wanted a bigger piece of the pie than the investors who put themselves on the line last summer. People warned me that it was harder to raise money when you've started, and it was true. I had to say no to these film companies because it would have been unfair to my first investors, most of who aren't in film and were "trusting" enough to get involved... It was painful to say no, since now it's been six months of raising money one unit at a time, and riding around the five boroughs and New Jersey on my bicycle, like a crazy person, trying to find my perfect Chinese restaurant, ghetto, and dock locations. I've been taken to a lot of steak dinners with hedge- fund managers, which is some consolation. We lowered the budget and now, finally, we'll be shooting the New York action scenes (boat scenes, dance scenes, etc) with a great new crew; then in a month we'll have Shoshannah out to finish all the scenes in the Chinese restaurant. I've put together a new crew and we'll be shooting on the docks in NY and NJ -- going to be crazy as ever, but I feel better prepared. I had to get these next scenes done right now, though, because the dockside factory I've been dreaming about shooting at for two years is about to get torn down. We'll be shooting there in its last four days on earth. I think I got the timing better on the weather--crisp clear days ahead, just like two years ago when I shot the tests!
I’m going to keep this short. I broke my arm the night before our shoot. I am extremely depressed and it’s hard to type. I was showing the crew a stunt and I ran into a pole, deliberately. There was soldered metal sticking out of the pole which I didn’t see. I cried in the hospital when they told me I cannot move my arm for at least six weeks. I am going to cancel half of the shoot, but try to get the boat and factory shots done before the locations disappear. I can’t shoot the scenes which I started last year in short sleeves, but I will do the long-sleeve scenes, so I have some more to edit, and some of the stuff in the projects in Newark too since the costumes aren’t established. Of course it is sunny and perfect and most of my shoot is being canceled, it is really breaking my heart.
Okay, everybody, on the one-year-anniversary of the commencement of Adventures of Power, we are finishing the shoot. My arm is mostly healed and I am doing physical therapy so I can do the dancing/ drumming stuff. No more stunts, I promise. After taking hundreds of pictures of Chinese restaurants across all of NY and LA (and Utah, once, too)!--we are ending up shooting a 6 minute bike ride from my apartment. Amazing luck, too, since so many of the places I wanted said "no."
The final phase of shooting was as grueling as ever--long hours, rats and maggots all through our set, and as usual a new crew to get to know (most of the old crew wasn't available, so that makes crew #4), but things worked fine. We had some hilarious days with a sign- language interpreter and a Cantonese interpreter trying to communicate through bullet-proof glass to me and Shoshannah and Chiu (the wonderfully crazy kung-fu master and charmer of "Kung Fu Hustle"). We shot in some abandoned projects in Newark, and scared some squatters out of their cots, I’m afraid to say. Still easier than trying to talk to Michael McKean in a factory on my first day of shooting, when I was terrified, and it was raining, and the factory was so loud that he couldn't hear a word I was saying. We'll be picking up a few shots in LA, but the hard part is finally done.
I haven't had a day off in 96 days. Mostly editing, though we shot some pickups too, and working with several editors around the clock, and me cutting on my laptop. I can barely talk, but somehow we're still able to edit, and I'm doing what everyone warned me I'd do--I'm cutting scenes I loved, some scenes that nearly killed me to make, so that the story works as best as it can. I have no idea why, but I still love this movie. I hope you do too. Sorry it's taken so many years. Try to warn me next time.
