Black Light Journals

For those who didn't catch it on the other blog...

2010-04-18T18:36:00.001-07:00

Black Light is now available on DVD through CreateSpace and Amazon. Head over to Cinevistaramascope for screencaps and info.

2009-02-10T14:15:00.000-08:00

Last Day - Thursday, October 9

12PM

In order to accomodate the dancers who are trying to work as we film, we've agreed during the previous two nights to wait until the last hour of the night before shooting at the main stage. The problem is, by midnight on a Tuesday all the patrons have cleared out and our extras aren't enough to fill out the club. Michael has invited a few of his friends to help us populate the club, and Bella offered to be on the schedule for the night, giving us ten minutes an hour to shoot onstage. Bella's also working the day shift, so I use this as an opportunity to grab a daytime shot of Nikki entering the club.

About five minutes from the club, my car starts stuttering and fishtailing - I make it to the club and guess, correctly, that a wheel bearing has kicked the bucket. Jimmy is kind enough to use his AAA membership to cover the tow, and Bella offers me her car to return to Berkshire County and collect cast and props for tonight. The club is still dead and I'm waiting for the tow to arrive, so Bella and I get a chance to hang out and talk for a while, not about the movie but about family, marriage and whatnot. We've been making the movie at such a breakneck pace that we've hardly been able to get to know each other, and I'm almost glad the wheel bearing gave me the opportunity - one of my goals in making the film was to make some new friends, and I now have a great friend in Bella. Eventually, the tow arrives, and I race back to pick everyone up and return for our last night.

6PM

We get through the first few scenes easily - by now, everyone has comfortably settled into their characters. The results are sometimes surprising, as when Sasha plays an emotional scene very quiet and internal, with stronger emotional impact then if she'd gone for tears and volume. Others, like a scene from the opening between Bella, Michael and KT, are just a pleasure to watch the actors play off each other. While I'd always imagined myself as a perfectionist willing to do 50 takes if needed to get the scene, I could not have anticipated how prepared my cast would be - we're averaging about four takes per setup. For a final night of shooting, the mood is surprisingly leisurely, and though I'm astounded that things have gone so well on such a short shooting schedule, I feel a bit sad that we're wrapping just as we're hitting our stride.

After a few mostly Alice-free nights, it's nice to have Jess back; while the club is an interesting setting and everyone is doing a great job, it's the relationship between Nikki and Alice that has become the most interesting aspect of the film for me. We're preparing to shoot a scene where Alice gives Nikki a prehistoric tooth when we realize we've all forgotten about the prop. Jess and I are scrambling to find a substitute gift when Bella informs me that Autumn Forever (our still photographer) collects animal bones and teeth, and probably has some in her car.

"We're all set," I tell Jess. "Autumn has bones and teeth in her car."

"Come again?"

"Autumn has bones and teeth in her car."

We've done two takes of Nikki's opening dance at this point, and are preparing for the third. The scene is scored with "Doomed From the Get Go," a loud, abrasive and aggressively sexual blast of punk from RI band Midnight Creeps. I think it'll open the film with a bang; when I play it for Bella, she says "Well, that wasn't what I was expecting, but it's your movie." The first take focuses on Nikki from offstage, the second follows her around the stage and focuses on the customers. For the third, I want the camera onstage with Bella - it's important that we get Nikki's point of view, otherwise the scene is pure exploitation (which I'm not totally against, but it's not what I'm going for here). The third take might be the most fun I've had on the whole shoot - dancing in my own awkward way opposite Bella, ducking and bobbing and sidestepping to get as close as possible while still accounting for the club's many mirrors. Directing, for me, is happiest when it's an active, physical experience, and while in this case it means revealing to a roomful of people just how uncoordinated I am, Jess is nice enough to assure me that it was entertaining to watch.

The rest of the night is devoted to the script's final fifteen pages, so I apologize in advance for my vagueness. A personal highlight: the ending involves Alice carrying around a bottle of whiskey. Before one scene, we realize that the bottle, by this point, should be half-empty. The cast and crew are taking careful sips when I have an uncharacteristically cocky moment. I don't drink much, and though I don't mean to make it sound like the Apocalypse Now shoot or anything, there has certainly been a good deal of rowdiness happening on the periphery of the Black Light set while I've been stuck in the role of stern taskmaster. The hell with it, I think to myself, as I take an unreasonably long swallow from the bottle. I hear Jess, Bella and others exclaim "DON'T!" as I take a deep breath, repress the urge to vomit, and announce that we're moving on. I cannot lie - the next few scenes were the easiest to direct in the entire shoot. I find myself making decisions quickly and with authority, and when I look at the footage later, it's surprisingly strong. I think to myself, maybe I should always direct drunk, and before the thought is finished, I have a vision of myself, middle-aged and paunchy, wearing aviator sunglasses and a bandana, slumped over in a director's chair, playing with a knife and grumbling "Let's fuckin' shoot this shit!" Maybe not.

A half-hour later I'm back to normal (secret superpower: I have a Schindler-like tolerance for alcohol) and we're at the last scene. When I finished the first draft, I thought to myself, "If anything works in this script, it's the last scene." So, of course, the overwhelmingly positive response I got from my friends was met with near-unanimous confusion about the last scene. If you're reading this after seeing Black Light and wondering how any director could drop the ball so badly, it's because I stuck to my guns. But no matter what other ideas I entertained, this ending is the only one that made emotional sense to me; I hope people enjoy the movie, but either way, the movie is true to my experience and understanding, and regardless of its success or failure, I can live with that.

And now that we're at the final scene, I think everyone is absorbing the feeling behind it. I'd chosen a song for the scene called If There's No Light, by the Vermont group Pretend You're Happy. I'd been worried it might be too earnest, too heart-on-its-sleeve for most people, so naturally, everyone thinks it's perfect. I can't wait to talk about this scene and what Jess, Bella and everyone else brought to it; suffice to say, for now, that they Chrissied it. When I call cut there are hugs and squeals of excitement, the pride of accomplishment and the relief that we actually did it mixed with the bittersweet awareness that tomorrow we'll all go our separate ways. We tried to make something honest, something we could all share, and for a moment, we did capture life as it should be and lived in it, for a moment, before reality took over again. I hope that when the movie is released into the world and out of my control, it'll reach the people it's meant for and they can join us in that moment. But for now, Black Light is a wrap.

2009-01-05T18:57:00.000-08:00

Day 8 - Wednesday, October 8

1PM

Before we return to the club, we shoot a brief scene at the Magic Wings Butterfly Conservatory, a few miles down the road from the club, the diner and the dinosaur store. It's the scene I've most looked forward to. It's a pleasure to take a simple idea - one woman taking another to her favorite place - and develop it, following Bella and Jess as they geek out over rare and exotic insects. It's also a welcome change of pace, after committing to a natural and source light approach that has often meant accepting darkness and grain, to roam around a location that is well-lit and gorgeous from any angle. The scene isn't integral to the narrative, and it's not meant as an all-encompassing metaphor or anything, but it's important to the feel of the movie, and hopefully it will be as pleasurable to watch as it was to shoot.

3PM

We arrive at the club early so we can give the women working tonight a general heads-up and explanation and hopefully avoid the tension of the previous night. When we get there, Jimmy asks to talk with me in the storage room. I brace myself for the worst.

"Okay, Andy, here's how it's gonna be. I'm not gonna back out on my promise to you and your people. You finish your movie and we'll make it work."

"Yeah, I think we can, Jimmy."

"You need the stage, you tell me. You need the dressing room, you let me know and I'll tell the girls. Anything you need, you let me know. We're gonna have your girls get dressed here, makes my girls more comfortable."

"Okay, that works."

"We're gonna work together, Andy. People gotta work together in harmony. There's gotta be harmony everywhere. It's beautiful."

"I agree completely, Jimmy."

And the night is indeed more harmonious. Knowing that we're not there to fuck them over, the dancers are more friendly and accomodating, and they even offer a few script notes. And the cast uses their real-life counterparts as a resource, particularly Sheena Shaw - an actor after my own heart - who spends the night observing and grilling dancers for her relatively small role (a wide-eyed innocent named Gwen). The entire cast is as prepared as Sheena; in the past, to direct was a constant struggle to get people to remember their lines and being resented for it, so it's no small thing that my cast has shown up prepared and ready to play. It's easy to get through any challenges this and every night brings, because they've taken care of the biggest one.

This is not to say that there aren't difficult-bordering-on-absurd moments. In one of Sheena's scenes, Dusty gives Gwen a breakdown of the financial details of working at the club. The numbers in the script are taken straight from my ex-dancer friends, but according to Bella, they're implausible. Perhaps it's a difference between clubs in Maine and Massachusetts, and honestly, it doesn't make a lot of difference to me. But it does to Bella, and if it's taking her out of the scene, it's worth tweaking. The problem is, Danielle has memorized her lines so completely that she can't get the new numbers out, and when she does, she loses her place in the scene. We're trying to come up with a mnemonic device to remember the new line when Jimmy, who has been observing, chimes in.

"Forget all this ten percent, twenty percent - you just tell her she'll make five hundred dollars!"

Now that Jimmy's doing rewrites, everyone in the room starts offering suggestions at once, a cacaphony of script notes. Ignoring my impulse to pull a Barry Egan, I ask for silence, and we work through it. I make a point of remembering that, despite my ideals of collaborative art, filmmaking by committe quickly becomes filmmaking by mob if the director doesn't know when to say "wait."

But honestly, that's about all I have for stories of creative conflict - for the most part, everyone works together wonderfully. I spend one break chatting with a couple of guys who are working on Edge of Darkness, the Mel Gibson movie shooting at the same time in Northampton. It's the movie that Robert DeNiro left after a day's shooting; according to these guys, "creative differences" in this case meant that DeNiro didn't know his lines and was asked to leave. So when your cast works harder than DeNiro (bloated 21st-century DeNiro, at least), it's hard to complain.

We're also able to use more club patrons in scenes tonight. I ask a guy who looks just like Ernest Borgnine if he'll sit opposite KT for a scene where Nadja is using her "vampire routine" on a customer. I tell the Borg, basically, to smile and nod, but from the first take, he decides to improvise - talking back to Nadja in bastardized French and making kissy-faces. By the third take, he's groping her in a way that's just wrong, but they're perfect for KT's performance and the scene. KT's a trouper, especially in a scene that involves her being discovered in a bathroom stall with a john who is literally caught with his pants down. The guy playing the john, Mike Affleck, responded to my ads looking for actors for a non-porn, adult-oriented film asking if there was any part for him to get naked. Mike likes to expose himself, and he's driven three hours to drop his pants for my movie. It's a credit to KT's commitment to her craft that she's willing to be upstaged by an erection. I'm happy that the film will have equal-opportunity nudity, and incidentally, it was huge. So huge, in fact, that I discover later while watching footage with some of the cast that it's not completely in the frame. I'm proud to be working with a group of people that will audibly express disappointment at not being able to see all of a 50-year-old man's penis.

Before we shoot a scene of Nadja onstage, KT asks me whether I expect nudity. We'd discussed it a bit during the casting process, so I reiterate that, while nudity seems logical, the emphasis will be more on movement and performance. When KT gets onstage, she dances quite well, but does not disrobe. Since it's not important to my concept of the movie that the nudity be comprehensive, and since I can't ever see myself standing off-camera yelling "Take off your top," I shrug it off. But before I start the next scene, Bella protests.

"Is this really the way you want to do this? I feel like I'm the only one taking my clothes off, and I don't want it to be, 'Oh, Bella Vendetta the famous porn star is naked the whole time, and everyone else keeps their clothes on.'"

I want to point out that several cast members, male and female, have been nude in the film. I want to say that it has nothing to do with fame, that I'd never heard of her before she wrote me, and that her work in porn, while very interesting, is not the reason she got this part. But I don't, because she's taken my request to challenge my thinking on this film seriously, and taken ownership of Black Light, and she's protecting the movie we agreed to make. So - as I'm learning to do - I bite my lip and simply say that not everyone did exactly what I'd anticipated. And KT says "Alright, let's do it again." It turns out I was so polite before that she thought I didn't want her to be nude. And she'd been looking forward to it. Lesson learned.

We're running extremely low on time, and we still have a fight scene to shoot. I start to edit in my head, doing each take only as long as I'll use that angle, and thanks to the cast, I'm able to move on after two takes of each shot. The same is true for a scene between Danielle and Bella, and then between Bella and Michael. It's been another long day and night, but I'm proud to have shot about 25 pages in a day and wrap on time. Now it's eight days down, one - the ending both of the movie and production - to go.

2008-11-24T13:18:00.000-08:00

Day 7 - Tuesday, October 7

1PM

Tonight we start shooting at Club Castaway, and it almost feels like we're making two different movies. Last week we only had three scenes with extras, and much of the time the cast and crew totalled 5 or 6 people. This week, we have a dozen new cast members and three nights to shoot 30 pages in a strip club that is open for business. If last week was occasionally a battle, this week is a war.

But first, we have to finish the scenes we'd put off last week. The first two are pillow talk between Nikki and Alice - Jess and Bella are relaxed from the break, and they've settled comfortably into their roles. It's a pleasure to basically just try to stay out of the way and let the relationship they've created take over. The third scene, an argument between the characters, is pretty broad on the page - name-calling, objects thrown - and doesn't really match the tone of what we've shot so far. We have to push the scene further, make Nikki and Alice really hurt each other. The challenge for me isn't to provoke the emotions the scene needs, but to keep from pushing it too far. I have a tendency to be what people charitably call "sharp," to tell the truth a little too truthfully, which is great for my work and terrible for my social life. When I was directing plays, I consistently elicited the best possible work out of my actors, and they hated me the whole time. I was talking about this problem to Jess a few days earlier; she gave me permission to be mean if it would make the movie better. I hope to not make her regret her generosity.

We think of things for the characters to say to hurt each other. I tell Jess to accuse Nikki of "blowing dudes for money," knowing from my friends that nothing pisses a stripper off like being called a whore. Nikki comes back by attacking Alice's drug use and her looks, which prompts Alice to dump a glass of water on Nikki's head. Jess is having trouble with this part - she doesn't want to soak Bella, and she says she once left a guy for doing exactly this. Bella and I assure her that the use of food or drink is a common, even zesty way to put a stop to an argument. On the last take, she drenches Bella, and as I call cut, Jess mutters under her breath, "I'm not fat."

6PM

Since I first met with Jimmy, he's taken a special interest in the film. It was Jimmy who insisted on shooting during club hours, thinking it would help business. He's called me a few times a week to see if I've gotten notices in every local paper - he wants everyone to know there's a movie being made at Club Castaway. Except a few of the dancers didn't get the message, and as the cast gets ready in the dressing room, it becomes clear that they're not happy about it. Bella points out that she wouldn't be happy if someone was interrupting her work, and I get that. But I've also had fliers in the club specifying the dates since August, so there is a limit to my sympathies. Regardless, I'm facing a night of filming my fictional strippers while being yelled at by very real, very pissed-off strippers.

Before we start our first scene, I apologize to the dancers for the misunderstanding. I try to assure them that we'll stay out of their way as much as possible, but Jersey, a tall dirty blonde with Mick Jagger lips, cuts me off.

"So who's going to pay our shift?"

"Like I said, you'll be able to - "

"This is bullshit!" Jersey loudly tries to convince the others to walk. Black Light may have sparked a strippers' labor movement.

We grab a shot of Diamond, Nikki's friend (played by my friend and co-worker Sasha Feliciano) dancing before moving onto a scene at the bar between Dusty (Danielle Raimer, who works with Sasha and me), the owner of the club, and Bill (Gershon Eigner, recently seen as the doctor in Without You), a former flame of Dusty's. Danielle and Gershon are sweet together, which is particularly impressive since they have to act through the sounds of dancers trying to ruin our audio by moaning and yelling profanities offscreen. I try to explain between takes that they're only making it harder for us to get out of their way; they accuse me of having B.O. Fair enough - I've been running around all day - but my cast members are kind enough to assure me that mine is not the most pungent aroma in the club.

Jimmy seems intimidated by the dancers. After the bar scene, he pulls me aside.

"Hey Andy, why don't you just shoot in the back room?"

"Well, Jimmy, I can move some scenes to the smaller stage, but for others I really need the main stage. It's why I wanted to shoot here."

"Andy, when you came to my office, you told me you were going to use the small stage only!"

I bite my lip. "No, I don't think so." I walk away and ask Ray, the bouncer, "Is there anything we can do to talk to them?"

Ray shakes his head. "Jimmy fucked up. These girls are ready to leave."

"It's ironic, you know, because the movie's actually really empathetic towards strippers."

"Well," Ray says with a big, fraternal laugh, "Maybe if you'd hung out here longer, your script would be different."

Nooo! I think to myself. I will not become a misogynist douche! And suddenly, it makes perfect sense why the strippers want us out. I cross the room to Jersey.

"Hey, can I talk to you?"

Jersey looks at me suspiciously. "Are you guys getting out of here or not?"

"No. We made these plans months ago, and I'm sorry Jimmy didn't tell you, but it's not our fault. I get why you don't want us around, but we're not a porno and we're not going to take pictures of you without your permission. You'll know where we are at all times, and we'll do everything we can to stay out of your way."

Jersey sighs. "I'm just trying to make a living, man."

"So am I."

"Alright, just stay out of our way."

"Of course."

Later I find out that Jersey's a theatre major who tells anyone who will listen that movies aren't art. This makes her my sworn enemy, but dammit if I don't respect her.

The rest of the night proves to be worth the trouble - though most of the actors have never danced before, being in the club loosens them up. The bar helps too, of course; during one scene the characters pass a bottle of Scotch around, and the actors declined to have the bottle's contents replaced with juice. Sasha, in particular, is hitting the bottle hard, and it's amusing to watch her get more, um, comfortable with her role on each take. And it's a surreal feeling to watch Nikki put on her blue wig for the first time, or to watch the danceers have an argument about blowjobs that I wrote a year ago. This is my happening, and it freaks me out.

We get a great shot of Michael (playing the Captain, the house DJ) gyrating at his booth, framed by Bella's legs in the foreground, before we move into a montage of dancers hitting up customers. It's fun to sit an actress like Alicia Thibault, an MCLA student playing Pinky, next do one of our "customers," a burly retired Marine named Fred who is old enough to be her dad (really nice guy, though) and watch her negotiate the situation. Najwa Rosdi, an actress originally from Malaysia who is playing Jade, has an easier time with her customer, played by a very polite, hard-working RI actor named Peter Hoey. Najwa has no trouble intimidating barking orders at Peter; later, when she shows me her previous movie, Christian Vampires From Beyond Suburbia (where she has romantic scenes with a garden gnome), it confirms my suspicion that her gretest strength as an actor is to dive headfirst into a role no matter how strange or ridiculous it requires her to be.

As the club's business slows down, we get a few scenes on the main stage. Najwa had recommended a RI punk band called The Sleazies, and she literally jumps for joy when I tell her Jade will be dancing to "I Wanna Fuck Your Mom." Pinky dances to the Blueberry High Heels song "Dice," and she attacks the pole with such ferocity that she nearly knocks herself out with one of her shoes. But my favorite soundtrack cue of the night is the Atomic Swindlers' "Diamond Dreamers" - with its Bowie-inspired guitar riffs and lyrics about space-age lesbian romance, it comes closest to the feeling of the '70s-heavy masterpiece of a mix CD I originally sent out with the script. I play it for Bella, who says, "Well, it isn't what I expected, but you're the director." Oh well. We get the scene - Alice meeting Nikki at the club for the first time - and, with some time left, we decide to put Jimmy in the scene. Jimmy had asked for a scene where "I tell the girls how to make a lot of money," so we have him mistake Alice for a dancer and hustle her. Before we start, Jess whispers to me, "I hate you." Thanks to her obvious discomfort, the scene is hilarious.

We wrap for the night soon after; our problems were solved tonight, but there will be different dancers working tomorrow, and I dread the thought of a repeat of tonight. The next morning, I play the footage, bracing myself for the worst. But it all plays fine; I'd forgotten that all that matters is what's in the frame, and the rest - the tension, the drama, the B.O. - is peripheral.

2008-11-08T20:00:00.000-08:00

Day 6 - Thursday, October 2

12PM

The cast is exhausted, so we've rearranged the schedule for today, leaving us with just a few short scenes before we break until Tuesday (as was always planned). The early afternoon is spent on a few Jess-only scenes, including a brief scene of Alice crying by herself. For all my nervousness over filming a sex scene, crying is much worse. During the sex scene, everyone was laughing and relaxed; for this scene, Jess has to access some very real pain to make it work, and it's hard to watch. It's strange, when I want to comfort your crying friend, to fight that instinct, call "action" and try to stay out of the way. I don't cry very often, and whenever I've had to cry for a play, it's a struggle for me; Jess is so effortless and unguarded that she makes this seem like the easiest task in the world.

After Jess heads back to Salem for the weekend, I return to the MCLA radio station for another shot at the DJs scene. Michael has quickly found two friends to replace the Cougar and the Woodman, and despite the very short notice, they're far more prepared and professional. And even though they're barely out of high school, they're much more serious and respectful of Bella than guys thirty years older. Bella and the DJs play off each other well, and we finish the scene fairly quickly. I go home and promptly have an anxiety attack.

While the break was much-needed for everyone else, I would have preferred to shoot through the weekend. During the shoot I didn't have the time to question my choices, now I'm questioning everything. I wonder if I've underlit when I should have overlit, if I went handheld when I should have gone with the tripod, if I should have shot on the PD150 instead of the DVX100B. A few years ago, after a screening of The Wild Blue Yonder, I watched Werner Herzog take questions from the audience. It was clear they weren't crazy about the movie, and Herzog had his own questions about whether the film communicated specific ideas. The moderator joked that we were being given the unique opportunity to change Herzog's movie, to which he replied, "No, if all of you didn't like my movie, I would find a different audience." I imagine that kind of confidence can only be found with experience, and since I don't have any, I can only rely on instinct. This is why first-time directors who talk about what kind of director they are can be insufferable - I don't know yet! The next day I look at the footage, and I'm relieved. It's the movie I've been imagining for a year. And now, an unbearable four days of waiting - Fosse was right, to be on the wire is life - and then on to Club Castaway.

2008-11-01T19:49:00.001-07:00

Day 5 - Wednesday, October 1

8PM

I never really understood the idea of a director and his crew taking their clothes off to make the participants in a love scene more comfortable. If I were disrobing for the camera, I can't say that catching the director's junk in my peripheral vision would make me less self-conscious.

We were scheduled to start shooting scenes at Michael's house (as Nikki's apartment) tonight at 5 before an emergency unrelated to the film delayed us. The lost time only adds to the major challenge of the night, the scene where Nikki and Alice first sleep together. Since the audience will likely be anticipating this scene from the start, I'd imagined it as a big, cathartic release for both the characters and the viewers - first the fucking, then we can get to the lovemaking. I'm not after Shortbus-style explicitness or Briellat-esque kinkiness; the important things, to me, are the immediacy of the scene and finding ways to translate the characters' emotions into action (the same as any other scene, except with lying-down kisses). Also, hopefully, it'll be sexy, and in Michael's very cold house, after a late shoot the night before, and with three hours lost, I don't think any of us are feeling very sexy.

First, a few quick scenes of Nikki alone, then we get in Jess' car to shoot a scene of Alice giving an inebriated Nikki a ride home. Jess' shocks are badly worn, and I can't find a way to stabilize the camera. Even if we stopped to make a camera mount, the sound would drown out their dialogue,, and we've already established the car. So we end up filming the scene with Alice pulling up at Nikki's apartment - Jess and Bella are both great, but I'm disappointed that we couldn't shoot it with the lights of passing cars hitting their faces. In retrospect, I wish I'd just planned for the poor man's process in the first place. We get the scene, but I'm feeling even less sexy.

We do observe the tradition of the director having a drink with his actors (I get that one). We start to talk about the scene, what is important and what we will or won't do or show. I can tell Jess and Bella are both a bit frustrated with my evasive answers to their questions - when they ask me to tell them what to do, I turn it back around to "How would Nikki and Alice do this?" The thing is, I'm trying to create an uncertainty in my actors that will, I hope, translate to the pleasurable awkwardness of the first time two people fool around. To say too much would be like talking during sex (literally, in this case).

"The different between hardcore and softcore," Bella says, "Is that with softcore, you're not really feeling anything. It's hard not to just go through - "

Jess, calm and smiling, interjects. "I'm not going to have sex with you."

It's more obvious than ever how close Bella and Jess are to their characters. I think of ways to play their differences in background and experience off each other. As our talk proceeds to blocking, we realize that there are no grounded outlets in the bedroom. Luckily, Bella has worklights in her studio and offers to get them. As we wait, Michael, Jess and I sprawl on the bed, waiting.

"It's pretty simple," Michael says. "Bella just wants you to block out what to do at different moments."

"But I don't want to do what she expects. I want to push her out of her comfort zone!"

Michael laughs at this.

"Sorry," I say. "I just want this scene to be honest."

"It's okay," Jess tells me. "I trust you."

"Thanks, I know. I just want to get this right."

Jess smiles at me. "You need to get out of your head."

Bella returns with the lights. "Alright," I say, "Let's give it a try." And while I won't get into too much detail (you'll have to see the movie for that), I have two observations about shooting sex. The first is that Home Depot work lights can give a sex scene a palpably dirty quality that far more expensive Lowell lights can't match. The second is that shooting a sex scene is fun - I can't recall another scene in the shoot where we laughed as hard or as frequently (the sight of Michael, half-asleep and wearing only his skivvies as he held a light, certainly helped). Around 4am, shooting gave way to beers and conversation, and I feel like if we finish at 4 in the morning and people want to hang around and chat, something is definitely working.

It's too late to make the drive back to North Adams, so Michael offers Jess and I the bed to crash in. It's been years since I've shared a bed with a friend, and I feel like I'm 16 and on a sleepover. Later Bella will refer to the shoot as feeling like summer camp, which I agree with, except I hated summer camp, and I don't want the shoot to end.

2008-10-25T18:57:00.001-07:00

Day 4 - Tuesday, September 30

3PM

Jess has strong chemistry with the T. rex. We're starting today at The Rock, Fossil and Dinosaur Shop, Alice's workplace and a location I've been looking forward to. The juxtaposition of odd roadside attractions - Club Castaway and the Dino Store chief among them - sitting on a stretch of Routes 5&10 that sparked the idea for Black Light. And more than Club Castaway, the store is irreplacable, so it was a relief when owner George Marchachos said yes almost immediately. As we shoot moments of a stoned Alice wandering around the store's impressive collection of large-scale dinosaur models, it's clear that the store is bringing out Jess' inner child. She's delightful as she caresses the T. rex's teeth before hopping aboard a triceratops, dubbing the beast "Lazarus" and commanding him to take them to "Dino City." I'd written the role to accomodate Jess' often-sarcastic demeanor, and I'm surprised to find she's not playing Alice sarcastic at all; wherever she's finding this sweet vulnerability, it's working.

As we stop to talk to a reporter from the Greenfield Recorder, Jess and Johnny (who, like Ron, will be helping us for part of the shoot and playing the part of Dan later today) go to the nearest convenience store to buy pipe tobacco for Alice's pot-smoking scene. I'd written the scene for the store's restroom before finding out that the store has two "mines" for kids to search for rocks and gems. I ask George if it would be okay to have Jess smoke in the mine. He asks me what she'll be smoking.

"Tobacco. But it's supposed to be - "

"Okay. Do what you've got to do. Hey, can I see the script?"

George peruses the script, and I wonder if we're about to be kicked out of the store. Jess and Johnny return, and we shoot the scene. The mine is perfect - dimly lit, with walls that absorb light so only the sand-covered floor is illuminated. A stereo system fills the room with an endless loop of wet, cavernous sounds - it's like being inside Alice's head. Jess sits in the center of the room, smoking a bowl and drifting, sadly and sweetly, into the blank state that every self-medicating stoner is after.

Apparently there are a lot of mosquitos around the store, or so I'm told. Mosquitos don't usually bite me, but one of the joys of directing is that everyone around me gladly fills me in on every discomfort, whether they're hungry, tired or itchy. I'm sort of immune to these conditions, partly because I'm so focused on the day that I'm barely aware of the periphery, and partly because I'm always sort of oblivious to the elements - I don't usually start wearing a jacket in the fall until someone asks me if I'm cold. I try to be sympathetic to my cast and crew's needs and accomodate them as much as possible; at the same time, they're kind of a pain in the ass. My shoot is much less demanding, time-consuming and uncomfortable than any of the ones I've worked on, the difference being, of course, that those were paying gigs. For some reason, when you ask people to work for a deferred payment, they act like you owe them something.

The toughest scene at the store, for me, is the scene between Alice, Meredith and Glencora. The idea is that Alice met Meredith and Glencora in school, doesn't like them but puts up with their patronizing advice because she's too passive to tell them to fuck off. Meredith and Glencora exist to tell us something about Alice; as they're more cogs in the story than fully-formed characters and are deliberatly uninteresting, I feel a little bad manipulating Lauren and Corrine - the very talented actresses playing them - to be as dull as possible. And in setting up the scene, I find it's hard to judge when the characters and scene are just tedious enough. I put Jess slightly in the foreground so that we can play the scene off her annoyed reactions and hopefully make it clear that these two are supposed to be annoying and irrelevant. After a few takes, we get it right, which is to say, boring. I think.

As we're leaving, Jess tells me, with a curious smirk, "I took a picture of Bella on the triceratops." I feel like I'm missing something; later, when Bella sends me the pictures, I get why Jess was smirking.

8:3oPM

Alice and Nikki's date at the Whately Diner, a grand old truck stop diner located just off 91. As we're setting up, I realize why Wong Kar-wai has so many scenes set in diners - the lighting is naturally gorgeous, and there are practically no bad angles. This is the scene where Johnny is playing Dan, a jackass who stood Nikki up earlier in the movie and who Alice confronts. Johnny took the initiative of buying fake tattoo sleeves and some shitty faux-bling, and everyone has fun upping the ante on Dan's douchiness. A toothpick, a pat on the ass of his date and some text messaging later, and Dan has become the embodiment of everything I hate in my own gender. It's a pleasure to watch Alice go Dirty Harry on Dan's ass before heading out to the parking lot and enacting a bit of revenge I won't reveal here. That moment, and Alice and Nikki's subsequent fleeing the scene with Dan in pursuit, are the closest thing Black Light has to an action sequence. I've been letting the performances dictate the visual strategy of the movie, so it's a challenge and also a blast to pretend like I'm Paul Greengrass for a little while. I'm helped immensely by Bella (whose spatial intelligence would be a great strength if she ever directed a feature) and Michael, who is operating boom and is spry as a fawn when we race backwards, following Nikki and Alice as they race to the car and peel away. This may be the most fun five minutes of the whole shoot.

10PM

Our next location is the Hatfield Pub, where Nikki and Alice meet. As we shoot the scene, I find myself fighting an odd sense of insecurity I haven't felt so far. I find myself second-guessing simple setups, and when my actors ask me questions about the details and logic of this and future scenes, I'm percieving a lack of trust in my abilities, which is ridiculous - they're working for free and offering suggestions to improve the scene, which is exactly what I asked them to do. I realize a possible cause - all day we've been shooting scenes about insecurity, loneliness, self-doubt and rejection, and it's weighing me down more than cold, hunger or bugs. I tell myself to snap out of it, to focus on the scene at hand. It's then that we start to find a working method for each scene - Bella, Jess and I talk about the scene at hand, the underlying meaning of the scene for each character and translate into terms that they can put into action. It feels like it did back when I was directing plays; I'm finding a method, and I leave the pub feeling energized.

11PM

I'd hoped to shoot the scene where a stoned Nikki and Alice eat fast food and get to know each other in the Taco Bell parking lot in Greenfield, but other logistical stuff prevents it. Bella and Johnny suggest the lot outside Diva's, a club in Northampton. We find a well-lit patch of grass on the edge of the parking lot; I ask whether it's plausible whether Nikki and Alice's first pseudo-date would happen in a dirty, nondescript lot, and Bella and Jess respond with an emphatic yes. This is our biggest dialogue scene so far; Nikki and Alice both talk a little about their lives, and it was tricky in the writing to let the audience learn a bit about the characters without it seeming like a shallow attempt to "explain" them. Bella and Jess make it work; they don't play to the camera, don't reach for the emotion, instead giving each other their attention. The scene feels honest, and the nondescript lot looks surprisingly good through the lens, even if it is infested with slugs (Jess and Bella both make sure that I know this).

This scene segues into a moment where Nikki and Alice dance in front of Alice's car. I was eager to cut this scene - I added it in the second draft trying to strengthen their connection, but I fear it's like something out of a Chris Columbus movie - but Bella asked me to keep it in, so I agreed to give it a try. It's fun watching Jess play the awkwardness of the moment, and Bella is sweet, playing the moment as though Nikki is urging Alice out of her shell. I'm still not sure the scene works, but if it does, it's because of the performances. We had one more small scene to shoot, but it will have to wait until tomorrow, as we have a good and surprising problem - we've run the camera's battery completely dead.

Moth Films Fund Drive

2008-10-15T17:42:00.000-07:00

Let's talk about that "Donate" button to the right, shall we? Because I'm not really looking for donations, I'm looking for investors. Let's get down to brass tacks:

- The budget for Black Light is $10,502.46. So far we've raised the $5600 needed for principal photography, which we wrapped last week.

- We're in need of approximately $3500 to buy the hardware and software needed to edit the movie. Since we came in a bit under budget on our shoot, any additional funds towards up to $10,502.46 would be put towards advertising our early screenings. If we raise the $3500 but come up short of $10,502.46, the budget and investors' shares will be adjusted accordingly.

- Investors will be repaid first. When the movie turns a profit, investors will be eligible for a proportionate share of 50% of all theatrical and ancillary profits returned to Moth Films whether we eventually sell to a distributor or go the self-distribution route. For instance, an investment of $210.05 would gurantee a 1% share of all profits.

- Investors are also promised a credit in the titles, copies of the DVD and an invitation to our premiere.

All this said, I realize it's a brutal time to ask anyone if they can spare a few bucks for a high-risk investment. This is why I waited until after the movie was shot, so you'll at least know I'm not going to take your money and bet it on the ponies. The footage we have is strong, and I'm serious about finishing a movie that will make everyone involved proud and hopefully pay you back for your generosity. If you can throw in five bucks, I'll certainly count it as an investment. And if you make any sort of investment, make sure to write me at blacklight.movie@gmail.com with your contact info so I can send a contract and keep you posted on the movie's progress (you can also write me to ask for a copy of our prospectus or for more information). Now that we've gotten that out of the way, I promise this post is the only panhandling you'll see here. The production journals will continue soon.

2008-10-13T18:44:00.000-07:00

Day 3 - Monday, September 29

5PM

We're at Club B-10, Mass MoCA's intimate performance space, shooting Jessica's cameo in the movie. Jessica is playing the acclaimed performance artist Vajj, whose most recent work is attended by Nikki, Alice and Alice's snooty college mates Meredith and Glencora. I suggested that Jessica rewrite Vajj's performance to accomodate her pregnancy, and now she won't tell me what she's come up with. Michael has also recruited his friend Aaron to play a jig during Jess' performance; because Aaron is also appearing in a different scene tonight, we've decided to give him a mask. Jess and Jessica went on a mission to find the strangest mask possible, and they've returned with a mask of a grinning old crone with a cap that reads "I Bingo." The sight of Aaron wearing the mask is completely terrifying - it looks like something that Conal Cochran designed to kill children. We have extras tonight, so I get to set the scene and give each audience member a bit of business. I'm enjoying the crowd control aspect of filmmaking.

I call action, and Aaron starts his jig. Jessica's performance is helped by her years of working at MoCA and navigating both the fascinating and ridiculous aspects of the art world. Vajj's act is like Oklahoma! by way of Ann-Sofi Siden, a demented harvest dance peppered with perfectly hamhanded symbolism. When Jessica finishes Vajj's act by mutilating a gourd, she taps into the kind of unchecked rage that only a very pregnant woman is capable of, emitting a primal scream before collapsing. She gets huge applause from the extras, and she's earned it - Jessica rarely gets the chance to show how far she's capable of going and how funny she can be, and I'm happy she made the most of this chance. A quick exchange between our leads, then we move on.

9PM

My friend Chris has gotten us a room at the mountainside resort he works at for our "private party" scene, which involves Nikki, at a low point emotionally, working at a bachelor party with her adversary, Czech dancer Nadja. Nadja is played by Kt Baldassaro, an actor and model whose work can be seen most prominently in the web series Without You, and is also an accomplished weaver. Kt auditioned in July, did strong readings of a couple characters but expressed a strong preference for Nadja - her desire to play the kinkier, less likable character intrigued me and pretty much got her the role. Right now, Kt's lost somewhere on Route 43 - understandable, given that the resort is as close to the middle of nowhere as one can get. Chris helps us direct her to the resort over the phone, and we check into our suite.

We realize when we get there that the room is missing one crucial prop: alcohol. Thinking out loud, I suggest that perhaps it would play funnier if the guys only had soda and popcorn to offer, but Bella cuts me off. "There's no way these guys wouldn't be already drunk and have booze to offer the dancers. Never happens." This is one of the reasons I wanted Bella for the part - someone to call bullshit on any details of my mostly-imagined script or the production - so I defer to her wisdom and send Ron and Chris to pick up booze. Bella also suggests porn for the TV, and happens to have a copy of Cum on My Tattoo #3 in her car. As we find a scene to play in the background, I realize that, if there was any doubt before, we have now definitely crossed into NC-17 territory.

Ben, an MCLA student playing groom-to-be Dale, comments on a woman getting penetrated in at least two orifices. "She doesn't look like she's having any fun."

"She isn't," KT responds.

Bella adds, "Actually, that's her husband."

Chris is sweet during the scene; he's never acted and is concerned about doing a good job, and he's afraid of what his wife's reaction will be. He does a great job as best man Tim, basically playing himself (that is, an easygoing dude who likes ladies). The latter fear is mostly unfounded, as there's little nudity in the scene - actually, what nudity there is mostly male, as a passed-out Tim and Dale are manipulated by Nadja into a homoerotic tableaux.

As Chris is stripping down to his skivvies and Ben goes full frontal, Ben tells Chris that "I'm glad I don't have a hard-on or anything. You might think I was gay."

"Yeah, I know," Chris says, "Me too. Ha ha."

Kt locates a wounded quality in Nadja that deepens her exchange with Nikki. What I'd written as Nadja's attempt to challenge Nikki's assumptions is playing as an attempt to relate with Nikki. She's easy to direct, knows when to embellish and when to stick to script, and it's a pleasure to read later that she's declared Black Light "[...] the cleanest stress-free shoot."

We then move into the bedroom for the scene between Nikki and Brent (the other character played by Aaron), a seemingly normal family man with a secret kinky side. I don't want to reveal too much about what happens between Nikki and Brent, but it's a scene that would be hard for any actor to get through without collapsing in defensive laughter. I play the scene in a master and a close-up on Nikki, which gives neither actor anywhere to hide. To his credit, Aaron is totally prepared to do what the scene requires, and it's fascinating to talk with Aaron and Bella about the underlying meanings of the scene and then translate this into action. The scene is as unsettling as I've hoped, but also darkly funny and - not sexy, exactly, but certainly carrying a sexual charge that surprises me.

At one point in the scene as scripted, Nikki confesses, "I'm a whore. I have no love in my heart." Bella says she thinks she should say more. I ask what else Nikki is guilty of.

"'I lie all the time,'" she adds.

"What was it Alice accuses her of? 'You don't make any sense.'"

"'I lie all the time. I don't make any sense and I refuse to change. I'm a whore and I have no love in my heart.'"

After, in the hall, we shoot Nikki leaving the party. The script has her breaking down, but that seems too big now, so we pull back. I call action, Bella opens the door and Chrissies it - in a few moments we see Nikki's exhaustion, confusion, misplaced anger and other areas that are Bella's to know and the camera's to guess at. We're done, and it's late - I think about hopping in the room's jacuzzi, but I fear I may not leave until morning.

2008-10-04T19:34:00.000-07:00

Day 2 - Saturday, September 28

12PM

The first of four locations today is a gallery on Eagle Street in North Adams owned by Eric Rudd, a local artist and one of the primary forces behind the effort to turn the town into an arts community. Eric's gallery was met with some controversy when local, conservative business owners objected to the relatively tame nude portraits that hung in the storefront. Those same paintings are on the walls for our scene, along with art by Howard Cruse, our landlord and the author of the wonderful Stuck Rubber Baby, among other things. Howard's also appearing in our scene today as an impatient gallery owner (after demanding top billing - I promised him the prestigious "and" credit), and his husband Edward Sedarbaum agrees to be an extra right before we shoot. Howard studied acting in college, and he and Ed appeared together as extras in the Sidney Lumet film Daniel, which places them among the most experienced actors in the movie.

In the scene, Alice - stuck in a particularly antisocial phase - is interviewed by Dick Derby, a reporter from the Banner, about her work. I'm playing Derby, partly because I couldn't find anyone who did the part quite the way I imagined it, and partly because it adds another layer to a scene that is already self-depricating (it's surreal when we take a break so the writer from the Transcript can ask us questions like "Why are you doing this?"). I'm wary of giving myself cameos that could play as Shyamalanesque self-importance, and I have no desire to go the Silent Bob route of director-as-pop-culture-icon. So I'm playing a dork, and I'm surprised how nervous I am about it. Usually acting doesn't cause me any stress, but I'm concerned about giving Jess something to play off and I don't have a director. Michael, on camera for this scene, is kind enough to suggest where to tone down the mugging, and I have fun doing the scene with Jess. She suggested adding this scene, and she's great in it, rolling with a last-minute rewrite that forces her to find the scene's emotion in a more economical way. After we wrap, she tells me it was hard to act off me because I was making her laugh. I don't get called "funny" in a positive way much, so it means a lot to me.

4PM

After wrapping early on the gallery scene and taking a short break, we move to the Hub Restaurant on Main Street, where Alice has the dinner date from hell with Meredith, a joyless, pretentious Pottery Barn employee. Meredith is played by Jenna Hoag, an MCLA student who killed at Friday night's script reading. It's not easy to do deadpan effectively, and Jenna's found the perfect monotone, dripping with contempt. We're a little low on extras, so Michael calls in some friends from a play he's rehearsing. Jess, Jenna and I build the scene's unease with small gestures - a pregnant pause here, a sideways glance there. The light in the restaurant is warm and barely needs adjusting. Jenna has an awkwardly long and verbose line to deliver, filled with words like "phallocentric," and "decontextualize," and it's gratifying, after one or two takes where she's understandably tongue-tied, to see her nail it. And despite Jess' fears, she manages to get through the scene without laughing.

6PM

Well, it couldn't all be so easy. First, when I get to MCLA's radio station (which we've booked for a scene where Nikki is interviewed by two leering DJs), I find a freshman who hasn't been informed that we're pre-empting her show and refuses to leave. We agree to work around it but Jessica, who is both eight months pregnant and a born producer, arranges to have the girl removed by security. Jessica could hold her own against Harvey Weinstein.

Next comes my first (and hopefully only) big fuckup. As we're unpacking, I realize I've left the camera's battery at the previous location, which is now closed. Frantic phone calls are made, and we get the battery. My mistake is the result of a smaller-than-expected crew and the need to wear many hats; I think I can direct, but I'd make a terrible grip. Luckily, what crew we have is bending over backwards for the movie - Michael's even kind enough to give me a backrub at just the right moment, without my having asked.

So we're finally ready to shoot the scene, and the actor playing Cougar - the head DJ - can't remember more than two or three lines at a time. Worse, he's playing the part way too low-key, so that it's barely registering. I learned from one of my directors that if an actor is lost, it's almost always better to encourage than to snap and create tension on the set. This guy, however, will not take a single direction, playing every take with the same somnabulent tone - it was literally easier to direct four-year-olds. When he auditioned I assumed the deadpan, burnout approach to Cougar was a choice, now I'm horrified to find that he was playing himself. Rather than accepting my directions on how to recall the lines and bring up the character's energy level, the Cougar explains that, since he is also a "shootist," he assumed I'd be doing a different setup for every line of dialogue. After an hour of fumbling through it, even Ron, our AD, can cue the guy's lines. Rather than informing him that fucking Tony Scott would find that a bit frantic and distracting, I ask Bella to join me in the hall.

"I'm sorry," I tell her, "But this isn't working. We've got to figure a way out of this."

"These guys suck."

"I know. I kind of feel bad for them."

After getting one more take of Cougar and the Woodman stumbling through the scene, I shoot Bella's close-up, reading the lines myself offscreen and directing her to play her discomfort. She's well-prepared and I think I can make it work. The next day, Bella tells me how uncomfortable the scene made her, for the reasons she writes about here - having wanted my set to be a totally safe and supportive creative environment, I'm aghast at my own miscalculation. I'd heard the Cougar make a crack about having trouble focusing with Bella exposing her breasts to him, joking oh so wittily that she should just keep her top off the whole time. I cringed and said "Hey now," but having just met Bella, I was reluctant to play the alpha male lest I overstep my bounds with a very strong, self-possessed woman. I was naive not to realize that even the toughest women (and men) need to feel like someone's got their back. I write the Cougar - who was scheduled to shoot B camera at Club Castaway - and tell him we won't be needing his services due to his lack of preparation and disrespect to a fellow actor. He denies having said any of that, saying Bella was the only professional there and accusing the rest of us of being on drugs. Well, I wasn't on drugs, Ken, but I guess I can be pretty unprofessional - enough so to focus on the scene at hand despite numerous distractions, to give an unprepared actor multiple chances to salvage his dignity, and even to use my blog to make fun of a burnt-out cautionary tale who doesn't know how to treat a lady.

9PM

We arrive a bit late at our last location, Howard and Ed's apartment, which is doubling for Meredith's. It's a relief after the tension of the last scene to get back to Jess and Jenna, who in this scene are doing lines of coke. I'm sure it'd be amusing to an experienced cocaine user to watch three neophytes attempt to do this accurately (and with flour), but eventually we find the right off-balance approach to the scene. Jenna is shaping up to be Black Light's biggest scene-stealer, and with every take we make Meredith stranger and more mysterious. When we do Jess' close-up, she launches into a coke-induced stream of consciousness about polar bears, entropy, death and loneliness, managing to be sad and hilarious and painfully human in one take. When we made Chrissie we knew we had it after that first take, so it's a pleasure to turn to her and coin a new phrase. "Jess," I tell her, "We Chrissied it." The smile on her face is perfect. We do a few quick exteriors and wrap what has been a rollercoaster of a day.

2008-10-03T09:30:00.000-07:00

Day 1 - Saturday, September 27

The first morning is spent converting our apartment into Alice's, which means clearing all baby-related items into the rooms we're not using and bringing in the many props found by Michael and Jessica, the movie's producers who took on the task of dressing locations (again Jessica is my wife/producer and Jess is the lead actress). After returning in the afternoon from a failed trip to find more pictures for Alice - who, in between getting high and bumming around at the dinosaur store, is a photographer - to find the walls lined with stacks of books and the floors littered with dirty clothes. There are also skis sitting in a corner, paintings wedged haphazardly behind dressers and other props meant to suggest that Alice has tried and given up on many things. Shooting at home means waiting until after Luna's nap to begin, so I make a cup of tea and sit in the yard in a futile attempt to clear my head. An overcast day, I think. Good cloud cover.

Bella arrives around 3:30; we're still getting to know each other and I want to start on the right foot, so of course I find my mom talking to Bella and Jess about my recent vasectomy. Good, so now we know each other. Luna wakes, mom takes her out to play and we turn our attention to Black Light. The main challenge of the day is creating an intimacy between two actors who've only met the night before. I'd hoped the first day would be devoted to more casual scenes, but juggling the availability of actors and locations means starting on a sequence revolving around pillow talk about pubic hair, leading into an impromptu photo shoot. While I'm confident the "bush vs. shaved" scene, which was inspired by a drunken debate between friends, will play, the photo shoot is meant as the one fully improvised scene in the movie. Anyone with improv experience will tell you about the high failure-to-success ratio, so I figure it's going to take some time to get it right.

When Jess and Bella get into bed and we start blocking the scene, I know immediately that I've found the right Nikki and Alice. Their chemistry is immediate - each brings out sweetness and honesty in the other, and most important, they're really listening to each other right away. I tweak the blocking, asking Jess to let her head rest on the soft spot just above Bella's hip - the most comfortable place to rest one's head on another person, I've found - which helps Jess find the right morning-after tired horniness for the scene. Bella asks if I saw Nikki as naked in the scene. I tell her I'd pictured a t-shirt and underwear, and she says she assumed she'd be naked. I admit that bottomless would work better, that the undies were one of several small concessions to a potentially less self-assured performer. But the t-shirt, I think, is sexy, so she throws on one of Jess' tank tops. I love having an actress willing to go as far with Nikki as I'd imagined, and I feel a strong sense of responsibility in deciding when it will enhance the scene and when it will be completely gratuitous.

The other challenge of the day is that my DP, a near-lifelong friend who has been involved with Black Light for a year, has flaked out without any notice. With no time to find another DP and a small crew to begin with, this means dividing my attention between working with the actors and lighting each shot (though my plan to use available light when possible helps). As I light the scene, Jess and Bella create a sequence of poses for Nikki to model as Alice snaps away. As we begin shooting the "bush talk" part of the scene, I find that the orange walls of Alice's room, which I feared would be two strong, actually work well with the Lowel and source lights to create an orange glow on Jess and Bella's skin. Coupled with their performances, the scene is shaping up as far more intimate than I'd imagined, an essentially comic scene given an unexpected erotic charge. When Alice orders Nikki to "Say 'pussy' one more time," a line I'd meant as a deadpan joke, Jess plays it as a turn-on of Alice's, and it's stronger and better that way. Maybe these moments of detachment that I'd written in were what I needed to talk myself into getting to this point.

When we get to the photo shoot - a scene I'd feared might be a bit thin, or too familiar - I see how far Jess and Bella are willing to go for me and the movie. Bella is not only aided by her experience and ease with modeling for a camera, she's also one of the most open actors I've worked with; as Nikki is submitting herself to this inexperienced, awkward photographer's directions, I realize Bella's doing the same with me. What she percieved as caution was actually gratitude - Jess is the only other actor who's ever given me this level of trust right off the bat. And as she takes pictures of Bella, directing her to strip, smoke, lie on her stomach, lie on her back, and finally pinning her to the bed, I see in Jess a confidence and sexual aggressiveness that I'd never seen before. There's a slightly surreal feeling to Jess pacing around the room finding shots of Bella as I do the same to both of them; Jessica told me this movie would be therapudic, and I'm starting to get what she means.

The next scene is a brief but important one; while I want the other love scenes to mirror the physical awkwardness and immediacy of the real thing, I wanted to give Nikki and Alice one movie moment. The plan is to push in on Nikki and Alice, veiled in blue light, locked in a stylized embrace. The clouds prevent enough exposure from the moon, but Alice's tv casts a flickering blue light across the room.

Jess asks, "So what do you want us to do here?"

"Well, Nikki and Alice are kissing, and I pictured them in a sort of formal position."

Bella adds, "What kind of position?"

"Well, like they're locked in together."

Bella laughs. "Scissors!" Jess shakes her head no. After a few tries, they find a comfortable pose. I decide, rather than pushing in, to pan across the doorway, beginning and ending in darkness. I call action, and for two takes they kiss and touch each other. Bella will later tell me that she was just relying on a standard porno pose, but the camera read it as something different - hungry and even compassionate. As I review the footage later, I wonder to myself where attraction ends and begins - where Bella and Jess are able to connect Nikki and Alice's scenes to their own experiences and where it's pure acting. It's the sort of thing that's best left unspoken between a director and an actor - it's too much like talking during sex, in this case quite literally. But this ambiguity is one of the reasons that I'm a director; in real life I'm too polite to ask about such things, but the camera allows me to wonder.

One day down, eight to go.

First Press

2008-09-29T08:53:00.000-07:00

Independent film co. shooting in N. Adams

I did not, in fact, direct The Departed. My mom mentioned my having worked on it, but I definitely never referred to it as "my previous film," and I don't know if many (or any) MCLA students worked on the film. Other than that, a good and much-appreciated article.

Meet Alice & Nikki

2008-09-18T18:55:00.000-07:00

While I previously said I'm not quite ready to classify Black Light in many ways, it's safe to say that it's a character-driven movie. At its heart is the relationship between Nikki the stripper and Alice the dinosaur girl, and while the most technically complicated scenes happen at Club Castaway, capturing a believable intimacy between the two characters is for me the most daunting thing about making the movie. And it's a lot to ask two actresses as well - to be naked is, I think, nothing compared to communicating the intensity of Nikki and Alice's connection, to coherently portray what happens in and outside of the bedroom as two haves of one ongoing conversation. So naturally, the process of casting each character could not have been more different.

There's been an Alice literally before there was a script. When I was still finding the movie from a vague idea born out of locations and subject matter, I felt like the basic concept - a nerdy guy at a dinosaur shop meets cute with an exotic dancer - was missing something. At the same time, I was struggling to find a role for my friend Jessica Conger. Jess and I became friends on our first weekend at school, when we both lagged behind a mandatory hike up Mt. Greylock and spent three hours discussing musicals, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and how much living away from home was going to rule. I realized later that school year, at a production of The Vagina Monologues, that she was a genuine hidden talent - Jess, who will tell you frequently and emphatically that she has no desire to have kids, delivered a monologue filled with gooey imagery about the wonder of childbirth with conviction and a believable sense of awe. I knew then that I wanted her to be my De Niro (or Bruce Campbell, if you prefer). She was going to play the female lead in Worlds a sci-fi screenplay I wrote with my future wife (also named Jess) that we could never quite crack. A few years ago we made a minimalist, dialogue-free short called Chrissie; we were both on the same wavelength creatively and in our lives, so we made it with a near-wordless understanding of what it was about, and after one take we agreed that we'd gotten it. Not everyone agrees, of course - one of my fondest memories of Jess is the first time we showed Chrissie to friends, and Jess nearly had to be physically restrained from attacking someone asked, "Is it supposed to be about something?"

Because of all this, I wanted to find something meatier for Jess than the best friend of the guy. And then it clicked - stripper falls in love with girl at the dino store. It immediately opened up a world of possibilities, and not because gay automatically equals substance. For one, it gave me a window into the story, as for whatever reason, I've always tended to personalize female characters. I'm not saying I'm ready to start the hormone treatments, but I've always had more female than male friends, and have difficulty relating to other testicle-bearing humans. Though the character isn't supposed to be me (a point we'll discuss in more detail in a future post), using a woman to voice my perspective on the story allows me to be truer to my own instincts, which can be (not to put too fine a point on it) kind of girly. And though Jess and I have a lot in common, we're also different in some ways - she's more sardonic and pragmatic, and has an unwavering love of Troll II. Writing Alice with her in mind, I could hear Jess' voice like a constant bullshit detector, forcing me to sharpen every moment. Despite (or perhaps because of) the role's many challenges, her enthusiasm and commitment has never flagged; when I asked her a while ago why we'd stuck with the movie when many more conventionally "hot" actors had chickened out, she responded smartly, "Because we don't have anything to lose."

Finding a Nikki was a longer and more complicated process. It began with Kate, my lifelong friend, accepting the part last summer while I was still writing and before I'd actually offered it to her. But I took her enthusiasm as a good sign, and as with Jess, having Kate in mind helped me to find the character as I was writing. Kate stayed with the movie for about a year, coming to readings and rehearsals and helping to further shape the character. Then, a few months ago, we went for a long, aimless car ride as she explained that her life was taking her in a different direction, towards writing and focusing on her family, and she just couldn't do it. I couldn't fault her honesty, and it was a good conversation; that said, when Jess and I got together that weekend to talk about the movie, our enthusiasm was muted. Neither of us said so, but I think she'd agree that it felt a bit like getting dumped, and the prospect of finding a new Nikki was a daunting one.

A few weeks later I put some ads up on Craigslist and New England Film, and got a number of promising responses, though none seemed to be quite right for Nikki. Then I got an e-mail from a woman named Bella Vendetta, asking if I was still looking for anyone. Bella's a true Renaissance Woman, an award-winning writer, fashion designer, filmmaker actress, dancer and porn star, one of the few people who can list both Edith Wharton Writing Society and AVN Award-winning projects on her resume. Her attitude towards sex and performance was perfectly complimentary for the character and material; plus, as a co-worker put it when I asked if Bella was her type, "She's everyone's type." I went for broke and wrote an embarassingly gushy response; after a few weeks I hadn't heard much, so I figured she wasn't interested, as I always assume pretty women are put off by me (it's actually still amazing to me that I'm married).

Then, after talking to Jessica (for clarity's sake, my friend will be Jess and my wife will be Jessica) about the script, a friend of mine - also named Kate - expressed interest. Kate's a great actress who has worked in films and plays most of her life; she's one of the smartest people I know, and very serious about her craft. I sent her the script; her reaction was mixed, but led to a great extended conversation about the issues the movie raises and what it would mean in the context of her career and life to play a part so drastically different from what she's usually offered. There were some issues to be figured out, not the least of which was the fact that Kate and her family live in Kentucky; but as my (hopefully) last audition approached, she was leaning towards accepting. So, of course, Bella got in touch to let me know she'd be coming to the audition. So now, after months of no Nikki, I found myself with two options for Nikki that were interesting for completely different reasons.

Bella came to the audition, did strong auditions for several different characters, and knocked Nikki out of the ballpark capturing her evasiveness, curiosity and essential sweetness. Problem is, she had a prior commitment to be out of town for three days in the middle of the schedule. I figure this makes my decision between two very strong actresses easier, so when I get home I officially offer Kate the role. And she promptly turns it down - very sweetly and apologetically, but it's just not the right time. I can't blame her, I'm sure we'll work together at some point, and clearly this role is not meant for anyone named Kate. So I decide to bite the bullet, rearrange the schedule, and offer Bella the role, which she enthusiastically accepts. A while later, using the internet for voyeuristic purposes, I stumble upon her livejournal and find this:

"Went to whately for a movie audition. Its this awesome lesbian love story. I REALLY want the lead role. The lead is Nikki Blue, shes a fucked up stripper sick of men who ends up falling for a kind of butch dyke. the director said he was really impressed with how I rad the part and that I seemed made for it. And he didnt even see me dance yet! [...] I think the movie is really importnt and is gonna do really well..."

And then, from that morning, the sort of thing that warms a director's heart:

"I got the part!!!!!!!

say hello to the new Miss Nikki Blue!!!!"

What is Black Light about?

2008-08-28T19:50:00.000-07:00

Well, it's about 110 pages long. Wakka wakka!

I apologize.

The short version is, Black Light is about Nikki Blue, a dancer at a tiny strip club located on a rural route in western Massachusetts. A few minutes down the road, there's a store that sells fossils, rocks, and dino-related items; the clerk at the store is Alice, a frequently stoned, perpetually nervous young woman with no plans to speak of. Black Light is about what happens when Nikki and Alice meet, and how it changes both of them. It's also about the women Nikki works with, and about being young and in the middle of nowhere.

I'm sure some variation of the above will make good DVD copy. But what's it really about? Well, it depends on who I'm talking to. My stock answer is that it's a romantic comedy, for lack of a better qualifier. Usually that satisfies people, but when the doorman at the Red Herring (the bar next to the cinema I work at) responded to the romantic comedy response with a snore and asked what else it is, I admitted that it might also be called lesbian erotica. "You know," he said, "You should really say that instead." And when I had to pitch the movie to the reasonably concerned-looking Whately board of selectmen so that Jimmy the Greek could get a special entertainment license for the shoot, I went for broke and used two very dirty words - I called it an "art film." It worked, but afterwords I went home and watched a slasher movie to purge the pretension from my system.

Why do I want to make it? I'm working on that. I want it to be sexy but also smart, and hopefully funny and relatable. Beyond that, I'm still figuring it out. David Cronenberg responded to this question by saying that he makes a film to find out why he made it - I like that. Another response from a more qualified source than I: once I got the chance to ask Werner Herzog about the brilliant, insane ending of Stroszek, asking why he lingers on that damn dancing chicken for so long. He said he just holds any shot for as long as he finds its subject interesting. That's maybe the best advice on filmmaking I've ever gotten, and I've tried to follow it since. Right now, what interests me is a dancer and a dinosaur girl. And hopefully in a little while I'll be able to tell you why.

Pitching Jimmy

2008-08-17T12:11:00.000-07:00

The owner of Club Castaway is Jimmy the Greek. It's how he introduces himself, and it's the name on his business card. I can't quite bring myself to ask Jimmy his last name as I sit across from him in his spacious office, and I don't really want to. Nothing else could possibly sound as cool as "Jimmy the Greek," and Jimmy obviously knows it. I'm not sure what I expected the owner of Club Castaway - upon whose shoulders the fate of my first feature, Black Light, currently rests - to be like. Maybe like Robert Davi in Showgirls, or Paulie Walnuts. Certainly not this silk-clad, sixtysomething Greek gentleman of leisure sitting across from me.

The day before, I'd stopped by the club to drop off the script for Black Light, a script about a dancer named Nikki who falls for a stoned, neurotic gift shop salesclerk named Alice. It's a small club nestled in a rural stretch of farmland in Whately, MA (locals affectionately and not-so-affectionately refer it as "porn in the corn"). While the script was influenced by the experiences of friends, it's very much a work of imagination - I have little knowledge of how a strip club is run, and assumed the owner would scoff at the idea for any number of reasons. These might include the script's gay-friendly story, its somewhat critical attitude towards the sex industry and the possiblility that the club was actually a cover for Panda smuggling or something. In the year I've been planning Black Light with my company, Moth Films (made up of a few close friends), we'd always assumed we'd have to substitute a VFW or Elks Lodge for a real club. So when, the next morning, Jimmy called to ask if I'd meet him that night to talk about the movie, I half-assumed it was to threaten me with legal action for the use of his club's name.

I arrive at the club at eight on a weeknight, so the place is pretty dead - a few guys at the bar, and just one sitting at the stage. When the manager asks me for the five dollar cover fee, I tell him I'm there to meet Jimmy. "Oh yeah," he says, "the movie guy." A few minutes later Jimmy arrives, extending his hand.

"Hey Andy, I'm Jimmy the Greek. Let's talk in my office, okay?"

Jimmy leads me through the VIP area and the dressing room, stopping a few times to wrap his arms around dancers and ask how they've been, and then up the stairs to his office. The walls are decorated with Elvis memorabilia, framed black-and-white pictures of relatives, and a vintage poster of a naked Marilyn Chambers posing with a box of Ivory Soap. "Have a seat over on the couch," Jimmy says. I think of what has happened on this couch over the years. Maybe nothing. Maybe it's just for napping.

A minute later, Jimmy's manager, Jojo, sits next to us. Jimmy adjusts his glasses, clears his throat and speaks. "So this movie is about dancers who go to Reno and make a lot of money?" The first line in the script, a throwaway is "I'm thinking about going to Reno in September."

"No," I tell Jimmy, "Nobody goes to Reno. It's about the characters at the club and their relationships with - "

"So there is no hooking in this movie?" Jimmy stares at me suspiciously. I think that no studio exec I might someday pitch an idea to will be as daunting as Jimmy the Greek.

"No, there's no hooking. Actually, one character turns tricks after hours, and the other characters don't approve of this."

Jimmy softens. "You know, I've got to make sure I'm protecting my girls." This is how Jimmy talks about the dancers - he's affectionate, a womanizer, but in a harmless way, like a smarmy old uncle. I like Jimmy, even though he might be the devil.

Jojo interjects, "We're close here, like a family." Jojo goes on to tell me that most of the dancers are students, and I find out that she and I actually have the same degree. We move on to details about when I want to shoot, and for how long. I assure Jimmy his parking lot won't be packed with trailers or lighting rigs. I'm surprised by how much Jimmy knows about the moviemaking process, as if he's been waiting for this to happen. Then, the question I've been dreading.

"So, what do I get paid for letting you use my club?"

I start my prepared speech. "Well, in addition to the free publicity your club will receive, we can offer a substantial percentage of any potential profits, as well as a small advance."

"How small?"

"A hundred dollars a day."

Jimmy laughs for a long time. I'm ready to call it quits, when he says, "So how many of my girls do you need?"

"Pardon?"

"How many girls do you need for the movie?"

"So...we can shoot here?"

"Yeah, why not."

So not only have I just secured the movie's main location, I also arrange to hold an audition for real dancers to play roles in the movie. And with that, Black Light is a go picture.