(The Last Blunder is a humorous weekly serial detailing the making of a true independent filmmaking catastrophe. I hope all of you who read along find it entertaining and can relate to it to some degree. The names of the participants have been changed. Any comments, suggestions, compliments, or criticisms can be sent to damianATkaverasfilmDOTcom. Enjoy!)
The Last Blunder: Chapter 10 by Damian K. Lahey
We haven’t discussed Karen Hall, the art director of The Last Blunder, very much and there’s a good reason for that. She loathed Balthazar Spankenstein and just about every other aspect of the production as well. She stayed away from the office as much as possible but was very intelligent and hard working. She’d assembled a cool group of guys to help her in the art department that I liked drinking with.
That afternoon I had lunch at Pizza Palace, my favorite spot in Wilmington. I had a slice of pizza and a shot of bourbon before heading back to the office. As I was pulling up, Karen stormed out of the office. I saw that both Shifto Jeans and Spanky’s cars were in the driveway. That explained things right away. I got out of my car and asked Karen what was going on. She told me she could now confirm what she knew all along about Shifto and Spanky. They were raving pedophiles. She told me she went to the office to pick up a petty cash envelope and Shifto and Spanky were watching audition tapes of ten to twelve year old girls in bikinis. They were watching with the sound off and rating the girls from one to ten. She told me it was disgusting and unprofessional and was thinking about quitting. She said she was going to talk to her husband about it. But she was appalled by their behavior. She got in her car and drove off.
I walked into the office and there they were - sitting cross legged in front of the TV, giggling and pointing at an eleven year old girl in a bikini sitting on a stool and reading what I assumed were sides from The Last Blunder. You couldn’t tell, though, because just as Karen had said – the sound was turned off. I watched as Shifto and Spanky decided that she was an eight and then high fived. My production assistant, Emily Loft was sitting at her desk reading a magazine. I motioned for her to follow me into the kitchen. I asked her what the hell was going on. She told me that Spanky had called while I was at lunch wondering if there had been a FedEx delivery from a talent agency. There had been. An excited Spanky and Shifto had showed up within five minutes, torn the package open, and had popped it into the VCR, salivating at the mouth. They’d been having themselves a ball for the past thirty minutes. I told her to stay in the kitchen.
I walked back into the office area and asked Spanky and Shifto to turn off the VCR and speak to me for a second. They asked me if I thought the twelve year old on the screen was hot. I turned off the TV and asked Shifto what his wife and kids would think if they knew what he was doing. He said he’d tell them he was on official casting director business and exchanged a smirk with Spanky. I told them that whatever sick, twisted shit they were into - they needed to cut it out. We were two weeks away from shooting and there were still a couple roles that needed to be cast. Shifto told me not to forget who was paying my bills and Spanky agreed. I told them to keep that stuff out of the production office and back at the bunker. Spanky told me that was out of the question because Midriff was there. I told him it was out of the question to do that shit at the office as Karen, who they both knew was already sensitive to things of that nature, was now thinking of quitting because they were a couple of pigs. Spanky made a comment about that being her problem. I told them it was our problem and a big one and we needed Karen and she couldn’t be replaced and to do so would be at too great an expense. I shoved the VHS tape into David’s fumbling hands and told them to leave.
As soon as the door was closed, I called Biff Frank. I knew Biff was gonna ask if Spanky had raised any more money. I was going to have to disappoint him. Biff was getting stressed out. He was making promises to the vendors based on money we hadn’t raised yet and we were two weeks out. We were about 25,000 off, but going forward anyway. This was really driving Biff up the wall. He had suggested a week earlier that I cold call for Spanky to raise more money. I suggested he do it himself. I called Biff and told him about Karen Hall and Emily Loft and the audition tape. He laughed and told me Karen and Emily were probably making it up because they didn’t like Spanky or Shifto. I told him I saw it myself and that he needed to call Karen and talk her into staying on board. He stopped laughing and said he would make a couple phone calls.
Molly Wire walked in five minutes later. I hadn’t seen our glorified “accountant” in quite some time. She plopped a large manila folder on my desk and told me she was quitting. I’d been paying her weekly salary for about seven weeks and had never even seen her. Spanky would pick up her check. I asked her why she was leaving us and she told me it was because Spanky was an ass-hole. She said I could keep her last pay check and left. I opened up the manila envelope and looked inside. It was filled with production accounting sheets. And all of them were blank.
(I want to thank everybody for reading and hope you continue to read as the misadventures of The Last Blunder continue next week…)
(The Last Blunder is a humorous weekly serial detailing the making of a true independent filmmaking catastrophe. I hope all of you who read along find it entertaining and can relate to it to some degree. The names of the participants have been changed. Any comments, suggestions, compliments, or criticisms can be sent to damianATkaverasfilmDOTcom. Enjoy!)
The Last Blunder: Chapter 9 by Damian K. Lahey
Things proceeded smoothly in the world of The Last Blunder for a couple of weeks. Biff was taking care of getting the grip, electric, and camera packages together. Curley Blonde had taken care of the locations, and we assumed Shifto had taken care of the casting. We weren’t going to be meeting any of the principals anyway. Studs and Billy had faded into the background and Salami was thankfully busy getting the costume department together. Morrison, our D.P. and for all intensive purposes, our director, was bearing the brunt of Spankenstein’s ever increasing retardation. If I knew they were going to be at my house working through the script, I’d hang out at my favorite local dive bar and wonder what I was doing with my life.
Yep. Things were going well. Then I started getting phone calls, increasingly angry phone calls from some of Spankenstein’s clients from his wedding video business. He’d fallen off the face of the earth they were saying. They couldn’t get a hold of him. On his home answering machine was our number, so that’s why they were calling. One afternoon a gentleman called and said that the video he’d commissioned from Spanky was supposed to be his daughter’s wedding gift. It was two months late. I made the mistake of telling this aggravated father of the bride that it was really none of my business. He responded by verbally tearing my head off and saying that he demanded either the wedding video, his money back, or he was going to sue Spanky. He was also an attorney.
I hung up the phone rather irritated. This was trouble from Spanky in a form I hadn’t expected. I picked up the phone and called him. He sounded high and plastered when he answered. He told me it was Suzy Midriff’s 18th birthday. She was finally legal. Whoopee. I told him to come down to the office immediately. I wanted to take care of this while Biff was at the rental house sorting out some financial details. I didn’t want him to know this was happening. I also wanted to put a stop to those phone calls. I didn’t need production assistants playing the answering machine and coming across pissed off clients from Spanky’s floundering videography business.
Twenty minutes later while I was updating our crew and contact lists, Suzy Midriff came into the office all dolled up in a flowered dress, wearing heavy makeup, her bosom bouncy and sweaty - the southern birthday girl in full. Spankentstein followed behind her, blushing with hickeys all over his face and neck. The bottom of his shirt was sticking out of his fly. I guess they’d been out in front of the house doing it in his car. I’d told my assistant production office coordinator she wouldn’t be needed for the day and was grateful I had. Suzy said it was time she and I buried the hatchet. I told her I had no hard feelings and really didn’t have time to deal with her anyway. She said we should do a shot. I told her she needed to go back outside to the car and wait for Spanky.
I let Spanky know about my phone conversation. Spanky acted surprised the guy called the production office. I reminded him that our office number was on his answering machine and he had no excuses. I gave Spanky the opportunity to explain himself. His story was that he had to put the film first. He had no time to take care of work and The Last Blunder. It was too much. I knew how Spanky spent his time. Or rather, I thought I knew. I thought he spent it working on his wedding videos, getting stoned, and porking Midriff. But I was wrong. Not only was he slack about his own production, he was also woefully negligent when it came to his job and his own personal upkeep. He was freaked about the possibility of a lawsuit, though. He agreed that we couldn’t have that happening while trying to make a film. He would have to pay back the money. He couldn’t, of course. Spanky needed to pay rent. Spanky needed car repairs. Spanky needed weed. There was only one option and Spanky knew it all along. It would have to come out of the budget. I told Spanky he needed to pull it together and cut the guy’s video together. That was all there was to it. Spanky hadn’t even digitized the footage. He was helpless. I underestimated him, though. I thought he was afraid enough of Biff to go ahead and cut the thing together and take care of it like a man. But he just didn’t give a shit. He leaned back in his chair and said fuck it. It was money he’d raised and he would do whatever the fuck he wanted to do with it. To a certain degree, he was right. We already didn’t have enough money. What was another a couple grand? I told Spanky I wasn’t going to take the fall for it. He was fine with that. Officially, the conversation would end with us deciding to wait until meeting with Biff before letting Spanky take out any money. After he left, I didn’t feel bad for very long. I finished what I was doing and left the office early for the first time since we’d started.
(I want to thank everybody for reading and hope you continue to read as the misadventures of The Last Blunder continue next week…)
When I wake up tomorrow morning, it won’t be Toronto dreamin’ anymore. I am hours away from hopping on a plane and embarking on the exciting mission of attending my very first Toronto International Film Festival. Please be sure to check out Hammer to Nail (as well as @hammertonail at Twitter) for updates, of which there will hopefully be many! See y’all mofos in Canada…
It’s been almost three months since the smoke began to clear, and in this fast-paced times, it feels even longer than that. So long, in fact, that the whole After Last Season “phenomenon” had begun to feel like a weird childhood dream. Or maybe this is still the dream? Either way, this news is big indeed. Mark Region’s After Last Season is coming to DVD on September 30th. Visit the film’s official website to watch a fittingly bizarre trailer.
For the first time in over five years, I am currently staring at a big fat balance of ZERO.ZERO-ZERO on all three of my credit cards. While I knew this moment was going to happen this month, having just hit the “send” button on the final payment, it has now become an actual-factual-concrete-cement-physical reality. The noises outside my window—cicadas, distant sirens, leaves rustling in the breeze—all sound a touch lighter all of a sudden. I made a commitment to myself at the beginning of 2008 that I was going to return to my old responsible behavior, which was mangled into disregard when I made Cocaine Angel and Silver Jew. Independent filmmaking—if you aren’t inherently wealthy, that is—breeds forced fiscal irresponsibility. It’s funny, though. Part of me feels like now that I’m back at ground zero, I’m ready to take the feature plunge once again. But that isn’t going to happen until next summer at the earliest, which is just fine by me. Peace out, debt!
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