(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 12 by Damian K. Lahey
For the first week of production, we were shooting at the lead character’s house. This was good because we had no company moves and didn’t have to wrap the set every day. After weeks of fine tuning the schedule, Biff told me we were going to be shooting late every day regardless. Biff loved to reiterate that the crew needed to pay their dues. He had already paid his. He loved telling the story about him setting up a t-shirt company in some hick town in North Carolina and driving the old man that had been there for thirty years out of business. This was his way of telling people that he would beat the competition at any cost.
If there’s one rule to low budget filmmaking it’s that you feed your crew well. The way to a crew is to their stomachs. No matter how little you pay them, always feed them well. Biff and Spankenstein had found a greek lady that would cater the film for dirt cheap. In return, the food was dirt poor. Crews usually wait for lunch with anticipation. They dreaded it on The Last Blunder. I always tried to take lunch off set to avoid the bitching and ridicule of the crew.
On the first day of shooting, Balthazar showed up without his director’s notebook. He’d lost it the night before and couldn’t find it. That wasn’t good. Then, Morrison and his gang took half the day to set up the first shot. Beleaguered 1st AD John Gavin pulled me aside during lunch. He was only going to be with us for two weeks. He had some comic book convention to attend after that. He was almost as fat as Salami and wore the same Farscape hat every day. He busted out his copy of the schedule and asked me what shots could either be cut or rescheduled. We were woefully behind. I looked over the schedule and cut out a couple shots I thought wouldn’t affect the continuity of the story. But I wasn’t too worried about it. I had to go to Kinko’s to reprint all our sides and then go to the office and redo the schedule. You see, the day after my crew dinner party and the day before we started shooting, Spanky had decided to do a “polish” of the script. While it wasn’t much, it made all the sides and all the schedules off by a couple scene numbers.
One thing for sure, our set certainly did look professional. We had the trucks, the equipment, and certainly the man power to make it look that way. We couldn’t afford it, though. With an army of ADs milling about and everybody piling up on interns and assistants, we blew our craft service budget for three days in one. Biff didn’t mind us blowing our wad making it look big. He wanted to impress those investors. And on that first day, they showed up. Unfortunately, they were greeted by Shifto, Studs, and Billy Bold. Even though these guys had brought their children and wives to check out the movie they’d invested in, Bold thought it would be best to talk about picking up chicks and curse like a sailor, while slurring his words and guzzling from his 40 oz mixed drink. One of the wives shielded her children from Bold and walked away in disgust. He and Studs thought that was awesome.
Later in the evening, Suzy Midriff showed up wearing a bosomy dress and heavy makeup. She made her entrance like she was the grand dame of southern independent filmmaking, but nobody noticed. Spanky made it clear he had no time for her. He was making a movie. He had to stay focused on his vision. While I was typing up the next day’s call sheet, I saw her storm off set, bawling. Howie, the leprechaun looking art department lackey, came out and consoled her.
At that time, I liked having my own private wet bar on set. I set it up in the camera truck. I also had my own portable office of a lap top and printer that I would set up at each location. I preferred the wet bar. Our camera loader was a burnt out surfer dude named Armstrong. Armstrong liked Victoria Secret and decorated his truck with cut out pictures of the models. He smoked pot all day long when his hands weren’t in the tent. He had a good sense of humor and was the kind of guy you wanted on an independent film set. Having a drink with him while making production calls was always a good way to get away from it all.
While I waited on one of the runners to get back with the call sheets, I made the rounds. I liked to bond with the crew on set to boost morale. I liked dropping in and telling a well placed joke here and there. Basically, I felt really guilty they were being treated so badly. I tried to keep everybody laughing because I constantly had butterflies in my stomach. I nursed my drink and walked past the art department truck. I thought I saw Karen in the back. I was trying hard to get on her good side. She was miserable and making a big deal of it – telling everyone in town about how incompetent we were and what a degenerate sicko Spanky was. I walked up the ramp and opened my mouth to say something when I saw that it wasn’t Karen at all. It was Howie, standing in the back of the truck with Suzy on her knees, giving him a full-service-Johnny-blow-job. I watched for a second as Suzy bobbed up and down like her very soul was at stake. Howie noticed me watching and put a finger to his lips, ssshhh… I slowly backed down the ramp and hoped we’d be wrapping soon.
(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 11 by Damian K. Lahey
Our final production meeting went well and I was pleased with that. I couldn’t believe we had pulled it all together. Our first day of shooting was going to be the following Monday. I decided to throw a dinner party for the department heads that Friday at my house. It was something I liked to do. It was a calm before the storm sort of thing and if it reeked of me sucking up – it was because I was indeed sucking up.
I was going to cook chicken and shrimp with penne pasta. I bought a couple bottles of booze, but aside from that, it was BYOB. Biff wasn’t going to attend. Neither was Karen Hall. She was going to a “real party” for a “real show” with her big shot art department lackey boyfriend. Spanky, Shifto, Studs, and Billy Bold would be absent as well. This is because they weren’t invited.
At this point, I need to introduce you, my gentle readers, to Randall Dillon. Randall was our key electric. He had worked sporadically on a prominent TV series in town and had been fired for being an out of control drunk. He day-played on various other gigs in town to pay the bills. He constantly worked because his girlfriend was a big makeup artist in town and pulled all the strings she could for him. No one understood it. This shit kicker had missed four out of six production meetings. This was because he would get slobbering drunk at this honky tonk across the street from his girlfriend’s house. Don’t get me wrong. He was an all right guy, but he couldn’t hold his liquor. After a couple drinks, he would start whoopin’ and hollerin’, screaming ‘the south will rise again’ at the top of his lungs.
He’d missed our final production meeting because he’d flat out disappeared. His girlfriend had shown up looking for him. It turns out he’d passed out in a ravine outside of his 24-7 watering hole. Some morning joggers had come across his body Law & Order style around eight in the morning and called 911. The fire engines arrived and a paramedic revived Randall with some smelling salts. They offered him a ride back to his house, but he begged them off. He walked across the street to his girlfriend’s house and raided her liquor cabinet with a vengeance. A fifth of vodka, a shower, and an hour of internet porn later, Randall was back at the honky tonk. When confronted with his tab from the previous evening, Randall responded by grabbing a beer from the guy at the stool next to him and chugging it ferociously. The police were called and Randall was thrown into the drunk tank. On the ride home, he promised his girlfriend he’d stop drinking and go to AA meetings. That lasted till he climbed back into his girlfriend’s refrigerator and sucked down beers till he passed out on the floor.
The next day he woke up feeling like crap. A note from his girlfriend let him know he’d missed our last production meeting and that he should call me. He did and was all apologies. There was really nothing I could do to the guy. We weren’t paying him enough and we were shooting in three days. He was excited about the party, though. He said he was going to bring a twelve pack and his world famous potato salad. He was going to use a recipe that had been passed down to generations of Dillons, beginning with his great-great grandfather, Confederate Col. Jeremiah Dillon. Jeremiah used to make his potato salad to boost the morale of his troops during the civil war, or ‘the war that got away’, as Randall liked to refer to it.
I spent the day sipping whiskey sours and getting ready for the party with Morrison and Phil Lately. I persuaded Lately not to invite any of his homeless buddies. I also put him to work since he was incapable of paying rent for the third month in a row. I was using the party as an excuse to not go to the office and listen to Biff Frank complain about us being broke. We only had enough money to shoot for three weeks. I had scheduled the shoot for five, but knew realistically we’d need to shoot for six or seven. It was just dawning on him that we were shooting in three days. He was getting the jitters and to be honest, so was I. Everyone was, except maybe Randall, who was getting ready for what he thought was going to be a five week party. He’d have to settle for three. That was another reason I was throwing this shindig. Guilt. Biff and I weren’t telling anyone they were out of a job till the end of the third week. I didn’t feel good about it. Especially considering what we were paying them.
Everyone showed up and had a good time. I was glad. It’s always good to lift people’s spirits before a no holds barred independent film production. The Savantis were huge Stones fans and brought over Goat’s Head Soup, Bridges to Babylon and It’s Only Rock N’ Roll. The drinks flowed and everyone enjoyed the food. The only person who didn’t bring anything was Salami and she ate and drank twice as much as everyone else, while boasting about how she didn’t spend any money on us because she wasn’t getting paid enough. Biff made a point of calling when things started hopping to tell me about a mistake I’d made on the first day’s call sheet. Biff didn’t like it when people were having a good time and he wasn’t there. But I understood his stress and frustration. He had made some promises to the vendors he knew he couldn’t keep. There was only one ace up our sleeve. Investors were going to be visiting the set weekly. Biff had spent some production money on a gamble. He wanted everything to look as professional as possible to impress the money men so they would give us more cash.
Just as things were winding down for the night, I thought I heard some noises outside. I grabbed a cigarette and walked outside to check it out. We lived in a fringe neighborhood and sometimes when we had social gatherings the dregs of society would come knocking for money. I opened the door and lying on his back in our front yard was Randall Dillon. He was wearing most of his world famous potato salad and the bowl he’d brought it in was shattered on the sidewalk next to him. There was no sign of the twelve pack. Morrison and I carried him into the house so he could sleep it off. After that we called it a night, told everyone to have a safe ride home, and to be on time Monday morning for our first day of shooting.
(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 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…)
(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 8 by Damian K. Lahey
This chapter is going to focus on our prima-donna wardrobe head Patricia Salami. This woman was beyond obese. She was huge. She had jowls and her body was always flush and sweating profusely. My girlfriend prefers the term “curvy”, but there was no way around it. Salami was a porker and not because she had some sort of metabolic problem. She was a porker because she stuffed her face wantonly day in and day out. She also had a horrible attitude. The only thing larger than her body was her ego. She belonged to that category of crew member that believed they were the star of the show. Nobody mattered but her and the ace up her sleeve was that she wasn’t afraid to cause an embarrassing scene in front of everyone on set.
I was in the office doing some scheduling work when Lori, Salami’s assistant, walked in. Lori was actually Salami’s second production assistant. Salami had let the other one go for “scheduling conflicts”. Lori was a married older woman, taking some time off to break into the biz through some unpaid internships. She was confident, smart, and level headed. She was also attractive – all things I’m sure Salami resented.
Lori plopped her production notebook on a chair and told me she was quitting. I asked why. She told me that for the past week she’d been doing Salami’s laundry, paying her bills, doing her grocery shopping, and on one occasion had to meet a black guy downtown to buy some weed and loritabs. I knew Salami could be a handful and was high maintenance, but she’d done costumes on a previous film Biff and I had produced. She was hell on PAs to be sure, but certainly did her job well. What Lori told me was staggering. She told me that not once did she do anything regarding costumes and that Salami told her that once shooting began, she had already promised the paid assistant position to someone else. Lori told me she had no problem with low budget independent productions, but she did have a problem with being treated like third world slave labor. She had a valid point. One I couldn’t argue against.
I felt bad and tried to think of another spot in the production where Lori could fit in but she was done with us. I even asked her to give me till the morning to come up with something else, but she politely declined. I waited till she’d driven off and picked up the phone. Normally, I would have called Biff first. But Biff saw past all of Salami’s faults and defended her at all cost no matter how many crew members complained and griped. There were rumors about Biff and Salami. I didn’t want to know. I picked up the phone and dialed Salami. She answered the phone and as usual, sounded like she had food in her mouth. I told her Lori had come to the office and quit. Salami told me she wasn’t surprised as Lori hadn’t shown much promise as a wardrobe assistant. I calmly let her in on Lori’s side of the story. When Salami didn’t have a response to that, I asked her for the real reason her first production assistant had quit. She told me she was calling Biff and hung up on me.
Curley Blonde came into the office with a bunch of material and gingerly approached the copy machine. The copy machine, you see, had gotten a bad cold since the last tech scout and had to go to the doctor. It had been a little pricey. Curley’s zealous use of the copy machine was a major contributing factor. I was now proofreading his material for errors and such before giving him the green light to print twenty or so copies. The next tech scout was coming fast and Curley Blonde wanted desperately to avoid the humiliation of the previous outing. He had this one planned out real well. This is partially because I’d already gone to the locations with him and pointed out what I knew would work and what wouldn’t. I also typed up a list of qualifying questions for potential locations prospects so they knew exactly what having a production at their house or business entailed. I wanted the scout to be tight with locations that would all work logistically. Choosing would simply be a matter of personal taste. I wanted to avoid any blow ups from Biff and any complaints from anyone else. Spankenstein knew to be on good behavior after the last incident, but there was never any telling with that guy. I also advised Blonde that Billy Bold, Studs Diamonds, and Shifto Jeans were not needed. I was taking every precaution to make this succeed.
Curley wanted to sit with me and look at some maps and photographs he’d taken. I pointed out one place that looked nice, but was too far away for a company move. The phone rang and it was Biff. He was infuriated that I had questioned Salami’s judgment. I told him what Lori told me. Biff laughed at me and told me it was all lies. He knew Salami could be hard to handle, but that? Never. I didn’t believe Lori had lied for a second, but couldn’t argue with Biff too much. The film was period, set in the 1980s. Salami was the best we could afford. I told Biff I wasn’t getting her any more assistants, though. That was his responsibility and I wasn’t going to have any part of it. Biff could work with her on getting her crew together for the shoot. If there were any complaints - he could take them. Biff didn’t like that. He told me that was part of my job. I told him the way she treated Lori was absolutely unprofessional and that it reflected poorly on us. Biff responded by reminding me that anything Lori said was hearsay and since she was a “nobody” who know “nobody” in “the biz”, she didn’t matter and nothing she said could hurt us. Then he hung up. And that was that.
(I want to thank everybody for reading and hope you continue to read as the misadventures of The Last Blunder continue next week…)
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