So very tired...

Is it appropriate that "Once in a Lifetime" is playing as I write this? "Letting the days go by / Water flowing underground..." I'm staring at the daunting task of recapping the last three weeks of my life when all I really want to do is go back to bed.

As all right-thinking people who read this blog know, we're in the midst of shooting our new production, Splatter Movie: The Director's Cut, yet another odyssey-sized epic attempt at selling out and failing miserably, judging from the gorgeous footage rife with subtext. All the folks at the Hundred Acres Manor - Ted, Tom, Damon, Ethan, Brandon - have been stellar, upstanding folk who are virtually bending over backwards to accomodate us, even when it puts a crimp in their own busy schedules.

The weather, however, hasn't been as friendly. Last weekend, in particular, it hit about 90 degrees. The Manor, for all of its courtesies, isn't air conditioned - nor does it need to be in October, when it's open to the public - so it's difficult to get air flowing through some of the narrow hallways and the crowded make-up room.

Still, that gripe aside, the shoot has been nothing if not interesting. First, kudos and a big shout-out to our make-up team recruited by Eric Molinaris: Jimmy, Brandon, Scott, Steve, Luke, Collin - you guys are awesome. Lorena, our lead glamour make-up, is also particularly awesome. Special thanks to our other folks: Mike H., Carolyn, Jeff, Matt G., Aaron, Nikki, Nic, Catherine, Jon and our PAs, Jordan and Dan. And if I forgot anyone, trust me, I have more thanks to go around. I'm a very thankful guy.

This last shoot revolved around Tiffany Warren Yarborough and Sofiya Smirnova. Sofiya came in from Chicago to play herself playing herself. She's basically the "survivor girl" of Tesseract, the movie-within-the-movie. In Tesseract, she also plays an actress making the movie-within-the-movie-within-the-movie, which is called Splatter Movie. So she had a lot of screaming to do. Because we are the folks we are, we doused her with stage blood just prior to her screaming. It made the scream real. Sofiya also got the opportunity to beat on our Grendel character with a latex baseball bat. Which was not fun for the actor playing Grendel. Not fun at all. He still has bruises. Weep for him.

Tiffany is playing an actress named Brenda. If you've been in the business for more than eight minutes, or have gone to any horror convention, you've encountered a person like Brenda. She's the "gonna take the horror industry by storm, you ain't seen no one like me!" type o'gal. She backs this statement up with the false confidence that only comes in a bottle. Since Tiffany is the exact opposite of this type of bravado display rack, she had some work to do creating the bitchy, slutty, annoying actress. But she did so beautifully.

So those were good things.

Not good things: aside from the weather, we had our very first - and I mean very first no-show in ten years of filmmaking. For some reason, we had a hard time filling an admittedly thankless role of a second obnoxious actress to play off of Tiffany's Brenda. Our first choice dropped off the face of the Earth. Our second was asked incorrectly by an associate (both of them have since forgiven us). Finally, we turned to a blind recommendation - something we are always hesitant to do. We didn't know the actress in question, so that was a wild card, but she was suggested by a very good friend of ours, and that lowered the risk in our minds. This new actress answered email promptly, was good at communicating, did not sound like a drooling idiot on the phone, asked questions about the character. In short, she was doing everything right.

Friday night, she called Amy to double-check call times. We confirmed we'd reimburse her travel.

Saturday, she was due to arrive at 10:30. By 11:00, we figured "traffic". We weren't ready for her yet anyway, so no big deal.

By 1:00pm, she still wasn't answering her phone. We knew she was not going to be playing with us. And, for some reason, I wasn't bothered by this. We asked the crew for recommendations, got a couple more, but it was Nic who came through. A good friend of his - who co-starred with Amy in (don't laugh) Marty Jenkins and the Vampire Bitches - Ashley, didn't live too far away and was ready to jump in. She showed up just at the point when we were ready to start the scene, looked over her lines, dove right in. (And when you see the scene, you'll understand why I used the word "dove") Amy took all of this in stride as well and just adjusted her directorial skills appropriately. That isn't to say that threats of corporal punishment were not leveled... All the good directors use that as leverage though. So we're told.

Now, again, this should have driven us into a wave of panic, but we were truthfully too busy and way too fucking hot to really worry about it. Tiff was staying with us for the week. We knew we could recast during the interim if it came down to it. It wasn't a big deal. It could have been a big deal, however, given different circumstances. But we had things under control. I guess it helps to work under the worst possible conditions for a decade.

But, again, we've lost locations, we've been escorted from premises, we've had to reshoot 40% of already-shot footage when lead actresses move to Greece, we've been through re-writes, retitling, late-comers, heat stroke, missed opportunities, lost investors and post-poned projects, but we've never had a no-show. Now, things come up. Problems arise. Personal shit always rears its ugly head at the worst possible moment. When it happens, you call. You don't email someone thinking they'll get it eventually. We're understanding folk. Be honest with us.

Still, it worked out for the best, so there's no reason to bitch, is there?

I spent the bulk of yesterday fighting with my Mac and my deck but ultimately captured the four hours of footage shot (roughly an hour on four tapes, three cameras - we're not that good) and the majority is gorgeous, thanks to Jeff Waltrowski's lighting and all of his, Jon's and (particular shout out) Aaron Bernard's fancy camera work.

So we have three days until we have to return. The heat, as I mentioned, is supposed to break to a nice, comfortable 75, which will be a nice temperature in which to torment Rachelle Williams and Elske McCain. Then it's a weekend with Tom Sullivan. Then, we should have the majority of the film complete. Save pick-ups and reshoots, hopefully minor. I'll keep everyone posted.

Back to work. Miles to go before I sleep. And I should probably eat something today.

New gee-whiz-bang news!

Okay, so some of you may not have seen this on Amy's blog yet. For those of you sub-rock dwellers:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Happy Cloud Pictures is proud to announce their next production:
Splatter Movie: The Director's Cut.

An independent production company sets up at a haunted attraction to shoot both a horror movie and the simultaneous making-of documentary, unaware that the set is being stalked by a killer masquerading as one of their own performers. As filming progresses, the line between what's real and what's fiction begins to blur—and then vanishes entirely! Splatter Movie: The Director's Cut takes a time-honored storyline and gives it a Happy Cloud Pictures twist, resulting in a veritable tesseract of a film. The end result will be as much a deconstruction of the slasher subgenre as it will be a new entry in horror history.

To complete this elaborate project, Happy Cloud Pictures is teaming up with the Hundred Acres Manor, Pittsburgh's only 100% volunteer based tri-themed haunt benefiting Homeless Children's Education Fund and Animal Friends. This immense attraction will virtually be a character itself in the film, providing a wonderfully-macabre landscape for the characters to play.

With a script from Mike Watt (The Resurrection Game, Dead Men Walking), Splatter Movie: The Director's Cut will star and be directed by Happy Cloud Pictures co-founder Amy Lynn Best (Abattoir, Severe Injuries) and will co-star legendary special effects artist and actor Tom Sullivan (The Evil Dead)! Also joining the cast are Elske McCain (Poultrygeist) and Best's Abattoir cast-mates Sofiya Mina Smirnova, Rachelle Williams (Jess Franco's Take Away Spirit), Alyssa Herron, Nic Pesante, Stacy Bartlebaugh-Gmys Jeff Waltrowski (Project Valkyrie) and Don Bumgarner.

Keep checking back at happycloudpictures.net or www.myspace.com/happycloudpictures for updates and news about this exciting project.

Now then, this is something we're extremely excited about. The project was inspired by a short film Amy shot with Devi Snively and Jane Rose back in March called, I kid you not, I Spit on Eli Roth (read all about it in Sirens of Cinema #7 - on sale now!). The shoot was set at the aforementioned Hundred Acres Manor - which is about a mile long of twisting, turning corridors and spooky rooms (not to mention an enormous maze that had us all lost for about twenty minutes when we visited with Mike and Carolyn and Anders Erikson and Melinda Kreuger at Halloween).

While shooting the short, I knew I wanted to shoot something of our own there. The place was begging for something bizarre and sinister and violent, but... what? A slasher movie seemed obvious - too obvious. Plus, we already did a slasher movie, albeit a comedy (i.e. Severe Injuries for those not paying attention). But the idea kept gnawing at me every time I'd head toward the upstairs make-up room, inevitably turn the wrong way and slam my shin into a coffin hidden in a room where we hadn't located the lights yet.

Multiple times over the weekend, I creeped myself out. I always found Haunted Houses to be cheesy fun, where you laugh when the high school volunteers leap out at you, their over-sized masks covering their eyes. Being in this enormous haunt pre-season, and having a lousy sense of direction, I couldn't shake the feeling of being watched, the distant sense of panic of getting lost (which stems from a tragic Boy Scout woods retreat), etc. So, okay, I knew the story was going to be a slasher movie. But how the hell do you make an original slasher movie? If the recent Hollywood offerings were any indication, you apparently can't. This latter theory is also backed up by the slew of indie fare I've suffered through recently (not everything - don't scream at me - you guys know who did the good stuff).

So the movie-within-a-movie idea came to me - also not terribly original, but I thought I could figure out a unique twist to the entire thing. Both Amy and I have been answering a lot of interview questions lately regarding what makes a horror movie, etc. So if I took the opportunity to actually explore the genre while recreating it at the same time, we just might have something here worth making.

I realized around page 10 that this script was going to be a royal bitch to write. The disjointed nature of the thing dictated that its structure was going to be difficult to find. At the same time, I knew I wanted to incorporate real documentary and interview footage into the narrative, which made things even slipperier to beat into shape. All in all, Splatter Movie was the hardest script I've ever written, and took me the longest ever for a first draft. I was literally averaging about three pages a day. Not to brag, but I usually write MUCH faster than that.

But the resulting draft really felt satisfying once completed. I really do feel like we have something here. It is, if nothing else, very weird. Everyone we've shown it to really likes it. Fred Obermiller, our executive producer, told me he thinks that it's my best work to date, so now I have THAT to live up to. Thanks, Fred. People are coming out of the wood work, too, to help out. Not the least of which Ted Sobek, one of the owners of the Hundred Acres Manor, but also Erik Molinaris at the Douglas School(aka The Savini School) and his team of intrepid and starving students, as well as Mark Marsen and Scott Tyson at Specter Studios, who are donating some props for us to use. So thanks all around to all of these fine folks!

So, we'll see. We have to finalize our production insurance, since we'll be shooting on property not owned by us. Usually, our homeowner's insurance covers us for damage and injury, but there's only so far we can take the idea of "mobile business", so we want to have the policy in place before we shoot to make sure everyone will be safe and protected. But once that's ready, we're set to go. And, as usual, we'll keep everyone posted as things progress.