ON FILMMAKING: PART DUEX

            First, an apology. It has been some time since I last graced this blog with my presence. And for me to sit here and tell you that I've been busy would be nothing more than just another lame excuse from a lazy writer. Having said that, I have been very busy lately and finding the time to write something significant enough for the blog has been difficult. I guess, in some ways, I would rather come up with something interesting to talk about than sputter on about nothing and bore the shit out of everyone that reads this. As such I’m also going to keep this apology short and get right back to what we’re here for: reading my words. ;)

            As you may have guessed from that not-so-ambiguous ending to the last blog post, the majority of this article revolves around my experiences working on “Larry & The Monsters.” A Keith Melcher joint. I suppose it would be fitting to start with the origins of the show and what we were hoping to accomplish with it.

You can't see it, but my wife is outside keeping the dogs quiet using chocolet.

            Larry & The Monsters (from here on out referred to as L&M) began as a stand-alone project written by my good friend, heterosexual partner, and just all around good man Keith Melcher. It was way back during our initial “Let’s do this! Let’s make our own movies!” phase and we were struggling to come up with ideas for short films. Keith had written “The Choice” which we had already committed ourselves to filming and he had written this short script with no title simply called “Vampire Short”.  As for me, the short film format was something I wasn’t accustomed too and I was struggling to come up with anything worth its value in words. I had conceived a new vampire story of my own called “Bleeder” however; I quickly realized that the story would be far too large for our purposes and, for the time being, set it aside in order to start working on “The Choice” and “Vampire Short”.

            I must admit, at first I saw nothing there. “Vampire Short” was just this lifeless one-shot deal with no future. It was funny. Don’t get me wrong. I liked it. I just didn’t see much there that I felt audiences would like. After all, the script didn’t even have a proper title. But a few weeks after starting production on “The Choice” I had an epiphany; what if “Vampire Short” was a series and we filled it with other wacky monsters that continuously torture and ruin the life of this guy Larry? They could go on all these screwball adventures and we could do anything we wanted to do with these characters because, you know, it was a one hundred percent fictional world with no boundaries. Naturally I thought this idea was brilliant and brought it before Mr. Melcher. As it turns out he had also had visions of a possible series involving these characters and for the first time since we began this little filmmaking quest of ours we found ourselves working on the same page. It didn’t take long for us to realize that the idea wasn’t as brilliant as we thought… but there was still something there.

This is how we roll on L&M.

            Shortly thereafter we began to develop follow-ups to the initial story which also included an episode where we brought the vampire back from the dead so we could continue to use him as a main character in the series. I believe there were eleven or twelve episode written. Of which, only five were ever filmed. Ideas and plans started coming together to film the first episode. There was nothing easy about filming that first episode either. Then again, it was still early in our filmmaking career and the concept of “planning” a movie hadn’t yet set in. Not only did we attempt to film the entire thing in one day we also had to deal with snow, neighbor dogs that would bark every time I set foot out the fucking door, and finding someone dumb enough – I mean courageous enough fit themselves in my stank-ass fridge to play the Mummy. And, of course, we also had to deal with horrible sound and a complete lack of FX training of any kind. If you’ve seen the first and second episodes then you know what I’m talking about.

Marty Spurlock as Todd the Wolfman.

            To this day, the first two episodes of L&M still have more views than any other episode or YouTube post we’ve made. Honestly, I’m not sure why. I always found the third episode – which introduces us to Larry’s new roommate Todd who also turns out to be a wolfman – to be one of my favorites. It was a longer episode, but extremely fun to make and the first episode that truly felt like it was following some kind of a plot. More than anything, it felt good to finally have a few more monsters involved with the story. Felt more like an actual show.

            Then came the fourth episode of L&M. Again, I felt this one wasn’t too bad because we had a chance to use all the primary monsters and it followed an actual story, but the episode itself was sort of a cop-out. It represented the first unfortunate compromise in the series that would ultimately lead to its abrupt ending. At one point, Keith and I had discussed the possibility of moving the shows primary location to something a little more akin to Larry’s bachelor lifestyle. The reason for this is because my wife and I had just had our first child and filming at my house suddenly became complicated. It was just easier to move the show. This put me in a position where I felt forced to write and as anyone knows, forcing a writer to write typically leads to some serious shit-stains. No one likes that kind of writing. Episode 4 was an “excuse”. A poor plot device designed to justify the sudden change in location. Ironically, we still filmed the beginning of the episode in my garage while my wife and child were home inside.

            And then came… the Banana’s… Dear, sweet Zeus the banana’s. I seriously think there are no words in existence that can truly describe my sheer hatred for episode 5. It started off so innocent and I won’t lie, the idea of throwing banana’s at my friend Keith from off camera appealed to me right from the start. And, if you really want to know, throwing banana’s at Keith was probably the only redeeming quality of the entire experience. I won’t go into too much detail here. I just want to say that about halfway through filming that episode I became convinced that it was cursed. My computer was crashing. Footage was mysteriously lost only to be found again months later after I had already come to terms with the loss and was ready to give up and move on.

            Yes. That’s right. Episode 5 almost NEVER happened. And if I’d had my way it still wouldn’t exist. I had no problem with the script. It’s just that NOTHING was working the way it was supposed to. For example: The banana pelting scene was originally planned as a comedic homage to “Apocalypse Now”. It was supposed to be in slow motion and there would be several shots of the bananas striking Larry. And as any good student of the George Lucas School of filmmaking will tell you, the only way to do that scene is with digital bananas. I was determined to use digital bananas. And then I started trying to make a digital banana. And then I stabbed myself in the eye with my own finger several times for being such a douche.

            Digital bananas… This guy…

            And when I say I had come to terms with the loss of the footage I really mean it. Even after finding it I was determined NOT to finish it because it caused me so much trouble and cost me money (to fix my computer). I hated it so much in fact, that it was almost a full year before I finally buckled and finished editing the damn thing. It has since joined its four predecessors on YouTube, but I cringe every time I look at it. It’s like the evil step child, all grown up, but you know it still hates you and you wanna just punch it in the face every time it looks at you funny then point and laugh and run away… Fuck that episode.

            Needless to say, that was the final episode of Larry & The Monsters. We have since moved on to other projects (not many) but I can’t help but want to return to that one. Keith and I have recently discussed the possibility of doing a reboot of the series, but so far that’s all. In retrospect I think L&M was one of those ideas that was good, but never really had a chance to shine. Call it poor writing. Call it poor directing or acting or all of the above. Either way, it was a show with potential that got screwed before it had chance to become something. I guess that’s why I can’t seem to let it go and why I keep pushing to go back to it.

            Despite the shows shortcomings, it was worth every moment to make it. I learned a great deal about making short films and L&M gave me a chance to become a little more comfortable with the short film format. Perhaps a little too comfortable. I’ve often found it difficult to go back to writing full length features and many of my own projects have been set aside because of it. In some cases ditched all together. The most important lesson I took away from L&M is that you can never plan enough for a film and not even short films are exempt from this. In fact, there really is no excuse for poor planning on short films. This doesn’t mean that I’ve been spot on since then. Quite the opposite. I still struggle to find that balance of planning versus run-and-gun filmmaking. As a result I feel a few more recent projects have suffered, though there has been noticeable improvement also.

            And then came the more recent projects and the rise and fall of Zone 4 Productions.