The Internet is Exciting!
February 27, 2004
The Internet is full of exciting things. important news of the day, thought-provoking scientific discovery, sure-fire money making opportunities and episode 13 - which incidentally is all about the exciting things one can find on the Internet.
In other news Shane is currently collapsed on my couch watching Gigli. We are both shocked to announce that it is perhaps one of the worst films we’ve ever seen. That’s something, especially considering that we’ve seen Magnos the Robot … and that film has a villian named “Xerxes Tire Iron Dada”. I keep trying to find my happy place by thinking of Lost in Translation … but then Bennifer has to open it’s hideous maw and start spewing garbage lines again… at least now they’re making out - hopefully that will spare me from cringing at the dialogue for at least a few minutes.
And now for a Pizza-his mind.
February 24, 2004
Since it’s ten to midnight, and I promised Brad that I would write a production journal for this week, I suppose I had better get started. The only problem is that while I have all kinds of ideas for future production journals, they require time and effort. Something that today’s production journal will have little of. Nonetheless, I now present a tragedy in three parts entitled:
- “Why can’t they get the freaking order right!?”
- Cast of Characters:
Rob – The heroic protagonist
Brad – The less heroic protagonist
Assorted Dead End Days cast and crew – The heroic non-speaking characters
Pizza Pizza – The off-stage antagonist
- ACT ONE:
The scene is the kitchen of an apartment. The time is at night. Rob stands with a phone to his ear, listening to a disinterested Pizza Pizza employee on the other end.
ROB: Yes, I’d like to order a couple of pizzas please.
(pause)
ROB: Yes, could I get two large pizzas, one with pepperoni, mushroom, and green peppers, and one with chicken, red onions, tomatoes, and barbecue sauce please.
(pause)
ROB: No, not barbecue dipping sauce. Barbecue sauce on the pizza. Please.
(pause)
ROB: Thank you very much.
A comically large clock on the wall suddenly moves forward 30-40 minutes to signify a leap forward in time. A loud buzz is heard offstage. ROB runs through the kitchen towards the sound, and is heard speaking offstage
ROB: Thanks so much. Here you go. Thanks. You too.
Rob walks back into the kitchen holding a large double pizza box.
ROB: Now, just to open this up and… what the hell? This is tomato sauce. I said barbecue sauce. Damnit…
- ACT TWO:
The setting is the same as before. A comically large calendar beside the clock indicates that a couple of weeks have passed since the last scene. Rob is apparently ordering another pizza
ROB: No thanks, that special sounds good, but I had my mind on something else.
(pause)
ROB: Yes, could I get two large pizzas. Could I get one with green peppers,
mushrooms, sun dried tomatoes, and onions, and one with chicken, red onions, tomatoes, and barbecue sauce please.
(pause)
ROB: No, the barbecue sauce goes on the pizza. Last time I ordered, they just ignored it altogether, so if you could possibly put an extra note on there indicating that I would like barbecue sauce to go on the pizza, that would be great.
(pause)
ROB: Great, thanks!
Same as before. Large clock. 30-40 minutes. Buzz at the door. Rob walks back in with a double pizza box.
ROB: Smells pretty good and… What the hell! No barbecue sauce!
ACT THREE:
The setting this time is on the set of a Dead End Days shoot, with various people milling around in various stages of physical and mental fatigue doing various things. Brad the producer walks into the room.
BRAD: Gee whiz guys, you all did a bang-up job on that last episode. But before we start shooting the next one, how about we take a break to get some pizza?
ASSORTED CAST AND CREW: HIP HIP HOORAY!!
Brad picks up a cell phone, punches a few numbers, and then after a brief pause, begins to speak.
BRAD: Yes, could I get four large pizzas please. One will have pepperoni, mushroom, and tomato. One will be a “Mediterranean Veggie”. One will be shrimp, onion and tomato. And the final one will have…
(dramatic pause as Brad turns to face the audience)
BRAD: ..chicken, red onions, tomatoes, and barbecue sauce!
(pause)
BRAD: Yes, that is all.
(pause)
BRAD: Well, our phone number is 416-555-1234, but that’s our HOME phone number…
(pause)
BRAD: Yes, but that is our HOME address. We don’t want it sent to our home address. We want to pick it up at…
(pause)
BRAD: Yes, pick it up, but we want to pick it up at the Yorkville location.
(pause)
BRAD: Yes, in Yorkville.
(pause)
BRAD: Great, thanks!
Brad hangs up the phone.
BRAD: I’ll go pick up the pizza. It should be ready by the time I get there.
Brad leaves the room. There is another comically large clock on the wall that indicates about 60 minutes have passed. The cast and crew (including Rob) is now sitting around apprehensively eyeing each other and rubbing their stomachs in an overdramatic fashion, to indicate that they are hungry. Suddenly, Brad walks in empty handed.
BRAD: I have some bad news.
ROB: Don’t tell me they messed up the barbecue sauce again!
BRAD: Nope, they got that right this time.
ROB: So what’s the problem?
BRAD: Our pizza is ready to be picked up… on the other side of the city.
The entire cast and crew collapse into a lethargic heap. A loud, comedic slide whistle is heard. The curtains drop.
In closing… is it REALLY THAT HARD to properly take a pizza order? I’m just saying…
What exactly *is* Sam up to?
February 20, 2004
Hola Amigos! We were up extra late this week putting the finishing touches on a super-special new episode (now three months without missing an episode, I might add) so I’ll be unusually brief: The later the hour, the more one appreciates the subtle understated humour of fellow Torontonian Scot Ramsoomair’s VGCatsbecause, frankly, the subtle irony of a carefully crafted character such as Dr. Hobo plays even more delightfully during the wee hours when someone is, say, waiting for their labouring aged computer to spit out encoded video files suitable for web distribution. Plus VGCats also get’s the coveted “Chad” award, as I was informed of its existence by our very own Drew Haapala who plays Eric’s ever-suffering boss at Monopoly Video.
Other than that, I really can’t help you while away the hours until the weekend… however I will mention that the JPL/NASA Mars Rover Site just keeps getting better and better… but then I’m a huge geek for space robots digging holes on distant planets… your mileage may vary.
So enough setup already…
February 17, 2004
It’s been a curious experience watching everything unfold on a computer. Not exactly the ‘hands-on’ process I’m used to, operating mainly in the theatre. The first project Matt and Erin and I worked on together, the first real independent project I helped instigate, was a collection of short work (later a fringe tour, see Shane’s previous essay) that we mounted in the basement of a heritage hall. Someday I hope you have the pleasure of performing a quiet, introspective comedy-drama under the percussive tumult of a hundred drunken wedding guests line-dancing to ‘Achy-Breaky Heart’. (Just out of curiosity, anyone remember Achy-Breaky Heart and/or Billy Ray Cyrus? Or is the real question: will we ever truly forget?) Can anyone argue for the sanctity of marriage with a straight face when weddings keep songs like this in circulation? I digress…
These first projects, figuring things out on the fly, are essential. Our original group met and rehearsed whenever we could, wherever we found space, with any given person directing one or two pieces and acting in two or three others. Matt and Toby and I were consistently a half-hour late for weekend rehearsals. Steve was consistently on time and consistently (and quite rightly) pissed off at us for being late. These situations were usually smoothed over with an Egg McMuffin. Sometimes two.
The costumes and set and props were a patchwork of personal belongings, theatres were rented on the strength of student loans, ushers were last-minute volunteers, we teched until four a.m., curtains were hung with a staple gun, there was a significant puddle just off stage right, not to mention the aforementioned Saturday night line-dancing… God it was beautiful (the experience, not the line-dancing). One of my most cherished.
Though I’ve been through oppressive processes that yielded crap, there’s real joy in making something out of nothing, or with next to nothing. Take the first Star Wars (rough and slipshod) and The Phantom Menace (decadent and glossy). One was made with a relatively small budget, and the other with all the money in the world. But who’ll take whatsisname (the best CGI money could buy) over Chewbacca (all shag and walrus sex noises)? The most rewarding creativity is often born of the most restrictive circumstances. Gets your juices flowing. As the old adage goes: Beg, Borrow, Steal, and Get the Fucker Up.
Like I said, I’m more used to the hands on. Though my projects have evolved, budgets have eked upwards, venues have become larger, and audiences swelled (well, not ‘swelled’ per se…), every one has been an extension of that first production at the Vancouver Little Theatre. The last show I wrote and produced was rehearsed in a loft in a tin shack under a bridge. There was a concrete factory downstairs. The space was always dusty. There were two functioning lights. There was a rat.
So good.
When I arrived in Toronto last summer, I had no idea what Matt and Brad had in mind. I know the ultimate goal is a feature, and I’m well aware that usually people who want to make features make short films first. Makes sense. I have a fairly substantial collection of short work, some of which I could see adapting. So they cart me out to Toronto, I spin plays into screenplays, they shoot them, shop them around, seek funding, get funding, cobble a feature together, hit the festival circuit, whore ourselves out to big shot producers, compromise our artistic integrity, make money, date models, dump the models and date supermodels, indulge in perverse amounts of alcohol, drugs, and sexual deviancy, become fodder for the tabloid press, and so on.
Toronto was hot. I grew up in Ontario, but I don’t remember heat like that heat. It probably didn’t help that the room I was staying in (Rob’s) has a convex skylight that focused the intense morning sunlight, as would a magnifying glass, into a singular beam of death. Imagine waking up every morning on the laser rack from Goldfinger, and you’ll have some idea of what a death-defying ordeal waking up on time became. The sun is evil at the best of times (as anyone with Welsh heritage can attest), but it has never, with the aid of an architectural miscalculation, actively attempted to kill me. Repeatedly. It’s a miracle I survived. The apocalypse and subsequent nuclear winter can’t come soon enough as far as I’m concerned.
I drank oxidizing tea out of a beautiful little iron-wrought pot, played War of the Monsters on Brad’s PS2, went to the Science Center, a Blue Jay’s game (they were trounced!), and the Royal Ontario Museum. The fat in my arteries from all the Pizza Pizza (not to mention the KFC and the chicken wings) I ate could net you a few healthy bars of soap.
At this point it’s redundant to tell you the plan was not, in fact, to make a short film (although I assume I still get to date models down the line), but rather this rather…odd…
WEEKLY LIVE-ACTION INTERNET SERIAL!
Now I’ll take credit for coining the term (note to editors of Entertainment Weekly), but not the idea. That was Brad’s. Brad’s fort
Bring It On!
February 13, 2004
Oh please, is this the best you’ve got? You think we’re not going to bring you a new episode just because our HQ’s ancient wiring keeps melting down, leaving us without heat or power? You think a 6-episode monster-shoot on the weekend is going to slow us down? You think having to completely re-edit 75% of this episode again because of unidentified computer errors is even going to make editing maestro Mike, blink? Who do you think we are, Megatokyo? Don’t be ridiculous, they have a lot more viewers for starters…
Now is not the time for Piro-drama, now is the time for swift decisive action by the hardcore DED crew… all so you can spend your friday reacquainting yourself with old friends from Episode 7 and… the prologue! Okay, and maybe some quality time over at Popcap… I love Insaniquarium… dratted aliens, always trying to eat my fish. I’ll get you if it takes me all weekend!
Anyways, all I’m saying, is you’ve got to do better than that.
Word.
Oh yeah… big news (for us anyway) coming up next week… sign up for the mailing list on the right to get the announcement first!
Seven Degrees of the Living Undead
February 10, 2004
So I am going to have to break my word. This is something I am loathe to do at any time, but even more so here, in a public forum, where it is available for all to see, recorded for all posterity, that Shane said he would do something, and did not do it. This will bug me for months, but there’s no getting around it at this point. I said I would be doing a profile on our dynamo of a producer, Brad, but I will not. At least, not now.
It’s not for any lack of material. I think it’s more that I’ve left it too long into the process. At this point we’ve been working on Dead End Days long enough that habits have formed, and I now find it impossible to sit down with Brad without saying something like “We should make an art department list,” or “When are we calling Jay for another writing conference?” Of course, as soon as any of these things leave my mouth, the chance to interview him is gone. Dead End Days becomes a third entity in the room, one which is entertaining, inspiring, and incredibly demanding at the same time. It’s impossible to ignore. And damn if I don’t enjoy every minute it takes from me.
So, as an alternative to the Brad biopic I was going to create, I wracked my brain for something more elementary, something which our audience may have been wondering out there.
There are ten questions that I’ve heard over and over again since we started. The top nine are all variations on “What’s it like to be a zombie?” (my favourite thus far is “Would a Jewish zombie eat pork brains?”… Okay, so no one actually asked that. But it would be funny if they did.) Not knowing a great deal on the inner workings of the living dead, I moved down to number ten: “How did you all meet?” And that’s what I’ll be sharing this week.
The first of us to meet were Matt and Brad, who grew up in Calgary together, making short documentaries on the changing of diapers and ‘How to Walk’ instructional videos. They both shared a passion for film, which led them to become the close friends they are today.
Of course, not long after, Rob was born into the Fox household, and immediately began berating Brad for anything stupid he did. Matt, of course, immediately saw that they were two halves of the same coin. Like yin and yang, point and counterpoint. Abbott and Costello.
The third member of the initial DED brain trust, Jay, comes from the same roots. (I’ve begun to think that Calgary breeds more than its fair share of creative people) He had been crossing paths with Brad and Matt for years, in theatres and other capacities. Brad and Jay also discovered, some time after meeting each other, that they were in fact, long lost third cousins. Imagine the shock. [Especially as I knew Jay primarily as someone who looked dashing while dancing and singing in brightly coloured long underwear and fetching straw hats, my first meeting with him through a particularly strange piece of children's musical theatre - Brad]
Matt and Jay did not become closely acquainted until they attended the University of Calgary together. Brad, at this point, headed out to York University in Toronto, to establish what we now like to think of as “Base Camp”. From here, who knows how far we can go? London? Los Angeles? Monkey’s Eyebrow, Arizona?
Strangely enough, both Matt and Jay decided independently that Calgary was not the place to hone their skills, but Vancouver was. Matt went out to attend Vancouver Film School, and Jay took up the creative writing program at UBC.
Matt found himself in his class with a particularly talented actress named Erin Whitehead. He also happened to move into a basement suite with a young performer/playwright named Tobin Mollet, who was a classmate of Jay’s at UBC. Matt, Jay, Erin and Toby, in an attempt to stave off a career spent doing meaningless guest-star roles and screenplay rewrites, formed Laughing Day Productions together, and began work on a play to tour the Canadian Fringe festivals that summer, when they were all out of school.
They began with a short but successful run in the Vancouver Little Theatre, and began preparing for the grueling life of a traveling performer. Unfortunately, that was when disaster struck, and both Toby and Erin were pulled away from the project by a series of catastrophes. This is when I came into the picture.
I had moved from my hometown of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan to attend Vancouver Film School in the class just below Matt’s. Our interaction, to that point, had been five minutes spent together in an audition. He had struck me as a talented and intelligent fellow, but I was completely flabbergasted when, three weeks later, he asked me if I might be interested in joining his troupe for the summer tour. In fact, at that point, even Matt didn’t even really know why he was asking me. But he asked, and I said yes.
And this brought us to the second childhood connection our group had, though this one was far more strange and serendipitous. Back in their university days, the Rotherys, a young married couple, had lived in Saskatoon, and had some very good friends named the Arbuthnotts, another newly-wed duo. The Rotherys, after graduation, moved on to Toronto, then Waterloo, then finally Calgary. Along the way, the families lost touch. Years later, after a Laughing Day meeting, Jay called his parents, and told them “Someone named Shane… Astronaut, or Arbobott or something joined the cast.” Their enigmatic reply was “You mean Arbuthnott?” Meanwhile, I was having a parallel conversation with my own parents, and at the next meeting, we confirmed that at some point, our parents had been best friends. We had in fact met when we were both very young. I don’t remember the meeting, but I more than likely spit up on him.
The Fringe tour took place, starting in Montreal and moving back towards Vancouver one city at a time. Back on the west coast, a young woman named Robin sat in on a performance, and saw something particularly appealing in Mr. Hoos. They, of course, fell in love, and as a pleasant side effect, we gained a future wardrobe department, not to mention a nice ear to bend, which helps keep us all sane inside this insane endeavour.
Another Fringe tour took place (which I did not participate in, though I flyered like there was no tomorrow), and then, for a short time, we all went our separate ways. Jay holed himself up in Alberta to write. Brad remained in Toronto, trying to bring a little Braddishness to an otherwise Bradless city, and Matt, Robin and myself packed large bags and headed over to Europe, I remaining relatively contained in the UK, while Matt and Robin ran the full gamut of cultures. And in all our locations, we decided something simultaneously: it was time to up the ante. Throw our hat into the pop culture ring, as it were, and make a film.
Brad, Matt and Jay bunked down for two weeks in July 2003, and came up with the concept for Dead End Days. I flew out two months later, and we were underway. First order of business: casting.
At this point we had the first few scripts from Jay, and there were five major parts we had to fill immediately. Sam, Bridget, Bruce, Ashley and Eric all needed actors. This was no easy task. We were all in a new city (except for Brad, but the only people he knew were film students and big-wig Canadian producers), and didn’t have our usual rolodex of talented friends to call on. Luckily, one talented friend called us.
Erin had lost touch with the rest of our gang for a couple of years, but in a vast universal fit of confluence, she decided that mid-2003 was the time to track Matt down and give him a call. And let him know, at the same time, that she was living back in her hometown of Mississauga. He was calling on her to audition almost before he was finished saying hello. We had our Ashley.
In the same audition, we had three other people read for parts: myself, a friend named Eric, and an unknown factor who Matt knew from work, named Chad. Once again, Matt had just had a feeling about him when they met, and with little to no experience of him, called him in to read. He turned out to be perfect for our loveable zombie Bruce.
As is the way with these things, other considerations get in the way. We had more people lined up to read for us, but we were proposing a year-long project, and not many people had a schedule that would permit that. One by one we lost our possibilities. That’s my theory as to how I got the role of Eric, anyway.
Regardless, we had three roles filled, but still needed a Sam and a Bridget. Matt had intended to solely be director to this project, but Brad suggested that maybe he could act as well as direct, and the more we thought about it, the more it made sense. Matt would have to step in front of the camera, as well as running things behind it.
But we still didn’t have a Bridget. This was a particularly difficult role to fill. Bridget is a strange character, to say the least. She’s womanly, but with a violent streak a mile long hidden just beneath the skin. We read a few actors for the part, and all were fantastic, but we were missing that elusive ‘Bridget’ quality.
At this point, we were sweating bullets. We were already shooting the prologue, and it was less than six weeks before our first weekly episode was to be posted, and we didn’t have one of our key characters. Chad had come along to help on set, and overheard us discussing it between takes.
“I have a sister who’s an actor,” he said, with his usual understated aplomb. We all stopped, and shared looks, and set up a meeting with this mysterious ’sister’ immediately, before we continued filming. It somehow had that feeling of serendipity again. A week later, we met Brooke.
It wasn’t so much an audition as a seminar. We read through scripts a few times, and Matt and I could hardly contain our excitement. Brooke had that Bridget air to her when she read; not mean, not cold, but potentially dangerous if she needed to be. It was fantastic. We ended up discussing our plans for the project for two hours with her and Chad, and then shaking hands and walking out the door. In the hallway of their apartment, in low whispers, Matt and I decided we had found our Bridget.
Since then, we’ve had a huge windfall of helpful people. A friend of Brook’s, Lindsay McKnight, came on as our key makeup artist, to make sure our zombies look as good as we imagined them. Chad’s girlfriend, Jennie Reichert, has been an invaluable asset behind the scenes, as grip, assistant script supervisor, makeup artist, and just about anything else you could imagine. And, much to my delight, we’ll be having one of the actors we initially read for Bridget, Joanne Cope, appearing in future episodes. Even my brother, Chris (coincidentally, he is also the fianc
Write your own darn title…
February 6, 2004
Ceci nest pas une pipe. It’s Episode 10, now in glorous “double-digit”-o-rama-vision, and closing in soon outnumbering those pesky Final Fantasies once and for all.
So there.
At the moment it feels like hordes of tiny goblins are burrowing through my sinuses, my skin hurts, and I find I have touble focusing on even the most riviting material, such as the thousandth news article on the Janet Jackson halftime show… why if I didn’t know better, I’d say I was both sick and indifferent. That couldn’t be… could it. If it wasn’t for the gentle encouragements, gourmet cusine, and stiff cattle-prod jabs of Shane and Matt… who knows how this episode would have gotten out the door?
Given such a socio economic climate I couldn’t possibly organize a coherent list of fun links if I tried, so go make your own Olde Tyme Fun… don’t forget to send me your creations… I have a shiny ingot for the best one.
If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go collapse in a pathetic heap for a little while… that sounds like fun.
So what does a producer do anyway?
February 3, 2004
So the fact that I, of all people, am writing a production journal should be a sign that something is horribly wrong. Like a crazed street-preacher, I rant at you guys whenever I want to - so by now it’s readily apparent to our loyal readers that I have nothing of value to say.
Actually, one of the first questions asked to me by Jason when I started setting deadlines for production journals was why I wasn’t writing one myself. My flip answer was that, as the producer, I didn’t have to and the rest of the crew could go get stuffed. In my heart of hearts though I just wanted to free our loyal viewership from coffee-guy ramblings one day out seven. Frankly, since I spend a lot of my day vaguely tying together everyone else’s focused contributions it doesn’t make for a riveting read. The best part of IKEA is not the free twine to precariously tie your purchases to the roof… unless you’re really into twine. As much as I’d love to regale all and sundry with the wonders of the progressive-frame cadence of our camera, my latest personal advancements in sound mixing, the finer points of waiving ones “moral rights” in assigning copyright, the elegant brilliance of a webpage that validates properly, or the blood sweat and tears involved in creating humorous fake cola labels - I have no illusions as to the popular appeal of such writings. Little Timmy doesn’t grow up dreaming of preparing cost analysis on promotional materials and investigating advertising avenues. Little Timmy dreams of having roguish good looks like Matt, a rapier wit like J-Ro, or massive upper body strength like Shane. Little Timmy certainly doesn’t dream of having to write compelling “behind the scenes” commentary at the 11th hour when he discovers that he’s forgotten to circulate new deadlines to his contributing writers, therefore leaving himself with no material to post.
Lest this devolve into self-centered melodrama, I’d just like to point out that I have the best job in the show. At the moment I can sit back and watch Shane and Matt, sitting across the table from me, as they heatedly discuss script revisions with Jason on the phone. Down the hall about 20 feet, the man known only as “Mike” works his black magic on the editing machine, spinning gold from straw like some kind of magical editing Rumplestiltskin. Somewhere in between lies Rob’s room where he’s riding heard on the forums, preparing year end statements, and managing our digital still files… because he likes doing three things at once.
And me? I just throw out my two cents now and then and try not to get in the way.
Little Timmy doesn’t know what he’s missing.
