A quickie—shooting for Unbalanced has officially begun, and although we’re spread out over the next two months, our progress thus far leads me to believe we’re in fine, fine shape! I’ll try to blog more about the process but I anticipate losing availability in the weeks leading up to Memorial Day Weekend (our biggest, most complex shooting block).
In the meantime, here’s Taylor in some test makeup.
Greg Mottola’s Adventureland is a fine film. I saw it last night, after months of living in fear of this movie. Well… “that’s a little hyperbolic,” to quote the film. I haven’t been scared of Adventureland, just overcome with waves of angst. You see, I spent a year writing a spec script about a wacky summer in a derelict amusement park. It was called Amusement Park—provocative! It was the first screenplay I ever wrote, and I am still emotionally attached to portions of the story.
Unfortunately, the superficial similarities between Adventureland and Amusement Park pretty much guarantee that my script will never be seriously considered for production. (Nevermind that it was never intended for production, but instead as a portfolio piece, or proof that I have a voice worth listening to.) I stopped revising the script when it became obvious that Adventureland was a real thing, a film that people would see. I’m not heartbroken; this kind of thing happens all the time, I continue to write (stronger) scripts, and I still have Amusement Park in my portfolio.
If you’d like to read Amusement Park, shoot me an email. There’s no reason to keep it close to my chest. It’s WGA-registered and all that rot, so there’s not much left to do except put it on the mantle and keep writing. If you take the time to read it, I’d be curious to hear your thoughts & opinions.
The Turkish Twist, Canobie Lake Park, Salem NH. Any resemblance my script bears to the real Canobie Lake Park is purely coincidental.
Adventureland is more The Graduate than Superbad. Mottola absolutely nails the gritty, depressing, suburban-microcosmic world of the independent amusement park (and the characters who inhabit it). The portrayal of an extramarital affair was also rendered with sympathetic honesty. I wasn’t as immediately taken by his portrayal of post-college hopelessness; I never cared about James’s Eurotrip Lost, or the grad school funding drying up—these felt like writer’s constructs. “See, this kid has dreams, and when this kid’s dreams are thwarted, our story begins!” Thankfully these conceits become more palpable as the film goes on—Mottola pokes wry little holes in James’s master plan, even as circumstance prevents our hero from pursuing his (supposed) dream career.
There are also some wonderful supporting performances in Adventureland. Martin Starr—who I haven’t seen since Freaks and Geeks—is particularly great. See it when you can.
Unbalanced preproduction continues to chug along. We have a modest handful of volunteers and low-cost laborers assembling various aspects of the show that will, I hope, bring some of the script’s ideas to life. We’re tackling two of the most challenging bits right now: character/costume design, and set design for Wendy’s fantasy world.
I hired Greg Miller, a talented young illustrator, to read the script and sketch out Mongor and Carl, our two fantasy creatures. His challenge was to create characters that would look menacing at night but comical by day. I think he succeeded:
Mongor the Heart Gouger
I love the yellow orbs, which evoke a kind of ragged clown-suit. My challenge is how to implement this design in the real world with a micro-budget.
Through the magic of eBay, I found a custom leatherwork shop, who quoted me a totally reasonable price for this custom work. I think their customers primarily come from LARPing circles; check out their gallery on flickr. Dealing with them, even across the Atlantic, has been a pleasure, and they send me progress reports every so often:
Mongor’s front, raw leather
Mongor’s front, partially treated
A horn from eBay. I do not condone the slaughter of cows for film projects (only for meat and revenge).
I’ve also got a wonderful pro bono seamstress who has agreed to work on some of the other costumes. It’s fun to see pieces slowly assemble, and our basement looks like a defunct Halloween shop.
As for Wendy’s fantasy world, we still haven’t figured it out yet, but the working idea is to slide-project fantasy images onto the apartment walls in order to evoke a different world without actually having to create the world. Shoestring, people!
If you are bored you might enjoy these projector tests, created with my camera, a Kodak Ektagraphic III (generously donated by Matt McLaughlin), and a 150W cheapo fresnel. If you are not bored, I recommend you utilize your time for something more productive or fun. Life is short, the internet is forever.
At the moment, Jeremiah, Jason and myself are divvying up the “Unbalanced” preproduction script for the purposes of storyboarding. In my experience, storyboarding is a weird mixture of excitement and reluctant resignation; it’s great to “see” the words on the page in rough imagery, but committing myself to a single visual interpretation is scary. In a worst case scenario, where we don’t have the luxury of shooting good coverage, what I draw is what the final product will be.
Given lots of toys, tools, and a budget, I can imagine storyboarding to be totally awesome, a protean graphic novel that’s as evocative as it is precise. I get fired up over Watchmen storyboards, which have the luxury of being derived from a graphic novel/script combo, but which also tell a story of their own:
Here are some glimpses from the trailer….
(I can’t wait for this f’ing movie. If you haven’t read the graphic novel yet, do yourself a favor—hold off on seeing the movie until you read the original.)
Anyway, our modest sets/budget/timetables and my devolved drawing skills pale in comparison. Here’s an excerpt from one of my storyboarding chunks, a quick walkthrough of an office aftermath:
Script:
INT. OFFICE
Ian walks through an empty office to his cube. Evidence of calamity is everywhere - overturned plants, papers and boxes strewn about, empty rooms…
Ian notices a queer motivational poster on the wall. It depicts a cat riding jet-skis, and it reads: “’America is another name for opportunity,’ Ralph Waldo Emerson.” Ian absorbs this, gets an idea.
Storyboard:
It’s no aerosol flamethrower, but… it’s a sequence!
As of August, I'll be a full-time student in USC's Motion Picture Producing MFA.
Code Duello joined the UCB TourCo and is available for national bookings.
Syndicate
This is me in Peru. I am very interesting.
Click a photo to enlarge or visit my Flickr collection.
This is me in one of my comedy shows. Won't you come to the next one?