journals part 2

oct 19, 2008couldn't sleep last night, anticipation of today's shoot running through my mind. worry that our canadian band wouldn't show up (they did). worried about the order of whom i picked up and where i would stop for gas (nicole who lives in my building first obviously then gas at domo then mike who played the drummer). shot the scene in which harv announces they are going to canada. pretty funny stuff. then the canadian band in the studio. ian (you remember ian, enjoy your pumas/consumer goods/went to lolla with him this year ian) was a little more than a little hungover so he wore some shades. lee (no list records) was our burton, fucking animated as hell. mike and a guy named dave (both great beards) were the rhythm section. stacey and shelly peterson were our hippie girl extras (i have known stacey since we were in a grade 3/4 split class) so weird co-incidence. emil showed up again today as well! hilarity ensued, lee was jumping up and down, scissor kicking, everything. great stuff. shot a few angles (including an over the head) and i was happy. everyone seemed a little happier today because we had no time crunch and it was our last day and we were only doing three scenes.

part two of the day we jumped from 1965 to 91. harv is in the studio with karen's new band (the downers) and they are all on dope. chad's sister michelle filled in as our 'other karen' (the kim gordon to kaeliegh's kim deal, get it!?!?!) and brett returned as ace heartstrings (fixxxing's drummer stuck around for karen's band we figured). also turns out he's an accomplished make up artist, who knew? jen did our make up again today and was awesome at mine as well as the heroin girls. it was a blast. i came up with a nice scene capping line about christmas before milt (drew) grabs karen and hauls her out of the room. golden moments, caught on high definition digital video harddrive (or film woulda been shorter to say).

josh rocked it out crew wise all weekend, he knows his job, he knows we're crunched for time, he's there to work. he shot most of the weekend (if not all). chad kept a cool set that coulda been much more stressful. we put everything in its right place and were out of there by around 4pm today. perfect scheduling if i do say so myself. 

then jen and i went to applebees to treat ourselves to a real meal. i've been depriving myself lately, don't know the last time i went out to eat. caeser salad, steak, shrimp, garlic mashed ... mmmmmm. that, and we saw "W" and it was gold. brolin, you have an oscar nom on your hands. you forget you're watching him and you could swear it is bush. they even put in the part about the pretzels.

i am very lucky to have such great friends helping me make our best film yet.

october 23,2008

harv stevens - nick friesen

fixxxing
karen down - kaeliegh ayre
chuck buck - victor enns
jose - chadd henderson
ace heartstrings - bret hogan

that canadian band
trevor burton - lee repko
ian jeffry
dave
mike

harv's crew
director - chad tremblay
mortimer the sound man - dale kibbins
stanley sloan - leah fraser
cherise - bj verot
sound engineer - bruce claydon
marvin 'milt' milton - drew

an american journalist in paris - jen zoratti

other karen - michelle tremblay

murray berkowitz - gary ross

patty pratt - nicole grabowsky

harv at eleven - isaac
harv's mom - andrea premecz

harv's girls
emily wessell
alexa bereznycky
melanie (pee girl)
stacey & shelley peterson
kylie friesen
cathy
taylor

harv's band
eric
josh benoit

french waiter - josh benoit

grant davidson - marc evans

'the artist' - marshall wiebe

bonnie bennett - ava

johnny & the moondoggs 
matt kennedy
craig
bj verot
dan berzenji

the awesome cousins
no idea. have to check that.

rabbi - howard curl

that's everyone ... so far. and a bunch of wedding extras that are written down somewhere. i don't have everyone's last name written down either. gotta thank everyone for coming out on these insane days and helping out. seriously - couldn't have done it without each and every one of these folks (and a bunch more). 

four more days to go ...

sunday october 26

so yesterday we shot in ile de chaines (or however it is spelled, i butcher) at chad's grandparents'. we lost one of our canadian band members so turned it into a gag about the other guy was missing cuz he's off hunting. yeah. it's a pretty funny scene. we have a lot of canadian cliches - deer head, stuffed duck, canadian flags, habs jersey, the usual. and leah in a bonhomme toque. priceless.

had an epic gg marathon with jen last night to wind down - thurston moore, kim gordon and daugther coco were in an episode involving crazy buskers coming to town. it was a golden moment.

today did not go so well. well, it did. but not as well as i had hoped. i was pretty worked up because today was a pretty heavy scene and i wanted a certain amount of seriousness, so i got into this pretty closed off headspace and everyone was joking around and i was trying to stay serious and a few people were late but it was okay and we were running on time and the gun guy was there and we shot the wide and bj went down and leah went down and we covered them with blood and we were going to shoot the tighter shots and ... the battery died.

no problem - we've got a second battery!

it's dead too.

no problem, we've got a plug in!

the plug in is at home.

so who left the plug in at home and didn't charge the batteries last night?

who drove from deep st james to his apartment at top speeds in the focus?

who felt embarrassed and awful for making everyone wait in the blood?

yeah. this guy.

i returned within 40 minutes and the day was salvaged. it turned out really well. so all was not lost. i was mad at first because i was trying to get mad and feel sad about shooting my friends, then i got mad because i was such a fucking idiot and left the camera stuff at home. 

oct 30

bruce mcdonald (for those of you who haven't been following my insane fan-boy getting to work with my hero epic) commissioned me to write the bible for the new hard core logo website and APPARENTLY screenplays as well. this would be the band from their birth to their death and back again.

so i wrote it last week and awaited response and bruce just called - he was halfway through it, had to put it down and call me to say how much he loved it.

and that he was sending it to danny and dave - daniel fucking macivor - to get their feedback and then turner and baker (book and original screenplay) to get their reactions and to hugh, callum, bernie and john (the band in the film) to get their reactions. jesus. 

he also said things like how he loved how i put them into real events and had real people (erica ehm from muchmusic and jeanne bekker to name a few) and he was all 'oh i'm sure jeanne would love to write something for it' ........... he loved the fictional accounts and the fictional characters and said that ... well, he said lots. i'm gushing now, i'll stop.

in the next few months you'll be seeing the hard core logo website. it will be much better than anything i could do on my own. i am stoked. stoked stoked STOKED..so bruce called today, but i was asleep because i never fall asleep at a decent hour because i don't do anything all day and so i called his office and he wasn't there but then he called me back. he apologized for not being around and all lately (he's the nicest guy, i swear) and calmed my nerves on a few issues that i had about the site and the comments from the other writers. nothing negative, just stuff i didn't know. anyways. he might be in town in march and he said we could hang out if he was.

yup.

also he said that hugh dillon couldn't open the files on his computer so bruce has to send him a 'fuckin hard copy'. 

tonight i went and helped out dave brown at an onalee ames acting class, they were doing auditions. i got to be 'the director'. it was a blast actually. there are some talented folks in that room. some people (the younger actors) couldn't pronounce certain words ... but we'll forgive them. saw a few old friendly faces and a few people i swear didn't remember me, people i had put in my films. no recognition from them. maybe i remember them because i get to stare at their faces over and over in editing and they don't remember me because it is like a one day experience for them. hmmmm. i dunno. they did scenes from the flick 'living in oblivion' and the characters are named nick and chad ... that made me laugh, i didn't think about that until tonight.

then dave took us out for drinks and food. he wouldn't let us pay. he is one helluva guy that dave brown. met a few folks and had some chats. i haven't gone out and socialized a lot lately so it was cool. 7pm-2am with the class then the outing. i was telling some stories and i guess i've gotten soft in my old age (i was never a hard drug user or anything, but since i've quit drinking i worry that i've turned into a pussy or something, well, not really, but i'm even LESS of a ... i don't know. tough guy? guy's guy? something.)

november 3

we shot at the bingo hall yesterday. grand finale. massacre. etc. bloodiest day of all. 

chad, leah, dale and i showed up at noon. toni marks let us in and told us all the details of bingo people that she could. insanely insightful, and now all i want to do is make films about bingo. i'm not kidding. bingo people are the quirkiest creatures of habit i've ever heard of. gamblers in any sense are i suppose. kind of amazing.

bj and josh and dave brown showed up around 2. dave brought with him not only guns, but a steadicam jr for us to use. the scene last night involved one continuous shot, choreographed down to every last movement. bj shot it and it went really smoothly i think. the shot looks fluid and nice, as opposed to a shaky handheld. 

so we started the scene outside, walked into the bingo hall, sat down, stood up, waved a gun, shot a gun, shot a gun again, had brett off camera with josh applying blood and flicking it, made quite a mess. 

jen saved us again because our make up girl cancelled. but then jen's bus driver was a dink and jen missed her stop. bus drivers are dinks.

problem was, we were trying to shoot for sundown at 5:03pm. rehearsals went a little long and by the time we shot it was about 6pm and it was pitch black. we had leah and jen sit in chad's car with the lights on, blasting at us before we went into the hall. it worked, but when we rounded the corner we got lost in the darkness. 

we did the whole rigamarole and pulled it off without a hitch it seemed. watching on playback, josh was in frame with the blood flick. damn. re-set. here we go again for take two (and due to the bloody nature of our scene, we had only two takes as i only had two identical changes of costume). 

take two went off fine as well, this time with more blood and no josh. 

this sequence is my homage to many things, the bingo scene in highway 61, the ending shootout in roadkill, the VERY end is a bit of a there will be blood reference, and chad even snuck in a nice man bites dog reference in his lines.

november 13

so.just got an email from bruce's people about the hcl project. a few quotes from those that read it:

From Noel Baker (hard core logo screenwriter):
Read it. Liked it. It's all good.

From Callum Rennie (actor, Billy Tallent):
i likey very funny........best C

and a few more additions from John Pyper Ferguson (actor, John Oxenberger) and David Griffith who wrote the sequel with Bruce had a few notes, mostly things I didn't know about that Bruce hadn't told me, backstory stuff they had worked out. So I've got some changes to do. 

either way, I still don't have a job. They're paying me for this, but when? Oh lord, when??

Either way, kinda neat that these guys are reading my shit ... I should put that on my resume

november 16

well, we have finally finished casting the flick. i won't tell you who, but he is a pretty prominent actor in the city. it's also a secret part in the script, so you will all be surprised. hoping to shoot this final day on december third. 

in other film news, putting the footage on the external hard drive cuz we ran outta room on the computer took about 25 hours. yeah. meaning i can't cut anything till wednesday when chad is back from his hunting trip and can help me with the footage. i wish i wasn't so useless at this stuff. eep.