Chapter Eleven - July 18-22, 2005.

Monday, July 18, 2005

Francis
We’ve realized that Francis is slightly retarded. After the general PA meeting this morning, where I announced I’d be sending home the 3 weakest performers in the next 48 hours, he spent all day wandering the yard and proudly picking up cigarette butts, announcing a new total with each discovery. (Occasionally running through the yard to tell me how many he’d found.)

“I’m on the butt patrol!” he’d shout with a smile on his face.

He attached himself to the actors earlier today, when they were headed out for an actors lunch. “Francis,” Kiel screamed, “You’re not going with them!” I chimed in. “No way, Francis! You have to work!” Only at that point did I realize we’d both actually called him Francis, referring to his striking resemblance to Pee Wee’s nemesis, instead of his actual name. Completely blowing our cover of joking about Francis.

Ek.

Andy less than happy.

Lloyd’s absence
Lloyd finally called today, after a week awol. He called me for 10 minutes, and then called Kiel for 2 minutes before he took another call. He asked me to make all these plans for this weekend, which I started to do, but Kiel just pointed out that Lloyd is flying to a convention in Canada for the weekend.

We start filming in eight days. And the director is practically nowhere to be found.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Quote
From one young department director, to another: “Isn’t it so cool that we’re both with producers!!!”

I’ll let you work out who said this to who about who and who.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Too many people
While we planned to have 50 people working on this film, Lloyd decided we should get everyone we could working on the film — just in case. Every film festival he went to, every convention he went to, every person that emailed us, he insisted we invite to work on the film. Trent had warned of this.

As a result, we now have 40 people living in a house I said we’d have 15 in. By next week, when filming begins, we’ll have 96 people working on a set that has food for 50, and only two bathrooms. Some of these people speak minimal English (three here, who met Lloyd at Cannes, speak only French). One PA is mildly retarded, and wanders around making a spectacle of himself. One PA has debilitating Aspergers, and stares off into space, lost in his dreams. One PA is a star of Enema Porns, and boasts a number of disturbing facial piercings. Her boyfriend walks around like a zombie, slowly sliding a broom an inch above the floor. One guy applied with a photo of himself in his underwear in a Bed, Bath & Beyond.

I’m now tasked with the job of culling the fields. Firing them. I already warned The Kid With Aspergers, Enema Girl & Her BF, and RudeBoy, that they’ve got 24 hours to impress me before I have to send them home. I got rid of The Damn Complainer earlier today.

DemonScars and Andy, happy.

The mildly retarded PA, though, is now being celebrated by Gabe as the new star of Troma films. He’s by far the worst of the bunch, although a nice guy, but Gabe sees him as the new Louise Brooks. 150lbs heavier. I guess he’s not getting fired just yet.

Busted
Someone at work found this url. Fuck. [Note - I’d secretly been posting these journals for months.]

From Larry….
Tell Gabe that his boy Zen is an asshole. He brought in his fucking 3 foot (1 headed) zombie monster, which looks pretty cool. But Zen did not tell me that he would be spraying it or something, so now the Troma building smells like ass, and I am sure that I will be yelled at because of it in a half hour. I am very pissed off. Fuck Zen and fuck Gabe for bringing this fucker into my life!

Thanks, Larry.

Thursday, July 21, 2005

An email I sent to a few friends….
Not sure if you guys are reading the blog, but if you are, it turned out that the local art director (who had some revealing gossip posted about her of late) [which has been edited out of this version - although you may find reference to it above] had somehow found the url and been secretly reading the blog for weeks. Ooops. (Actually, not so secretly– she’d shown the two other producers, and they’d both been loving it. No-one told me. Bastards.)

I feel like shit
Ben was always looking busy, but never seemed to be doing anything. I had to let him go this morning. (He was an arrogant prick, so I didn’t mind so much.) The choreographer, Maria, thinks he’s the only decent dancer here, so when I told her, she was pretty pissed at me. (I’d also heard he was making wild moves on her, which she may have appreciated, but I definitely didn’t.)

I also had to let Francis, the semi-retarded mascot, go today. I was really starting to like him. He was goofy and slow, but also really meant well, and wanted to help out. But he wouldn’t hack it. I told him that if he could find somewhere to stay, we could definitely have him in the film… we just couldn’t house him. He’s making calls right now.

But I feel like shit. I have three more to go.

Focus
While we have almost no time, Lloyd wants [writer] Gabe to focus on updating photos on Lloyd’s MySpace profile, and wants [producer] Kiel to get PAs to fill in a questionnaire on modern horror for a Social Theory book LK might write. Glad he’s as focused as we are.

Fired
I just came back and found one of the fired PAs sitting in the church front lawn, drinking a 40 in the middle of the day. Evidently this was his giant “fuck you” message to us.

Lloyd
Often, talking to Lloyd on the phone, I just find myself zoning out. He’ll repeat things over and over again as he works them out in his mind, and will correct and contradict and change his mind mid-sentence as he’s on his fifth repetition. It’s really hard sometimes. Frustrating. Confusing. Annoying.

Dave Molloy fighting the humidity, while molding John Karyus’ double (for the scene where the zombie hand pluges into Karyus’ ass, and then reaches all the way out his mouth.

Another couple
I had to have another termination talk with a couple today, who weren’t at all prepared for the speed or expectations of this experience. She was more focused on telling people about her enema porn career. He was focused on being incredibly slow and meticulous, spending 30 minutes sweeping a 4-sq-ft patch of the stage. I think she’s also Troma Art Director Melvin’s girlfriend (Melvin also being The Sleazy One), with whom I’m already fighting with incredible venom. (One of his other girlfriends just quit, primarily because I told her she had to move from one of the four bedrooms, because the two lead actresses were showing up, and there wasn’t room for six people in that room. After that, she spent all of her energy talking shit about me.) So, after firing two of his sleazy girlfriends, I’m sure there are going to be loud screams coming from New York.

Zombie Arms
Every day, people associated with the film tell me about how excited they are to be involved in the opening night shoot, where the romantic leads, necking in a graveyard, are attacked by zombie arms. Sadly, this is a closed set — the leads will be topless. Over and over and over again I have to break the news: “sorry, it’s core crew only.” Of course, I’m sure when the time comes, they’ll all be considered core crew.

Rehearsals
There are supposed to be death rehearsals over at The McDonald’s tonight. I’ve been working with FX to try to determine a good death for me…. Bitte really wants something she creates to penetrate me — a small chicken demon, for example. The symbolism isn’t too hard to read. Reminds me of that grand drill scene in Body Double. Mmmmm.

Instead of this movie
Lloyd, on the phone earlier today, terribly depressed: “We should just get out… get out while we still can. Go out and get drunk… drive to AC and get some hookers.”

Another one bites the dust
Another one down, btw… that makes six in three days? something like that. (Really hard when people quit their jobs for this, and travel across the country or globe.) Fortunately, three people quit in the last 24 hours, so that makes for fewer cuts ahead. (It turns out that *two* of the people I was cutting had aspbergers. one of them was beginning to develop a frightening obsession with Lloyd.)

I also had to give another warning to a Troma office PA, Rudeboy, who’s always been the world’s leading slacker. I don’t know how “Nice Guy Andy” (as Lloyd used to refer to me) got the job of Bad Cop, but I did. My neck and shoulders are killing me.

humid
so humid that nothing will dry. the zombie arms, wet with either water or sweat, have been hanging over the clothesline for days and are still sopping inside. the costumes are soaked. at the mcdonalds, the cardboard “produce” storage boxes are falling apart from dampness.

Gabe filming the entire movie on a camcorder.

readthrus and video rehearsals
because we’re in a remote location, stuck together in this crammed house, and working around the clock, Lloyd decided (while off on holiday in France, or Cancun, or somewhere) that it would behoove the rest of us to actually start making the film, in costume, with all the effects, and shooting it on video. Blocking out the scenes, rehearsing, taping it all, and then editing it all together. As a result, we really are ending up with rough cuts of many scenes of the film. (Alot of these we had shot in advance of the actors even coming to Buffalo. All of these we’ve shot without the director. He just watches them when he comes to town for a visit, and comments on them.)

Lloyd is also a big fan of group readthrus, with frequent pauses to obsess over details. Tonight we started a readthru at 8pm, with about 60 people (PAs, Dept Heads, Actors) in attendance, the actors reading their parts and stand-ins for some of the extras. After an hour and change, and Lloyd losing interest, we’d made it thru a remarkable 17 pages of the script. I don’t see this going very far.

Obsession
One of Lloyd’s quirks is his absolute obsession over details. He becomes fixated on tiny tiny details. He and I spent 40 minutes trying to watch 10 minutes of footage of rehearsals, but every few seconds he’d pause it to demand we buy more red, white & blue bunting — something he’d spent 10 minutes yapping about in a meeting merely an hour earlier. “There — on that building! You should put it on that building! All over it!” “On that building too! Oh, is that the same building?” “You could put a fence in front of that building there and put it there too!” “See those lampposts? There!!! Hang it up all over there! You know what I’m talking about, right? Red, white, and blue? Maybe you should tea down the white, but little flags — all over the place! I want tons of them! Shitloads!!!”

In the earlier meeting, he also kept coming back to Sumac Trees, and how we need to have Sumac represented both in the graveyard and outside the Restaurant, to tie the two together. No-one actually knew what Sumac was, but we all nodded. Over and over again, he asked about it — going so far as to demand Gabe actually write a line into the script along the lines of “A sumac tree is visible in the background.” This film is so full of nonsensical plot devices, and illogical chains of events, and singing chicken-indian zombies, and yet he seems convinced that this one little detail will tie it all together.

Weeks ago, when Lloyd came out for a 3-day visit to the location, he was similarly obsessed with both the bunting and the sumac. I guess it’s not a passing thing.

At least he’s been in a good mood since he arrived. The one outburst I’ve witnessed (him screaming at Gabe “tell that asshole to turn your fucking- farting- fuckface- phone on!!!”) was incredibly brief. I’m weirdly convinced it’s entirely because of the heads-up pennies I’ve found today. (My pockets are bulging with the things.) I’m going quite insane.

Mike and Maria sharing sin.

I continue smoking a cigarette or two a day. I try to keep from it, but there are so many people around who do it, and it’s such a short-term stress reliever. People aren’t really allowed to take breaks, unless they’re smoking. So it makes it easy to pick it up.

Friday, July 22, 2005

Phones
We’ve been here for 6 weeks, and we still have no phones. Fucking AT&T are a bunch of assholes. They keep delaying and postponing and making up excuses as to why they missed their appointment. I jacked up my sprint cellphone minutes to 6000 a month. Fortunately I’m in charge of the budget… some of the PAs on the team are really going to suffer when their bills come in. I feel bad, but… well…

Blood
People will randomly walk into the office, drenched in blood. Earlier today FX beauty Bitte, and then AD Caleb. Caleb was literally dripping, smearing it across the poor church rectory carpet. Goddamn.

Next week: The head makeup artist has a breakdown, Andy becomes the least popular guy on the production for firing a popular PA, an octogenarian extra gets padlocked in a portapotty by a Buffalo street gang, and the fire department shows up at the American Chicken Bunker, looking for a real American lunch. All at poultrygeistmovie.com. Then, see pictures and find out more at Andy Deemer’s website.

Also, be god, at http://www.startyourownreligion.org