We tried.

In the effort of getting our movie from an R rating to PG-13 (which did not happen), we took out about 27 fucks, and in the process I saw generally what an easy out that word is because every time we had to replace it, every time we had to ask, What did we really want to say here? we came up with something more specific, more revealing of character or situation.

The gun first came out in a Los Gatos coffee shop. It was really funny. We were just sitting there, doing our thing, trying to fit a handful of lifetimes onto ninety pages, which is similar to trying to squeeze twelve obese people into one wetsuit, when, one of us, I don’t remember who, brought a gun into the scene. Mayhem ensued. At one point, we were both yelling—I think Antonia was standing up and yelling her ideas but it could have just as easily been me—because it was so exciting to shoot your characters (I know! I am NOT pro-gun, and I hate violence in movies—and life—but there it was…I was shooting people left and right and having a ball!).

The manager came out to make sure everything was okay.

“We gave them guns,” we said, and he nodded, smiled, and put his finger to his lips. “We’ll be quieter,” we promised.

There was a stand-off. Two characters pointed guns at each other, and we had no idea what to do! How do you get one person to drop his gun? We worked on this scene for a long time and then, guess what? We totally cheated! We cut to another shot and then, when we came back, one of the characters had dropped his arm down to his side! No wonder we got such low reviews on Rotton Tomatoes! We did stuff like that! Rookie moves! But who cares, really? We made a movie! So what if it got stinky reviews (except for the one good one in The New York Times!!!)?

The house we rented to shoot some of the scenes in had an attic full of feral cats. It was summer and the house was old and hot and the smell was physically insulting and hard to manage, but the day Rebecca Romajin was scheduled to take off everything but her panties, no one was complaining, none of the men, I mean. They jammed into the outskirts of the living room to get a peek. Many were wearing masks because the smell was so bad, but when a beautiful woman lets her dress drop, people get really quiet.

There was the scene when Gbenga Akinnagbe was lying on a bed and a women he had just met a minute ago in real life was supposed to walk into the room, climb on top of him, and start wildly making out with him. The woman wasn’t climbing on him the way Antonia, who co-wrote the movie with me and also directed it, wanted her to, so then Antonia stepped away from the camera and climbed on top of Gbenga to show them what she had in mind.

Everyone got still for a moment. That was one of the hottest scenes and it wasn’t even in the movie.

I had found the actor Tobin Bell in the Peet’s in downtown Willow Glen by googling “ten scariest men in movies”. I couldn’t watch the Saw clips, but I thought Tobin’s face was perfect for the part, and I liked his name because it made me think of the Tobin Bridge in Boston.

When Tobin showed up on the set, he asked me about character motivation. He wanted more insight into his part, but I didn’t have any. He was the bad guy. I liked Tobin immediately. He was professional, funny, and interesting to talk to. He wanted to do a good job. The problem was that this was my first movie. There hadn’t been space in my brain to both write dialogue and know why the characters were saying those things so I told Tobin I had to run and do something. I patted him on the arm and told him I knew he’d be great.

Hahahaha. Truly. I ran away from Tobin Bell to avoid telling him I had no idea what his character was about aside from the fact that he was scary and dangerous. Try to write a movie if you haven’t! It’s so hard! Every line of dialogue needs to move the action forward or reveal something important about the character. There is no time for chitter chat. There’s just a bunch of arrows all headed for the target of the final scene. Writing a movie is an exercise in willpower for someone like me who likes to go off on tangents. Clearly I need to work on my internal fortitude if I’m ever going to write a screenplay again.

It’s 4 a.m. here in California, and I’m hoping for a little sleep. I woke up thinking about this time, the time we made a movie, and so I thought I’d write about it and then try to see if I couldn’t go back to sleep.

The movie opened at the Austin Film Festival. The theater was packed, and during the shoot-off, I started laughing because the response of the audience was amazing. People were gasping! People in the audience were acting as if they really liked the movie! The young man next to me, at the end of the movie, turned and said, “Are you part of the movie?” I nodded. “Oh, what a relief,” he said. “I thought you were such a jerk for laughing.”

I love the movies.

I hope you have a wonderful day.