With a few weeks of hindsight (and rest) behind me, I’ve taken a little time to write a post-mortem on my first produced film, TENEBROUS. I’ll try to recall as much as possible about everything and what I learned, but it will mostly be in stream of consciousness, so bear with me.
Writing It
It was just after Thanksgiving, 2006. The weekend was approaching fast. Phil Melfi (one of the other producers) and I were standing on the front porch of his house after dinner, discussing plans. During the course of the conversation, he looks over and says to me, “Why don’t you go write a script so I can sell it?”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ve got a weekend to kill before my next contract job kicks in. I’ll write it this weekend.”
At this point I had a pretty fair idea of what I wanted to write. I also knew that it generally takes about 3 months to write a screenplay. But it didn’t enter into my mind that it couldn’t be done in 2 days. After all, that was all I had, and I wanted to get the story out of my head and on the paper.
So, late Friday night, I started writing TENEBROUS. During the course of the weekend, I stayed in my room with the doors closed. I took cat naps, got up and went right back to the keyboard. The scenes were coming at me hard and fast and I couldn’t seem to type fast enough to get them out. This story wanted out, and it wanted out in a bad way.
Every so often, Phil was peek his head in and ask me what page I was on. I would tell him, and he would ask if he could read what I had. I vehemently denied him access. “You’ll read it when it’s done, and I have until the end of the weekend to do it per our agreement,” I told him.
I finished Monday morning at around 3am. Sent a PDF copy of the first draft to Phil via e-mail, walked into his room and said, “It’s done. Go read it if you want.”
He shot up out of bed and ran into his office to read it. Meanwhile, I went outside to have a smoke and relax. I had written another screenplay. Mainly as an exercise for myself to see if I could do it in 2 days, but also to get a lot off my chest.
Phil walks out onto the porch about half an hour later. His mouth was open like a fish. “That bad?” I asked him, laughing.
He just shrugged it off and said, “No, it was really good. Like a one-two punch. Some of that stuff just comes out of nowhere and hits you.”
I took a few days off from it, then Phil and I went back and polished up some of the dialogue over the next week or so.
And that is the genesis of TENEBROUS.
Pre-Production
I can remember when we got our production deal going. It was my 29th birthday, about 3 months after I wrote the first draft. I got the weekend to relax for a little bit. But I didn’t. Reality settled in pretty fast. “Holy shit,” I thought, “all those things that everybody kept telling me we’d have to do, well, we’ll have to do them all now.”
So there was a bit of a mad scramble to start the pre-production process at the beginning of March. Since I wrote the script, knew some of the area better than most, and I was the only person on the ground here with a camera (at the time), I ventured forth as location scout. At final reckoning, I took close to 2,000 pictures of different locations here in Warren County.
Once the pictures were taken, they had to be organized for the director and the D.P. to look over. We set up a secured area on our servers so the crew could log in and view the various locations and give their feedback. Once rejected, it was taken down. Repeat for about a month or so.
Meanwhile, I’m also working on rewrites with the Director (Joel Bender), trying to get the story ever tighter and more cinematic. I didn’t mind doing so much at the time because I was learning and it was keeping me busy.
Around this time is when Brad Thornton flew out. I don’t think that without his legal counsel we would have gotten as much done as we had. Not to mention that he was playing the lead role and also a producer. Yes, we’re a strange bunch, but that’s in our nature.
I remember going to pick up Louis Mandylor at the airport with Brad, and my first impression of him as he got in the car. He was energetic, excited to be here, and eager to get going. He was really nice to me, which helped bust up some of my own jaded views of “the Hollywood type.”
Some more advice that people gave me: once pre-production is done and principal photography begins, it will be like going underwater and not coming up for air for 21 days. They were right. It was difficult to tell night from day, since most of our days were in fact night anyway. When you’re working on a film, the film becomes your world and your life; your schedule is the film’s schedule. I even stopped trying to figure out what day of the week it was. Rather I thought of it in terms of what shooting day we were in (is this Day 6 or Day 7?)
Casting was another part I had no idea about truly until I had gone through it. I watched audition tapes from L.A. and here, going through them all with the Director, Cinematographer, and Louis. I had to develop a feel for each person reading the same lines over and over for hours on end, and give my own input on it. It was tough and draining for me, as I believe it was for everyone else involved in the casting process. In the end, I think we got the best cast we could because we stood our ground and went through literally thousands of applicants.
We started crewing up fast and worked through the logistics of budget, schedule, lodging, all those many thousands of pieces of information needed to put a film together. Much of this part was out of my hands and it wasn’t until I walked onto the first set that I got to meet everyone.
Principal Photography
With a locked script and crew in place, we set off to make the movie. But first, we needed to get the talent in front of the camera so the talent behind the camera could film them.
At this point is where I started being Transportation Coordinator for talent. What that basically meant was that I drove to and from Nashville, picked up the cast as they arrived, took them to the hotel, and then also picked them up from the hotel to take them to set. Not too bad a task, but you rack up the miles on your car real fast.
In picking up everybody at the airport, most were very surprised that the writer was the one doing that job. I’d laugh and tell them that I’m also a producer as well. I’m guessing that it isn’t SOP in Hollywood for the writer to pick up the talent, let alone hang out on the set.
Francesca Cecil was one of the first I picked up at the airport. I had a bad case of nerves. I mean, here was the actress that was going to play one of the more crucial roles in the film, not to mention that she was a bit of a looker as well. For those in the audience that don’t know it, I am a very shy person in the flesh.
I must’ve looked like quite the doofus, standing there in my jeans, t-shirt, and Dr. Scholl’s sneakers with a pair of Polar Optics sunglasses on, holding up a sign like a limo driver for her. She noticed me after getting her luggage from the luggage claim and came over. I was quite surprised to see her. The photograph of her on IMDB doesn’t do her any justice. Here was the person playing Sara, standing in front of me. It was my first surreal moment of the film, but not my last.
My standard routine was, once the talent was picked up, to check in with production to let them know they came in, and then to see if they needed something to eat. Ruby Tuesday was on the way back out to the interstate, so I usually stopped there if they were hungry. Don’t worry, I’m going somewhere with this.
I picked up James Marshall at the airport and asked him if he was hungry. He hadn’t eaten all day, so I took him to Ruby Tuesday. He ordered the largest burger on their menu, which is something that I tried eating once and gave up on it. It’s a double-decker burger with all the trimmings that you have to cut in half just to get it in your mouth. I mean, it’s a big honkin’ burger.
While talking with him, I watched him eat the whole thing in about 10 minutes. I laughed about it and said, “Man, you weren’t kidding about being hungry, were you?” To which he replied: “Yeah, I think I want another one.”
I was a little starstruck, sitting in the restaurant across from James. I mean, here was the guy I saw in A Few Good Men and Twin Peaks, things I remembered watching when I was younger. I admitted as much to him, and how honored I was to have him starring in a film I wrote and helped produce. He kinda shrugged it off. Over the course of the next week or so, we got to talk a lot and became good friends.
The drive from Nashville to McMinnville is about 90 minutes. Most of the time all you can do is talk and watch the trees go by. I didn’t mind, because I had the chance to talk to the cast and some of the crew, pick their brains as they picked mine. Some of the more common questions I got were about the area, history of the place, the kind of town it was. I saw myself as a kind of ambassador to the area, so I tried to put my best foot forward.
I remember the first day of shooting. We got up early and drove two golf carts from the house to the set, which was just down the street. It was odd, driving past the thick grasssy field on one side and a growing corn field on the other at about 10 miles per hour. I had to laugh at it being so different.
More to come soon. I just realized I’ve been typing out my thoughts for the last 2 1/2 hours, and the sun is starting to come up.
