the new Trailer is here the new Trailer is here!

Oh my God I can't believe it's true!!! Yes, we haven't even finished filming the script and there is already a trailer for the film! Hell, I figured if they could do it for Ocean's 12 or War of the Worlds I might as well be able to pull off something similar. Here's the difference... we don't have all of that fancy computer graphics stuff to "make" a trailer out of nothing. So, we decided to use actual footage. I know, crazy huh?! I guess you'd like to know how to get your hands on this thing, right? Okay.

www.rustedsunfilms.com is the location to find and view the trailer for our latest film Divine Manipulation of the Threads. It should give you a taste of what this film is ready to offer. I've been spending days upon days rough cutting footage into scenes... then we decided that we might as well cut a trailer for this thing. We want to get people excited about this project. So, for all those of you that have concerns that we have not shot with you as of yet... rest assured, we're still working on it.
On another note, vacation hasn't been all that restful... but amazingly enough I haven't been drinking that much beer. Hell, it's Friday, I guess that can change tonight.
I did get to see a couple of films at the Indie Memphis Film Festival (including my short-but-sweet performance in Slow Down... You're Dating Too Fast). Look out George Clooney, apparently I can be a charming son-of-a-bitch too... Enjoy the trailer and tell us all about it!
-B

and now, the rest of the story...

That phrase is probably going to end up involving me in a lawsuit because of copyright laws and Paul Harvey Jr., so I'll get this over with as soon as I possibly can.
We're up to tape 10 (I've still yet to load tape nine), we've broken the half-way point of shooting for the film Divine Manipulation of the Threads, and I've just about completed the first pass of the Official Trailer for the film. I'm on vacation from the news station next week and I'll more than likely spend a large portion of that "down time" working on rough cut edits, the trailer, loading tapes, and drinking beer before the strike of noon.
I truly love vacations. Even though I'm not going anywhere (no planned trips) and even though I have to remain somewhat responsible over the span of next week (you know, film stuff and having to get my car tags renewed)... I look forward to the option of sleeping in, playing a game or two, going to see some films at the Indie Memphis film festival (although the more I think about it the more I get pissed off about not having anything to submit this year because we're still working on it), being able to pretty much do whatever-the-hell-I-want-to-do, and mainly getting a break from work before the dreaded November ratings book.
November sucks to work in news. There is no time off, you have to be at a beckon call, I usually have to work Thanksgiving (because I'm not married, have no kids, and my family structure pretty much doesn't exist), and everyone I work with goes squirrel-nuts-fucking-crazy from stress, deadlines, and expectations that often fall somewhere around the realm of making Micheal Jackson seem as normal as a Ziggy comic strip. The stress is enough to knowingly hit yourself in the face with a shovel, and enjoy it...
"Oh, well wouldn't it be smart to take time off after such a draining span of time?" Yes, yes, it would... but seeing as how I'm riding the middle of the seniority totem pole, the December vacation book fills up mighty quickly. So, it would be nice... but taking time off in December "ain't gonna happen." Besides, I usually take some time off around the Indie Memphis film festival so that I can attend movies, drink at afterparties until the "breaka-breaka-dawn," and not have to worry about the day job until the following week. Sanity...
I've got a shoot with BSM this Saturday (the somewhat dreaded shoot that may eventually cause me greif) we're doing some pick-up shots with the PHONE GIRL SCENE on our movie early Sunday morning, and then I'm putting together a crew of people to go see OCEAN FRONT PROPERTY at 1pm on Sunday. It's a film that a friend of mine from Dallas acted/directed/shot/etc. He's coming to town for the festival and I would like to show a warm welcome. It's a great film and I highly recommend film lovers to see this Indie feature. It's an amazing work... and it's often hard for me to give compliments... but damnit, it's good.
I'll post again next week, change some things with the Official Rusted Sun Films site and post the new trailer by the end of the week. So far it's taken on a 70's jazz kind of cool feel. It will spark interest and make me think about all of the shots I would like to get further on down the road.
-B

weekend nine: doing just fine...

Blond, James Blond... (yes it's a pun). Every once in a while I get excited about the James Bond series of films. I grew up watching them and they are one of the many reasons that I wanted to "grow up and make movies." I grew up on Roger Moore, learned to appreciate Sir Sean Connery as the birth of cool, rode along with Timothy Dalton, loved the re-birth of Pierce Brosnan, and would have liked to have seen more from George Lazenby. If there were ever an opportunity to arise for an American to play Bond, I would jump through hoops to play the part (I've been practicing my Proper-English accent).
So, kudos to Daniel Craig for snagging the role as the "new" Bond. I envy you, you bastard... you were absolutely fucking great in Layer Cake, I hated your sniveling bitch of a character in Road to Perdition (which was the very intention, I'm sure), and I cannot wait to see what you bring to James Bond. Put in a good word for me when you decide to bow out of the role.
So, with that underway, I will progress to the weekend update of production on Divine Manipulation of the Threads. This weekend marked the return of the very talented Ralph Hatley. Everyone was glad to have Ralph back in town for the weekend (even though we really didn't get to film that much with him.) Instead we focused on the shoots that involved the talented and lovely Tabitha Warren, who plays MARGARET, THE GUITAR MAN'S rather bitchy and intimidating wife. Through her interpretations, the audience gets to see who really wears the pants in that family.
We had a very long Saturday this weekend. We shot from 9am to 4:30pm at Anthony's house. Tabitha got to hit someone in the head (fake hit, of course) with a cast iron skillet, chase kidnap goons around the house, and threaten me with a knife. She did amazingly well for working with us for the first time... and I'll say that she did exactly what we wanted (and even knew all of her lines!). At 6:30pm we moved from our Bartlett location to the warehouse downtown. Yes, that's right... we're shooting in the warehouse once again. It's a great location... I can't help that it's got 4 decades worth of filth floating around every nook and cranny. We continued to shoot until 9:30pm and called it an evening. I drank some wine and went to sleep.
Sunday marked a continuation of working on the interiors of the warehouse. We only filmed for two hours, so everyone got to reclaim part of their weekend. I want to thank all of those individuals that showed up, helped move gear, acted, laughed, or had anything to do with the shoot this weekend. I truly enjoyed this weekend's shoot and can say without a doubt that we've crossed the half-way point of production. We're working on wrapping up the last scenes of the movie (and we might actually get this thing finished in a timely fashion).
I don't want to give away too much information of what we filmed this weekend. We want to keep some of the laughs for the film... for I have a tendency to run my mouth about everything. This film is hilarious. We'll continue to work on filming it.

HERE ARE YOUR THREADS FOR THE WEEK:

TABITHA: "So do you have some padding or something or should I just go for it?"
--referring to "the grab scene."
MUCK: "It's okay, you're not going to hurt anything... it's really small."
--referring to "the grab scene."
BEVAN: "Am I stereotyping the black male with all of the drugs, guns, and dialogue?"
--referring to every scene involving black males
HOWARD: "Yes, yes, you are..."
--responding to my question
MUCK: "See, I told you it was really small"
--referring to being grabbed.

weekend eight: part two of "the date"

As far as my Indie film experiences have gone, I've had a very exciting, pleasant, and vibrant time "playing movies" for the last few years. I've engaged in several learning experiences that run the gamut of pre-production decisions to post-production deadline issues. I've loved them all (as much as some have frustrated the ever-living-shit-out-of-me).

Lately, we've been dealing with scheduling issues. These problems will undoubtedly occur when your cast and crew are working FOR FREE. So, you deal with them. Luckily, we have been able to squeeze some last minute shoots together before a very talented actor (and good friend) left for New York once again. Thanks to the amazing producing talents of our crew (and some long nights worth of scouring through script and paperwork by Christine) we made this weekend's shoot happen. It was actually scheduled to a relatively smooth-as-glass sensibility... which lightens the load on my skull and stretches a smile across my face by the end of the day. I was very happy that this weekend's shoot was going to go off without a hitch. Then... it started to rain.

As a shook off a hangover and started getting dressed for our Sunday 9AM crew call, the earth shaking rumbles of lightning and thunder loomed overhead. "FUCK!" I thought to myself. "This is the one item that is out of our control." I hung my head and started off towards downtown with the hopes that we could "wait it out." Thankfully, we only ran about an hour behind schedule.

We started shooting downtown Sunday morning, focusing on TRACY ADAIR and KONG. I will state this as a firmly as I can... Chris Ross and Freddy Mitchell are (hands-down) one of the funniest pairs of comic relief actors I have ever seen. Even though there were bits of scripted dialogue and ideas that had to be conveyed from one point to another... most of the time I just let the camera continue to roll to see what madness we would capture. Those two goofy bastards really made the humor of the scene come alive. I feel confident that people will be rolling in the aisles when this film premieres. I can say this with assurance because of several key items that just "went above and beyond what we were expecting." They even had a security guard that was completely unaware of what was going on laughing out loud.

I would like to thank those that saw us filming on the city streets for not being too disruptive.

We finished our daytime shoots around 2PM... had a length lunch at Movie and Pizza Co. on Mud Island... watched the dailies... and took a much needed nap. We would gather again for our night-shoots around 9PM. Chris and Freddy continued to thrill and make us laugh with the silliest of improv.

Since the temperature has dropped a few key degrees in the last week, Jennifer froze during the evening but kept in great spirits. We were actually able to shoot a few extra moments on the "date night" scene... This really made me happy. Getting in extra shots along with making the scheduled production day is an added bonus to an already enlightened day. Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of those people that made it happen (Chris, Freddy, Muck, Jovan, Nick, Marcus, Joe, Robert, Christine, Brad, Anthony, and anyone that may have slipped my memory of the long day). Sunday was a fantastic day.

d i v i n e m a n i p u l a t i o n o f t h e t h r e a d s is going to be one funny-ass movie. For now we'll continue chipping away at the shooting schedule, get some more scenes in the can, and keep rough cutting the scenes we do have shot. I just love watching it all come together. The coming weekend is going to take a lot of time and effort. I'll try to keep my head together... I said... try.

HERE IS THE ONLY THREAD I CAN REMEMBER:

JOE: "What the hell time is it, 42 o'clock?" (Joe explains why the church bell tower had been ringing for five minutes straight)

should have started a documentary...

This isn't a picture from this weekend but it should serve as some sort of visual representation of "The Morning After." This is a good picture of Bevan being quite hung-over after two or more days of continuous drinking. With this image in mind, I will proceed with the tales of adventures, reunions, mis-adventures, forgotten promises, a distaste for menthol cigarettes, and a wonderful dish of Pad Thai.
We had to call off shooting for the weekend on Divine Manipulation of the Threads for a series of reasons that just didn't come through. It's hard to get some of these shoots set up from time to time... and this one just didn't happen the way we wanted it to. So, instead I decided to attend a series of occasions that most of us (under any sort of normal circumstances) would dread and fear. Yeah, I went to my 10 Year High School Reunion...

As the days approaching this vastly uncomfortable chain of events disappeared behind the horizon, my brain began to work overtime. Should I go through the trouble of having someone help me document the occasion for a short film somewhere down the road? I would make it a documentary, but full of lies. I like the idea of Grosse Point Blank, when Martin Blank (a.k.a John Cusack) comes back to town for his 10 year High School Reunion after a freak-out incident at work (which by the way, he's a contract killer). Martin sees his old friends, the girl he left at the Prom and tells them the truth about his life after being prodded with the question, "10 Years! What the hell happened to you? 10 Years... 10 years."
"I freaked out, joined the army, went into business for myself, now I'm a professional killer."
Amazingly enough, no one believes him, so once he realizes that his new found honesty is taken as a load of shit, he continues to feed all of his old acquaintances a ration of lies and it makes for a fantastically humorous story. I kind of wanted to do that with a documentary. Instead I drank. I thought that it might be a better idea then having to kill a rival hit-man. Unfortunately they didn't hold the reunion at the school. I was kind of looking forward to that part.
Friday night we had a dinner meeting at Tsunami on Cooper. I had never actually eaten there before. I have to recommend the calimari... excellent. I talked to a few familiar faces, Christine was a trooper, and I ran into Samuel L. Jackson. If I were making it up I would just be lame... but Samuel L. Jackson showed up at my High School Reunion. He was having dinner (and the calimari, by the way). He was nice enough to entertain some conversation and I felt stupid about bothering him afterward. He did ask, "Do all of the girls look the same?"
I replied, "Amazingly enough they do."
"Really," he said, "That's usually never the case, they get all fat an' everything."
That made me laugh. Christine would later approach Sam to attempt a conversation and he told her that "You're not supposed to date the people you work with." Samuel L. Jackson still lives by the rules (it's the guys like me that break them).
Later in the evening I went to the Young Avenue Deli and got pulled along to One More, which is a lesbian bar (nothing wrong with that)... I just thought that I was going to get my ass kicked... and I told someone that they looked like Toni Collette (and that Toni Collette played a transvestite in a movie... it just got worse from there).
Saturday allowed an opportunity to sleep in. It was needed and welcomed. It also brought about an insane notion to go to the Shelby County Fair. Christine needed it... I just wanted a Funnel Cake. After a little "hair of the dog," I was feeling better. Then it started raining and this Saturday afternoon at the Fair turned into every "first date" movie that you've ever seen... bumper cars, running into the Skee-ball building to get out of the rain, and saying "fuck it" and walking home in the rain. Then we went to the "big" High School Reunion at Sam's Town casino. We showed up two hours late - but I did get voted one of three guys "Still 10 for 10" which roughly translates to "looking good Ten years later." One of my old buddies, Christine, and I then snuck out to drive back up to the Young Avenue Deli to see The Reverend Horton Heat (a fantastic Rock-a-billy show - or just a 'Psycho-billy-freak-out'). I drank too much Pabst Blue Ribbon, smoked too many squares, and got home around 3AM.
I got a call at 9:20AM Sunday morning from Robert Saba. Apparently I was supposed to film on Delusions Sunday morning and I flat out forgot about the shoot. Robert was calling from Birmingham... he didn't know that I was still in bed. I got to set at 10AM hung over as all hell... and I had smoke. I didn't bring a pack because I was sick of smoking and drinking and really desired to vomit. Someone on set had a pack of Menthols... so I proceeded to smoke take after take after take until we finished the shoot.
I got a fifteen minute nap, cleaned house, watched L.A. Confidential and played a video game for a few hours. By the time I had finished eating a fantastic meal at Bhan Thai, it was 9pm... there was an empty bottle of champagne and white wine... I barely made it to 11pm without passing out. There is no medium... the engine is either at a dead stop or the accelerator is smashed firmly into the floor board as though we were racing the Devil. And in a way I suppose I am racing the Devil... and I didn't kill anyone in the hallways of the High School. We get to rough cut the Stone Free Joey scene tonight!!! Filming this weekend?!? We shall see... we shall see...