Rolling the Dice Pt 2 or Don't Crap Out

Last November, Kristen Abate and I were at the Filmstock Festival UK with our feature film, PRE the first aftermath comedy. This was our second year in a row there. It's the kind of festival that restores your faith in humanity. The founders Neil Fox and Justin Doherty made you feel like a friend not the victim of a Ponzi scheme like some other festival$. The first time we were there in 2008 with our short, Busted Walk, we also went to see the Alan Ayckbourn play, Norman Conquests at the Old Vic in London.

Ayckbourn was one of my original inspirations and teachers. I didn't take a class with him but many years ago when I was at the lowest point in my life, having barricaded myself in my room for seven years (this is not an exaggeration for dramatic effect - I was fucked up), I saw a BBC program in which he wrote a play during the program - not before the program aired; but while it was airing - to demonstrate his craft.

This year we went to see a revival of another Ayckbourn play, Bedroom Farce, directed by Sir Peter Hall (who directed the English language premiere of Beckett's Waiting for Godot and is the father of Rebecca Hall of Vicky Cristina Barcelona. You decide which is the greater achievement.). We almost didn't see it because it was over an hour's train ride outside of London and when we got there they initially said they had no record of our tickets and it was sold out. Fortunately I tried variations of my name and found my tickets under my new favorite alias - Tanen Von Stevis.

The play was classic Ayckbourn beautifully performed by the ensemble, although one of the actors stood out from the rest. Definitely worth the train ride. After the play, when we got out of the tube in London it was late and we headed for a restaurant across the street. As we approached, one of the actors, Orlando Seale (pictured above), from Bedroom Farce - the one who stood out - was exiting the very same restaurant. We were over forty five minutes away from the theatre and he was coming out of restaurant that wasn't any where near his neighborhood - what were the odds of that? We started talking and I mentioned that I would be shooting a film in February. Half kidding, I said you should come to New York and be in it.

It appears that the most successful way to roll the dice is when you are half kidding. I wrote a part for Orlando and we rehearsed on skype. He flew in a few days before his shoot (sick as a dog). But he is part of that stage tradition that lives by the Beckettian adage "I can't go on, I'll go on". His scene in the film is a tour de force which he performed at the highest levels take after take. The other day, after watching the footage, our editor Ryan Garretson suggested that we turn his scene into a short. Tanen Von Stevis agrees. We had every opportunity to crap out at every step of the way - long train ride, London SUBURBS, lost tickets, chickening out when we saw Orlando after the show - but we didn't and let it roll.

How Rolling The Dice Can Save Your Life

It’s been said that financing your own film is a courageous roll of the dice akin to hopping aboard Phaeton’s flaming chariot. (When it comes to invoking the Phaeton myth I have always preferred Jung’s interpretation of what he called the hero myth – the point isn’t about crashing and burning but how long you can hold onto the sizzling reins). Sometimes the amount of bravery attached to art is greatly exaggerated. It’s not as dangerous as coal mining. And as far as I know no one has ever gotten black lung disease from it. What is more likely in the independent world is that you will end up with a bad credit rating which can seem as serious a heart attack. The most dramatic roll of the dice that I do know about that actually includes flames occurred in WWII. My father was on one of the first troop ships that sailed across the Atlantic. One night, while the rest of his unit was fast asleep in the bowels of the ship, all zipped up, one on top of the other, in hammocks; my father was on the top deck shooting craps. When he literally rolled the dice, the troop ship was torpedoed by a Nazi U-Boat. The torpedo struck the ship right where my father’s unit was sleeping. The ship sank and all the men in his unit were killed because they obeyed orders and weren’t shooting craps after lights out. This was definitely a case when rolling the dice saved a life. I’d like to think that by making a film I am saving lives, especially my own. At the very least it’s my job to make everyone involved feel like the stakes are that high.

A Luger In The Hands of An Inglorious Basterdess

A still of Kristen Abate, a Luger and an overhead fan from How To Score Your Life

A Nazi Gave Me Props

Not directly. I got the German Officer's Luger in this photograph from my father. He got two Lugers in hand to hand combat with a Nazi. The Nazi got dead. Initially we were going to rent prop guns but I remembered that I had the WWII Lugers (one of them actually dates back to WWI). Don't worry these were not live guns. In order for my father to bring the Lugers back to the States molten lead had to be poured into the barrels. It's true the Nazi's were anti-semitic but you have to give them props for their cool handguns and leather jackets. But more props to my dad who was a tough motherfucker. More about him in my next post...