Thursday, June 22, 2006

Dismal. The Story Of Dismal. How Dismal Got Started.

I realize I’ve never really told the Story if Dismal here.

I might have to do it in a few installments – but I promise to keep it lean and not go into all the gory (boring?) details.

For years now I’ve been working with Ray and Jeff at a small but successful television production studio. I was producing and writing, Ray was working production in various roles, Jeff seemed to have a dozen roles in pre-production and production.

We made a lot of shows that were well received, and that was cool, but after a while you tend to feel a little bit in a rut.

One day in January 2005, Jeff and I were talking.

Jeff: How’s it going?
Me: All right. You?
Jeff: All right.

Long silence.

Jeff: I’m bored.
Me: Me too.
Jeff: Let’s make a movie. A short. You write the script, I’ll raise a few grand, we’ll make a movie, send it to Sundance. You know, make a movie.

(Jeff has a tendency to say things three times…)

Me: Good idea. Cool locations, but only a few, simple story, small cast.
Jeff: Let’s do it.
Me: Done.

The next day, Jeff called me into his office.

Jeff: Talked to Ray. He’s been thinking the same thing. He’ll direct, but he wants to do a full-length feature.
Me: Even better.
Jeff: He’s been thinking of a story for a while. He’ll have an outline Monday. Ready Monday. Man's gonna have it Monday.

On Monday, there was Ray’s outline on my desk with a note: “David, can you make this into a script?”

And so I got to work.

Right away we knew we had a good team put together. It’s a good dynamic, each of us bringing something different in terms of skill set and mind set (and complimentary yet non-overlapping psychiatric disorders), and no one bringing too much ego that THIS THING IS MINE. Hate to sound like one of those inspirational posters that feature soft-focus photos of a group of ants lifting a loaf of bread together, but we know we need each other to get this done, and we know the project is more than any one of us.

Once we had a good draft in place, we started sending it out to people in the industry we know and have worked with. Some folks with good, hands-on, real-world (if anything in Hollywood can be considered real) experience.

Scary, really.

But the response was overwhelmingly good. We got some notes, some of which were very, very helpful, some not so much. Because I’m so smart it was the helpful notes I worked into the next revision. Clever, huh?

Then there was getting the money. Jeff’s job.

First we planned to do it on weekends for $14,000. Open Water-style.

But our contacts said to go larger –- no need to kill yourself trying to make it for 14K.

So then we upped it to come in under the SAG ultra-low budget deal. $200K to get it in the can, up to $500K more deferred.

And so Jeff made a list of ten potential investors. Not long thereafter, Jeff called me.

Me: Hello?
Jeff: Didn’t get past the first one. First one gave us almost all of it. First one.

At that point we thought we should bump it up to $2 million –- it had been so easy to raise money so far (sorry, I know other independent moviemakers will hate me for saying that, but it was). Went back and forth on this a lot and finally settled on the ultra-low budget budget. For that we could make a really strong movie that could hopefully lead to bigger ones later.

The crew was fairly easy to get. A lot of talented people around here, all of them itching to do something new that’s put together well.

Casting was a little tougher, but we soon met a fantastic actor for the lead. Went to LA to meet him, knew right away he was the one. Then one by one we cast the rest. The three main dudes are from LA and North Carolina-via-LA, the rest are regional. (I think I’ll be able to name names soon, once the paperwork’s signed.)

And maybe actors always say this, but everyone was saying how excited they were about being on the project – that it was a good, tight script, that we obviously had our shit together, that they knew it was gonna turn out well.

Know what? I think it will.

More later. Later. I’ll tell the rest later.

1 comment:

glassblowerscat said...

Where's the rest of the story? We're on the edge of our seats, here!