March-July, 1999

This is part of the story that I have conveniently left out when I have talked about HH. In the end I chose to take the tougher road in order to make the film, something I did a couple of times.

Now I'm glad. But back then, man, it was a struggle.


March- July, 1999

More trying to fill roles.

I bring in Duke and I do Aric’s lines while Duke reads Brad’s lines. This cracks Rick up, as he’s seeing me do the lines the way I wrote them, which is not exactly the way he’s been reading them.

Duke’s not bad. He’s nervous, but he settles down after a while. I think we’ll go with him over Rick’s other friend. I’ll try to get the other guy a non-speaking part, so he can at least be in the movie.

Rick’s got someone for the naked part. She comes in and does some lines(even though she doesn’t really have any in the movie, other than talking to her dog), and I shoot some pictures to get an idea of how she’ll look. I think she’ll do fine. More on her later.

We still haven’t filled two parts in the movie. The part of Ken, a dorky co-worker of Aric’s who really wants to be his friend, and the part of Frank, the scummy detective hired to follow Aric.

Rick mentions that his boss at work has done some theater stuff. I’m getting desperate, so I say, let’s see him. He brings him by one night. The guy kind of looks like the actor who plays Freddy Krueger, which is cool. Maybe the audience will suspect he’s the other serial killer in the movie. His name is Jeff Kipers.

He reads some lines and does pretty good. I cast him on the spot. He wants to know when rehearsal is. I laugh like a hyena. Rehearsal? There won’t be any time for rehearsal. Learn the lines, we’ll do a couple of run-throughs before we roll the camera, and there you go.

Still no one for the part of Frank. I may do it myself, even though I’ve given myself a non-speaking cameo already.

Oh, yeah, I guess I can mention that I got kicked out of my house. Well, it wasn’t really my house.

It went like this:

My girlfriend(who was actually my fiance, but the word freaks me out) had moved into her grandmother’s house(at her grandmother’s request) because the old bag lives in Florida for most of the year, just comes back to her house in Maryland for the summer months.

So my gf said to me "Hey, you want to move in with me, just split the utilities, since the house was paid off?" Sounded like a good deal. So that’s where we were for over a year.

Then, somewhere around June, her grandmother called to say she was coming back and she wanted me out of the house when she got there. Came out of the blue. I mean, I never got along with her(hence, I had given her the nickname “troll”), but we hardly even saw each other. I think she hated the fact that I’d go to bed at like four in the morning and get up to go to work at about one p.m. That didn’t jibe with her view of the nine-to-five man.

So my gf flips out, tells her grandmother off. I’ve got roughly two weeks to move out of the house and no where to go. I can get an apartment, but it’s going to suck money from the movie. I don’t think I can afford to shoot the movie AND get an apartment(which will take a security deposit and the first-month’s rent up front). I’d have to pony up about $1200 immediately.

I make a decision. Time to suffer for the art, baby.

I move into my store. It has a back room(about ten by twenty feet), and I buy a futon to serve as my bed. Won’t be much of a bed, but…

My cat has to move in with me. She’s not too keen on the idea, and frequently takes to attacking customers while they’re shopping through the back issues. It IS kind of funny to watch.

Here’s how my schedule goes for about two months:

Hang out at the store before going to bed, watching one of about three channels I get on the television. I go to sleep about four in the morning and wake up frequently because the futon is hard as hell, not very comfortable. Then, when my employee shows up to open the store, I wake up briefly, but doze back off.

Finally wake up at about two p.m. I peer out the covered back windows to see if there are any customers in the store. If there are, I wait until they leave. If not, I come out and act like I’ve been there since we opened.(I don’t want customers to think I’m living in the store).

Then I stuff a change of clothes in my bag and go take a shower(either at my parents’ house or Missy’s parents’ house.)

It’s not fun, not at all. To be honest, it's some of the worst nights I can remember...

At one point, after a few months of this, my gf has moved out of her grandmother’s house also, and moved in with her parents. She asks if I want to do that also.

I jump at it. This store shit SUCKS.