February 4th-February 18th 1998

So here's a funny anecdote for those who have read this part before. The filmmakers that we met in the bits below were Doug Ulrich, his buddy Al and another buddy. We got so pissed at him and his buddy during this pre-prod process for "High" that I eventually put "Al and Doug" in the no-thank-you section of "Hunting Humans".

The funny part is that later on I hired Doug to do the special effects for FOC1 and Foc2. By that time I had forgotten about the no-thank-you, and a few years later Doug saw HH and read the end credits, and then called me up. We had a good laugh at it.


February 4th, 1998

Met some local filmmakers. Right across the street from where they shoot Homicide is a little coffee bar called The Grind. That's where they wanted to meet. Sounded a little pretentious to me, you know? Like, filmmakers only meet in coffee bars, it's the Los Angeles thing.

Turns out they seem to be a nice bunch of guys who have some experience. They've shot some features on Beta SP(which they say is a bad move, in hindsight) and right now are shooting a skin flick for Cinemax. Apparently, Cinemax has a deal where, if you meet their requirements they'll pay you $40,000 for 8 weeks of run time. Then, if they still wanna show it some more, they'll give you $10,000 for another 8 weeks.

After that, you get the movie back. They just buy rights to show it, not to own it. Kind of like leasing your movie. This leaves you room to sell the film rights where ever you want to. Of course, there probably won't be a lot of takers in the U.S. after it's been shown, but there are plenty of over-seas markets.

Anyway, these guys are going to read the script and let us know what they think. If they like it, they'll help us produce the script. As far as I know, that doesn't include raising any money, but is more of finding the talent(actors), lending their cinematographer and camera(an Eclair), and helping out in other ways.

Coincidentally, one of them whose name is Al looks somewhat like Felix in the script. We'd have to sleazify him a bit, but he'd probably fit pretty well, and he acts too. (NOTE: When I first wrote this I was being nice, but he was pretty pasty white with greasy long hair)

A funny anecdote. The guy who could fit the part of Felix mentions in the course of the conversation that he thinks he could play Saul(The handsome, homicidal villain of the movie). Rick starts laughing, thinking he’s kidding, but from the serious look on his face you can tell he’s not. Rick’s laugh fades and he turns it into smile, says, “Really?”

One of those things you wish you had on camera later.

February 15th, 1998

Rick called the local filmmakers back to get some feedback on the script. They told him they liked it and made some notes. We're gonna meet them again on Wednesday(2/18) to talk some more about what we can do for each other.

My brother read the How-To on squibs that's available as a link under our filmmaking links. He's always been into FX stuff, so we're going to go do some tests, see how the stuff really works. FYI, I was able to locate Pyrodex at Bart's Sport World, a sporting goods store. They say it's 18 bucks for a brick, but you can also get it in pellets.

On the preparations front, you can now see the individual scene breakdown, something that you will need to do if you're going to shoot your own movie. Starting to feel the pinch of time. We've got about 4 months before I'd like to start shooting.

February 18,1998

We met with the filmmakers. They make T&A pictures. They proceeded to give us a list of things they thought were wrong with the script, and they were actually very perceptive in much of what they locked on. Problem is, they were very rude about it. They gave us a copy of their latest movie, called Screenkill, that they've apparently gotten a distributor for.

We go home with the intention of changing some of the problems in the script. First, we decided to watch their movie.

It sucked. Hard. One of the filmmakers we met(the one who expressed interest in playing Saul) also played one of the leads in the movie, and he'd expressed interest in auditioning for our movie. Too bad he couldn't act his way out of a paper bag. The script was corny with dialogue that makes look like high art, and the only good thing to say is that it had some good special effects.