MUGWUMP

The Reading

A few people have asked me how the reading last week went so here goes...

It was amazing. Came off without a hitch and all the feedback I've received has been extremely positive. I even discovered (while watching it) a couple of places to tweak the script to make it better.

There were 9 actors -- plus my friend Mike Barron narrating (and I was a little worried about him beforehand... but he excelled at storytelling). The actors had their chairs in sort of a semi-circle facing the audience and behind them we hung a screen and projected backgrounds for each scene... so that if -for example- two characters were arguing in a kitchen during a scene, we projected a shot of an interior of a kitchen (from the 70's since the script is set in 1978).

Michael Williams directed it so I could sit in the audience and take it in -- and I gotta say it, he's a mind reader, cause we were on the same page about the theme, the characters, the tone. He even took the time to block out the whole thing but the actors were really pressed for time and we could only get everyone together at the actual reading so the blocking had to go out the window. Couldn't have asked for or got a better job from anyone else.

Just a few things about the actors if any of you actually went to imdb to check them out. Matt Battaglia was the last one to join the cast and he played Pat, the dad, and was perfect. I was a little bit intimidated by him but I think it really worked for that character, so I didn't do anything to change that rapport. Debra Christofferson floored me... just nailed it and had the character from the first meeting on. Brady Corbet, as the main character Kevin, went in a different direction than I originally imagined, but turns out he was an audience favorite and I think now I'll have to mull over what I expect of the character before I shoot it. Lyle Dohl was a guy I hadn't seen since last year -- hadn't EVER seen him act -- Just figured he could pull off the character (that of Jon, a frat-type pussy hound) and he was so good that later that evening after it was over I accidentally called him 'Jon'. Carolyn Hennesy is another one that just "gets it". Love her love her LOVE her. She came in with us for the first time that night and just became her character. Cynthia Ireland also can do no wrong. Biggest laughs of the night so she gets props for that. Go see her show here in L.A. (Both these ladies were in "Engaging Peter") Ann Magnuson is someone I've know for a decade and she was in my head when I was adapting the novel but she brought even more than I expected. She went from bouyant to wounded seamlessly. Derek Ray played two roles and he's been a friend of mine for a couple years so I wasn't sure what to expect but he really impressed me (in a way that a friend sometimes can when they do something you didn't know they could do). I want to use him again for something soon.
And finally... Jack Plotnick is one talented mo-fo. He really brought the humor of the book/script out at the reading even though he wasn't physically right to play a 68 year old man (but he IS right to play the English Lit teacher and I can see him doing that in the film.) Ok... sorry, this has spiralled into one major ass kiss fest. But I'm sincere about it at least.

I'm sending the script out to a few interested companies... I had a couple of people tell me they could see it as a play (although that's not something I think I want to delve into right now) but hey... they all liked the way the story unfolded, how we told it, and lots of people stayed afterwards to chat... which tells me it didn't suck.

Reading Ready

I'm nearly set for the staged reading this week of The Year of Ice. The theater is ready, I got the script down to a lean 90 pages by removing a lot of superfluous direction lines, and the cast is complete. We're doing a read-through tomorrow night and the performance for the audience will be on Thursday. The goal is to find a home and sniff out some funds for the film but in addition to production companies I've also invited agents, managers, casting directors so my cast members can maybe get a little something out of doing this for me.

Oh, by the way, they are: Matt Battaglia, Debra Christofferson, Brady Corbet, Lyle Dohl, Carolyn Hennesy, Cynthia Ireland, Ann Magnuson, Jack Plotnick, and Derek Ray. They're gonna be great.

My Johnny Depp/Halloween story

There's nothing particularly funny about this one... it's just a great Halloween memory of mine when I was a production assistant working on the movie Ed Wood.

The crew was asked to come to work dressed up for Halloween if they wanted to and since I had been Edward Scissorhands one October back in college I just decided I would pull the costume out and wear it again. (I thought it would be fun since both Johnny Depp and Tim Burton did both films.) Once I found out that the Ed Wood hair and make-up ladies Vee and Yolanda had also worked on Edward Scissorhands, I asked them if they would do my hair and face on Halloween morning to make it look right and they both said 'sure'. (These two women won an Oscar, by the way, for doing Martin Landau's Bela Lugosi make-up.) Yolanda even said she'd bring in the 'Edward' stand-in wig for me to use (turns out that it's Johnny's own hair and NOT a wig in the movie).

So... morning of the 31st... I'm sitting in the Hair and Make-Up trailer in one of those spinny chairs in front of a big mirror. I'm wearing my costume, the make-up is on my face, Yolanda has just finished styling my wig when the door to the trailer pops open and Johnny steps in so Vee can start to get him looking like Ed.

Before he sits down she says, "Hey Johnny, look over there." and he sees me, says, "Oh my god!" then walks all the way down the length of the trailer bent over, peering at me, and finally he stops about two feet from my face and says, "KERRY?"

"Yeah... pretty good, eh?"

"Wow... it looks really good. Wow... it's crazy! Wait... where are the scars? You forgot the scars." at which point Vee says "Oh I didn't even think about that!" Johnny turns back to Vee and says, "Do you have a little make-up case?" He retrieves it from her then sits in the make-up chair next to me and spins me to face him. "I think I remember where they all go," he says and for the next 10 minutes I was eye to eye with Johnny Depp as he made scar mark after scar mark on my face with the brush.

When I die, I'd be perfectly happy to spend eternity back in those 10 minutes.