October 20th, 2000.....

Today is the fifth anniversary of the day that Theodore made his death wish! It's also, coincidently, my birthday. Shows how creative Celeste and I were when writing the script. Actually, I was thinking about that today and I thought it might be interesting to reveal some of the other inside tidbits from the film. I'll lay them out in factoid form like so:

• Theodore's name is a (hopefully) subtle Teddy Graham joke, but his middle name, Curtis, is the last name of my best friend when I was growing up.
• The name Terri (Theodore's Boss) was the name of my boss at my very first job at Papa's Pizza Parlor. When it came time to give Teddy's boss a name, the choice was obvious for me.
• The name for Scott Free (Theodore's neighbor) was the name of the main character from the first script I wrote at VFS titled "Scooter's Big Day." I was extremely proud of the script (dare I say more than The Death of Theodore Graham?) and I was very bitter about not getting the chance to make the film while I was in school. I felt it was appropriate to finally put the character to rest by killing him.
• All of the dart references in the film were an homage to the film's conception. I thought of the idea while playing darts.
• The line "Was that an escape attempt? Wow, nice try Indy." originally ended "Wow, nice try Indiana." When I sent the script to my brother-in-law Kenton, his only note was that Death should call him "Indy" instead of "Indiana." Brilliant.
• Cameos: In the first scene of the movie, when Death looks out over at Theodore's co-workers, you'll see Celeste (the co-writer) on the far left, Greg (the director of photography) followed by James (the sound mixer) followed by myself.
• In the above mentioned shot, Celeste takes a bite out of a cookie. Celeste has made an appearance in three short films that I've directed, all of which include her eating candy at some point. This was never a concious decision of any of ours. I guess art just imitates life.
• Celeste and I wrote the script with Colin Matthews in mind to play Death. I first met Colin on the set of another VFS short titled "I-Rising." Colin claims that I approached him on the set of "I-Rising" and asked him what character he's always wanted to play, to which he responded: The Devil. To the best of my knowledge, this story is not true, but Colin swears by it. The truth is that I thought Colin was a pretty funny guy and a very talented actor and when I-Rising was done, I thought he was the strongest presence in the film. After the first draft of TDOTG was complete, I called Colin and asked him if he'd be interested . He said yes. Once Colin was on-board, I knew the film would work. I even brought his headshot to the script pitch to show the instructors at the school who I got to play Death.
• Colin was offered a role in the final film that I worked on at VFS titled "The All-Too-Easy Sabotage of Love" but Colin had to pass due to scheduling conflicts. Had Colin taken the role he would have appeared in every film that I worked on at VFS, excluding documentaries (4 out of 5 films). That's a lot of brit.

I'll add some more factoids if I can think of them. Celeste and I put a lot of inside jokes in the film and I know more will come to me. In the meantime, throw yourself a mini-party in celebration of 22 years of me!

Scraps of news...

I got an email today from Cheryl, the Creative Services Coordinator from the Vancouver Film School showing me the ad that the school recently ran in the trade paper "Playback." In the ad, they congratulated me on Death's acceptance into the Vancouver International Film Festival. Pretty cool stuff, thanks VFS.

In other news, or lack of future news (for me at least), I'm leaving my job at KEZI 9 News. When I told my boss that I would like to request time off in November for my trip to the Munich International Festival of Film Schools, he told me that it probably wouldn't work out because my trip fell on sweeps week. For those who don't know, sweeps is when broadcasters use the viewership numbers collected during an amount of time to set advertising rates for the rest of the year, therefore they put their best material out at that time. The reason that I couldn't get time off is because the new News Director decided to have a "no vacation" policy during sweeps. My boss supported my decision to leave, so I'm leaving on good terms, which is good. What's bad is that now I'll be out of a job when I get back from Germany, and I'm dropping a ton of money on the trip. So if anybody has a job opening at the beginning of December.

That's all I've got for now. The Portland International Short Short Festival is this weekend in Portland, Oregon. Anyone in the area should definitly check it out, I think it's gonna be pretty good. Death will screen on both nights of the festival (I'm not sure why). Check out the website for more information about the festival.

Death goes to the Sea to Sky Film Festival.

Death screened at The Sea to Sky Film Festival a couple of weeks ago and I asked Colin (Death himself) to write a few words about it (he was the only person from the film who attended). I think I should let everyone know that Colin is English/Canadian (not handicapped) and that's why he adds extras "U's" to words like color and honor and mispells center and theater. Here's whaut he had to say:

The first question that Erik asked when he found out that TDOTG had been accepted into the Sea to Sky Film Festival in Squamish was…… Where in the hell is Squamish!

Well, if you want to know where in the hell anything is… you ask Death!

Squamish, dear bloggers is a fast-growing community located one hour north of Vancouver in British Columbia. Previously named Newport, Squamish is the European pronunciation of Skwxwú7mesh, which comes from the local First Nations people and translates as "people of great drinking water”.

The town of 16,000 people has expanded from its roots as a forestry and industry town into one of western Canada's top outdoor recreation centres. Now Erik may not know where Squamish is but wanna know who does…… Jon Bon Jovi. The New Jersey born hair rocker named one of his hit albums ‘Slippery When Wet’ in 1986 after he had travelled on the highway from Vancouver to Whistler (which passes through Squamish) and noticed that there where many signs bearing the term ‘Slippery When Wet,’ and took a liking to the phrase.

I arrived at the festival and must admit that I almost immediately became worried. Five minutes before the festival was due to start and there were only about 15 people there! Luckily, with seconds to spare, people from far and wide came out of the woodwork and filled the Theatre.

I was very impressed with the quality of the other films that made up the festival and felt very honoured that our own film was chosen. There where entries from Montreal, Toronto, LA, Israel, France and Brazil. I told Erik that there where Brazilian filmmakers there and he got a strange look on his face and asked “How many is in a Brazilian?” Still, what do you expect, he’s American.

I originally planned to split after our film was shown and take a climb up the nearby Stawamus Chief, a massive cliff-faced granite massif favoured by rock climbers, but the films where so good I decided to stay.

Death got a great reception from the extremely eclectic audience and everybody was very complimentary after the show. Unfortunately, we where just nudged out of the winning spot by ‘Super-Anon’, a great little film about a support group for family relatives of superheroes.

After a short drink (or 12) at the after-party (woop-woop) with the other filmmakers, it was time to drive home. I’d like to thank Adriane Polo for all her hospitality at the festival and look forward to blogging again soon when I have something to blog about.

This is D…… and I’m outtie.

Death's Big Weekend! - Part 2

So we all got into the screening (minus Jon who had a gig playing Superman the next morning) and the show was packed. We were the fourth film to play in the Shorts Package. Death (I call the film "Death" for short) got a really good response. We got a lot of laughs, and even some laughs that we don't usually get, the crowd really seemed to be watching closely. We were proud.

After the show, Emma called all of the filmmakers up to the front of the crowd for a short Q&A. Not a lot of hard hitting questions, I have to say. We got the usual questions about budgets and how long it took to make the movie. I explained how I thought of the movie and got a little chuckle out of the crowd in the process. After the Q&A, Emma invited our crew out to a club to join another films post-screening party. Karen Lloyd (she played Terri in the movie) was with us now and we all went with Emma. After we got into the club we decided that it wasn't the kind of atmosphere we were looking for and decided to leave for a quieter, more relaxed bar. We went to a place on Davie street that was just what we wanted and hung out until around 3 a.m. Lots of laughs, lots of reminiscing, lots of drinks.

(There's Dave, always showing everyone how much tougher he is than me by ordering toxic waste instead of alcohol)

So we had our emotional goodbyes and parted ways. I gotta say, it was awesome that Colin and Karen took the time to stay out so late with the rest of us. I realized that I had never really visited with Karen other than when we were shooting the film, too bad, she's really quite fun. Celeste and I went back to the hotel and crashed, hard.

We woke up too early the next morning so we could get our free breakfast at the hotel, then we were off to see some more free movies at the Festival. As we were leaving our room, though, there was a guy waiting for the elevator reading a VIFF program. Celeste pointed out that he was wearing a pair of tiny, tiger-striped glasses. He was the guy who moved out of our room. Celeste asked him if he was attending the festival, he said yes and asked about us. We told him about our film and he told us that he was a producer for a film called "The Oil Factor" (http://www.theoilfactor.com/). I told him where we were from, and he told us that he really wanted to have his film screen here. I told him about the DIVA (the Downtown Initiative for the Visual Arts) and then I told him I'd send him some information about the organization. We ended up talking for a few blocks until we had to go our seperate ways. It was the closest thing to "networking" that we had done at that point.

Celeste and I watched a documentary called "Why We Fight." It was about America's quest for military supremacy. Really good show, but kind of depressing. I remember feeling very overwhelmed within the first 10 minutes with the realization of how crazy the world is and how it will never be fixed. After that, Celeste and I decided to go bowling to get our spirits back. Bowling is a little different in Canada, have a look:

(Awww.... bowling is ADORABLE in Canada!)

After bowling, we went back to the hospitality suite to get some free dinner and beverages. They were serving a HUGE sushi platter, I was in heaven. We left kinda early so Celeste could get some dinner (she no like Sushi). We had dinner then caught another flick and called it an early night.

Monday morning was the final showing of our film. The package started at 10 a.m. so we really weren't expecting anyone to be there, but luckily we were wrong again. The theatre was once again packed and once again we got a great response. There's something very interesting about watching the film with a large crowd. Colin mentioned this and I agree that everytime we watch the movie with a large crowd they laugh at different parts. It's strange, but it makes it really fun.

Celeste and I didn't stick around for the Q&A this time. I really wanted to eat at Shabusen again before we went home and they're only open for a little while for lunch.

(Shabusen - #1 Greatest Food in the World)

After lunch we went to one last show and then it was time to go home. All in all the festival was an amazing and inspiring experience. It was a huge honor to be a part of and I really hope someday we'll be back with another film.

It looks like the next festival that we'll attend is the International Festival of Film Schools in Munich, Germany in November. Until then, it's back to my job at the button factory. Speaking of my job: interesting news today, maybe I'll write about it tomorrow.

Death's Big Weekend! - Part 1

I don't really know how to start this, so I'll just say that our weekend was amazing and start from the beginning:

Celeste and I got into Vancouver around 2 O'Clock and checked into our hotel. I guess there was a mishap with our room because when I opened the door I saw two pieces of luggage on the bed. I've seen enough movies to know that there was probably somebody behind the door with at least a Samurai Sword so I quickly shut the door and knocked. No answer. I dodged yet another assassination attempt. So we called the front desk and they explained that they were moving the last guy from that room into another room and they weren't done. We took the bags down and called it good. Then over the next hour we felt like we were part of a icky eater-egg hunt as we found the rest of the guy's stuff, the worst of it being a pair of dirty socks and what looked like a tiger-striped pair of little girl glasses, kind of creepy.

Anyway, after we got settled in I called Jon (Theodore) to meet up with him to work on my top secret project (to be revealed shortly, stay tuned er...blogged, whatever). We hung out for an hour or so and had a great time. We thought we were going to see each other again later that night at the screening, so we didn't make it a big event.

After we dropped Jon off at his place, Celeste and I decided to check out the VIFF hospitality suite at the Crown Plaza Hotel, and believe me, it was suite indeed. The Festival spared no expense, free food, free drinks, and free memories. We met with one of the ladies running the place to get our guest kits, but she didn't have them. She told us to go to the lounge and wait while she located our goodies. A few Stella's and Crantinis later, we had our passes, kind of. Celeste and I received guest passes for the festival (these got us into any screening we wanted and as well as the Hospitality Suite) but we were supposed to also get 3 passes for our screening as well. They told us it wouldn't be a problem and that our 3 guests could be placed on a guestlist and that would get them in. Then we found out the show was sold out. Good because we were afraid there wasn't going to be anybody there, bad because this meant that Colin (Death), Jon, and James (the sound mixer from the film who drove up from Marysville, Washington) weren't going to get in. We tried everything we could to figure out a way to get them in, but nothing was working. Then we were off to meet some of the cast and crew for dinner at the greatest Restaurant in the world: Shabusen.

At Shabusen, we met up with Colin, James, Dave (the boom operator), and Greg (the director of photography. Jon couldn't make it because he had a gig the next day on X-Men 3 and had a 4:30 am call time. I'm not sure what his role on X-Men 3 is, I think he's playing Superman. We broke the news to everyone that it didn't look like any of them were going to get into the show for sure, but then Greg told us that he had two tickets, so he passed the ticket on to James (since he travelled the furthest). So we ate loads of all-we-can-eat sushi and steak and it was awesome, then we were off to the show.

The outside of the theatre was packed, and there was a huge line of people waiting for stand-by tickets. Again, this was awesome and horrible at the same time. But it all ended up working out. Emma, the lady running the show, found out that we had actors and crew members who didn't have tickets, and she promised us she'd get them in. So when it came time for the show to start, she pushed her way into the Theatre and brought Colin and Dave in with her. The inside of the theatre was packed too. Celeste and I were both excited because the last time we attended a festival the crowd consisted of us, my parents, McKenzie (the composer for the film), his parents, and the three judges. So if my math is right, this crowd was 400,000% bigger.

(the crowd at the screening. my apologies for the couple who got blasted with Celeste's flash. )

All of the other shorts that TDOTG played with were great. It was an honor, and kind of surprising, that someone felt that our film was at the same level as some of the other films. Particularly, I thought Big Girl, by Renuka Jeyapalan, was great. You should look it up.

It's time for me to go to work now, I'll finish the rest of the weekend either tonight or tomorrow. It get's really exciting. Lots of adventure and danger, as well as an encounter with the man who was moving out of our hotel room. No joke.

Death's Big Weekend!

We just got back from the Vancouver International Film Festival and it was super awesome. I'm really tired right now, so I'm going to wait until tomorrow to write about just how awesome the weekend was. We took some rad pictures too, so make sure you come back. Later.