The $7,000 Movie
(a personal tale of immeasurable misery)

I should like to begin by stating that the conscious remembering of this production and the putting of these memories into written form fills me with the same pain and sickness that took hold of me from the very first audition. Yet, I will divulge this experience so that others may learn from what is explained, and so that perhaps, they may also feel pity for me.

I will try to express, to the best of recollection and ability, the preceding events leading to the end result. The name of the project: Back to the Beginning. Written by your's truly.

For starters, we only had seven thousand dollars. I reiterate, we only had seven thousand dollars with which to construct an entire feature film.

First Complication: It all started when I was PAing on a weekend shoot at the LAX for a UCLA grad student. It was a free gig; meaning, I was not getting paid; no one was. But that didn't stop me from doing my best at WATCHING THE GRIP TRUCK! For eight straight hours! Having previously studied film in Berlin, Germany for one year I felt a little uneasy and a bit overqualified at having to watch a grip truck on a free production for a UCLA grad student. So I took this feeling to two other individuals who were working on the same production and were themselves relegated to tasks unbefitting of their qualifications. Come to find out they were feeling just as underappreciated as I was. With the three of us there, I hatched a plan. I insisted that we could make a film of our own. But not a short film, like the one we were working on, but instead a full-length feature film. They agreed. I mentioned that I had a script. That night the two read it and liked it. The girl, I'll call her Sue, was set to produce it, while the other, I'll call him Allen, owned the Cannon XL1 mini DV camera which we were going to use. The wheels were in motion'� until one week later they both got real jobs and I never heard from them again. However, a tenacious one, I moved on, finding Juan Torres and Richard King to produce; neither had any previous producing experience. Rich also ponied up 1/3 of the seven grand budget needed to finance our ultra low-budget experiment.

Although he had never spent a single day in film school (in fact none of us had), Juan Torres nevertheless had the most experience in filmmaking than any of us, having worked on several more movies as a production assistant than me. For Rich, this was his first film. Ever.

So three guys with no credible film experience to speak of, set out, armed only with a script, to construct a masterpiece: I being the irrepressible, creative force behind it.

Oh God, what went wrong?! I tell people that it was though I'd had the recipe for a brilliant French meal, but somewhere along the way I had misplaced it. And in the end I was left with only the ingredients and thus had to cook up a stew that everyone would like.

Auditions: They were unspeakably unbearable. I was living in Santa Monica with my girlfriend at the time. I had quit working to free up time for the film. I also had no car, having sold it a year before for a plane ticket to Germany. Juan had secured the basement of a small, hidden, run-down café in Silver Lake that doubled as a meeting place for Narcotics Anonymous twice a week. This was the place where our auditions for Back to the Beginning would be held.

We advertised for actors in Breakdown Services and Backstage West. We requested that all headshot submission be sent directly to my home address in Santa Monica. Huge mistake! The following day the head shots arrived in stacks of hundreds. Both actors and Agency Reps. were knocking on my door at all ours with their submissions, claiming 'I had business in Santa Monica so I figured I would just drop off my headshot in person.'� What's worse is somehow my phone number ended up in the ad, so the phone literally rang non-stop for close to four weeks. I had actors sometimes calling as late as midnight wondering if we were still accepting headshots.

I had taken on the daunting task of scheduling the auditions myself; something I wish to NEVER DO AGAIN! At this time we had not yet been successful at securing a reliable Assistant Director.

We had retained the audition location for two weeks. However, I had received and written down the wrong address in my notes. So for ten days prior to the auditions, I had told agencies and actors, whom I had scheduled, to show up at a location that we were not at. So you can imagine our surprise when, at the café on Monday and Tuesday, not a single soul showed up. We soon learn why and corrected it.

Second time around, the pickings were abundant but very poor. By the end, however, I was confident that I had landed the absolute best talent zero money and a deferred contract could buy.

Rehearsals went virtually without problem, except the matter that we still had not secured an AD and I was only managing three hours of sleep a night as a result of the workload.

Juan had secured a caterer, a friend of his who would work for $2K. She convinced us that it was a good deal. We didn't consider at the time that pizza would've been cheaper.

When I wasn't rehearsing, I was looking for locations. An arduous task, I now know. But we had secured everything we needed within two weeks. As it stood, everything was set to go a week and a half before our first day of principle photography.

Three days before we were to begin shooting, I had made a realization; having finally received a full nights sleep the night before. That realization was that my two main actors could not act. Having never before been in a position of authority, it was extremely heartbreaking having to let them go. Nevertheless, I did. So I had two days to find replacements. That same day Rich called with some bad news; seven of our major locations canceled. Having only a limited budget, we could not pay anyone in order to secure our locations, so I had to find new ones. And if I could not, it would then be up to me to write those locations out of the script, replacing them with new ones ' free ones. I had to rewrite. The first of many.

The night before our first day of shooting Juan called me and informed me that he had made a gross error in the budget and that we were already way over budget. He also mentioned that the $7K that I originally thought we had was false, that somebody had removed their money from the account. At this time we only had $4K, and we were to begin shooting the very next morning. Not to mention it was estimated that our costs were already over $8K. So we had to push the production back one week to look for more money. Pushing the production back meant that we lost the locations that we had secured. We needed to find new locations. A week passed and we had only managed to find a couple of the necessary locations. So we had to push it back yet another week. Upon doing this, we lost some of our actors who had found paying jobs. So now we had to find locations, actors, and the rest of the necessary funding.

The rest of the money came from two of our actors. One, in fact, bought himself the lead role buy giving us a thousand bucks. Through contacts I managed to cast the rest of the vacant parts with new actors. As far as the missing locations ' rewrites!

Time to begin.

I should mention here that we had no assistant director, no wardrobe, no art department, no prop master, no script supervisor, no sound department (just an old DAT machine), no production coordinator, and only a handful of PA's, who we soon lost once they got tired of working for free. I was doing all of the aforementioned responsibilities myself. Not to mention, I was also directing it! Luckily for the production, but not for him, Juan was fired from his job at the LA Times for making too many phone calls and faxes (all Back to the Beginning related) from the company's phones. This meant that Juan now had more time to contribute to the production.

First Day: DAT machine breaks down on 3rd shot. No one knows how to run the microphone into the camera correctly: an issue that would later doom the completion of the movie. This set us back three hours that day, thus we had to rush through the coverage.

Second Day: Wrong address on the call sheet. Everyone showed up 3-4 hours late. Had to rush through the coverage. Makeup artist in a car accident trying to find location. Car out of commission. Had to find a replacement.

Third Day: Wrong directions to location again. Everyone late. Actors very angry. Some threaten to quit. I talk fast. Main actor forgets his wardrobe. What he is wearing will not match previous day. He must go 2 hours, through traffic, home and get wardrobe. Very behind schedule and must rush through coverage. Still have no time at night to look at any of the footage.

Fourth Day: Receive call from DP who is in jail. Previous night he got into car accident on freeway. Drinking and driving. He sprained both his legs. Must push production back 2 days. Lost more locations. Find more or rewrite? I rewrite.

Fifth Day: No caterer. She has quit. She keeps 1$K deposit. Screen Actors Guild calls and will stop production if they do not receive SAG deposit of $500 dollars. Money running very short. We decide on pizza for lunch. Actors not happy with lunch choice. A day player shows up very ill. He doesn't want to perform. I talk fast. Morale is staring to wane among the troops. Grip leaves after an hour. No PAs arrive at all. Makeup artist does not show. Actors very upset. Very behind schedule and must rush through coverage. On my way home, my girlfriend's car breaks down on the freeway. Must wait two hours for Rich to pick me up. Next morning we must use film budget to rent car for my transportation.

Sixth Day: Address on call sheet correct, yet everyone gets lost anyway. DP is angry that his retainer of $500 has not yet been paid in full. He threatens to walk. Money running low. Pizza for lunch again. Main female lead does not want to do kissing scene with male lead ' they are at odds. Nothing I say helps. I rewrite the kissing out of the scene. They do not like the rewrites. At noon my girlfriend calls me on the set and tells me she feels unloved and hates that I have not been around. She hopes this movie will be over soon because she cannot take it. We are rushed for time again and must quickly get coverage. We run late because of a diesel truck that has pulled up in front of the restaurant window, destroying our continuity with the previous takes. We spend far too much time tracking him down and convincing him to move this truck. Because of the hour, the owner of the restaurant wants us to pay him an additional $150 in order to keep the location open later. We have no choice but to pay.

Seventh Day: Rained out. Pushed back one day. We lose location. Too tired to look at dailies. Still have not seen a thing.

Eighth Day: Morale is low. One actor scheduled to shoot does not show. Have to rewrite. Go on without him. There is a buzz or a hum or a hiss of some sort in the boom mic. Spend two hours trying to fix. Cannot solve and move on with problem still present. Behind again. Have to rush. Tired of rushing. For lunch we do 39-cent burgers. Rich informs me that the burgers were purchased with the last of our money. Actors, of course, are angry about meal selection. That evening I call a meeting. I decide to put the production on hold until we secure more funding. All hell breaks loose. Rich and I barely avoid a fistfight with one another.

It would be another two months before we would begin again. Juan, a thousand dollars in the hole to his landlord, takes an associate producers job down in Brazil. Rich decides to get a sales job. For two months I do not receive any communication from either producer. Still I forge on.

I figure out a way to finish the remaining days for only $150 dollars, which will require borrowing my neighbor's camera and two lights. He agrees for a twelve-pack of beer. That night I finally have a chance to look at the tapes. All the audio is practically unusable. Part of the time it is too low or peaks too high, but most of all the footage is infected with a strange noise ' a buzz or hum or hiss of some kind. I am devastated.

Juan calls me from Brazil and I tell him the situation. He first tells me that while in Central American he had been kidnapped by guerrillas and held for two days before being released. He then tells me that he spoke to Rich and that Rich has called it quits and will not be back on the project. I tell him of my plans to finish the movie with a camera, 2 lights, and 150 dollars. He thinks I'm crazy and asks me to confer with the DP. So I call my DP and he conveys that he will not be finishing the shoot; he has no desire to continue. I tell him to fuck off and then hang up the phone. I fear the movie is dead. Main female lead calls and says that she will be moving back to England in three weeks. She is crucial to the finished product. Meanwhile I am all alone, a one-man crew. I inform Juan of the situation and he defends that he will not continue unless I figure out how the postproduction will be financed.

I decide to get a Macintosh G4 with Final Cut Pro editing software to edit the movie. Because of my poor credit, Apple Sales won't let me finance without a co-signer. So I call my father for a co-sign. After much discussion, he finally agrees. I send in the paperwork to Apple. They lose it. Main actress reminds me that she will be returning to the UK soon. I send the paperwork back in to Apple. This time they misplace it. Two weeks until England. Finally the paperwork is found and then cleared and they send out the computer.

While waiting for the computer to arrive, my girlfriend corners me and tells me that she has 'fallen out of love with me'� and that, since the apartment is in her father's name, she wants me out by the end of the week. I comply.

Juan returns the following day. I move in with him. I notify Apple of the change of address but they inform me that the computer has already been shipped. Finally the computer arrives (at my girlfriends apartment), and I rush over to pick it up. My girlfriends 'new' boyfriend helps me carry it to the car.

Holed up in Juan's room for seven straight days, I edit 15-20 hours a day. I show Juan how the movie, despite 75% of the sound being completely unusable and unfixable, can be salvaged. He is convinced and, together, he and I finish the remaining 50% of the film with just a camera and $150 bucks.

Pick-ups/ Reshoots: Juan borrows a rare antique Kalatchnikov rifle, meant as a prop, from his roommate. He tells me that his roommate's parents smuggled the gun into the country in a diplomatic pouch and that the gun had been outlawed in the US years ago. A woman, living on Juan's street, sees Juan carrying it to the trunk of his car and calls the police. Seven LAPD officers surround us, detain us, and then confiscate the rifle, never to be seen again. Juan's roommate is furious and wants to be paid back in full, but Juan and I are both broke. Juan's roommate then gives him the additional news that the two of them (and me by default) will be evicted at the end of the month for unpaid rent. We nevertheless continue shoot the movie and edit at night. We have no money to eat, so we live off of tomato soup. A couple of days later, Juan gets into a car accident in his roommate's car, so we have no transportation to get to the locations. Actors angry that they have to come and pick us and the equipment up and then drive us out to the location'� and then back again at the end of the night. Fearful of losing his apartment, Juan gets a landscaping job leaving me to finish alone.

At the end of the month, we are all kicked out of the apartment and go our different directions. I end up moving out to Woodland Hills to stay with one of the films investor's Ramesh, who has agreed to let me live with him and four other guys from India until I finish editing the movie. Without a DV camera to run the DV footage into the computer, I have to convince Ramesh to buy a camera. I tell him we can buy the camera from Frys electronic store, which has a 30-day return policy, and use it for 29 days before returning it. He agrees and we buy a camera from Frys, which we return every 29 days until the editing is done.

Final Screening: I put the word out to everyone involved (actors and crew alike) that a screening of Back to the Beginning will take place on a Saturday night at Ramesh's. No one shows. Nonetheless, I play the movie for Ramesh and his roommates. To say it was poorly received is an understatement. The most common complaint? The film felt rushed and unfinished. I laugh hysterically! Fuckers! Not a single person gives me credit for simply finishing the thing. I throw the final tape into a box, seal the box, bury the box, then swear that I will never direct another film again. And I haven't.

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