Want to share that we are again launching into what we hope is a great way to raise MUCH-needed money for some great charities, while building up funds to make “Harvest” in the spring. SO here is “Kittens and Kids”, which will help kids and animals by donating $1 to either the Make a Wish Foundation or Animal Lifeline for every $10 raised for the budget of “Harvest”.
Let’s get on it!
JB
We’d just done the first of our haunted houses, ending in November of 2009. I think at that time I felt a bit better about creative projects and such, but we still hadn’t put together a new movie in some time, and that was still weighing on me. At that time, there were about 70 different scripts I had wanted to put to the screen, but none of them were so exciting we just *had* to do them.
We had attempted once before to do a retrospective piece for our old video- we did a great bunch of interviews on the 10th anniversary of our first video material, but never really put anything together for the 1996 thing except for a logo for Cheezy Productions that said “Ten Long Years”. I don’t remember when, but I had started to conceive of an actual movie to feature a bunch of our old material. This led to several more different ideas and different drafts. VERY different from what we ended up doing.
The original drafts were meant to be more like a regular movie, with a running plot. The problem with those was that it was difficult to work in the old material with them. One had an evil scientist torturing me while the others were trying to find me, and another was like a road trip movie. Weird… It wasn’t until I had been watching some Southpark one night that it came to me. I was watching some of their “Fireside Chat” type bits between episodes on the DVDs, and I really liked that format. Like the audience would be visiting us as we showed them the old stuff. Sold.
I’m sure opinions and memories vary, but it seemed like there was some groaning and resistance when at first I brought this to the original folks to talk about making it. But it was like everyone was starting to come to a point where the movie things were able to come back to the forefront. Everyone was pretty quick to agree to contribute, and so we started, and the shoots were scant in 2010, but still memorable and fun.
First shoots were at Ed’s during early 2010, and they started in TONS of snow. The thing I remember the most about those shoots was that it was the first time we had new cast/crew member Matt Curtis with us. The shoots were… rusty and awkward, if I’m remembering this correctly. We spent the rest of 2010 doing a couple promos, one with just Ed and I, and another that included Kate. Just fucking around with the cameras and making stuff up was starting to be fun.
Uh oh… year two of the contractual obligation. We had a haunted house to do, but as it turned out, that was ok. It extended our weird “24th Anniversary” into a rather expected “25th Anniversary” by pushing Jiggery Pokery back to 2011. We did have one more shoot in 2010, and it was at my parents’ home, and we shot a whole mess of things, but again, it left me feeling a touch on the awkward side. We were better, but still not back to full strength. Jiggery Pokery was coming along.
Oh yes… how in the HELL did we concoct such an odd title? It’s not a very exciting story. Ed and I were sitting around work, and had occasion to watch an old film starring Vincent Price called “A Comedy of Terrors”. At one point in the film, the character played by Basil Rathbone awakens after being thought to be dead, and utters (among other dialog) “What… Jiggery Pokery is this?” and I liked the sound of the phrase, so since 90% of what we do in front of the camera is mischief, it was a good title.
The haunted house in 2010 was a documented mix of good and bad times (mostly good), but during it, Dan, Kate, and I had been talking about getting back to the movie once the haunt was over. Now, let me explain that during this time, I began to freak out and go ‘Full Asshole’ about people and their participation with it. I was sure the whole damn thing would collapse at any moment, but, shortly after the start of 2011, we met for the first time to get back to shooting. This alleviated ALL of my panic.
See… this was the first time we’d had two of our new, added cast members. Cheeko Camel (Who had been in “The Wait”) and Allie Yungclas joined us for the first time on the set, and the result was a bunch of better, smoother material. But here was the good part, it led to us immediately scheduling a further shoot- a big one- at Ed’s about a month later.
We rolled out to Ed’s, loaded with costumes, makeup, props, and all in a weird mood. It was weird because I don’t think some of the new folks knew quite what to expect, and we “veterans” were nervous because we hoped it would go well. We started the day at Matt’s house, and shot a couple bits there. We then made for Ed’s, and here’s where the magic came to life in a big way. First things first, we had material for a trailer to put on tape.
At a very cold, very gray parking lot, we shot the material for this trailer, as well as a ton of still pictures. This trailer was pretty special for us. Over a year before, we had contacted the agent for famous movie trailer guy, Don LaFontaine (The “In a world…” guy), to ask about doing a voice over for our trailer. Happily for us, we needed but to make a simple donation to a children’s’ charity in order for him to record what I’d written for the trailer. It was great, even if a bit bittersweet, as Mr. LaFontaine passed away a couple months after recording it for us.
That night at Ed’s was a series of sketches, bits, and shots that awakened a lot of magic in us- it felt EXACTLY like it had in the early times. We laughed a LOT, and it hardly seemed like 14 hours by the time we were done, but the entire crew was jazzed to have been there, and looking forward for way more. Way more would come in the form of a shoot at Meredith, where we would all but close out shooting on the movie.
That shoot at Meredith continued the magic, but it was coming down to where the editing was going on at the same time, in a rush to get us ready for a family and friends screening of it on the last day of April. The Meredith shoot corrected a few things we’d messed up, and took care of most of the rest of the movie. The last few things were finished off as the editing was really getting going.
Next up? Let’s talk live showings, and great things to come out of the Jiggery Pokery screening. Like… a second screening…
JB
Don’t forget to check out the new 3B Podcast. You can subscribe to the feed here on iTunes.
The plug got pulled on “The Wait” in 2009, and so like a crazy person loose from the asylum, I began to look for a way to inflict my insanity upon the world. Thus began a string of ideas to get *something* on the screen almost immediately. I was in a terrible funk, and I didn’t realize how bad at first. There were horror ideas, comedy ideas, and so on, but one thing became clear to me- I had zero ego left, and that’s not good. Ego is a word that everyone thinks of as bad these days, but it’s not- it’s totally ok to believe in yourself and what you do, and your skills. Confidence is not arrogance.
Well, after “The Wait”, I had nothing left. I started to realize that everything I was rushing through script format was junk, and I was desperately trying to claw back into the movie making. I had said that I didn’t care what it was, or how we got it done- damn it, I needed some kind of ‘win’. I felt about as cruddy as you can get to feeling about yourself after the zombie fiasco. But then the opportunity for that “Win” showed up.
Not sure for what, but I had stopped in to the Windsor Heights City Hall, and while conducting whatever business I was there for, it got mentioned to me that I had come up, because 3B had done a haunted house for the city in 2001- the “Windsor Heights House of Horror”. Someone had mentioned doing a haunted house in the old super-valu building at 63rd and Hickman, and you know? That suited me just fine.
I went to the others and spoke about the virtues of the haunted house trade- fairly good way to make some cash, and we had plenty of experience, and we had NO movie on the horizon. So, we got ourselves in contact with the Windsor Heights Chamber of Commerce, and pitched our idea. Thus was born the concept for our first haunted house, and we went to have a look at the building for the first time.
I can remember going with Ed (Post) to the front of the building at night, but because we hadn’t gotten the keys we were just staring through the front windows at an enormous, wide open area. Holy smokes, filling that thing with scary stuff would have been a challenge. As it turned out, we were to use the rear area of the place, a stock room/loading dock, officers, etc. which was more than enough room.
Summer of 2009, we got the money, and started throwing down layouts and putting up walls. I wouldn’t hire me to build a house for anyone, but we put up a lot of walls to create a fairly decent maze, and started dreaming up sick things to fill it with. And the ideas, they were many. We must have gone through dozens of potential ideas for scares, settling upon a theme that had no theme- a collection of random stuff that would tap into many different fears. What do people fear, you ask? Spiders and Clowns, of course!
About a week or so in, I was in the midst of probably preparing to murder someone inside the building, probably for breaking one of the sets or for telling me they couldn’t be there on an important night. For whatever reason, I was in a hurry when this rather polite, bearded chap strolled up to ask if we needed help. I jerked a thumb toward the wife and grunted “Talk to her”, and in I went.
This turned out to be Matt Curtis- the haunt’s CHEF- who was a gem and a welcome addition to the place. He also helped to prove wrong one of my theories, and I’m glad. He asked if he could bring a chainsaw, and of course, I said “Sure, why not?” But I was really certain people were sooooooooooo over that as a haunt scare. I was so wrong, it was frightening. Well, frightening to the throngs of customers coming through…
2009′s “Journey Through Madness” was a great experiment for us- we’d never done that big of a haunted house, never raised that much stuff for a charity, or made that much money for doing a haunted house. There was a fair amount of drama, tension, and so on, but for the most part, pretty good haunt which got pretty good reviews from the customers. I was happy with it, but not as happy as I would be when we did another one in the same building in 2010!
We started designing over the winter. We planned, we schemed, we… Well, we were ready a lot sooner than the chamber was, but then, we also knew what we wanted to do, and the result was a haunt that was about twice as long and big, with an overly ambitious list of scares to be stuffed inside. Turns out it was a little bigger than we could handle with our budget and staff, but we made the most of it, and it was phenomenal! More tension, turmoil, tempers, and trying times, but we survived (barely), and made more money and donations.
The second half of Nightmareland, as it was called, was just a shit-storm for the poor paying customers- I could actually sort of time it from the moment they strolled into Alice in Wonderland, and Hannah would bellow ‘TEAAAA TIME!”, you would then hear a scream, then another on the dock, then the rumble of bigfoot chasing them, then the pots and pans against a rickety door, then ‘chug… chug… BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!” of the chainsaw, then a loud BLAM! as they would hit the exit wall from the ‘Sawmill’, then a moment later that clatter of a metal chair striking metal rails (SCREAM), and then the squeaks of the clowns….
That was just the last little bit. I was thrilled with it, but felt like we could have done it a little better. The building is gone now, and we have no plans to do another haunt, but those two sure were an adventure. If you ask Jim Cunningham, it was less like an adventure and more like war. I barely crossed the finish line… I’d been sick during the whole operation of Nightmareland, and during tear-down, I ripped open a thumb and got some stitches. Then it was off to surgery for a bad gall bladder.
But during Nightmareland, one of the people from the Chamber of Commerce had bought a property, and it included filthy, disgusting buildings that were barely habitable. So naturally, we HAD to make a horror movie in them. Thus was born a hastily thrown-together project called “Heartland”. We shot over a two week period in a crusty, greasy, grimy, cluttered old house which had been a daycare/travel agency/restaurant/catering/gift shop operated by Pakistanis. It was… disgusting. The crack pipe on the second floor was a nice touch.
The first weekend- great. Set up the kitchen, brought in the tools, shot some great scenes, chopped down nearly every door in the place. It was about 85 degrees and humid. People were bloody, terror was created, and everyone had a good time. Second weekend- power to the house shut off. 95 degrees and humid. Running ONE box fan and one set of halogen (meaning- HOT) lights off of a gas generator which we killed numerous times. People were happily miserable that weekend.
Then we were done. Then we got an email that we had left too much of a mess, and so Matt and I, as well as my wife, filed over to see what the problem was. I mean, we had only left about ten to fifteen pounds of raw meet in a 95 degree house for a couple days… Oh, right. Maggots. And LOTS of them. Even bleach didn’t seem to be killing them, but we scooped, scraped, and sprayed everything, took the bad stuff away, and then a couple days later the house was razed from the map. All in all, a great time was had by everyone!
So there I was, at the end of 2010 with a better tummy, a stitched up finger, and a rather devious grin on my face. The cool shit was about to begin…
It has been a blast so far shooting Cloaca. Last weekend saw some fabulous stuff like the fake porn and our new folk music. We have two more long weekends of principal photography. Thanks to the crew and some of the new folks who helped us last weekend.
D
Will be posted soon!
D
Sigh…
Ok, here’s the story and some sordid details of the making of “The Wait”, our unreleased, epic zombie pic that took four years to finally get shot in the brain enough to die. I’ve hesitated writing a lot about it, or its demise because of the fact that with so many people involved, and so much nonsensical drama over that long a period of time, someone’s bound to end up with hurt feelings. I’ll try to hurt peoples’ feelings in the nicest way possible 
After finishing “Revenge”, I was hot to get to the next project, but I was thinking something smaller. WAY smaller, mostly just so we could test out Ed’s new bitchin’ crane and dolly. But I wasn’t real wild after trying to come up with a hundred different scripts, and so I considered the fact that I had just finished a 500+ page manuscript entitled “Escape from the Dead”. I *loved* George Romero’s zombie flicks, and so I thought I’d take a sliver of the story, turn it into a screenplay, and then make a 30 minute test flick out of it, to try out new gear and lighting technique. Great plan! Small cast, short movie, minimal special effects… NOTHING can go wrong…
But that’s where stuff went wrong. The script was easy enough to fashion, and I went and snagged a lead actress, conscripting Nicole Schafer from “Revenge” to play Ashley “Ash” Welles, a stripper with a heart of gold, on the run from zombies and looking for her uncle Mike. I would play Air Force pilot Mick Scott, and Dan would play Mick’s brother Jake Scott. See? Cast of 3, simple location (Ed’s barn), and only some zombie makeup to do on a handful of extras. Super easy.
When we started shooting, everything was going great. Ed and I were doing tests for gunshot hits, working with the dolly and crane, trying out CG muzzle flashes, and so on. Everyone was excited to come out and work on it, and things seemed to be going great. It was at this point that Nicole had gotten us introduced to Mick (Real Mick, not character Mick), and he was to be the enormous, violent zombie I had to do battle with. This version of the production went on for about a month before Ed said those fatal words to me in the barn one day… “You know, you really ought to just make this a full movie…”
We really hadn’t done much pre-production, because of how short the movie was supposed to be, and because everything was so contained. There weren’t hundreds of heads to keep track of, or even dozens. No huge makeup budget, or need for public buildings, etc. But when we switched it up to a full length movie, and I was working on the script, here’s where I believe the fatal mistake was- we STILL didn’t do that stuff. I think because we were already in a shooting mode, we didn’t want to back off of that, and spend several more months going back to plan everything out. HUGE mistake that I think was the cancer that started right at the beginning, and killed it at the end.
More cast, more zombies, more sets, more guns, and more headaches were added to the flick, which now had a bloated 120+ page screenplay, bumped up from 26 pages. We brought in “Revenge” veterans Ryan Gass and Alex Solodov, as well as a bunch of new faces. Thus, we set about our unplanned, unprepared quest to make a zombie movie. I was producing, and Ed was going to direct.
But what followed were months and months of the pattern “Shoot- review- reshoot”, and that got old, expensive, and frustrating in a hurry. We did have our moments, and one of the things we were good at was finding great sets/locations that we could use for free. Ed was doing an adequate job of directing, but he doesn’t really like zombie flicks, and now I don’t blame him.
How big was this thing? We decided to do a night of zombies. We would just put out some ads, and anyone who came to be a zombie would be slapped up with greasepaint, and sent into the night to eat brains. We’d have numerous cameras rolling to catch the various scenes we wanted to do, and everything would be great. 130 people came out to be zombies, and we had lots of great crowd shots, including massive ones in, on, and around the fire station in Windsor Heights.
To say there were problems with cast and crew would be tremendously understating things, but here’s where I’ll use some discretion and play nice. Suffice to say, I ended up directing, and there were some major problems that led to numerous re-casts, as well as some material we couldn’t do. Eventually, we wound up with the cast that would be the “final” one, and we forged ahead no matter how many times the movie had been pronounced dead. Ironically, it was like a… wait for it….. zombie.
We just didn’t have any money behind it, and while the others felt like it was taking forever, and that they were spending too much time on it, I wish they could have seen how much time I was spending on it. In the mean time, some personal issues had managed to end my law enforcement career, so I was suffering a lot of terrible, painful things while trying to be anything/everything on the production. Tiring? Hell yes, it was.
So we had most of this thing shot. Damn near all of it, and so I had a roughly edited version, and cast/crew wanted to see it. I added some temporary music and some foley to make things livable, and brought the rough edit to the others to screen. The screening was brutal. Viciously brutal- and I took it pretty personal, considering the credits were like that cartoon where Bugs Bunny is playing baseball, and the announcer is reading off every position as “Bugs Bunny”. By the time we were done watching it, and everyone went home, I was so mad, I couldn’t even think straight.
Now, mind you, it was pretty awful, but when you’re the guy writing, producing, directing, acting, editing, and so on, when people laugh at it and tear it 17 new assholes, that makes you a bit bitter. My time, I decided, could be WAY better spent on things that were more joyous and productive. I didn’t need the stress and the headaches so that I could have to endure that, I reasoned. And if that’s what the cast/crew thought of it…
So I quit. I just contacted everyone and said I was done. I didn’t want to do it anymore. Now everyone was serious, and wanted to finish it. I was super, super hesitant to get one more video frame of it, to be honest. I knew it was a dog, and it WAS a dog for numerous, very good reasons. Still, it was our dog, and I just couldn’t shoot it. I made clear that we almost needed to start from scratch with the damn thing (*groan*, right?) But to my surprise, everyone wanted to make a good movie, and so most were ok with that. We lost two cast members, but I can live with that attrition rate.
It had to have money to give it legs, and we had to quell some of the personality issues with cast/crew. Eventually, when our efforts raised a pathetic $160, and we could not seem to get past some issues, Dan and I mutually decided that perhaps in the future we could revisit the concept, but now was not the time. It required money we didn’t have, to put out a zombie flick amidst what had become a virtual sea of zombie movies, TV shows, comic books, and so on.
In the end, there were just so many technical problems with it, I just could not see releasing it to a world-wide audience, and I know that pissed a LOT of people off. But from our perspective- OUR wangs are in the breeze, OUR asses are hanging out, OUR names are on the thing. It’s far from a decent representation of our work, and the technical issues make it unrecoverable. We used 8 different cameras in 4 years; from dying single chip vacation camcorders all the way to professional level units. Some scenes are missing sound which we never dubbed. The shots range from beautiful to awful, and some of it was hard to cut together. Some of it was impossible. The on screen chemistry between Nicole and I (sorry Nicole) was almost non-existent, and probably because of both of us, by the end, we just weren’t getting along and didn’t like each other very much. It’s telling that the one shot in the movie where she hugs me, she is shown from behind, and it’s a stand-in. But for this production, by that point, that seemed normal.
If this movie had been a quilt, based on how it looks and flows, it would have been a quilt made of iron, leather, and kleenex, stitched together with dental floss and soldering wire. That’s how uneven it is. Hopefully, if we re-visit the genre, we’ll do a better job. Sorry this one didn’t turn out very well.
Although I’m certain there are no “Frequently Asked Questions” about us thus far, here’s some background on us, our projects, and our giant, dysfunctional family. It may not be as cool as reading a book, or practicing amateur dentistry on your friends, but at least maybe you’ll make a journey of discovery on why you hate us. That’s the kind of mental road trip that should be cherished, like a pet monkey. So here you go.
The short version of the beginning is that when we were kids- Dan, Kate, and I were exposed to LOTS of really cool, very diverse flicks. None had as much influence as the summer blockbusters, which really began while we were kids. Jaws(1975), King Kong (1976), Star Wars (1977), Superman (1978)… every year there was some new, juicy movie filled with imagination to get us going. I think Dan and I wrote “Star Wars II” in 1978- ahead of our time…
Fast forward to high school, where we were able to start using media equipment, like state-of-the-art VHS camcorders, to begin making movies. And make them we did! From 1986 to about 1989, we were prolific little videographers, shooting funny bits and lots of other stuff on weekends, usually. It was during this time we started doing this stuff with Ed Post and Dave Johnston.
The 90s were… well, a different decade for us. Some video shoots (and some VERY memorable ones) were to be found, but for the most part, we were concentrating on college, families, children, and jobs. It was a dark time… Well, it was more like a gray time. Attempted our first ever feature length production, which lasted… oh…. one day before going poop. That was a slasher flick, but because it’s something we still want to do in the future, can’t give any more details. It was an excellent workshop in organizing a cast, and how NOT to do pre-production.
But then there was this new millennium, and that brought with it some interesting things. Around 2003, thanks to the internet, Josh had learned of the concept of “Fan films”- which are basically unofficial sequels to existing successful movies. Check with the Star Trek and Star Wars guys- there are whole sites and contests and more devoted to these fan creations. Well, Josh had been milling around websites and message boards for his favorite movies, which resulted in the conception of doing a fan film based on one of his guilty pleasures- “Friday the 13th”. Thus, around 2003, pre-production and casting began on the ambitious “Friday the 13th- The Revenge”, and the movie had a bit of a false start in 2003′s burning hot summer, as the “wingin’ it” style of production wasn’t getting it done.
Revamped and pre-planned to infinity, “Revenge” got started again in the spring of 2004, and completed shooting after a lengthy 6 months. It spent a couple months on the internet, where it was viewed by fans all around the world, and got great reviews. For a fan film, it was an epic monster. Most fan films average about 10 minutes in length, so “Revenge”‘s 91 minute running time was a delight to fans who are always craving content. Far from perfect, it was a valuable learning experience, and made us a lot of friends. Riding a high from completing the first ever feature-length project, it was time to do something else.
It was time to do… “The Wait.”
