Adding Jiggery to our Pokery

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

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2009/2010- 3B Haunts the Heights, and Chops down Doors…

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…