Movie Update Options

[Bargod]

Well, we are more than half way shot. I'd like to say it's been a lot of fun, but actually it has been very hard work. We will be (hopefully) be meeting with a company that "finishes" movies later this week. Basically, they come in when a movie is almost done and throw more money at it to make it better (all for a cut of the action, of course). We will really need this if we want a real chance of getting any kind of big screen release. The sound just isn't very high quality so we'll need to take it into a studio to get it polished. If that falls through there is always the chance that somebody will see it on the festival circuit and do the same thing, or a studio will like it and pay for us to re-shoot it. That would be nice.

While recently googling "Bubba's Chili Parlor" I found something pretty funny. Apparently there is a fantasy game for film buffs called "Fantasy Moguls.com". Basically you pick which films are going to gross the most money. Well, apparently one of the analysts for the site is VERY thurough in his research. Here is a quote from one of his reports:


Any worries that Fresnadillo might fail to earn the respect of Boyle's adherents have been well and truly quashed. "Reviews" of footage screened early for journalists have been great-to-outstanding, and an entire community of online fans awaits 28 Weeks's theatrical premiere with a vocal, relentless, slavering hunger. Zombie flicks are pretty vogue: This year alone will see the releases of Severance (April 20), Fido (June 15) and Death Walks the Streets (July 1), along with George Romero's Diary of the Dead, Bubba's Chili Parlor and Resident Evil: Extinction (August 21). And 2008 will bring J. Michael Straczyniski's World War Z, an account of a global zombie war 10 years after its conclusion. But always, the question: What sort of box-office prospects do these films REALLY have? Only five films over the last 20 years featuring the "living dead" have managed $20 million in domestic grosses; two were Resident Evil chapters, two were derivatives of previous Romero properties, and the other was 28 Days Later. (My Republican friends insist An Inconvenient Truth belongs on that list, too; however, I digress.)

HA! Beautiful! You'd think the guy was on our payroll. There we are, right between Romero and Resident Evil. I'm sure only a handful of people read this guys stuff, but it's nice to see.

We've had two interesting run-ins with the law. The first is incredibly humorous. I really wish I'd been there because I just can't imagine what was going through this cops head. Apparently he drove up while we were shooting a fairly large zombie scene. As he drives up he see a cop (actor) with his gun drawn facing a group of bloody, slow moving people (zombie extras) and one middle aged woman with her brains blown out laying in the middle of the road. What he doesn't seem to notice are the people filming it. So the officer slams on his breaks gets out of the car with gun drawn while yelling into his radio. The director doesn't yell cut as he wants to finish the scene in case we don't get another shot at it because of the real cop. So, one of the producers, my buddy Mike (Bubba/producer) goes over to the cop to explain what was going on to him. The cop screams at him to stop where he is as Mike yells "We're making a movie!" Apparently, although the local PD let us use one of their cars, they didn't announce to the entire staff that we would be making a zombie movie in town. Once the dispatcher understood what was going on she recalled all the cars from both the small town we are in and the small towns surrounding it. My question is, what is the call # for "zombie attack"? LMFAO!
Officer: (screaming into radio) We've got an eleven-twenty-eight! I repeat an eleven-twenty-eight!!!
Dispatcher: OH MY GOD!!! ZOMBIES!!!

The second incident involved some extras driving home after a long day shooting. Because they were tired and one of them lived fairly close by, they decided to just drive straight home, without cleaning up first. Well, as they drove through town a police car driving the other way hit it's breaks and swung around behind them with the lights on. The officer approached the car carefully, looked inside and went back to the squad car. The second officer approached carefully from the other side and looked inside. By this time the extras had rolled down the windows. As the officer looked closer he asked them if they needed medical assistance. LOL! A tribute to our FX guys. They got pulled over because they looked like they were bleeding profusely! We got a lecture from the cops to make sure our extras removed make-up before leaving the set after that.

Anyway, I hope I didn't ruin those "behind the scenes extras" for you. Well, the bloopers should make up for it. LOL!