I was going through pictures on my phone this morning and found some fun ones from production.
This shot, for instance, brings back a lot of feelings. It was our second day of filming, and two weeks after we shot there, the building burned down. Thankfully, no one was hurt.
Notice that my script is a sheaf of loose leaf papers. I think by the time we wrapped I had 45 or so of the original 112 pages, and they were absolutely not in order.
I feel honored that we got to film this incredible space, even if our miracle-working production designer Sara Walsh gave it a very different feel.
The above was taken by Maeghan Donohue, who was gracious enough to come to set a few times and get some great behind the scenes stills.
David Andrew Macdonald is extraordinary. There aren’t enough nice things in this world to say about him. He was so easy to act with, so open, so generous. He gave such a nuanced and brilliant performance. Ah. The actors in this thing! They’re so good!
Speaking of which.
Brendan Griffin, man. I don’t even know what to say about him. We get into this industry to make movies with our friends, and when we get to, it’s the most fun thing in the world. It makes everything else seem worth it. Getting to act with Brendan is one of the aspects of this whole project that I most value.
When we went to the costume fitting for the uniforms, I was all IT WILL BE COLD. But Brendan and Casey wouldn’t let me get them these hats.
Their loss I think? The hats are cute! And it was really cold.
But my heart was stolen by Cat Missal. Best attitude award hands down goes to this girl. She nailed a really difficult role. She just nailed it. The film is so much better for her involvement, and the set was so much more fun because of her attitude. She was a joy to have around, and so epically talented. I also got to know (and adore) her mom, Karen.
Oh MAN was it cold. I’m getting a chill just looking at that picture. That day was long, but that scene turned out beautifully. Here are a few more from Maeghan of that day:
Haile! I miss you, Haile. Come back from San Francisco!
Any time Anna Margaret was on set, I was instantly 30% calmer.
She is hilarious and a treasure and a marvel.
Los Angeles took her from me a few years ago, but I’ll keep writing movies if it means getting this girl back on the east coast for a while.
And then OH MY GOD these three:
My key PA, AD and producer. Missy, Dan and Serena. This picture was taken on the last day of filming, and we’re all loopy and exhausted and so fucking happy. It was the first time where I let myself be like, okay. We’ve done it. This will be a movie. I still kind of feel like I’ve pulled off some sort of caper.
This was our wrap party. It sums up my mood well.
There was a karaoke party after the drinking-at-a-bar part of things, and Alexis got this great shot of my parents:
I love these two so much. They have been nothing but supportive for my entire life. What a gift.
-bodine
I wrote a post for Seed&Spark about how to make a movie with a loved one. Basically I compare the experience to getting a tattoo and presume to give advice to others. But there are some things in there I wish I’d heard in December, so I hope it helps someone.
Thank you to the always lovely Emily Best over at Seed&Spark!
(photo by the incredibly talented and wonderful Maeghan Donohue)
-bodine
Everyone said that when we wrapped filming, I’d get really depressed. I’ve just been working on it for too long. But production tentacles are still wrapped around my throat, so it’s a touch surreal for me. I’m editing the film, and there are a lot of details that just aren’t done with me yet. Location issues, payroll. It was an enormous and terrifying thing to just up and make the film ourselves. The analogy I kept coming back to in pre-pro was that it felt like driving a car that hits a patch of ice. You’re going so fast and the brakes won’t do anything but you can still sort of control the steering. So you guide the car into the skid and hope for the best. That was me, all January. On set, my AD pointed out that production felt to him like a very fast train, and we were all running in front of it to lay down track. The overlap in our analogies is interesting, I like that we both went to these nightmare vehicular catastrophes. So you go through that for a month or so and then it’s over! It just stops. I no longer have to think about scheduling, or hiring extras, or worrying about whether it’s going to rain when we need to shoot in the park. I don’t have to panic that I’ve brought the wrong costumes or lunch is late.
The absence of that daily drama is to fall backwards in a warm bath. I am so relieved we got through it. For two weeks I’ve been feeling ALL OF THE EMOTIONS but mostly it’s relief. We shot it! It’s been filmed. That part is done. Editing, oof. I’ll have a cut within two months, probably, not one as previously desired. I already feel like I’ve been editing forever, and I’ve only cut 10 or so scenes. Out of 124!
But god. It’s complicated, you guys, because also? I got to spend a month listening to the best actors in the fucking world say lines I wrote. I got to watch my husband put together shots that are so elegant, so perfectly composed and gorgeous, that they break my heart. I got to hang out with my mom for a few weeks, since she was on set helping out. I got to watch Serena blossom into a role she was born to do and I cannot wait to work with her again. I got to operate at a level of sustained focus and intensity that was a beast to maintain but also wonderful. I’ve never worked harder in my life, and it gave my life a color that was new and sustaining.
So yes, I suppose I’m a little depressed. Well, not depressed. I feel crazy. I don’t know what to talk about when I hang with people who weren’t on set with me. I don’t know how to talk about this project, because how do you? Like, all of the above post – can you imagine if I said that to you at a party? Dude, I did that Saturday. Crazy is the word. I feel super crazy.
I’m working on a teaser trailer, something with a bit of the story and my favorite pretty shots. I recently edited one that’s too disjointed to work for promotion, but I like how it came out. It’s cut to a song we use in the film called Catch 22 by Imani Coppola. It’s off of her outstanding album The Glass Wall. If you want to see it, go here. The password is teaser.
Thank you for caring about this project. I am so enormously excited to share the finished film.
-bodine
This has been an insane experience. Today is our last day off – we film tomorrow and Thursday and then we’re wrapped. We’re almost wrapped! That’s an absurd thing right there to get to say and think about. There have been four hundred or so distinct moments when I thought this would continue happening forever. Production is insane. I’ve never had to think about so many things at once (god, costume continuity alone has given me a succession of minor panic attacks), think about feeding so many people for so many days, think about paying so many people for so many days. We’ve weathered bizarre plumbing emergencies. There was an accident to the cube truck that three different insurance companies have found a way to avoid paying for. The blizzard hit when we were meant to shoot a ton of exteriors. The location we shot in for Paul’s apartment was lost in a fire a few days ago. I was punched in the shoulder by a homeless veteran who hassled us on the street on the lower east side. I’ve definitely been yelled at on the phone at least seven times.
I mean it when I say that making this film is the hardest and best thing I’ve ever done. I look around at Serena and Dan and Alexis (not just them but especially, especially them) and think with gratitude that I am getting the chance to make this film, and that is a gift. When I look back on this, I know I won’t be thinking about the long hours or how cold I’ve been or how tired. I’ll think about the lunch break dance parties and crew code names. I’ll think about how many smart, talented people have come together over a script that fell out of my head. I will work with these people forever if I can.
This was taken yesterday by my very good friend Keith Goldberg. We had just filmed the last shot of the movie and Alexis and I are watching it back on the monitor to be sure we have it. Serena is on the right in her amazing hat that I covet. I look like a tenant farmer out of Grapes of Wrath. It seems to sum up everything.
So many people have demonstrated that they believe in the project. By giving to our funding campaign, by reading a draft (or six) of the script, by having drinks with me and saying that making a feature on our own is not a terrible idea. We wrap Thursday, I’ll sleep in on Friday for approximately 25 hours, and I expect to have a rough cut in a month. I can’t wait to edit a teaser.
I’m exhausted but buoyed by gratitude and excitement. Thank you for following this process.
-bodine
Tomorrow is the first day of filming.
Yesterday my mom arrived to cook for the crew for the duration of production. I met with the costume designer, Lindsay Kleinman, and the two actors playing police officers for their costume fitting. Last night I rehearsed with three of the other actors and was reminded that they are not only so gifted (so, so gifted) but they’re all also perfectly cast. Today, Lindsay and I get to distress a batch of clothing and make two sweatshirts look bloody. Alexis and Serena are meeting with the Parks Department right now to secure our shooting locations next week.
This morning was the first time I woke up feeling excited and joyful and not just worried about all the things not yet done. The people around me are killing it. They’re extraordinary and kind and capable, so capable, and I’m feeling beyond grateful most especially for Lindsay and Sara Walsh (our miracle-producing production designer) and Dan Keezer (our intrepid AD, my sanity-maintainer) and Serena (who is getting shit done like nobody’s business) and Brendan Swift (our AC, who is also doing two hundred other necessary things with a smile and charm) and of course my husband, dear Alexis, who is going to shoot and direct the hell out of this movie.
It’s almost the day of the show y’all.
The enormously charming Matthew Bowers interviewed Alexis, Serena and me for his podcast, Wrong Opinions About Movies.
We talk about what it’s like to make the film, how we like working with Seed & Spark for fundraising, what got us into filmmaking, and what it means to us to work together. We’re so grateful to Matthew for taking the time. If you’ve never heard me chatter excitedly, this is for sure your chance.
-bodine
The central character in the film, Kim Getty, has a roommate named Amber Reynolds. Amber is a beautiful late 20s blonde who is funny and smart and happens to be living with someone who is sort of insane to have to live with. Kim is doing her best, but she would be a trial as a roommate. It’s a craig’s list matchup that works well enough but man, I have nothing but sympathy for Amber’s character. Her scenes are meant to be funny and break tension, and Amber was written with a very specific funny person in mind:
I’ve planned to include Anna Margaret in this film since the very first draft. We acted in a play together in 2009 that was written by the incredibly talented Michael Yates Crowley and oh boy it’s been love ever since. She’s going to kill this role and I am so, so excited to get to act with her again.
She stars in “Social Butterfly,” which will be at Sundance in a few weeks. Other wonderful projects you should absolutely see her in are the features, “Small Beautifully Moving Parts” (SXSW, Hamptons Film Fest), “Gayby” (SXSW, BAM Cinemafest), “Somebody Up There Likes Me” (SXSW), “Slacker 2011,” “The Romance of Loneliness,” “The Color Wheel,” “The Brave One,” and the short “Adelaide” (over 50 festivals, including Gen Art, Woodstock & Austin).
She is charming in everything without exception but I especially love the bumpers she did for SXSW last year.
-bodine
Serena and I met at a Hairpin meet up and that site was and remains our favorite on the internet. This is how Hairpin describes itself, and I can vouch that this is accurate:
You know how having cocktails at a friend’s house can sometimes be more fun than the Big Party you go to afterward? And not because the Big Party isn’t fun, but just because hanging out with select lady friends is sometimes unbeatable? This site hopes to be a little like that — a low-key cocktail party among select female friends.
Yes. Exactly. It’s never too cool and the commenter community isn’t mean. The advice columns sometimes have the tough love vibe of an older sibling who is just exhausted by the question writer, but the whole operation makes me feel like their priority is that I learn about things that are interesting and that it’s within me to have a better life. Ah. I love it. I love it so much. I go to parties and almost always bring up something I read on the Hairpin. This article, for example, made me laugh the first time I read it and also each subsequent time.
Serena wrote in to Edith at the Hairpin, totally cold, to let her know that we’d met through the site and how much it meant to us. And Edith ran a post about our film!
You know sometimes you smile so hard, you worry your face might freeze? That’s me since Monday.
-bodine
About a year ago, actually Halloween night 2011 to be exact, I went to a meet-up organized by a then-new website called The Hairpin, which was run by and written by some really interesting and funny women. I have never been one for groups, and for the most part I keep to myself, but when I saw that this meet-up was to be just down the block from me, I decided to go. I had a feeling that I was meant to go, that for some reason it was important that I show up and meet the people whose articles and comments I had been reading, and to whom I so strongly responded. I heard myself think (as one can) I am going to meet someone who I will work with.
So I went to the event and talked to a number of really charming and funny people, and was actually about to leave when I found myself talking to this girl about writing and how I wanted to write a screenplay and make a movie, but that I had no idea how to go about doing so. And she said to me, “I wrote a screenplay that I want to make into a movie.” Without a beat, I said, “You should send it to me. I’ll give you notes. I’m really good at that.” (If I did say so myself…) That girl was Bodine Boling and that was, for me, the beginning of Movement + Location.
Over the next year, Bodine would send me drafts of a constantly evolving script and I would send her notes. And every time I did, I’d think, well, that’s the last I’m going to hear from her, because if someone gave me notes that called for the changes that I suggested, I would run away. But every single time, she was back, and I’m talking within weeks, which, to me, was extraordinary. She just had something in her that needed this story to be realized. I’ve frankly never seen anyone work so hard on anything in my life.
Now I’ve never produced a movie before, but every time I would correspond with Bodine and we would discuss the reasons and the rhythms of the characters (and I was not the only one to do this, for sure) I would feel like I knew that what I was telling her was right. Between us, I felt a sense of conviction that I have honestly never felt about anything before, and it was incredible.
We went through a couple of readings, after which she made some final tweaks – the results of which, by the way, had me on the edge of my seat as I was raeading the final draft, that’s how much she had honed this script into a tight, lean story which actually made me want to be an actor and say the lines, they were so good – and suddenly (if a year’s work can be sudden) we had a final draft. (I want to add exclamation marks at the end of that sentence because I still find it exciting.)
At this point, I didn’t know what was going to happen. I had always thought of this as a side project, something that I loved doing, but the reality of which was elusive. But then I got an email from Bodine asking me to produce it.
We set up a meeting, so that we could discuss the possibility of all this with her husband Alexis, who she said would shoot and direct it. I had met Alexis at a reading of the script which he was recording, and I was struck by how focused he was on making sure the audio equipment and all else was right. I just saw this guy without an ego who whole-heartedly was supporting his girl in an endeavor that was really important to her, and I was really touched by that. Then after the reading, I listened to what he said and how he responded to her and I just liked him more. Not to mention he agreed with me on a couple of points, so I figured he must be extremely smart.
On the morning of our meeting, however – and neither Alexis nor Bodine knew this – I was sort of preparing my speech about not being able to produce it because I’m so busy and I don’t know my schedule and blah blah blah. All those things – fear, laziness, complacence – that can keep one, and certainly had kept me, from pursuing one’s dreams, were at play in my head.
So I walked into their apartment and without much fanfare said, “Ok guys, what do you want to do. What is the movie you want to make?” And Alexis just started laying out his vision, his desire to shoot with a really high-end camera, and how he would shoot, and what aesthetically was important to him, and immediately I knew I was in. Any resistance I had, any fear about not knowing what to do, or being overwhelmed, just completely disappeared. I knew in that moment that I was going to make this movie with two incredible talented and dedicated people for whom I not only have a ton of respect and admiration, but whose company I really enjoy.
And that’s where we are today, just over a year later, on the eve of the launch of our fundraising campaign. All of us in, excited and inspired, and all hoping to make Movement + Location the movie it is meant to be.
-serena
I’ve been a fan of Imani Coppola since Legend of a Cowgirl, which I played on repeat through much of high school. Through the unlikely magic that is New York City, she’s actually now a good friend. When writing the script, I put in a character named Gema Fund, a pop star from 300 years in the future. Gema doesn’t make an appearance in the film, as it takes place entirely in modern day Brooklyn, but she’s referenced repeatedly, and the Rachel character at one point sings part of a Gema Fund song. I also imagined a real, produced version of that song playing during the closing credits. When picturing Gema, I always saw Imani.
When I boldly asked Imani if she’d be up for writing a song for the film, she said yes (because she’s not only talented and beautiful, she’s also deeply, extraordinarily kind). She suggested a trade – would I edit one of her music videos? I said HELL YES I WILL LET’S DO THIS.
She’s still working on the song for the film, but here’s what I cut together for her:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqOSDiHOjQc]
One of the things I’m most excited about with this project is the opportunity to collaborate with artists I admire. I could not be happier that one of the most stylish New Yorkers is part of our team.
-bodine