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
Alexis and I have been in Colorado for the last few days with two friends. Everyone else has been skiing, but I’ve been hanging at the condo doing film stuff. I’m an awkward, clumsy person skier, and I was petrified of injuring myself so soon before we start filming. So, chilling in the condo.
Holy yikes, by the way. In two and a half weeks, we start filming. Wow.
So this past Thursday, we fly in to Denver and the four of us stop for Mexican food, and in the parking lot of the restaurant, my phone is accidentally knocked from my hand and the screen shatters. Fully shatters. Little pieces of glass still come off on my fingertips when I send a text. But the phone still works perfectly, which is a blessing. Driving away from Denver, we stop at a liquor store and I buy beer. An hour later, we get to the condo and I can’t find my wallet. Between the four of us and six Apple devices, we figure out what the liquor store was, and I call. They haven’t seen my wallet. Not even in the parking lot? Sorry ma’am. I go to the websites of my credit cards, poised to cancel, and sort of spontaneously decide to call the guy at the liquor store back. Sorry to bother you, I say. Can you take my name and number, just in case someone finds it? Sure, he says. But I don’t think your wallet is here.
Five minutes later, my shattered phone is literally in my hand and Capital One’s number is up on my computer, and my phone rings. The liquor store guy found my wallet, untouched, in a dark part of the parking lot. Blessing number two, salvaged from the blight of a near disaster. But, the liquor store hero says, we close in one hour. And the liquor store is one hour away.
So Alexis and I jump in the car and take off and maybe he goes a mile or two over the speed limit. Just about five miles from the liquor store, we get pulled over. My heart is in my throat, this is seriously the most surreal and perplexing evening I’ve had in ages. I tell the officer my stupid wallet story and he follows us to the liquor store and I get the wallet (HURRAY!) and we then sit in the car, waiting for the officer to come over and give us whatever ticket. He takes forever. Then he comes over, talks for a while, and ultimately just gives us a warning. Blessing number three. My relief is so unwieldy and vast that I exhale for an hour.
I like to see coincidences as verification that I’m on the right path, and near misses give me a similar tingle. They force me to pay attention to how lucky I am. And now, today, two-ish weeks from principal photography, I need to settle down, take a breath, and think about how wonderfully lucky I am to be two weeks away from making a movie I wrote, that I also get to act in. That’s outrageous. I get so caught up in what’s left to do and what we can’t afford. But like a wedding or a community theater play, it’ll all come together. Momentum and this team will see us through.
We’re about to make a fucking great movie.
-bodine
This is a departure from the other posts, but documenting the process of making the film is very much documenting my life.
Let me start by saying that I think it’s safe to say that 11-14 are the most impressionable ages, and we’re lucky to survive them. Your peers can be mean, adults don’t take you seriously. Your post-school future is as shimmery and impossible to imagine as outer space.
I had the extraordinary good fortune to meet Karisa Bandura in 6th grade and she was my life raft. We made each other laugh and went to the mall one million times and slipped notes into each other’s lockers. We talked on the phone for upwards of five hours a night. Once in 7th grade, she and I walked down an empty hall and voices from around the corner drifted back. It was two girls making fun of me in cruel and specific detail. I turned to Karisa and I remember exactly the expression on her face. It was unavoidable that we walk by them, and they’d see that I’d heard – one of those impossible social dynamics that defines what it is to be 12. Karisa gave me a smile that said I’m with you, we got this. And we walked past them, side by side. And I kept my head up. Because sometimes sharing something difficult is the only way through it.
Just over three weeks ago, Karisa was diagnosed with stage four adrenal cancer. When I realized just how horribly terrible things had gotten, I came back to Maryland to see her. I arrived late Saturday night and was in the next room when she slipped away Sunday evening. She leaves behind a close-knit and wonderful family, including two beautiful children. She brought a lot of joy into a lot of lives. As friends go, she was the perfect mix of generous, supportive and loving. The world is less interesting and much less bright without her.
My first acting experience was playing Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors when I was 12. I remember being backstage with Karisa, listening to the radio and wishing we were older. We shared a dream of moving to New York City to be actresses. This film is for you, honey. I love you so much. May your memory be a blessing.
-bodine
It’s easy to worry obsessively over how much we have left to do. Let the worry grow and grow and flower into panic. Back in September, when we decided to shoot in February, it really sounded like enough time to leisurely make a movie. Hahahaha. “Leisurely” + “make a movie” = hahahahaha. The time between Thanksgiving and New Years passes so quickly it basically doesn’t even happen. CUT TO FLOWERING PANIC.
So I’m going to take a deep breath and think about the stuff that is coming together, things that remind me to be grateful. I want to fill all the loose spots in my jittery brain with reasons to feel calm and ready.
1 – Serena Hedison.
This woman is very largely responsible for the fact that any of this is happening. She’s a treasure. I treasure her.
2 – My family.
My parents. My aunt Anna Marie. My sister-in-law Megan (who is currently selling the finest letterpress calendar it it possible to buy, for a ridiculously low price). My parents-in-law. My cousin Stuart. My cousin Cathleen.
My mom offered to cook meals for crew. My dad-in-law offered legal services to form the LLC. I am buoyed and deeply moved by the ways my family supports this effort. I’m hearing a lot of “I’m so excited for you, how can I help?” from people who mean it, and this is a well I draw from when things seem literally impossible.
3 – Seed & Spark.
More on this soon, but I truly believe that this is the model everyone will be using. This is the future of independent filmmaking.
4 – Imani Coppola.
The song she wrote for the film is finished and it’s wonderful. Alexis and I have kept it on a loop for days. I know that Imani is a gifted songwriter and one of the most creative and interesting performers in the world, but this song still exceeded my expectations by miles and miles and miles. It’s called “Don’t Skip A Beat,” and it will be on every party playlist I make for the rest of my life.
The song will be a donation perk when we fundraise, and also plays during a sweet and pivotal scene in the film itself. I use a piece of it in the teaser. It is the anthem of this movie and of this project. Oh my god, it’s good. I can’t wait for everyone else to hear it. I feel like I’m hoarding something beautiful, but as of December 1st, it will be gloriously unleashed on the world.
WOW. We’re making a movie. I’m so fucking excited to make this movie.
-bodine
A little less than a week ago, Hurricane Sandy made a mess of things in New York and New Jersey. The lucky ones – like Alexis and me, in a high-ground part of Brooklyn – have felt stranded, subway-less, our lives put on hold. Then there’s lower Manhattan, where Serena lives, which was without power or water for days. And of course Staten Island and parts of New Jersey are still in desperate straits.
This is when asking people for money, or preparing to ask people for money, to make a film feels… Ridiculous. Offensive.
And yet – I have to believe that this is the point of art. To exist in the face of misery and give people something else to look at. And this is a story about Brooklyn, which will be fully shot in Brooklyn, hiring New York City locals, eating food from Brooklyn restaurants, renting equipment and uniforms and picture cars and whatever else from this area.
I’ve lived in this city for 12 years, and I love it. I love it. That is something that New Yorkers all have in common: we want to be here. We have to want it, it’s too hard to live here for it to be an accident, and for most of us, that required coming from somewhere else. We were all drawn to this place because it is magnetic and difficult and worth loving.
So I wrote a New York story. And I still intend to tell it.
-bodine