Welcome to the first edition of Hell: The Blog Post, an informative and mildly entertaining once weekly guide to our progress in writing, pre-producing, filming, editing, showing, marketing, touring, and basking in the well earned success of creating a feature length comedy. We're currently in the "pre-producing" phase of this list, so there's, uh, a ways to go.
"Richard, can I ask a question?” you say.
“Sure thing,” I say, even though I just got started and it’s pretty rude of you to interrupt me so quickly. But I’m cool like that.
"Why are you writing a blog? Who are you, Dog with a Blog?"
First, no, I absolutely am not. I’d be lucky to be so talented.
Second, I'm writing a blog because it’ll be fun to document the process and have that documentation to look back on when everything is finished, and also because several people have said they’d like to read about it.
But aren't movies only made by people in Hollywood or dipshits with rich parents who think they can buy their way into becoming one of those people in Hollywood? Often yes! But not always! It just so happens I fall into this not always group. I'm not a rich dipshit, just a standard everyday one.
I moved to San Francisco 14 years ago to write stories and take pictures, and hey, it turns out movies are really just a combination of those two things. Many years ago I started making short films with my friend and co-director / collaborator George Sukara. Some of them are great and played at various festivals! Some of them are not as great and did not do so! I learned quite a lot from all of them, and honestly learned a lot more from the ones that did not turn out the way I wanted than the ones that did.
I also moved to San Francisco 14 years ago with the goal of not being poor. This second goal took precedent, so outside of video projects at work, I could never treat filmmaking as more than a serious hobby. It's just not possible to make a feature film and work fifty hours a week at a normal job, at least not and have that movie turn out as good as you'd like it to be.
But as I'm closing in on 37, and am in a pretty good place financially, this feels like the right moment to go back to what 23 year old Richard came out here to do. We have a 130 page script we've been writing for two years. Know tons of talented people who are excited to be part of the project. Have all kinds of equipment and experience we've picked up through years of both succeeding and failing with short films. If not now, then when?
So here we are? Wait, sorry, that's the wrong punctuation and it's too late for me to turn back now that I'm writing the next sentence. Let's try that again:
So here we are! Filming officially begins on June 4th.