They say that the only way into the business is by knowing people. It's not what you can do, it's who you know. That might get you through the door but it won't keep you there. When it comes down to it, sooner or later someone figures out you can't make them any money and you're out.
Flavor of the Month. So how do you get in? We're getting to that. I was never big on writing scripts. I have read many times that the best way to learn to write scripts is to actually sit down and write two full scripts and after you're done you should throw them away.
You'll learn a lot by doing those first two but they'll be awful, so after you write them you should throw them away and then start writing your real script. Whoever thought of that game is whacked. In a way it makes sense. I mean, I think everyone has a few bad movies in them, the sooner you get them out the better off you are. I just know I could never bring myself to create two complete, time-consuming scripts only to throw them away afterwards.
It is hard enough to try and find the motivation to write anything, much less something that you know you will throw out because it will be awful. I knew that in all honesty, I could never bring myself to actually write a script not knowing what was going to happen to it before I started. Will I sell it? Will I burn it? Will I write it over a threeyear period and hope it makes me rich someday? In that kind of a situation, motivation is practically nonexistent.
You need motivation in order to take on something like writing a script. My motivation to write El Mariachi was very simple and it really opened my eyes.
It suddenly hit me: Instead of writing two scripts and throwing them away afterwards, why not just take the scripts and make them for really low budgets? That way while you're practicing your writing skills you can also practice your filmmaking skills. That's what I decided to do with El Mariachi. I would write two scripts, both about the same character, but I. Then I would sell them to the Spanish video market where no one in the movie business would see them if they were no good, so it was almost like throwing them away, only I would get paid for them.
That's a better motivator. Then I would write and film my third script. The third installment in the Mariachi series. I would sell that to the Spanish video market as well, but if it came out as good as I thought it would. Writing and directing three movies in a row like that would give me so much experience and confidence that I could use the best scenes from the trilogy or all of Part III as a demo tape and get financing for a real moviesay a sex, lies, and videotape or Reservoir Dogs times tenand explode onto the American independent scene and pretend like I had never made anything before in my life.
My brainstorm came so strongly it almost knocked me out. I remember thinking, why hasn't anyone else done this? Could it be that no one else has ever done this? Could it be that I may be on to something? I love to make movies.
But to make movies and make some money to live on so I could make movies full time would be the greatest thing in the world. I was excited beyond belief with the idea. We've all heard of independent filmmakers that make one great film, are pushed into the limelight, then are so scrutinized on their second movie they are never heard from again. I think part of the reason is that their success came unexpectedly, before they ever got the chance to experiment and hone their style and talents.
I was only twenty-three and in no hurry to rush into the film business ill-prepared, and I was already winning festivals with some short films. I realized that by making my first, second, and third feature film in complete obscurity, I could make mistakes quietly, experiment freely, hone my talents in every department because I would make this Mariachi Trilogy with no crew whatsoever.
I was inventing my own film school where I would be the only student and where experiences, mistakes, problems, and solutions would be my teachers. And the best part was that even if my movies were no good, no one would ever see them and I'd still be able to get my money back. Now that was motivation. I went on to write the first Maria-chi in three weeks. It's amazing how quickly ideas come to you for a script when you know you're going to be actually making the movie in a few months, not just writing for writing's sake.
How did I get the idea about the Spanish video market? I guess it all started for me in March of Bed-head was on the festival circuit and doing well. I got a call from Carlos Gallardo.
He told me to come back to his hometown in Mexico. To make another movie? I asked. No, he said, to see a movie being made. He filled me in on the movie that was being shot in his own hometown. He was amazed because it was the biggest budget movie ever to be produced in Mexico. It was the film. And it was being shot in Ciudad Acua, Carlos's hometown. Carlos said the director, Alfonso Arau, had chosen Carlos to help with the production since he was from the town and had some movie experience.
I decided to come down and shoot some behind-the-scenes footage of what was to become one of the most popular Mexican movies of recent years. I wanted to see the lighting and the camera setups. I thought it would be an interesting and very productive spring break vacation. So I went. The following are excerpts from the journal I kept during the making of my first feature film El Mariachi in which I recount the heaping amounts of luck and good fortune that accompanied almost everything I attempted.
It's also interesting to see the consequences of what originally started out as a quick money-making scheme and a chance to get a little practice making a feature-length movie. The book has a natural and interesting trajectory. From the idea of El Mariachi; to the. I'm feeling sick. I tried to escape Austin without catching my wife Elizabeth's stomach virus. I didn't make it. HB, Carlos's pit bull, didn't even recognize me.
He tried to jump the fence and kill me. I threw him a few leftover fried chicken bones I had scattered in my car, and that seemed to quiet him down. My pal. Carlos's sister arrived and let me inside the house. I love this place. The whole house is dark and the air is always cool, the guest room is comfortable, and the refrigerator is always stocked.
I slept. Carlos had arrived by the time I woke up. We talked until A. He told me how complicated the shoot is. I've brought my video camera so that I can document the film while I'm here. It's my spring break. Carlos told me that I'll meet Alfonso Arau tomorrow. We woke up at A. It smelled like menudo. I was taken to another table where Alfonso Arau was eating alongside his star, Lumi Cavazos, and a few other crew members. Alfonso stood up to greet me, welcoming me to the set, and encouraging me to videotape as much as I wanted.
Carlos introduced me, to Alfonso's wife, Laura Esquivel, the novelist who's responsible for all this. She also wrote the screenplay. We went to the set and I taped the action until P. Saturdays are half days. They stopped for the weekend. I went back to the house and tried to sleep off whatever bug I have. I am still feeling so sick that Carmen, Carlos's mother, took me to the doctor next door. The nurse gave me a shot in the ass. Haven't had one of those since I was a kid.
Since I was locked up in the hosue recuperating, I watched cable. This town is movie-making paradise. The local Mexican TV station gets the cable. I'm feeling better so at P. I went to the location. They are on a night schedule now. If she likes it, she'll probably get him to watch it.
That's the plan, anyway. Laura and Alfonso arrived. Laura saw me and exclaimed, Bellisima, Roberto. I saw your movie three times. She told me that she saw it alone, woke her husband and they watched it, then she woke their daughter and they all watched it again. She gave me their address to send them a copy of my next movie.
Alfonso came over and shook my hand. Excellent work, I enjoyed your work very muchvery creative, very funny. Laura said how much she liked the pacing, the story, the camera, the kids, everything, and how Alfonso said, Now this is a muchacho who can direct. While I was taping behind-the-scenes interviews, I taped one conversation between Poncho, the production manager, and Carlos.
Poncho was saying that he produces Mexican video action movies and that he wants us to make a film for him. He says he shoots on film and releases on video.
He said he can't pay us anything? I told Carlos we should look into this some more, because if it's true we could make a cool movie on our own for much less. Carlos agreed. Why work ourselves to death for this guy for free, and not own the movie? I began thinking about an old story idea I've had for a few years of a man with a guitar case full of weapons and gadgets called The Mariachi.
I'm ready to go home. I got some great footage, wonderful compliments on my movie, so now I'm charged up to make another one. During this period, I came back with a renewed charge for filmmaking. Bedhead was off to film festivals, and I was back at school making a short film. This was my first 16mm color film with sync sound. What a pain in the ass. I worked hard on it along with Tommy Nix and Edison Jackson. I even took the extra time to draw a color animated title sequence.
I did that for Bedhead as well. Three hundred drawings on typing paper by hand for a thirty-second opening sequence. We finished the short, fifteen-minute film entitled Pretty Good Man, and it came out.
We showed it at the student film screening. I'm charged up to pursue my feature film idea this summer. My first job in high school was at a photo lab and I remember what my first boss, Mr. Riojas, told me one day after he saw some of my cartoons and photographs. He said that I had creative talent, but what I really needed to do if I wanted to be successful was to become technical.
He said that just about anyone can become technical, but not everyone can be creative. And there are a lot of creative people who never get anywhere because they don't have technical skills. Part of what makes a person creative is his lack of emphasis on things technical. My boss said that if you are someone who is already creative, and then you become technical, then you are unstoppable.
I like that. Creative and technical. I've made some crazy movies, but as long as I have to rely on a crew for the technical demands of making a movie, I will always be at the mercy of having to spend a lot of money to make a feature film. But, if I learn all there is to know about making a movie myself, and do it all myself, I will be light years ahead of other people still trying to tackle the basics.
What I need to do is learn everything at the same time on a movie that I can quietly fail on, and learn from my mistakes. By making a movie for the Spanish video market on my own, I can do that. I will learn sound, camera, lighting, effects, and then I'll be more prepared to make real films later.
I told him that to be conservative, we have to imagine getting half of that. That way we can avoid the outrageous cost of a 16mm film print, the way I avoided it on Bedhead.
I told Carlos to call the Spanish video distributors and find out what format they want their master tapes to be on. It would be cool to come back to school after summer with a feature film under my belt. When people ask what I did over the summer I can say, I made a foreign film. I have a lot of friends who like foreign films so I figured I'd make one.
I saw one of my film school teachers today, Nick Cominos. We talked about Pretty Good Man and the great response at the student film screening. He asked what I was doing this summer and I said, El Mariachi. He asked me, Who's your director of photography? I paused. I know he'll shit all over me if I tell him the truththat I'm planning on shooting it all by myself, without a crew.
So I told him, I'm going to be the director of photography but I'll probably have a small crew around to help out. He shook his head. No, no, no, no. You're going to fail! Your actors are going to hate you! They're going to be sitting there waiting for you while you light the set!
Don't be an idiot! Get a director of photography. You have to learn how to delegate. You can't be doing everything yourself anymore! I told him I hate having someone else operate the camera.
Half the effect of the movie has to do with the camera. I can't stand not being able to look through the lens as the action rolls. I told him he'd seen all my other short films; I did all those myself. I told him more about my plan and before long he was changing his tune.
Within fifteen minutes he was enthusiastic. He started warning me about getting robbed blind, asked me if I was going to have a joint account so that no one person can run off with the production money, asked how much per diem?
I would get, who was keeping the master edits, contracts, negatives, etc. He started confusing me with terms and jargon I knew nothing about. I figured I'd learn what he was talking about as the movie got going. That's the main reason I want to do this myself, my way, so that I can see for myself what is actually necessary and how much of it is just the traditional way of doing things. He got so excited he said that if the producer fell through he would put up some money and go in it with me.
He asked where I was getting the camera from, and I told him Carlos was bringing a few cameras up for me to look at that a guy he knows is selling. If not those, we will try and borrow an Arriflex that a couple of friends, Keith Kritselis and Ben Davis, have on loan from a friend of theirs who owns a local commercial production company. The production company shoots all their ads on video now, but they used to shoot on film.
So they have a bunch of old Arriflex 16s cameras lying around. They're not sure if they work, but I'll be glad to get one fixed. Beautiful but too expensive. I'll call Pharmaco, the local drug research center, tomorrow.
I'd have to be locked up for a month but I'd make good money and have time to write the script. Pharmaco is a drug research facility that pays healthy male specimens to be guinea pigs to test their latest medical breakthroughs.
Pharmaco has been my second home. I've been working so hard these last two semesters, I really need a vacation. I made two short films and held on to two jobs while going to school full time.
So I have no time to write a feature-length script. But I need to get cracking if we plan to shoot the movie this summer. If we plan to come in under budget on this, we have to have the script completely worked out beforehand.
I can't just quit my two jobs to go and write. I need to go somewhere quiet to write, plus earn money for the movie. The ideal place. I can leave work for a month, make more money there than I'll make at my two part-time jobs put together, have my room and board paid for, and yet I'll have plenty of free time to write my script.
Since they don't let you leave the facility for a full month, I'll have nothing to do but watch movies and write. Vacation and a writing sanctuary all in one. If only I can qualify. The competition is pretty stiff. You're going up against forty other guys for a drug study that only accepts about twenty. Carlos and I do our homework by going to the local video store that carries Spanish videos and we rented the most recent Mexican action movie, Escape Nocturnal.
It sucked. These straight-to-video movies are done for the quick buck. It's obvious whoever made it concentrated on putting a good cover on the video, getting a name actor on the sleeve, and then filling the tape with a crappy movie. I know we can make a better movie for a lot less, because we'll actually be trying to make a good movie so that we can learn from it.
On these other movies, they don't even try to make the movie look like it has any kind of production value. No one running in the streets, no action. Everything is shot in someone's apartment. That's what we can do in Acua. We can run around in the streets and make the movie look expensive. One thing they did have was a famous Mexican soap opera actress in the starring role.
That's the key. We need some kind of name actor in the movie somewhere, even if he gets shot in the first five minutes. Unfortunately, we have no contacts or any money to pay them.
Carlos told me his family is good friends with Lina Santos's family. She's a known actress in Mexico, and she's from a town near Acua. Carlos thinks he can get her to do us a favor and film for one day. Elizabeth cooks us spaghetti. Carlos and I eat and talk about the story I'm trying to write.
So far I have a scene where Azul the bad guy and the Mariachi walk into the same restaurant at different times. The Mariachi arrives at the restaurant to find work playing his guitar. He asks why there's no. The Mariachi takes the hint and leaves. Afterwards Azul, also carrying a guitar case, walks into the restaurant, orders a beer, and then walks up to a table with some bad guys. He opens his guitar case and shoots them dead. Azul leaves. As the bartender tries to call the cops, Azul reenters the restaurant and walks straight up to the bartender, who thinks he's going to be killed.
Instead he hears the sound of a bottle opening and it turns out Azul is drinking and then paying for his beer. The bartender calls the boss on the phone and describes the bad guy as a man dressed in black carrying a guitar case. Maybe this is the opening scene. I acted out the scene for Carlos. He liked it. A screening is where they run tests on you to make sure you are a good specimen. You're supposed to eat really healthy for a few days beforehand so that your blood is clean.
Drink a lot of water to flush out all the pizza. We all sit in a room with a nurse asking all kinds of weed out questions before taking our blood for tests. One guy raised his hand and asked if it mattered if he ate a couple of Eskimo Pies last night.
The nurse told him to go home. He has no chance of having competitive blood with arteries full of ice cream. There are some real pros here. You can tell by the holes in their arms and the familiarity they have with all the staff.
I met a few people who do this full time. It's good money but I'm sure after a while the drugs start building up. I went to the movies to see John Woo's The Killer. I wish we had more money for squib effects bullet hits. No one else at the film school thinks we can, but I really can't see how we could screw it up unless it's a technical thing, like a huge film scratch across all the footage or constant equipment breakdowns.
Otherwise, if we plan it carefully, which I intend to do as always, I just see it. If it doesn't come out perfect, so what? Our movie will still have more action, hard work, and passion packed into it than a dozen of the regular cheapies cranked out for a quick buck. We shouldn't have too much trouble selling it, and with the profit we'll make Part II and just work harder on the sequel.
What I think about most is. Why hasn't anyone else done this? Some shark of a producer in Mexico heard that we were getting into the straight-to-Spanish-video market and wanted to come aboard as a producer.
He said he'd equip us with a crew, oversee the production to make sure we do it right, blah blah blah. Yeah right. I told him we didn't need him. I told him we didn't need anybody. I went to Pharmaco for my physical.
I better make it into this study or the project is dead before it's begun. There's no one we can borrow the money from and I really don't want to borrow it. The money we make back once we sell the movie is what we'll use to finance future films. We don't want to have to pay someone back with that money. We've decided this project has to be our own risk. Besides, it's been my experience that you're a lot more careful where the money goes when you are using your own money.
I've been a lab rat about four times. The first was back in My college roommate had been checking into these research hospitals to make some extra cash to pay for his stereo. I told him he was an idiot to participate in medical experiments. I warned him that the drugs would eventually accumulate and make him sterile, screw up his blood, burn his brain cells, who knoWs? Whatever they'd do to him wouldn't be worth the money. So I thought at the time. After a few months of being broke myself, I didn't have much choice but to follow in his footsteps.
He called me a hypocrite back then and he calls me one now, especially after he saw me on television talking about how I sold my body to science and made El Mariachi with the proceeds. At the time I felt selling my body to science was my only option, which is a terrible feeling to have. I had finally been accepted into the Film Department at the university and I wanted to go into the class with enough money to make an awardwinning film.
Since it would be my first 16mm film after years of video movies, I knew I was going to be pouring a lot of time and hard work into it so that I could send it to the bigger film festivals. I didn't want money to stand in the way of doing it right. That one sounded the best.
It was certainly the most money offered for such a short time period. I thought I had struck gold. It turns out that the drug they were testing was a speed healing drug. Meaning that in order to test it, they had to wound you.
They took a punch biopsy out of the back of each arm, then applied placebo on one arm and the speed healer on the other. Then they slapped clear tape over the holes and let me wander around the hospital. The only catch was that they wanted my arms for further testing. So they cut out the section of the biopsy on both arms then sewed me back up. Now I've got two tiny football-shaped scars to remind me of how I used to finance my films.
The happy ending to that episode is that I put the money to good use by making the award-winning short film, Bedhead. So it follows, if you bleed for your money, I mean really bleed for it, you're very careful on how you spend that money. The money went fast. Some to the movie, most to paying tuition, bills, etc. It was less money for a longer stay, but the. This time they were testing an antidepressant. I guess it worked. By the end of the nine days everyone in our group was ready to beat each other up.
The main reason I did that study was because I wanted to finally buy myself a camcorder. I'd been making movies on video for years but always with borrowed equipment. So with my drug money, I bought my camcorder and have gotten a lot of use out of it since. In a way, the medical studies allowed me to make my dreams come true. They allowed me to have access to instant capital.
When it came time for me to make El Mariachi, I needed someplace quiet to write and earn money at the same time. Naturally, the research hospital fit the bill. Also, I found that the longer studies were less painful than the short-term studies. Maximum writing time, top dollar, and less pain. Sign me up. In my mind I simply imagined that I was getting paid to write a script, which made the whole thing easier to swallow. With that attitude I would be able to write comfortably and enjoy the experience as a pseudo-vacation.
I had just come off a rough ten months of nonstop work, having completed two short films, plus school and my two part-time jobs, so I was ready to get locked up somewhere and simply relax, watch rented movies, and write my action film.
Upon reflection, and only upon reflection, do I realize that it was a crazy time. I checked into the research hospital at P. I can't sleep unless I have the sound of a fan running right by my head constantly, even in the winter. A source for constant ribbing by fellow lab rats. How these studies work is that even though the hospital may only need fifteen subjects to run tests on, they'll bring in nineteen of us on the first day.
Those four extra guys are the backups. The researchers run the tests that they held during the screenings all over again as soon as you get there: blood tests, piss tests, heart tests, the works. If for some reason you don't check out perfect, because you drank a beer a few days ago, smoked a cigarette, or for some reason you have an. The backups help cover the few guys that inevitably won't make it in because they went on an unexpected joyride a few days before and screwed up their systems.
On this occasion, though, one of those unlucky fellas was a guy who during the routine baggage check and strip search that happens when you enter the hospital, was found to be in possession of an experimental toothpaste.
The researchers felt that this experimental toothpaste he'd been using might throw off the results of the drug they were going to test. The poor guy started begging and pleading with the researchers that the toothpaste, which he had never even used and was indeed unopened, had been unwittingly packed by his unsuspecting girlfriend who got the toothpaste at school as a sample. The researchers told him that they'd have to call the sponsor of the study for their approval.
We all sat and awaited the fate of the toothpaste guy. The sponsor was paged. While awaiting authorization, toothpaste guy was begging them to let him into the study. The call came back from the sponsor. They didn't want to take the chance, so they discharged toothpaste guy. This sort of thing struck an uncomfortable chord with everyone there. So I was quietly praying that my tests would check out normal, for already I could feel my pulse rising at the thought of having to go home tonight, empty-handed, after mentally preparing to drop off the Earth for four weeks.
By far the scariest thing about this place isn't the experimental pharmaceuticals they're testing, the strip searches, the heart monitor hookups, the piss jars and crap buckets, but the thought that you might actually have to turn right back around and go home the first day because of a funky enzyme, twitchy triglyceride, blood in your urine, or maybe even something as silly as a pulse rate that's higher than normal, something that was happening to me just thinking about it.
We went through our tests and awaited results in the television room. After an hour the intercom kicked up. Four names were called and asked to go to the lobby. My name was one of them. The scariest feeling I was to have the entire time was the feeling of maybe getting thrown out before my stay had begun. What a failure you are if you can't even qualify to be a lab rat of all things!
I got to the lobby to find out there was a problem with our EKG readings. Supposedly they weren't hooked up correctly when they were taken the first time and we'd have to redo them. I went into the EKG room where they have you lay on a table and hook up about twelve leads to different points on your chest, arms, and legs.
You are asked to breathe normally, stare at a singular point on the ceiling, and not move a muscle, not even your eyes. The test was taken and I came out normal. All my other tests cleared as well. At P. I was approved to stay in the hospital as a subject for the rest of the month. I made it!
I'm a lab rat! The whole group was excited that they made the team. They could pay off that loan, that credit card bill, that tuition, whatever. The coast was clear. Now all we had to do was make sure we stayed in.
You only get the full amount if you complete the program. But for now we were happy. Imagine a voluntary prison system where all the prisoners are glad to be locked up. That's what this was. I even called my wife to tell her the good news. There are about five pay phones for the patients to use. They were filled with other patients telling their girlfriends the good news as well. I heard one guy on the phone next to me, near tears, saying, Aw come on baby.
I'm doing this for us. We have the rest of the night to go about our own business trying to settle in for the month ahead of us. The dorms are set up so we each have a bunk bed with a drawer under the mattress for personal belongings. You don't need a wardrobe, since you're provided with a uniform. I set up my fan, and like others in the group, I placed the calendar they provided for us on the mattress above, so I could wake up every morning and see how many days I had left.
We all crossed off the first day. We were issued our uniforms: green scrub pants and red T-shirts with the research hospital's logo emblazoned on the front. We have to wear our red T-shirts at all times so that the coordinators and paramedics know what drug we're on. Every group has a different color T-shirt to represent their drug study.
When you are being paged over the intercom for a call at the pay phone or because you're late to a procedure, you are referred to by number and Tshirt color. No names. I'm Red I went back into the television room, where a movie was being played on the big screen TV. I've seen this movie already, I thought. I was about to get up and find something more productive to do but then realized that there was nothing else to do right now.
Nothing to do but relax and get used to the idea of being on vacation. It had been such an insane, nonstop ten months that it was strange realizing that I had plenty of time to sit back, relax, and watch a movie that I'd already seen. So I did. I like this. I'll start my script next week, this first week I'll just relax.
Our first real day here. Life as a lab rat has begun. For breakfast: two bowls of raisin bran cereal, juice, two milks, banana, bagel, and butter. This is much more than I eat at home. That's another reason I like this place.
Four meals a day. They're taking ten blood draws today. But on regular days there will only be one blood draw. That's not bad at all. Some studies have as many as twenty-four blood draws in one day. Every hour on the hour. By the end of the study the subjects have pincushion arms. One technician told me that once she had to work one of those twenty-four-draws-in-one-day studies, and she would even have to draw blood from subjects while they slept.
She said that some of the other technicians would get lazy and instead of finding a part of the vein that hadn't been punctured yet, they would just use the same puncture holes. She said that the punctures would get so stretched out that a tech would barely get the tourniquet on and the arm would start spurting blood.
The guy bunking next to me, Peter Marquardt, was a little freaked by all of this. This was his first study. Most people who come to these research studies start off with a shorter stay, maybe a weekend or a weeklong study, and then work up to the monthlong studies. Peter, though, jumped right into a one-month study his first time out so he doesn't know his way around just yet. I tried to tell him that the studies are painless, a breeze, but so far it hasn't been.
For some reason we've been stuck with the worst blood draw technicians around. I'm only on number five with the blood draws and I've had two different techs miss my vein completely. I'm going to be all bruised up and it's only the first day.
Peter doesn't think he's going to make it. One guy in our group, Hernan, came out of the blood room with an ice block on his arm as he dabbed the dripping blood with a cotton pad. He looked awful. Peter was next. Hernan had bruises already showing up on his arm. He said that the tech who was drawing his blood pushed the needle in too far. The needle went through the vein, making another hole on the other side of the vein, seeping blood under his skin, and that's why it was bruising.
I went in first. The tech looked incompetent enough so I sat there and pumped my arm to make my veins stick out as much as possible, so he'd be sure not to miss. He tapped at the vein and said, Monster veins, hit in the dark veins. Fortunately, I got out all right. So did Peter. We are into our normal routines now. Only one blood draw a day. Most of my bruises have already healed. We have to take our daily dose of horse pills. You have a clipboard with you at all times that has your daily schedule down to the minute.
There are synchronized electronic clocks all around the. Everyone is a few minutes apart, so that if the guy next to me starts eating breakfast at A. Everyone performs at three- to ten-minute intervals. If you are late to a procedure, a meal, a blood draw, a medication session, you are docked twentyfive bucks. They are paying you for your inconvenience and proper performance of all procedures, so they dock your pay if you screw up. This is a big business.
It costs a sponsor more than 70 million dollars to test a new drug and takes more than seven years. They don't want mistakes. In this study, you have thirty seconds to swallow your five horse pills, and you have a tech sitting there timing you, watching you swallow them, and then checking your mouth with a flashlight to make sure you didn't hide them to spit out later.
We cross off the days on the calendar like inmates. So far everything has gone by at a snail's pace. It seems like I've been here three weeks, it's barely been five days. Peter, the first-timer bunking next to me, just happened to have brought in the same book I did: Stephen King's The Dead Zone.
I've noticed that an unusual amount of people in here are reading Stephen King books. It's really funny. People have asked me, What kind of person would sell his body to medical experiments for extra cash? The kind of people that read Stephen King books, that's who. Just when we thought this study was going to be an easy ride, they start up a new procedure today. We are all issued a clear plastic jug that we carry to the bathroom every morning to fill with urine.
But you have to urinate at a certain time designated on your clipboard. If that isn't enough, whenever you feel the urge to defecate, you take what looks like an empty Cool Whip bucket in with you and fill that up.
When you finish you write the time of birth on the lid and place it in the refrigerator with all the other buckets belonging to your fellow lab rats. The refrigerator was full by the time I made my contribution. Now if that wasn't humiliating enough, how about discussing the quality of your dung with your study coordinator? That's what we have to do. At a designated time, we all sit down and have the study coordinator hand us two sheets of questions to fill out about the consistency of the stool, how long it took to deliver it, all kinds of stuff.
The coordinator then sits down and discusses it with you. What was it like? Hard, soft, jagged? Someone in the group said, We're earning our pay now. There was another one-month study going on in the next dorm. They all got sick after being on the medication five days. They were all throwing up and everything. All except one. He was probably on placebo. But the others were taken to a hospital and then released the next day with full pay.
The guy who was left behind kept trying to make himself sick so that he could also go home with full pay, but the sponsors weren't buying it. We all started hoping our medication would make us sick. I wouldn't mind tossing my cookies for an early discharge with full pay.
I've had a week of relaxation, and now I've got to start putting the movie together and continue to work out the logistics of how we're going to shoot this thing and get it in at a certain budget.
I called a film teacher of mine at the university, Steve Mims, and asked him for some advice. I told him that I wanted to shoot 16mm film but then edit on video. Since I was going to sell it to the video market, I would never need to make a film print. I asked if I should shoot on reversal film, which would be a positive film image when developed and then transfer that straight to video, or shoot negative.
I'd have more exposure leeway with a negative image, but then I'd have to take on the extra cost of printing dailies on film before I could transfer it to video. He told me I should shoot negative because a post lab then transfers the negative straight to video making a positive image on video without the extra cost of having to make a positive film print first. I didn't know any of this could be done, but then again, that's the whole reason I'm making this movie, to learn as much as possible in a short amount of time about making a low-budget movie.
I knew that this would be a great way to learn filmmaking. By throwing myself right into the fire. The group rented and enjoyed immensely the Steven Soderbergh film sex, lies, and videotape.
Everyone was saying that Peter looked like James Spader. The fun thing about being locked in here so long is that you get to observe the other lab rats from other drug studies as they go stir-crazy. So while every other group gets to eat real food, the Teal Blues have to eat rabbit food. And they're starving. For example, our lunch consists of a ham and cheese sandwich, potato chips, an. The Teal Blues get a huge chunk of cauliflower, a big chunk of broccoli, carrots, and lemonade.
It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't have to watch us eat our food while sitting at the next table. Worst part is that you've got the cafeteria servers watching you to make sure you eat everything. Everybody has to eat the same thing as the others in their group and the same amount.
Some of the Teal Blues are starting to lose it. They're trying to bribe some of us to pass them some sandwiches and chips. It didn't take long to figure out that there's not much to do in here.
Besides playing pool, watching rented movies on the big-screen TV, or scanning bad programming on the two other TVs with cable hookups, life in The Hole, as they call it now, is pretty stale. I write as much as I can, but every once in a while I need a break.
I can either go to the TV room and get sucked into a meaningless debate with one of the Debaters, a couple of guys who do nothing all month but argue their point of view, or visit a room where you can check out board games.
Peter and I checked out that old Milton Bradley game Battleship that I used to see ads for during Saturday morning cartoons growing up. The game was actually fun to play.
I guess we're dying in here. The Teal Blues keep getting in trouble. First, the cafeteria was broken into last night. Someone stole several boxes of breakfast cereal and a couple of pies. There's only one group to suspect. The Teal Blues. They're the hungriest around here. The rest of us eat like kings. Buy Rebel Without A Crew to blast into a battle of the sexes today!
After reading Rebel without a Crew, Vince Rocca was inspired to keep a Journal, which has grown into a no-nonsense account of the real filmmaking process. Everything is covered from film school to the idea, writing it and financing it, the entire shoot, postproduction, film festivals, meeting Kevin Smith and suicidal depression.
No subject is taboo. This is a real account of no-budget filmmaking, down to profit and loss statements. New York Times-bestselling author and award winning screenwriter and director, Kevin Smith lends his take on Vince's Journey and relates his experience with Clerks. Since then, his book has aged. USC Film School graduate, filmmaker, and author Rob Smat, positioned like Rodriguez was three decades ago, has transcribed his observations making his own feature film, in the hopes of updating Rodriguez's DIY experiment.
Planet Hy Man is in turmoil. Her leader lost on earth. Will Mex rise to the challenge or fade faster than her hair dye? Mex is heading for the Edinburgh Festival in search of lost energy. Hot on her heels is Beryl, her leader who has already dropped Mex in it once and may do again. Beryl has a planet to save and an arch rival to beat. As time runs out Beryl turns to Mex. Mex having discovered gin hooks up with a troupe of performing transvestites, tosses her mobile to the wind, and delves into the seedier side of the festival.
Saving Planet Hy Man could not be further from her mind if she was comatose. Will Beryl convince Mex to sober up and save their planet or will Mex stick with the padded bras and all who wear them?
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