“When talented people are interesting, it’s amazing. That’s like Tanna.” - Director Henry Jaglom, Hollywood Dreams

In her debut role as Margie Chezik, the effervescent Tanna Frederick manages to create a character who is equally zany and tragic. Margie isn’t just complicated, she’s a full-bodied enigma whose cunning is hardly limited to her interaction with the other characters. By the end of the film Hollywood Dreams, a film about a deceptive, ambitious, but ultimately troubled young actress, the audience knows that it has been taken in by Margie, too. And thanks to Frederick, we enjoy every second of it.

Part III (Read Part I and Part II)

FC: You’ve developed this relationship with Henry, now, but you are obviously trying to branch out into other acting work. And with Irene in Time, now you’re doing these different roles for a director you’re comfortable with. How does that set you up, or how do you expect it to set you up for the future?
TF: I think it will be really great when people do see Irene in Time because people will be able to see a different side of my acting. To be honest with you, I guess I haven’t really thought about people’s perceptions because I’m kind of oblivious to the fact that I swing so broadly from character to character. Only after the movie came out, and I went to film festivals and left screenings and people were actually freaked out by me as a person. I thought, “Wow, yeah, I guess I really do play a screwball in Hollywood Dreams.” [laughs] But graduating from the University of Iowa and having done the theater since I was nine and doing five shows a year and going from this character to that character, especially at a program like the University of Iowa where you are doing these extreme characters and these extreme scripts that are produced by new playwrights so people are all about risk taking, you just kind of take it for granted that people know that you have built a character, that there is a process. I haven’t been really worried about, “Are people going to see me in a certain way? Are people going to type cast me?” because I’m always different in every character. I think I’m boldly different. Not giving myself kudos or anything, but I am, well, Irene is very different from Margie. At first I thought people would be type casting me and giving me scripts that are crazy, neurotic, innocent girls, but actually people are offering me a wide array of different scripts right now. I’m surprised by the characters. I’m working on this Western surf film. I think that’s great. It’s very Kurosawa. That’s in development. It was offered to me by someone who saw Hollywood Dreams and thought I would be great as an action hero, as a silent, kung-fu fighting surfer…So I’m not being type cast, which is great.

FC: Is that what you wanted to do then, you wanted to go into film, even though you come from a theater background? Did you want to move into that?
TF: Yeah. I got a lot of flack in Iowa for coming straight out to Los Angeles. Everybody said, “You’re too big for film. You’re not going to make it. It’s not worth it. Why wouldn’t you go to Chicago or Minneapolis first? Or to New York?” A lot of people will tell you a lot of stuff. People were telling me my features were too big for film. They just didn’t understand why I was going straight to film. But I said, “That’s what I want to do. That’s my dream.” So I didn’t let anybody stop me from doing that. I figured, all these people who I saw fluttering out to Chicago and Minneapolis would eventually make their way out to Los Angeles. I’d say 95 percent of them have come here. It was after they went out and realized that a lot of productions are being cast with people from Hollywood who have credits. Now they’re coming out here and trying to build their resumes here. I’m glad that I was kind of naïvely stupid enough to come here and bypass that little time of dipping your toe in and just jumping in. I’ve always been more of a jumper than a wader in the water. Just get in there and do it.

FC: And in the process you’ve managed to connect with one of the last truly independent visionaries of film.
TF: Yeah

FC: If they’re intention was to go a more artistic route with it, and then you go to L.A. and get this work with an independent visionary. That was kind of a boon.
TF: I didn’t anticipate that. I was hoping to make fairly commercial films [laughs]. There were a lot of other people who had a much more extensive knowledge of independent filmmakers and independent films. I guess I’m more geared toward commercial tastes. Like Will Ferrell in Blades of Glory. Brilliant [laughs]. It was kind of ironic that I was surrounded in high school and college by people who were so into the independent world. Somehow I got hooked up with, as you said, one of the greatest independent filmmakers. That was a nice surprising, unexpected happening.

FC: You just can’t escape it.
TF: No, I just go with it [laughs].

Read All About Tanna, Part I & Part II

Hollywood Dreams is available on DVD May 6. Pre-order at Amazon.com.

“When talented people are interesting, it’s amazing. That’s like Tanna.” - Director Henry Jaglom, Hollywood Dreams

In her debut role as Margie Chezik, the effervescent Tanna Frederick manages to create a character who is equally zany and tragic. Margie isn’t just complicated, she’s a full-bodied enigma whose cunning is hardly limited to her interaction with the other characters. By the end of the film Hollywood Dreams, a film about a deceptive, ambitious, but ultimately troubled young actress, the audience knows that it has been taken in by Margie, too. And thanks to Frederick, we enjoy every second of it.

Part II (Read Part I)

FC: Continuing on your relationship with Henry Jaglom, you starred in his play A Safe Place. Did you know him at that time? Was that as early as that relationship started?
TF: What had happened was I was in a play out here and waiting tables and doing extra work on Days of Our Lives. Doing whatever I could to pay the bills and doing rehearsals of this play. It wasn’t A Safe Place. It was a different play written by a dear friend of mine, Lee Simon. This guy came to rehearsals, one of my friends, and said, “I just wrapped a day of filming with Henry Jaglom. He’s the most brilliant independent director.” And I was like, “That’s cool. How did you get that?” He was like, “Well, you know if you write Henry a letter telling him how much you love his films, he’ll call you in and he’ll cast you.” So I wrote a letter about how much I adored Déjà Vu and went and dropped it off at his office. He called me the next day and we had a heated two hour conversation about his work.

FC: But you hadn’t…
TF: I hadn’t met him, and I hadn’t actually seen the film.

FC: And you had a heated two hour conversation about a work you hadn’t seen?
TF: Yeah, yeah. I was in full Hollywood hustle mode. [laughs] I was like, “God, Déjà Vu was so romantic, but so devastating. And what you did in that one scene, wow.” He’s a talker, so I just fed him questions and made him talk about the film, so I didn’t actually have to bring up anything from it. Then he invited me to a screening of Festival in Cannes. And I went and saw it and I met Henry face to face. Festival in Cannes was just amazing. I felt this completely déjà vu-ish sense of, “Wow, this is exactly what I want to do. I feel like I’ve seen this movie a thousand times, and this is exactly how I want to work.” So it was kind of serendipitous and fortuitous that I lied. [laughs] Actually then, he hired me to come to the office and put up window posters for Festival in Cannes. So I went around Los Angeles and hung up these window cards for Festival in Cannes in store windows when the movie was opening. While I was working there making, like, 75 bucks a week, he gave me his play A Safe Place, and he said do it for your acting class if you’re interested. I went one step further and got the play produced. I found a theater company that wanted to produce it and ran it out here for three months. I have to say, it was with the intention that I wanted Henry to see my work, to see that I can really understand and get his films, and I would be really great to work with. He did end up coming to almost every performance in the play and correcting me on every single line of dialogue that was wrong. But we then started planning the next movie and incorporated A Safe Place into (Hollywood Dreams). So that’s how we got started.

All About Tanna continues here.

Read All About Tanna, Part I.

Hollywood Dreams is available on DVD May 6. Pre-order at Amazon.com.

“When talented people are interesting, it’s amazing. That’s like Tanna.” - Director Henry Jaglom, Hollywood Dreams

In her debut role as Margie Chezik, the effervescent Tanna Frederick manages to create a character who is equally zany and tragic. Margie isn’t just complicated, she’s a full-bodied enigma whose cunning is hardly limited to her interaction with the other characters. By the end of the film Hollywood Dreams, a film about a deceptive, ambitious, but ultimately troubled young actress, the audience knows that it has been taken in by Margie, too. And thanks to Frederick, we enjoy every second of it.

TheFilmChair: I just watched Hollywood Endings and I have to say you were fantastic. I’m always excited to talk with people when I’m very impressed by what I’ve seen.
Tanna Frederick: Thank you.

FC: You can take my word, or you can take the New York Times’s, I guess. You’ve been getting great reviews. How does that make you feel? This is your first on screen performance. What does that do when you are getting NY Times raves, Oscar and Golden Globe talk?
TF: It makes me feel wonderful. It’s really exciting to know that you can choose the track that you want to follow out here. You can do art that inspires you and that’s challenging and you don’t have to necessarily compromise between commercial and independent. I think that has a lot to do with the technology we have now, and a lot of films now are being produced by the independent world, a lot of the valuable films. I think that I’m very fortunate to have made “Hollywood Dreams” at a time when people are hungry and want something from independent films. I feel really lucky in that sense. And then to have found a director like Henry Jaglom who I just jive so well with and who jives with my idea of fun and art. It’s a total blessing.

FC: When you talk about independent, now, he’s old school independent. He’s been around, making movies his way. You just completed, or completed last year, principle photography on another one of his movies, and you are going to be in another Henry Jaglom film.
TF: Yeah, the one coming up. Everyone was left hungry, which is a good thing, to know what happened to my character Margie Chezik in Hollywood Dreams. Did she make it? What happened to her life? So were actually doing a sequel to Hollywood Dreams.

FC: That’s awesome.
TF: It’s called Queen of the Lot. There’s a scene in Hollywood Dreams that was cut out, but we are putting back in at the beginning of Queen of the Lot where I say, “I’m going to be just like Norma Shearer. I’m going to be queen of the lot.” That opens the next movie and it’s about Margie when she’s successfully made three big commercial films. She’s now Cinderella, but what does Cinderella have after she has a prince? What does Margie have now that she’s famous? She’s sort of lost and dealing with addictions and trying to figure out why she’s not happy still. It’s going to be with the same cast, David Proval, Karen Black, and then Noah Wyle is stepping in as the romantic lead. So I’m really excited about that. We’re shooting that this summer.

Irene in Time is the second film we completed, and it’s almost finished. It’s being edited and ready for rough cut screenings. It’s scheduled to be released in a September/October time frame. It’s a completely different character from Margie, which was fun for me. With Henry, he’s so open. He’s so respectful with people’s talent and range. I just really said I wanted to do something different. Margie was so bold in the movie, and my character in the next movie is very subdued. It’s a great, different character. It’s more of Jaglom’s magical realism, women’s films, where it’s about fathers and daughters. My character’s father died at a very young age, so she’s on her search, trying to find her ideal man, which is hard for her to find because she can’t find someone who’s just like her daddy.

All About Tanna continues here.

Hollywood Dreams is available on DVD May 6. Pre-order at Amazon.com.

Remember that guy who went to all the high school football games? Tim Vanderberg does. His mockumentary 4th and Long is an ode to the local football faithful, the gridiron groupies. It’s also an entertaining and oddly touching comedy. Here discussing his inspiration, his cast and his local appeal is Timothy Vandenberg in a special Indie Interview.

TheFilmChair.com: What was the inspiration for the film? Did you know guys who hung out at the high school football games?

Timothy Vandenberg: It all started with a short 8-minute film we did for a “Make a movie in 24 hrs” local competition. We wanted to do the short with a real Friday night game to punctuate the reality of the time constraints of the contest. The idea to focus on the fans came out of a discussion about this local guy who seems to be at every sporting event. He walks or takes the bus everywhere in town, he doesn’t have a car but somehow manages to show up to EVERYTHING. And he is by far the most enthusiastic fan you’ll ever meet.

When we showed the short at the competition, we got a really great reaction and thought, “Hey, can we take this further.” From that point, there was a momentum that naturally led us to expand upon the idea, so we just kept going with it and things kept falling into place.

FC: How important was it to make these guys sympathetic?

TV: It was definitely important. These guys are essentially losers in their own respect, and if they didn’t have some sort of sympathetic humanity, the audience would not embrace them. You have to see something you can relate to in these characters or at least feel drawn to the fact that they love something so dearly. Or for most,it’s as simple as, “I knew that weird dude in high school. Oh my God, he is just like…,” and it makes them laugh. Especially in the case of The Chuck, a good portion of him is pretty dark, and if the humor of his situation isn’t perceived, he could be a real downer to watch.

FC: The performers were great. I love the scene where Larry, Coach Dansby and The Chuck are being interviewed. Did you let them improvise?

TV: We did. There is a large portion of the film that is scripted, but the majority is improvised with an outline structure of the scene. We would discuss the scene and the points we wanted to hit or some specific lines and then dive in with an interview. Much of the non-interview scenes are scripted. You’ll notice that two of the main actors are also the writers. This was a tremendous collaborative effort in the purest sense of it. We really built the scenes from the character out. The chief reason the film works is because these actors are so dead on; you never question their validity. This movie is very much a character-based film, and without their tremendous acting talents, the audience would have nobody to invest in.

FC: The film has great slapstick moments, which are even funnier considering the documentary look. It’s not something you usually see in mockumentaries. What made you decide to throw slapstick comedy and the documentary style together?

TV: Many of the decisions we made started with the characters themselves. Each one of the three actors brought a distinct type of comedy, and we played to each of their strengths. That’s what I was really excited about. There wasn’t redundancy, and the audience really gets a good ol’ Denny’s sampler of comedy. Chris Blanchard, who plays Coach D has a very rare gift of being blessed with both intellectual and physical comedy chops. His intensity really jumps out at you, and he’s fun to watch. His scenes with physical comedy just naturally fleshed themselves out, and his timing is where his skills shine. I’ve known each of these guys for years, so I know what they do best and how to play to those strengths.

FC: The high school football team was a real Wilmington-area team. The newscasters were real newscasters. How much community support did you get for the project?

TV: New Hanover High School and Principal Chris Furr couldn’t have been more supportive. They were great, they let us have a lot of freedom filming and even gave us full access to their spirit club which provided tons of props like the mascot uniforms.

I can’t say enough good things about Wilmington and its film community. It’s an interesting place, you have big TV shows like “One Tree Hill” that film here and big budget movies that film at Screen Gems’s studios and then independents shooting side by side with them. And it really seems every time I do a project, people from all those different worlds are always willing to help out each other. I find it’s much more of a supportive community than a competitive film community. I used to work as a cameraman at the local NBC affiliate, so those guys were great about pitching in.

FC: What’s next? Film festivals? New projects?

TV: We are currently submitting to festivals to raise the visibility of the film. We have had distributors who love the film but we don’t have any name actors to sell around, so we have to really build some buzz to make it more marketable to these guys so they’ll pick us up. We plan to see this project through distribution and promotion over the next year and I am currently writing a script that I hope to begin shooting in 2008.

Comedy auteur Mike Binder discusses his body of work and his 2001 film The Search for John Gissing, available for the first time on DVD through TheFreeBird.com.

FC: With John Gissing, you are doing the self-distribution thing. How does that work for you? You are on the Internet. I saw an ad on MySpace. You are probably doing this out of necessity because you have the product sitting around…
MB: What it is is fans of Alan Rickman or just the film itself will email and tell me they want it out there. At the same time, I wanted to see what it’s like to distribute my own movie through a Web site. Just press the DVD and ship it out when the orders came in, with the idea that one day when the TVs are all connected to the Internet, that maybe I can make a movie just for that or make my own movie, distribute it in theatres and then sell it on home video. Why not just shove a little wire through the ground. I want a pipeline one day, but let’s do it a little bit at a time and build a business.

FC: So you’re just trying to learn about it right now.
MB: Yeah. Word of mouth. This is the ultimate example of the “long tail.”

FC: How many people are recognizing what you are doing? You’ve just come off two critically acclaimed films in The Upside of Anger and then Reign Over Me. Now you have Gissing going back a little bit, trying to get people to reconnect. Do you think people are making the connection with the work you have out there in theatres?
MB: It’s just a word of mouth thing and I’m just trying to see if we can get it written up on Internet sites. When I say the long tail, when people like it, then they do their own blogs. Google search for John Gissing (Try it here). You can see that people put up their own blog entries once people see it. That’s the beauty of what’s to come.

FC: Can people only get it on…
MB: Just on TheFreeBird.com.

FC: Is it going to be on Amazon.com, NetFlix, or those kinds of places? Are they interested?
MB: They haven’t come to us, but right now I’m happy to have it just the way it is.

FC: And you’re doing it on your own terms. It’s a good comedy. I don’t think people are used to seeing a comedy like that anymore. You are pretty classical with the style of the comedy.
MB: That’s what we tried to do. I wanted to do a throw back to Neil Simon or Blake Edwards, just a whole different kind of energy when comedies weren’t that goofy and they weren’t quite arty, they were just people.

The Search for John Gissing is now available on DVD through TheFreeBird.com. For more information on Mike Binder’s films visit MikeBinder.net.

Comedy auteur Mike Binder discusses his body of work and his 2001 film The Search for John Gissing, available for the first time on DVD through TheFreeBird.com.

TheFilmChair.com: In my opinion, you are making some of the best comedies out there today. But you have Man About Town, which goes direct-to-DVD. You have The Search for John Gissing, which you are self-distributing. What it is about your films that might make them appear unmarketable to some people?
Mike Binder: I don’t know. People like my work, but the industry doesn’t think a lot of me. I don’t know why that is. Maybe it’s because I never had a hit. I’ve never been the flavor of the week. I have a movie written called The Emperor of Michigan, and I have a great cast attached, but I can’t find anyone to finance it. You could have worse things happen in your life, but I’m just in a situation where you go, “Now what?”

FC: The Upside of Anger, that was slapped with an R-rating. Is that a problem?
MB: I don’t think so. I mean Knocked Up has an R-rating, doesn’t it? The 40-Year-Old Virgin. I don’t know. It’s a good question. I know that when I made Gissing, a lot of people said, “He shouldn’t have put himself in the role,” that I should have had a movie star in the role or someone else. They also said it was a “tweener.” It’s not an art house film, but it’s not a studio film. I think if I had come out with it today, it would have got distributed. But I’ve had offers (from distributors) to put it in two theatres and then they would own it forever.

FC: In John Gissing, it’s not like you didn’t have any names. You had Janeane Garofalo, Alan Rickman. In Man About Town, you had Ben Affleck and Rebecca Romijn. Those are pretty big name. What is it that draws the names to your films?
MB: I’ve never had a problem with actors. Actors read my scripts and love them. It’s more about distribution companies. I don’t know what that is. They just don’t find me sexy enough or attractive enough in terms of being a Wes Anderson or Noah Baumbach. That’s not to say they aren’t talented guys, but I’ve never been able to get into that groove, where people say, “Let’s back him. He’s a good filmmaker.”

FC: How personal are all your films. They all seem to follow a theme, someone who is successful, a middle-aged white guy who hits a bump in the road and reevaluates himself. There are a lot of films out there targeting 20-somethings that way, but I wouldn’t classify your films as simple mid-life crisis films. What is it you are trying to get across with this idea, a successful guy who is hitting this bump?
MB: I don’t think that way about my movies. I think they are all different, but I see what you are saying. I guess I’m just trying to deal with life on life’s terms. So even when you get into the next phase, when you are married and you settle down, everything doesn’t come easy.

FC: You haven’t had a hit like you said, but you are tapping into something, I think, that is going to happen more and more with the Baby Boom generation getting older and they are not feeling the same way about life as someone else might have felt at the same age before.
MB: Right. And I also think I’m trying to make characters that are a little flawed. They are not perfect. But at the same time they are real people. They aren’t hitmen or cops, they just kind of live normal lives. They are very real, so they aren’t as escapist.

FC: You don’t have that escapist element, but you are capturing something important.
MB: People tell me that they are funny and that they are real to them.

FC: Sometimes too real.
MB: Yeah.

Former roadie Joel Miller reflects on art and commerce in his debut feature The Still Life. He discusses the making of the film, his thoughts on the business and his police encounters with TheFilmChair.com

FC: In our first interview, you said it just hit a cord with all these different actors and people working in the creative industry. That intersection of art and commerce, everyone who works creatively has a stake in something like this. How much of it is your own reflection on it, from your history with music?
JM: I’ve been doing a lot of interviews. When you do interviews it gives you time to think. You guys ask questions that I don’t get to think about. When you ask questions, I say, “I guess this is how I really felt.” All the characters in The Still Life are my fears, things I didn’t want to become. Jason is an extremely talented individual, but he’s a drunk. By the end of the movie, he’s not a very impressive individual, which is very sad. What he creates and what he has in him is impressive, but he’s not. He got off his path because he “sold out.” I don’t like that term. That usually just means the people you like are now making money, and you don’t want to like them anymore. But this is an evaluation of that. Mr. Fernot. I don’t want to be a manipulative shark who will take everything you got for monetary purposes. Rachel (playing Robin). The poor girl. She’s really trying to understand what she wants in life, and her intentions are good…She’s a girl who is trying to become a woman. She wants the house with the white picket fence. She genuinely cares about the guy, but she just doesn’t know what to do…The most horrible, scariest is the character Stephanie, Holly Fields. Any woman who is attractive and intelligent is lethal. We are screwed! That’s where Stephanie came from…The scariest thing of all is to be old and alone. That’s where Terry found something because she had a husband who passed away. I would assume it’s a difficult thing to have to deal with.

FC: So what was it like trying to sell this movie?
JM: What I had was an independent art movie. That is the most unsellable product you can put out on the market, even though we had very strong actors. We were in 27 film festivals. We had a huge following on the Internet. But it wasn’t easy. I only got one meeting in person, and I’m a good sales guy. I tell people, “If you are a good writer, a good actor, cool. But you need to be a good business person.” You got to pay your bills. Nobody wants to be a struggling artist. Those words are too often next to each other. It’s not the way things are supposed to be. You got to put on that hat. We had one meeting in person and I had a handshake deal when I walked out, and it will be distributed through Warner Bros…Get a meeting in person. It’s worth its weight in gold.

The Still Life DVD and Soundtrack Pack is available Aug. 7 through Amazon.com and other retailers.

For an autographed copy of the DVD, order at TheStillLifeMovie.com. Just ask for Joel to sign it in the notes section of the order form.

Former roadie Joel Miller reflects on art and commerce in his debut feature The Still Life. He discusses the making of the film, his thoughts on the business and his police encounters with TheFilmChair.com

FC: With the locations, with the graveyard scene and the exterior of the art gallery, did you use effects shots, like for putting the name of the gallery on the wall?
JM: You got it. The name of the gallery. The gallery is actually a hair salon. The name, “On the Verge,” I made up. How did you notice that? He did an incredible job.

FC: I have a friend who does visual effects, so I have an eye open for it.
JM: That’s the shot with all the cars driving through it and the one shot where all the graphics guys are like, “This guy’s amazing.” You know how much time this took. You can freeze it as the cars drive by. The only one mistake is, in the cemetery, all the gravestones are all fake, but they came from a real cemetery…It’s kind of funny because that scene is like Mafioso grandma, because her husband is just off too the side with all the rocks.

FC: Did it make it easier to do it with the effects then? Was that kind of the idea?
JM: No. It was tough. The idea was that it would look like it was a cemetery, and it didn’t happen…But I had to do something to make it say where we are …I needed a scene at the cemetery, and my buddy hooked it up for my. My buddy added all the gravestones, which was really neat. For me it was like, “God. What else can you make up?”

FC: You’re in L.A. You get all these cameos. You get Kato Kaelin. You get Terry Moore. Does that help when you are trying to get distribution for it, the DVD release? Was that easier? Was it easy to get them being in L.A. compared to somewhere else?
JM: No. It was damn hard work. They don’t care. Actors want to act, but they’ve got agents and managers who keep us away from them when we have no money. If you can get them a script that’s really well written…In The Still Life, they are very well-developed characters. Whether you like them or not, there’s a lot of thought involved in creating this. A lot of women roles that you see in films left, right and center, the female roles are not developed characters. When women can get a script where they are getting to really act they are all over it. Once you get a couple people, you can have a snowball effect, and you can really hit it up.

The Still Life
featuring the film
and the soundtrack
Available Aug. 7

Former roadie Joel Miller reflects on art and commerce in his debut feature The Still Life. He discusses the making of the film, his thoughts on the business and his police encounters with TheFilmChair.com

TheFilmChair: When I looked on IMDB.com I saw that you did all your filming in L.A. Is that right?
Joel Miller: I filmed most of it at my house. I had been a set dresser for a little bit. I wasn’t an art department pro by any means, but I did have the time and being that I lived there I was able to change the building and make it look like an apartment. It’s actually a house. None of it was an apartment at all. The old lady’s room, Mrs. Stratford’s room, her door that Jason (Barry) goes too was actually my bathroom. Her apartment was actually upstairs (in my house). Jason’s room was upstairs. The film office was upstairs. Rachel’s room was in my house in the living room. Mr. Fernot’s office was the other side of the living room. Party scene, backyard.

FC: So you had Terry Moore hanging out in your bathroom for some of the shoot.
JM: I guess so.

FC: It didn’t look like you had many locations.
JM: I started the film with limited financial resources. I don’t come from a film family, where I have any connection. My dad was a car mechanic. You use what you have. When I spoke at Penn State Erie (during the Great Lakes Film Festival), it was cool. I told them that they can do what I did. You don’t have to be in Hollywood.

FC: Did you try to limit the outdoor scenes, just as a matter of practicality?
JM: Yeah, because of the cops. We had the cops come to the set a whole load of times. I think they came four times. When you are outside, it’s a lot easier for the cops to get pissed off. What are you going to do, you know? The meter maid scene, that’s behind this guy I knew’s work. It would have been cooler if we did it on a real curb, but the cops still came…Once the cops came to my house and they said, “You didn’t get any permits, this is totally unacceptable, we’re going to close you down”…Well, the cop grew up around here, and he knew Fishbone. The singer in Fishbone is my buddy, so I go one a twenty minute tirade about Fishbone. I’m telling him rock stories, while they’re shooting upstairs the entire time…The cops thought I was funny and they were like, “We just want to go upstairs,” and basically their interest was, “Are you guys shooting porn? If you guys are shooting porn we are not cool with that.” We go upstairs and Jason has his shirt off [laughs]. But I said, “Hey this is the cops, and the deal is, if you guys are good, they’re going to let us keep shooting. If you suck, we’re not allowed to shoot anymore. So try to make this shot good you guys.”

The Still Life
featuring the film
and the soundtrack
Available Aug. 7

Check out this interview with

director Jason Hull

in the Erie, Pa. section of TheFilmChair.com