October 15th, 2003

Remember those magazines in the movie that
Tuck has been masturbating to? collecting?
Well, they had to be created.
My buddy Rich Henn came up with these after I sent him pictures.

----------
This seemed like a long day because we started early, but it really wasn't that long of a day.

I remember getting this really uncharacteristic feeling of sadness that the whole thing was over. I was going to miss most of the people I had spent all that time with.


October 15th

Last day of shooting. Feels weird. Had to get up early at 10am and head to Balitimore. Wind was whipping like a bitch. Can’t use the crane or steadicam, so there goes the shooting script.

I say screw it and shoot it static. Low budget hell. Move to another scene in Brooklyn Park that looks like the projects. We shoot there--it's confusing because it's doubling as the OUTSIDE of the basement.

We head to my parents’ house. My brother is there already. Sound like he’s pissed(again). We run behind, but have a nice setup for basement where clown stays. The lighting setup Dave does looks good. He's worried it's too "college film-class". I like it though.

We're running late. Get pizza, get ready to run to Pasadena. Wife calls--Andrew is already at my house. 40 minutes early. We’re running late. He doesn’t want to stay late--I'm getting irritated with him.

We rock to Ppasadena and crank the scene out. It's funny, it's my wife's uncle's house. He has knows we're coming over so he's lit all these tiki torches out on his porch. But the scene is a day scene even though we're shooting it at night, so we can't even see out the window or doors.

Also, his bedroom is very girly, and it's supposed to be the psychiatrist ex-husband's bedroom. But I think we get some okay shots, and his OFF-CAMERA death is supposed to be a bit of misdirection concerning the next OFF-CAMERA death where the guy isn't really killed.

Then to my house. We get Andrew's side of the scene finished pretty fast.

Then outside to get Mark in my back yard. The martini shot(final shot of the production, not counting pickups).

More meloncholy. We go out to Jillian’s for drinks. Had some laughs. Funny but sad. There’s a lot of work to be done.

October 14th, 2003

The NEVER-before-seen picture of Andrew in clown makeup.
-------------

What I remember about this night is that NONE of it made it into the final movie.

When I was writing the script I distinctly remember thinking that the audience probably wasn't going to care who was BEHIND Shivers--that once he got caught, they would disconnect from the picture.

I should have pursued that line of thinking, because in the editing room it wasn't working. The scene was a mess, and even worse than that, I could tell no one would care. They'd caught the big clown. To have the movie go on for another 15 minutes would have been a disaster.

So I had to remove the ending of the movie--and when you set up a lot of clues that lead you to the ending...that's a lot of shit to also take out. But then other things don't make sense.

Hence, the mess that became the final version of FOC.

Oct 14th

Steve calls out sick. Great start to the day. He’s supposed to do the stunt work tonight as a double for Andrew.

Went over my parents’ house to do a pickup of Rick and Jacky in the Viper. It started raining, but Mun did some funky work on the camera and it looks like daylight.

Took a quick break, then we have the finale of the movie at my house. Praying for no rain.

The rain started pouring.

I said(to myself) fuck it, we’re shooting it anyway. We loaded in equipment in the torrent wearing rain-slicker ponchos my wife had bought.

Paul couldn’t get over to my house to paint Andrew until like 9pm so we tried to shoot all the cutaway stuff that we could. Nicky showed up late; Mun took him out and did his scenes in the car real quick while I set up the inside stuff. This is how you know I trust Mun--no way would I do this otherwise.

Andrew pitched a fit and yelled at Mun when Mun joked about his face paint. So then Mun was pissed. Word to actors: Don’t piss off the guy who can make you look bad on screen.

Running late. Go figure. Had to pick up the pace and then you run the risk of jumping shots or the line. We did both tonight. Not gonna be the most dramatic ending ever, I can tell you that.

Took the shoot outside. The rain had stopped. Didn’t make things too much easier. Andrew keeps saying he has to work in the morning so he needs to leave. This was an original shoot day so I’m not sure why he’s got to work early the next morning.

He comes over again and says, “Am I done?” I try to think. I think we got the shots. He goes to take off all the makeup.

Fifteen minutes later I think I missed two shots I needed. Fuck.

Then I put on his clothes to do a couple of stunt shots. I jump on the car in his clothes with a knife, the car pulls away and I fall, still holding the knife. Mun doesn’t want me to use the real knife but it’s all we got. I did get a little hurt(my elbow) but hopefully Mun got some okay cutaways.

But I managed to not impale myself on any of the takes, so there is that.

Ended about 3:30am. Packed up. Gotta be in Baltimore at 11am for the “final” day of shooting. Jacky took off. Kinda sad to see her go. You spend this kind of time with someone and get along well with them, it’s like you’re seeing a friend leave.

Hey, she’ll be back for the pickup and the wrap party. Hopefully everyone will come. They’re like my temporary extended family.

Weird. Not used to having a cast of this many people.

Oct 13th, 2003

Jacky Reres and Steven Gleich in the mediation scene.
-----------

You know the great thing about this? As if the night wasn't tough enough, we had this reporter come out and interview me that night. She ended up being an extra. Was with us for like five hours.

And then the article came out in the newspaper and not only did she mis-spell a couple of my lead actors' names wrong--she got the name of the movie wrong.

Even though--in the picture SHE took and had printed next to the article--I am wearing a hat with the name of the movie. She called it "Fear The Clown".

I had to digitally correct the entire article for the press kit.

Oct 13th

Mediation scene. Goes fucking perfect, besides the maids right outside the door with their vacuum cleaners. They cleared out fast though. Actors/actresses were right on.

Easy shoot, finished on time. Darla Albornoz, who played Lynn Blodgett in the promo trailer we shot, Christopher Lee Phillips, Steve Gleich, and Jacky. Amazing how fast it goes when people don’t fuck up their lines.

Went to dinner, off to the gallery.

I expected about 50 extras. Got about 15. Isn’t gonna work right. Improvise to the second scene where we don’t need that many extras, then send Mark and my wife and her friend to the bar a couple of doors down to recruit some extras.

Also, a reporter from The Capital picks this night to come out and interview me. I make her an extra.

We get some extras from the bar, most drunk, but still not enough. Started shooting, everyone’s antsy, sound sucks with trucks and buses going by. I try to get some coverage, but we lose some extras. Also, they keep wanting to talk during the take even though I’ve chastised them(nicely) a number of times.

Soon we’re down to like 5 extras and the gallery is supposed to be packed. Yeah right.

This scene is gonna suck. We jumped the line, didn’t get a lot of coverage. Ugh. Bad night. Finished about 1:30am.

But we did screw Rick up by putting booze in his cup during one take. Pretty funny to see the look in his face, but he did the take without missing much of a beat.

btw: Wanna see creepy? Check out the screen cap of the first time my brother EVER airbrushed the Shivers makeup. He did it on HIMSELF! Then he emailed this to me after he digitally made his eyes black. Nice, huh?

Oct 12th, 2003

One of the many paintings my brother did for display at the gallery. This one had real nails in the painting where you see nails. I call that dangerous. He calls it art.
---------------

This day was an absolute nightmare. Everything that could have went wrong did go wrong.

And a lot of these things are things that wouldn't go wrong if you had more money(which means more people) to help out. Your location guy would know that there was a parade going on so you wouldn't get screwed there.

Your camera assistant would be making sure you left with all the equipment you came with.

But these are luxuries when you're working the no-budget flick.

Oct 12th

Gallery day. Got there early(11am), but the street was blocked off. Turns out that they were going to have a Columbus Day parade that day.

No shit.

Couldn’t get the truck or my car with all the equipment and paintings to the street. Blocked off. Said fuck it and drove them both two blocks down a one way street, then backed our way onto the street we wanted.

We started shooting, and right on cue the parade started RIGHT ON THAT VERY FUCKING STREET WE WERE SHOOTING ON. We took a break, since we couldn’t record any sound.
After that things went okay, but we ran over time. Josie, the nice lady who was supervising us at the gallery was pretty tired. Finally got out about seven p.m.

Jacky Reres at the Craig Flinner Gallery

Rick Ganz in front of another painting my brother did.
--------

Dead tired. Went to the house and caught a little football before heading out to the theater for our 11pm – 4am shoot. At least, that’s when we were hoping to wrap.

Started shooting; it’s the pickup where the clown confronts Lynn and Tuck in the theater. We missed it the other night. Everything’s going okay, except we have to shoot a slight variant ending since I don’t know if we’ll get the whole fight in.

The battery ran out and we went to get the other battery. It’s not there. Neither is the charger, so we can’t use power from a plug.

Turns out we left it at the gallery.

I have a replacement at my house, so I run out, go 70mph to my house and back. We rock and roll through the end and finish up at a little after 5am. Great. Now I have to get up at 11am to go up to the mediation scene.

Fuuuuuuuuck.

October 11th, 2003

Yes, we all have to try that homage shot.
----------

Okay, how bad did we fuck the first part of this day up?

We get back to the house and haven't taken any continuity shots. There's a sliding ladder in front of the bookcase and none of us can remember exactly where it was when we shot part of the scene before.

So we're trying to shoot and dodge the ladder, but if you watch closely in FOC you'll see it moves by itself! One second it's over on the left, then on the right! I cut it pretty close so you probably won't notice it now.

With Lauren's scene it was just awkward. Looking back maybe I should have shot more meaningless scenes with naked girls like my college film buddies did, but I was too busy making horror trailers to movies I wanted to make...

Which means I had never before shot pictures of a naked girl that I didn't intend on sleeping with right afterward.

In the end it came out pretty good though, and that's all that matters when you're talking about movies...

Oct 11th

Went back to the Eastern Shore for pickup at Ed’s—the big house. It went okay. Nothing great on footage. Gotta hope it matches the other footage we shot, even though we tried to cheat daylight when it was night.

Lauren Pellegrino as Amanda

Then off to kill Amanda. It’s awkward. We’ve never met this girl, and here she comes four hours away and we’re like “Hey, take off your clothes”. Feels awkward. She’s not a nude model or actress, but she says she’s fine with it.

She is fine, but I’ve never shot full nudity. I want to be considerate but I also want to get the scene so it’s freakin’ awesome.

It goes well. Lassise hit her head on the wall once. Threw her down a couple times. She was a real trooper. She didn’t care, just kept doing it.

We ran late, so the owners of the house were out waiting in their car until like 2am. But we got it and I think it’s good.

October 10th, 2003

This day was pretty relaxed when compared to everything else, but I was having a real hard time finding a little girl to play young Lynn Blodgett. I can't remember why.

And again at the end of the night when I rushed off to get things prepped for the next day, Rick and Mun went out to a bar or a strip club. Bastards.

Oct. 10th

As thought, no go on the first two scenes. I wasn’t prepared, we had no kid to play the young version of Jacky's character, no station wagon for that scene, and no Viper for the other scene.

Just slept in after calling everyone and telling them not to go anywhere until I called them. Jacky didn’t get the message and went to the location(my mom's house) anyway. She couldn’t get in touch with me, and called Mun and Rick.

So they met her down there, then finally got in touch with me. I told them to go ahead and shoot the scene—they have the shooting script and it’s just a sleeping scene. They had to make the bedroom look like night. Mun does some more camera trickery. It looks good. I get there in the middle long enough to see it went well and finish directing it. Mun had it under control though.

Had a couple of hours to kill so we took an impromptu break and went to see Kill Bill Vol 1. Pretty entertaining, but almost too stylized. Unbelievable how nice it is to sit down and relax, and try to forget I'm in the middle of waging the war that is no-budget filmmaking.

Finally went to Rick’s apartment to get another scene where Frank is at Detective Peters’ house—gets a call and rushes out the door. Went well. Everyone had beers and it was kind of relaxed.

Mun did some good lighting setups—the shots with Frank at the computer look very good. I dont' realize until later though that Frank has done some of the takes with the phone in a different hand. Cut together it looks like the phone teleports from one hand to the other.

Frank also managed to dent Rick’s wall when he swung the door open and rushed out. Rick was kinda pissed, but it's not really Frank's fault. Should be a door stopper or something, and what? He's gonna be delicate when he's off to save a lady from a killer clown?

I left to return the actual police radio I've borrowed from my cop buddy Rich, and pickup another room key for Lauren Pellegrino who will be coming in tomorrow from New York.

She’ll play Amanda.

Lauren Pellegrino, about to make her entrance

October 9th, 2003

Judy Furlow as Gale, and me as the cop who ate too many doughnuts
-------------

When I look back at this day in the log I just remember what a nightmare it was. Getting up earlier than normal so I can have my wife drive me into the airport, walking through the terminal to the car rental place only to have them tell me I was screwed. That's another 90 minutes of sleep I could have gotten. I think the actual shoot went well. Had some fun with Jacky, Judy and Frank.

Oct 9th

Started bad. Didn’t get much better. Made a reservation for a Dodge Intrepid at the airport rent-a-car. My buddy cop said those were the new model cars and we could make them look good.

Go to the airport, walked a half a mile to the counter and they told me they don’t have any more Intrepids but they could offer me a minivan for same price. Obviously that’s not going to work.

What a waste of time.

No other cops would show. We used a Crown Vic from down the street plus my younger brother’s Taurus. Everyone showed up late. Some extras didn’t show again. I decided my cameo would be a cop on the scene, since I needed some cops and didn’t have the extras. Fucked by the extras again. That could be the name of my book.

Steve Carson, our first AC, also became a cop.

The scene was the morning after the clown has killed a family a few doors up from our protagonist. Our choice was to use the next house up, which I had permission to use.
But I liked the one two doors up better. Rich Herard, our police advisor advised against it.

I outranked him.

We ran crime scene tape all in front of the house, parked two fake police cars there, and began shooting. I even commented on camera that it would be funny if the people who owned the house came home to their new crime scene.

Not five minutes later, the lady of the house pulls up, ready to have a coronary because her house looks like a crime scene. At least I know it looks believable.

The bad new is that she’s pregnant. I hustled over and explained what was going on and she was cool with it. Even moved her car for us.

Then the guy who owned the house with the pregnant wife comes home and is a dick. Five minutes after he gets home and I talk to him, he’s out back mowing his lawn(and the grass didn’t look that long). Ten minutes later and he’s out front loudly raking his leaves. How do you spell COCK, boys and girls?

We started doing all the shots. A car drove by just about every take. A fucking plane took off every other take. Some nimrod with a hammer was pounding away at his house.

Not a lot of fun. I’m not in love with all the stuff we’re getting, but it will have to do.

Frank and Jacky run lines

We rush down to the side of the house where Detective Peters(Frank Lama) tells Lynn what he believes happened regarding the hitman clown. And we're losing light fast.

We try to do Frank's side of the convo but he keeps tanking his lines. Can't remember. In his defense it's a lot of lines in one chunk, and he's doing double duty acting and directing on another movie, but we just don't have time.

End up just letting him hold his script below camera line so he can glance at it when he needs to. Then we get some good stuff on Jacky's side just so we're safe for any cutaway. Say what you want about Jacky, but I can't remember a time she was unprepared with her lines.

We eat, move on.

Did the scene where J.P. and Frank knock on the door, looking for Jacky’s character. Rich Herard did return duty as another cop with them. Set up the screen to double for daylight. Went okay.

Afterward Mun pulled me aside as there was a littler personal conflict going on that I didn’t know about. He tells me that the night before he and Rick went out. Rick got drunk and said that “we” weren’t happy with the shots he was getting. That “we” wished Gil had been available. Mun says if I’m not happy he’ll take off—no problem.

I don’t know what the fuck Rick is talking about. I tell him it was just Rick being drunk. The stuff looks good, and the stuff that doesn’t look good is not his fault—we’re so limited by the equipment we’re using in the locations we’re using them that it’s a miracle we’re getting ANY good stuff.

Think we straightened it out.

Funniest blooper of the night. We’re doing the scene where Jacky gets a call from Phillip after she and Rick are mugged. Phillip’s not there because we only need Jacky’s side of it. So I’m reading Phillip’s lines so Jacky has something to respond to.

We do the take a couple of times, and one time when Jacky asks, “Phillip, what are you doing up so late?” I respond seriously, “Buttfucking your mom.”

Jacky opens her mouth to respond with her line, and then it sinks in. We were all tired, exhausted, and everybody burst out laughing. Took five minutes for us all to compose ourselves.
Anyway, we finish up. There’s a shitstorm coming for tomorrow.

Another shot of the star of the movie. Yeah, me.

A Brief Break

This was the trailer we shot to show investors what we were going for before we shot the movie.

A few tidbits:

• This was before I ever met Mark Lassise, so as you can see, the clown costume is all in one piece. You know, before we realized we were gonna turn the clown into a perverted sex symbol.
• This is all shot on fairly-crappy hi-8 video, but we actually shot 16mm film at the same time with my Bolex. Due to the cost of development and transfer to video, I STILL have the film in my refrigerator. Besides, the video-version of the trailer worked...
• Darla Albornoz("Vampire Sisters") played Lynn in this video and was a finalist for the role that eventually went to Jacky Reres.
• We shot a bunch of stuff that wasn't even in the script, but there are a couple of shots that are actually exactly like they are in the final film.
• Yes, that music is from other movies so there's a chance this will get taken down.

October 7

I always thought this hand looked pretty realistic as FX go...
------------

The first scene we shot this night was supposed to be just one straight take--the whole dolly into crane thing to reveal the body. We spent an hour setting up and lighting the shot. Then we did about 5 takes.

The crane was shaky every time we went up. And then when the movie ran long I ended up dissolving part-way through to speed this up.

I also remember that the mini-van I borrowed from my parents wouldn't start the next day. Had to call the dad who brought me another car, had the mini-van fixed that day, and returned to me that night.

Now that I think about it, thanks Dad!

Oct 7

Went down to Annapolis to shoot the aftermath of Julie’s death. The scene has the camera on a close up of phone cord. We move down the cord to the phone, past that to the receiver and a hand clutching it, past that to show the arm is chopped off, then we crane up to reveal the decapitated corpse of Lynn’s best friend and manager, Julie.

Very easy. Went well. Had to set up a lot of equipment for one shot, but it went off great. The crane worked out well—just not sure how realistic the body looks.

We shot it at my buddy Luke’s house. He was pretty cool about letting us dump fake blood all over the wooden floor. Gave us a rug to ruin.

Went back to the theater to get another shot. Did it fast. Half assing the police cars with those party lights. Don’t know if audience will buy it. Need to get the cars on Thursday or they definitely won’t buy it.

Finished by 4am. Early night. Sweet. If only I didn’t have to go get comics.

Accidentally left the “COME IN THEY DIE” sign on the inside window of the theater. The theater locked behind us so we couldn’t take it down after we noticed it. That should be a pleasant surprise for the early crew tomorrow. I hope they don’t call the police.

We got the 8th off, then back to work on a very hard scene.

We need cop cars bad.

October 6th, 1999

Shivers in action

It's funny to read this log entry. To think, the movie was LONGER? You mean I cut shit out and the movie's first edit was like 3.5 hours long?

Honestly, my biggest regret in the whole thing was not having another month to go through the script--I'm sure I would have fixed a lot of the things that ended up being problematic.

But had I waited another month then we would have had to push the shoot back another year since we would have been shooting in the winter months, which brings problems that can be unfixable. (Snow one day, no snow next day--that's an unfixable continuity problem, not to mention if your actors can't GET to the set because of snow it could shut your movie down...)

That's why I don't shoot any movies in the winter.

Oct 6

Back to the theater again. Doing Jeff’s death scene.

Mark was late getting to my brother’s, so we sat around waiting for him for a while. Shot some stuff when he arrived. We were running behind—again.

Did Jeff’s death scene. His wig cracked us all up. It really didn't look right--he looked like a Beatle or something. It amazed Jacky that it looked okay in the shot though.

Wow, they're like twins...

Jeff was a trooper though—throwing himself on the ground with no pads or anything.

After that, though, we were real behind.

So I rewrote part of the script right there. It’s nice having the writer on set to do on-the-spot changes. Had to omit stuff. We just don’t have the time and I can’t make any more pickups. We’re running out of days to finish this. So I’ve shortened stuff.

We moved to an upstairs scene that I was really looking forward to, and had seen in my mind very vividly--the scene where Shivers corners Tuck and Lynn at the door.

Of course, it was about 4:30am at the point we started shooting. We just didn’t have time to light it right, so we could only shoot from certain angles, and you can bet those weren’t the angles I was imagining when I did the shooting script.

Little disappointed about that. I really wanted that scene to turn out awesome. We shot until 7:15am, then packed up. Home by 8am. It’s 8:33am right now.

I’d go to bed but we blew two lights tonight. The only two that I don’t have replacements for. Gotta try to locate some replacements or we’re in trouble.

Fuck it, I’m going to bed. I just ordered them overnight from someplace on the web. We’ll have to do without them for one day. It's 9:14am.

October 5th, 2003

Some extras think that posing with me will get them better background placement.
Sorry, ladies, only handjobs will do that.(I'm kidding. Maybe.)
-----------

You can see much of this day in the "Making Of" FOC. This is the night you see me leaning over the counter rolling my eyes while Jacky and Rick make fun of the lines and then do some uninspired acting with them.

Now normally I'd laugh with them and then try to explain to them just what the point of the scene is. Once you get an actor understanding the whys, then they will typically get on board.

But at this point I've probably had about 12 hours of sleep in 5 days, and have already been working 14 hours with my only break being the five minutes I sat in my car eating my Burger King meal.

I'm exhausted, frustrated from actors not showing up, and there just comes a point where you hit a wall. This was that night for me.


Oct 5

Enchanted forest. We slipped the crew and equipment through the hole in the fence and tried to block the scene.

Some other people were there. I acted like we had permission to shoot there, and started bossing them around. They left and we got down to it.

Again it's pretty cold for the day. We did okay. The contacts are bothering Mark. He can't keep them in for that long so we try to get all of his angles done first. I'm concerned about the clown running around in the day, but the reason I'm doing it is to try to buck the all too common killer-only-appears-at-night.

Don't know if it will work or not.

We lost light fast--the scene was taking a while. There's a lot of wind, and the trees are blocking the sunlight. We get it done though, and I think it turned out okay.

Rick and the crew were gonna go grab a quick bite to eat. I said go ahead, but be at the diner by 7pm.

I hit Burger King, eat on the drive, head by the house and grab some equipment. Then went to restaurant. Rick and the crew was late.

Set up, not bad, but I forgot to call Mark to tell him to go to Paul’s early and get made up for the scene later that night.

Paul’s pissed—he’s gotta work early in the morning. I’ll hear about it more later I’m sure. But right now I have to get the diner scene with Lisa Willis Brush finished. It's a lot of set-up and exposition.

Got it done in a minimal three hours.

We ran late getting to theater. Two actors didn’t show up—Frank Lama and Jack, the kid. I call Frank and he says he must have got the nights confused. Says he can be at the theater in two hours—he lives all the way on the eastern shore. Means he’d show up about 4:30am.

Can’t reschedule. Had to improvise and shoot one side of the scene with Jacky and Rick talking to me, standing in for Frank. A couple days down the road we’ll shoot Frank talking to me, standing in for Jacky/Rick, and hope the eyelines match. Jack’s just gonna be written out of the scene, but it’s gonna make the main character look like a bad mom since I wrote her kid out of the scene. Or it’ll make me look like a bad writer.

We move on to James’ death scene. We don’t have much blood left that night, so James grabs a bag of cherry slurpee mix and we use that.


James dove in. Looks a lot like blood. Crazy man.

We do a scene by the soda machines and Rick and Jacky have both decided they don’t like the dialogue. They make fun of it during the first run-through, then proceed to do the most-uninspired first take ever.

I’m very frustrated and short tempered. It was a sixteen-hour day for me, and I had had enough and didn’t have the energy to fight to get what I wanted. We finished shooting, packed up, and I left without saying goodbye to anyone.

It’s getting harder every day. It’s hard typing this now.

We worked until 6:30am.

I know--they don't look like they're sucking at their jobs right now, do they?
(I'm kidding--it was brutal on all of us)

October 3rd&4th, 2003

Shivers about to chop some piggy

Setting up a shot at my parents' house with our Lowe's-made screen

The bouncing head on the car window

-------------

One of the key difficulties in a super-low budget flick is one of special effects. Most of the FX on FOC1 were created and I never got to see them until the day of the shoot.

So you never know what's going to work and what's not going to work. You have this shooting script that you hope to achieve and then find out that the FX prop isn't going to work for what you need.

In this case the head needed to be airbrushed on the spot to get it closer to J.P.'s skin color. We lucked out that my brother was on set that day with his airbrush. He didn't have all of his paints but he definitely worked it closer.

Then, the prop body for J.P. wouldn't really cooperate. It was stiff and kept falling over. It's not really Doug's fault--we didn't have a ton of money to work with so it was impossible to make a realistic body.

To me, the worst shot is the far-away Heston POV shot where the body is on top of the Happy Clown. I should have had Jed(the Happy Clown) moving around, trying to get the body off of him.

But I was busy running up and down the street, trying to watch what we were getting and still direct people. Bit of a mess, really.



Oct 3

The decapitation day.

It went as well as could be expected. Drew a crowd of about 20 across the street. One of the kids did pics and then brought them over for us to autograph.

I think the head looks good—Paul had to touch it up color-wise so it matched JP. The dummy is pretty rough through. Its joints don’t move right. Probably won’t look very realistic. Too late to do much now.

The shot where Shivers walks out and pulls the axe out of the balloons didn’t work. I see it in my mind and it’s pretty cool, but the wind gusted so hard that every time he walked the strings would wrap around the axe blade. Even ended up popping some balloons. Impossible to pull the balloons away without using a cut.

Too bad. It was a “trailer shot” for sure.

We ended early enough I got home to do a rough cut of the decap.

Oct 4

A bit of a clusterfuck. Supposed to be an early day, but the wind and rain blew in and darkened the sky so much that it wouldn’t have matched our day shots. We spent some time doing bedroom scenes.

Mun rigged up a pretty cool setup for a bounce-board outside the window. Used duct tape and a stick. He’s pretty creative with our ghetto equipment list.

October 1st & 2nd, 2003

Tuck and Lynn, trapped in the projection room

---------------

You know, not surprisingly, I don't remember a ton here other than what I typed. I was tired. I was making a lot of decisions with hardly any sleep, so it was nerve-wracking.

But Mun helped out a lot here. There were times I couldn't remember which way we did something but he was always pretty helpful there. And even though he was very tired, he barely ever gripes. Another good thing about the Chinaman. (he's not really Chinese, but he loves it when I say that)

I remember Mark and his protein drinks. He always had this gallon-plastic jug full of his protein drink so he could stay in shape. In between takes he'd stick his straw into it and drink from it(so he didn't smear his makeup).

As for the posters that I mention below, you can see in the final product that we had to blur some while others were fine. Go figure.

Oct 1st
Shot scenes of rick and jacky escaping from clown into projection room, without clown. Then we did every scene in the projection room. Went well. Will be interesting to see how I can dodge all these fucking movie posters hanging up all over the place. The line of “fair use” and copyright infringement is very blurry.

Did jeff’s scenes right before he meets the clown.

Shot until 7am, then went to get comics. Finally got to sleep about 11am and slept for a good 7 hours. Shooting went well. Because of my strange sleep hours, my head feels muddled. Hard to think.

Still very tired.

Oct 2nd
Went to the Eastern shore to nice house, shot some scenes, jumping between each other.

Workers working on house kept making noise—there’s a lot to fix and clean up because of the hurricane a week ago. The workers keep walking into our shots from the backyard, would come outside and stand by their trucks talking—which was all picked up by our mics. Sorry about that STD, guy.

The shoot gets confusing--we lost our light so we’ll have to go back. Can’t fake the light in a house with giant windows.

We eat lasagna that my wife made—she brought it over and cooked. It was nice.

We pack up for the next scene...

It’s starting to get cold. We drive to the roller-coaster office on the eastern shore. Very cold. Wind chill was 38 degrees. In between takes everyone would run inside to try to get warm except me and Mun. I mean, it didn’t feel that bad once your body went numb.

We shoot the scene where Rick and Jacky get mugged by Heston, played by Ted Taylor. It went pretty well I thought.

Got way behind though, didn’t leave til 3am. Typing this at 4;08 am and am ready to drop. Got some decent stuff though.

September 28th/29th, 2003

Lynn, in shock from being mugged--Rick's out of focus with his hand in her lap. (probably)
-----------------------------------

The only thing I remember from the 28th was how fast that freaking car was, and how much everybody wanted a chance to drive it.

Also, I remember being a bit of an idiot. I had my shooting script but hadn't broken it into a shot list. When shit started getting really confusing I realized I needed one, so at one point during the shoot I broke a couple of scenes down into shot lists.

Sept 28th

Skipped first two scenes, pushed them to later. That’s called a pickup. Don’t want to do it too often, ‘cause all of a sudden you have your days off turned into days on.

My friend Beth has a boyfriend who has a nice house we’ll be filming in, and he owns a Porsche and a Viper. We went over to borrow the Viper for the scene where Rick drops Jacky off after the Heston(hitman) attack.

We all took turns driving it for fun--Mun got it almost to 100mph in 2nd gear. The thing goes to 180mph. FAST. It was getting a little cold though, and it has no top, so the ride across the Bay Bridge to return it was a little chilly.

We got the scene done, piece of cake. Looks nice. So far been good day bad day good day. We’re in line for a bad day.

Sept 29

Movie theater night. Mark came by and we went over to get him painted up at 9pm. We went to the theater.

Now, we don’t really have permission to use the theater. The head projectionist, James(everybody calls him Kimo) is a friend of mine and he’s good friends with the Assistant Manager. They’re both cool with it. We have managed to leave the General Manager and Corporate out of the loop.

We show up and wait for the customers to leave. We can only shoot when the theater is closed, and we have to be out before it opens again.

Things go well—a lot of the theater employees helped. Bill Stull, the Assistant Manager, and some other movie people helped us load in. Went fast.

Started shooting. Had a shot list. Think things went well, but when you’re shooting actual shots out of order, it’s very risky. Are you going to be sitting in the editing room going, “Shit, I wish I had shot that?” Turns out, yes you will.

Jack porter, the kid showed up, a little early and we were running behind. I brought Shivers out to meet him, rolling video on it—I was hoping Jack would freak out and it would be a cool story to tell later. But it turns out he thinks the clown is cool. Not scared at all.

Got the auditorium scene done where Jacky and Rick are talking, waiting for their movie to start, then we had to move to another auditorium and light it for the scene where Shivers holds Jack hostage.

We did that. Jack was decent, but he wouldn’t stop smiling. Too cute to yell at though. I shoot a lot of coverage behind him and from afar.

Shot a little more, got out of the theater at 7:30 am. Got home by 8am. Gotta get some sleep.

September 27th, 2003

Dennis Long played Shivers in the promo trailer we shot to raise funding.

-----------------------

We shot this entire day at the house I grew up in. My parents still live there. And I realized something in that one day that I never knew the entire time I lived there.

That house and neighborhood is LOUD. The kitchen floor CREAKS if you move an inch.

My sound guy was giving me fits and I finally said screw it--not much we can do now.

I can tell you, fixing sound in post taught me a TON about sound.

Sept 27th
Exhausted. No other word for it. It’s 4:57 am and I just walked in the door. We started setting up to shoot at 11am this morning—I’ve been awake and working for almost 18 hours. I booted up notepad and then excel before I realized I needed Word to continue this log.

I’m that tired.

The day was a bit of a disaster. I figured we’d fall behind, so you might expect that I was prepared. But no.

During the shoot inside there is so much noise outside--people using every fucking’ power weedwhacker and lawnmower, there’s construction up the street (BAM BAM BAM with the hammers) – it’s impossible to get good sound.

We’re so far behind by the time we finish shooting the first couple of scenes that it’s getting dark outside. We still have to do the scene where the hitman in a clown mask comes in, fights Tuck and gets shot—and all that takes place during the day.

Mun figures out a way we can light it like it’s day outside—close the curtains inside and blast just about every light we have at the curtain so it looks like sunlight outside. It works okay, but it’s still pretty dark inside now.

We choreograph the whole Tuck runs in, tackles him, fights, and then they stand up. The room is actually too small for this scene but we try to make it work. It takes a long time.

The scene, as envisioned, has Jacky shoot the hitman and behind him we see the picture shatter. He laughs, then we crane down slightly to show that the bullet went through him to hit the picture.

So I’m behind the camera with a BB gun. Jacky would pull the trigger on her blank gun and I’d fire the BB gun. It would crack the picture frame but not explosively enough that you could really tell anything was happening.

We did it a couple of times with a couple of different pictures. Never worked out.

There was a lot of sexual innuendo going on all day(and this was when the “nugget porn” conversation happened, which I think was on the Making Of. Also, Jacky scrunched up her boobs for the camera. She’s fun like that.

At the end of the night I called off the first scene of the next day, and thought I might call off the second one because we need a wig that Lisa Willis Brush said she’d get—we need her “corpse” to wear it.

September 26, 2003

Jacky's headshots sent to us WAY back when. If she asks me to take them down I will.

--------------------

Not sure why I don't mention casting Jacky Reres.

We were having a hard time filling the lead role. I really only had one other serious contender and then we got a video audition from Jacky.

Rick really liked her. She was a little nervous, very spunky, and cute. She did the audition and at the end said some cute stuff to us through the camera. I think Rick wanted to bang her.

I told him we'd have to see her in person before I could cast her in a role that could make/break the movie. She lived in Virginia, so we set up a time to audition her at a house halfway between us--a friend of Rick's.

We met her and auditioned her at a table in the basement of the house. You have to wonder how creepy it is for young ladies to go to strangers' houses and audition in their basements...

I wasn't totally sold. Still wavered between Jacky and the other woman because, to be frank, Jacky exudes sexuality. It's not on purpose, I'm sure, but it really was the opposite of how I saw the character. I had based the character on someone I know who is like a sister to me, so to think that her character would be like that...hard to wrap my mind around.

In the end I took Rick's advice and cast Jacky. Now I'm happy I did--she definitely took over the role and made it her own.

Sept 26th

First day of shooting.
Got to the main set and the crazy lady who lives there started screaming through the door to go away, she didn’t want us shooting there. Very embarrassing for me in front of the crew. So, thanks mom.

Went incredibly well. Working with a four-man crew for today, since we don’t need a sound guy. Everything we’re shooting is MOS(without sound).

Banged out the first couple of scenes and we were ahead of schedule. Ate some dinner of sloppy joe(thanks Mom!) and then moved on. I did get a little bored, since we were doing all the “Lynn paints” scenes—I’m aching to kill somebody…in the movie I mean.

Last scenes of the day involved Jacky in bed. We put her in bed, Rick sprayed her down(quick note: I’m not sure Rick really does this for the acting—I think he simply likes spraying down the actresses) since she’s having a very bad nightmare involving clowns.

The innuendo was flying today even more than on the set of “Hunting Humans”.

Even went to Jillian’s and had a couple of beers afterward and beat Mun in a game of pool. Better luck next time, my nine-fingered friend!

Came home, went over the shooting script scenes for tomorrow so I’ve got an idea of what we need to do. First thing we have to do is move all the equipment upstairs since we’re shooting in the whole downstairs tomorrow.

Hope it goes well, but we have a lot to do.

Okay, little extra here. What I remember from the first day was being very nervous. I was worried that Jacky would be underwhelmed by our crew--that is, me, Rick, Mun, and Steve Carson. She might not take us seriously.

But she did. And then I remember infinite boredom--taking an hour to light the scene and then shoot scene after scene of her painting. BOR-ING!

We made our day though. That's important. I think it may be the only day 1 of any shoot that didn't end in total disaster for me...

Sept 5th - Sept 22nd, 2003

There's a road under there--this is downtown Annapolis, about 20 minutes from my house.
I did not take this pic though.

---------------

Man, shooting a low low budget flick isn't tough enough--we had a hurricane hit us. Every once in a while one will blow by but they NEVER do anything to us.

This time though, it kills the state. Knocks out power to my house for over a day. I'm supposed to be finishing the shot list and 900 other things, and instead I'm sitting around in the dark.

At this point I'm nervous because I've never seen Mun's reel. I'm going simply on the strength of him having worked with Gil. He clearly knew what he was doing, but I was still worried.

Turned out he was great. Easy to work with with great ideas, and very helpful in remembering shit like which actor was frame left and which was frame right in the shots.


Sept 5th – Sept 22nd

Mun said he could do the shoot if we pushed it back a week. This would also be helpful because then Andrew can still play Phillip. So, I push the shoot back and pray everyone’s okay with it.

They all seem to be. Hallelujah!

Comfuck—oops, sorry, I mean, Comfort Inn had said they would provide us with two rooms for the duration of the shoot, complimentary because we’ve been holding all the auditions and rehearsals in their conference room(and paying full price everytime). In addition, I have said we’d put a thank you in the credits.

So we’ve been calling them for two weeks just to ensure that we’re square. The lady isn’t calling us back. Finally my wife goes down there to find out what’s up and the lady says she talked to a manager and he says they can’t give us the rooms. If we want them she can give them to us for the bargain rate of $70 a night.

That’s $70 a night FOR THREE WEEKS. That’s their best rate?

I need a room for Mun and a room for Jacky, which she’ll share for three nights with Lauren, the actress coming from New York. I have already diverted the funds from the budget and spent it on other things. Now it looks like Mun will have to room with Rick at his place, and I’ll have to find a room for Jacky.

The lone lucky break is that Hurricane Isabel hit us on September 19th, which was our original start date. We all lost power. I’m still not entirely done my shooting script, and I lost a day and a half waiting for power to come back on.

Here it is September 22nd and Mun arrives tomorrow. There are a couple of small parts that we still haven’t filled, because they’re police parts and I don’t have any uniforms. Finding cops and their cars is one of the major challenges I still haven’t fixed, and we need a bunch of them on the 27th. Five days away.

September 1st/September 3rd, 2003

Once again, here I am slamming someone I know. But you gotta understand where I was coming from here.

First, actors come into auditions and tell you they will give you the world if you will only cast them. They will work 24 hour days, they will walk miles through smoke and fire, they will kill their mom and eat her...if you will only cast them in your movie.

So you cast them, and the first thing many of them do is turn around and fuck you in the ass. All sorts of conditions, reasons they can't show up, etc. It's pretty frustrating.

That's where I was here. Andrew's a good guy too. Hey, everybody's a good guy. So the next person I slam just assume he/she is a good guy, 'cause I'm done saying it.

Just assume at this moment in time they weren't. And I know all this text is blowing your mind. Pics will start showing up when we get into production. I promise.


Sept 1st

I get a call from Andrew Schneider. He’s playing Phillip, Lynn’s good friend and the gallery owner. A big part.

He tells me that he just looked over the schedule and realized he’d have to back out of the part because he has shooting days on two Jewish holidays.

Uh, hello? You knew when we were shooting. What the fuck? Now I’m forced to try to rearrange the schedule, which was a bitch as it was. I mean, one guy can only work on Monday-Wed, I have to schedule the girl from New York so she has three days in a row, one guy doesn’t want to work on Sundays when the Ravens play at home, etc.

Sept. 3rd

I’m attempting to get Dave Mun, First AC from HH, to be our Director of Photography on the movie we’re shooting in 16 days. He’s trying to clear his schedule. I’m contemplating moving the shoot one week back, but if I do it then I have to make sure everyone else can still do it.

In addition, some of the equipment hasn’t shown up. The company claims they need my driver’s license faxed to them so they know it’s not credit card theft. No explanation as to why they didn’t call me to let me know this.

August 31st, 2003

Picture I shot at first contact fitting, altered by Rob Long II

--------------------

Sticking giant contact lenses into another person's eyes is not fun. 'Nuff said.

August 31st

Gil has not called us back. We’ve sent emails, we’ve called and left messages, Rick text-messaged him. Nothing. I’m left with only one conclusion: We have no Director of Photography and we’re shooting in 19 days.

Like I don’t have enough problems.

The plaster mold Doug made of Lisa has fallen over and broken. He may need her to come back over. I’m sure she’ll be overjoyed.

Had Mark Lassise come over to test out the special FX contact lenses. These things are the size of a quarter. I tried to put one in my eye and couldn’t do it, and I’ve worn contacts before. Mark hasn’t.

After about a half hour of trying, we finally got one in by him holding his eye open and me inserting it. Looked real freaky. I opened up the other contact and find out it’s ripped.

Uh…can ANYTHING go right here? ANYTHING?

August 26th, 2003

Shot from 1st Make-Up Test with Shivers

--------------------

The worst part of this time period was that the Director of Photography, David Gil, was not returning phone calls or emails. When we last spoke to him he was good, but then months pass and we hear nothing.

We have no backup. I don't know any other DPs, and we're WEEKS away from shooting. I'm thinking I'm gonna have to be the DP, and I'm already wearing too many hats.

I'm not sure how I didn't get an ulcer.

I'm a little harsh to JP here--but in the interest of preserving what I wrote, I have not changed it. He's a good guy though.

August 26th

Did the first headcast for Lisa-Willis Brush last week. She missed the first appointment to do it because the big New York blackout trapped her out of state. We did it down in the basement of Doug Ulrich, the FX guru.

It’s a small dark basement and I’m sure Lisa was a little hesitant as it was; for all intents and purposes we were strangers to her. So he gets this alginate put all over her head, then plaster bandages are wrapped over that. She can only breathe through her nostril holes.

We were at the point where Doug was forming the bandages on her neck and she pushed him off and motioned to back off. Apparently her heart was running a mile a minute, but she couldn’t tell us that. I finally ended up holding her hand through the rest of the process so we could finish it. If she had ripped it off at that second, the whole thing would have gone down the drain.

We didn’t get time to do JP(John Patrick)’s head cast, so we rescheduled for today. Went over to Doug’s and waited an hour for him to show up. A no show. No call, no email. Nothing.

Pisses the fuck out of me. I don’t have time to waste. I only have about 1000 things to do before we shoot and I’m standing around pulling my pud waiting for an actor with a small part.

Lot of stuff to do. Shoot date is barreling toward us. I found a gallery to shoot in today which is huge, but we still haven’t gotten in touch with Gil, the DP. What the hell?

August 21st, 2003

I remember this vividly. We were extremely up front about the Amanda part requiring nudity. It said so in the casting notice, it said so in the sides, and when we auditioned people we asked beforehand if they were aware of it and okay with it.

Anyway, I looked her up today because her name is pretty unique. She has no listing whatsoever on imdb and I couldn't find anything other than a Facebook page.

So I can say with absolute certainty that her career would be in no worse shape had she taken the part of Amanda.

August 21, 2003

Had three full auditions. Sarah D. came back for another read. When we finished she says, “I just wanted to talk to you about something.”

Uh oh.

She then tells us she’s not so comfortable with the nudity. She talked to an agent who thought it wasn’t a great idea at this point in her career. So she’s out, and I’d pretty much penciled her in as Amanda.

All told we received well over 1000 headshots.

I’ve cast almost all of the roles now. We’re about four weeks away from shooting and we’ve got lots of obstacles. Lots of things that need to be done. I’m not even positive my DP is coming. May have to shoot this myself, which just puts more shit on my plate.

Tomorrow we get headcasts done for Lisa Willis-Brush, who plays Julie, and John Patrick Barry who plays Officer Patrick.

June 7th, 2003

The first casting session was a bit of a disaster. Not that many people showed up, and I gave everyone WAY too long to try out. I wasn't really experienced in casting, and I acted a bit too nice--even giving the horrible people five minutes of time.

Live and learn, huh?


JUNE 7th

Held first auditions. Rented a conference facility at a local hotel. My wife had her friend Anne help out, and her cousin Denise and my mom also came to help manage the people.

About 50 people showed up, which was less than I expected, but it was a good thing. As it is, some of the people were waiting over 3 hours, and we ran over by about 45 minutes.

Mark Lassise came. He’s the clown. Plain and simple. First time I saw him I thought it was a little eerie how close he looked to what I had in mind when I was writing. Except, Mark is a lot more muscular than I had envisioned, but I think it makes him even scarier.

A girl named Sarah D. came in. Very cute, interested in the Amanda role. Seemed okay with the nudity and she read well.

Another man named Christopher Lee Philips came in and was great as Osbourne. Seemed a little disappointed the part isn’t bigger, and I can’t blame him. Would be a waste of his talent, but as they say “There’s no small parts, only small actors”. May try him for Parrish.

Saw a couple of decent actors for the role of Phillip. Still not satisfied with what I’ve seen for the lead though. There have been a couple of decent actresses, but no home runs. There’s going to be a point where I have to choose between some actresses with the right look who are okay actresses and the excellent actresses who don't look the part. I think I’ll go for the latter. This movie hinges on her performance.

April 25, 2003

I didn't start this log as early as the one on HH--this is the first entry I have, and it throws you right in the middle of it. I've removed the names of the stupid below. I have, however, left their (mis)spellings intact.

April 25, 2003

So I put an ad in Backstage magazine, the mag for aspiring actors/actresses. We did it for Hunting Humans and got like 500 headshots in a week. Unfortunately, 99% of them were from New York, and none of the New Yorkers wanted to come audition for us. It was like, “What have you done that I might have seen?”

I also put a brand new counter on the Fear Of Clowns page. Be good to know how many hits we get.

The ad runs. In a week and half we get about 3500 hits. We receive about 500 headshots in email alone. About another 300 in regular mail.

I began writing back responses. Most of them were standard “Thanks for your submission, we’ll get back to you.” That was for the people I clearly wasn’t interested in. I emailed sides to out-of-towners so they could mail us videotaped auditions.

I got some classic emails. One lady sent me a color picture of herself in lingerie on a couch. She didn’t fit any parts, so I emailed her back with the standard letter. She sent the same picture another two times.

Then there was this guy:

>“I feel I fit the part of BOBBY.
>I will only audition if it will be in NYC.
>If I get the part I will only go to Maryland if housing and travel is provided; view my Head Shot & >Resume at this link:
>LINK REMOVED


to which I responded:
“Good luck. You will only be in the movie when hell freezes over.
(In the future, you might want to tone down your demands if you ever want to get another job)”

His response:
>“Fuck you moron, I’m already a Movie Star, and you’re an uneducated wannabbe filmmaker who will accomplish shit…good luck to me you say, NO, it’s Good Luck to you getting nyc actors; the least you can do is pay for everthing since your not paying the actors, Moron, you’ll have to settle for Local >Uneducated Losers who are just like You :)
>Have a nice life, I’m sure it will suck :) :)
“

Yeah, this guy’s got superstar written all over him. I mean, it says on the web site that we’re paying the actors. And as it is he was looking to audition for a guy with two lines.

Anyway, another one:

>Dear Rick and Kevin,
>Thanks you so much for deciding to cast me in your production of “Fear Of Clowns”. Enclosed is the address and contact info where you can send my contract. Thanks a lot.
>
>Sincerely,
>Sia S
>ADDRESS REMOVED
>NYC, NY 10009
>PHONE REMOVED
>P.S. What is the phobia name for fear of clowns?

This is the first email I had ever gotten from this person. I hadn't even heard of them, much less cast them.

Another keeper. Out of the blue, this is how the email started:

>I currently have nipple piercings, clear braces and taking acting classes.
>
>I am a total natural when it comes to acting and I am a hardcore Horror Film fan.
>
>Best Wishes,
>Diamond1

I wonder if they put "nipple piercings" under special talents on their resume...

The Start Of This Log

Promo picture shot for investment trailer--
Rick Ganz, Darla Albornoz and Dennis Long(as the clown)

-----------------

Unlike my other log for "Hunting Humans" this one has NEVER seen the light of day. I have never shared exactly what happened on the making of "Fear of Clowns", other than what you can see in the behind-the-scenes on the DVD.

At this point I had successfully shot a movie, won a few minor awards for the film, and received distribution from a reputable company who got the movie into Blockbuster/Hollywood Video/Netflix and paid us more on signing than the entire budget of the film--in general you can't hope for more from your first film.

But none of that stops the apprehension you get when moving toward the next film. How much work there is to do...how bad you may fail...how can you make it all happen and come out with the best movie possible?

So it began again.

I had to raise money for the film, which is really just glorified begging. On HH I paid for everything(by selling comics and using my charge cards) except for $5000 that one of our actors gave us to finish the film. So I really had no idea how to raise money.

I put together a prospectus. We dressed a buddy of mine up as a clown, put him in a vintage clown costume I'd bought on eBay, and I shot stills and some video. Scenes from a script I hadn't even written fully yet.

We had access to a movie theater, so I figured I'd set the end of the movie there. I took my actors and my clown up to the theater after hours to shoot some more video for this trailer I was going to put up.

I took my smoke machine. We're up by the elevator and I smoked up the area and started to shooting. The smoke alarm starts BEEPING wildly, and apparently it can only be turned off by the fire department who is ON THE WAY.

That's where we stopped filming and took off. I cut the trailer to music from Aliens and Signs, and it came out good.

To finish the story a lot easier than it was, I showed it to some people and two of them agreed to give me 10K apiece. I had 10K left over from what I got paid for "Hunting Humans" that I was going to put in, and just like that we had the $30,000 I thought the movie would cost.

So that's where the "Fear of Clowns" log begins. Hope you enjoy.

I think the only thing you're really going to learn is that if you just want to make low budget movies because you think it would be cool or that it's fun then you are sorely mistaken.

(As with the other log, I will preface each entry with current-day thoughts in bold type, and the log will be in regular)