Hobbies and interests.
The Game officially started shooting on May 2 1993. This was after a false start in January of that same year. The film had started shooting for two days when major changes were made resulting from personality conflicts. Though this sounds minor, it was actually an extremely difficult situation on many levels, emotional and financial being the two most severe. Casting went on and in April a new lead was found. Rehearsal with the new leads commenced as did the business of renting cameras, gathering locations and renting living space for the actors; who would be staying on location for the duration of the shoots.
Three days before principal photography was to commence the leading lady was forced to back out of the part. This was a nightmare that seemed to be without end... and the shooting hadn't even started! With three days before the "meters would be running" on cameras, building rentals, etc. we gave the part of Laney to our alternate choice of leads; Margaret Lamonica. The Game was finally beginning in earnest. The night before the first shoot, we had a meeting of as many people as possible that would be on the film. It was the D.P.s (Jack Bromiley) birthday. We had a celebratory drink for him and another one for the film. The next morning, we started our first shoot; the scene where Mitchell (Mark Gorman) and Laney (Margaret Lamonica) meet for the first time. I chose this scene as the first scene for a variety of reasons. It was an important scene with the two leads (The third costar (Stephen Wastell) was still in New York at the time and wasn't scheduled for another three days). Since it was the first scene in the film where the two meet, I felt that any clumsiness' that would come across in the acting might be a bit more acceptable in this scene than others. (I have since come to regret that decision)
When you start shooting a film, you have a schedule with a huge amount of pages... scenes... shots... It feels like a mountain and you have a tiny spoon with which to pick at that mountain...Slowly we picked away... one word at a time, one shot at a time, one scene at a time... moving from location to location.
Though The Game was a very low budget movie, there were many locations; some of them at night. This was breaking two of a few core rules that are given a low budget film. But it could be done... not in style, not in comfort, but it was possible.One day at a time, one scene at a time... Slowly the film was shot. One of the things we didn't have the luxury of doing (people still call us crazy) was processing and printing the film as we shot, so we didn't have any idea whether or not we were shooting anything, let alone usable footage. I had full trust in the D.P. Jack Bromiley, as well as others on the crew. It was after all, not the first film they were shooting, just the first Feature length film, and that was a responsibility for me, the director and the actors... technique and expertise in film making had already been established by the many short film we (as a combined crew) had made in the past.
The last days of shooting were the most difficult... 18 days of shooting over 21 days doesn't leave any room for relaxation. To add to that, the typical day averaged 16 hours or so... Toward the end it got even more brutal. We were nearing what was going to be the only set that was built for the film. It consisted of a hallway in which a gun fight was eventually going to happen. I had experience in the effects required for such a scene and realized that to do it in a real location wasn't a good idea... holes had to be made in walls, small explosives (squibs) placed in them and then the holes covered and painted to match the walls, etc. The constructing of a set was imperative. Weeks earlier I had spoken to a long time friend and contractor/set designer who graciously was into the idea of building the set. As the day of reckoning for the scene was approaching, I had talked to him more about it. After we finished at the location prior to the hallway scene, I left for the town in which he lived. I went to his shop looking for him, didn't find him, and then continued searching the town for him. When I found him, I discovered a man with the flu and (to me) much more seriously, that no set had been built because no location for the set had been found. Desperately we spoke to his landlord at the lumberyard where his business was located and made arrangements for a large storage room to be used as the area for construction. The two of us (Dale- the designer) and myself then moved the large window and door frames that were in this area into another spot and, with the promise of a built set the NEXT MORNING, I went home for a typical four hour night of sleep. The next morning, the crew, cast and myself made the trek to the yard where the set was hopefully going to be. When I arrived, I nervously went to the front gates and watched as the large garage door slowly opened. Inside was the set, walls still wet with paint, and Dale's employees working away frantically. It was another few hours before it was ready but yet... the set had been built. We started unloading the equipment while actors and crew alike worked on finishing the set. We had the location for the weekend. Shooting on a weekday was not possible because of the business going on at the lumber yard. We started shooting dialogue scenes while the effects squibs, etc. were placed into walls between shots...In the end, we spent the entire weekend shooting the scene... the days which had typically been 12 to 16 hours now jumped to one continuous time period... We knew that Monday morning would mean the end of our shooting and so we went all out. Monday arrived and at about 6:00 AM we called it quits. We had not gotten everything we needed to get in the scene but "What can you do?" It was the last day of shooting and equipment had to go back to the various rental houses... actors had to return to their lives and crew had to move on to paying jobs...We drank a couple beers... everybody hugged everyone, people took pictures... and then we left. In three weeks of shooting, we shot about 12,000 feet of film... Now it was time to see if it had come out. I knew that if it hadn't, that was the end of the project... there would be no feature film...It took approximately two weeks before we could come up with the money to process the film, but finally I was able to take two large boxes of 400 foot cans to the lab. Then we waited for two eternally long days wishing we had had the money for dailies. Two days later, I called the lab and they told me it was ready.
"You have a print" I asked, knowing that if there was a print, it meant there had been an image.
"yup"
"It looks okay?" I asked.
"Yup"
"I'll be right there"
Three hours later I was back in my house, threading the first of many roles of film... I practically started to cry when I saw the first images on the large screen... "My god... it's okay... it came out..."Now it was time to edit and raise more money.
ROUND TWO
After the first round of filming, we had no more money... half the film was shot... it had gone according to schedule, but now we needed to raise more money. We had known that this was going to happen and it had been part of the plan... shoot as much as you can and they (financiers) will come. I figured that I needed about 20,000 dollars more to get the film finished and after what we had been through, it didn't seem like anything was impossible...I rented an eight plate Steenbeck and dragged it from New York to my bedroom in Bucks County PA. I had it for one month.... I couldn't afford to keep it more, so I sat in front of it in the hottest of summers every minute I could. My sleep was a bit better than when we were shooting and since there was no crew, I only had to beat up myself... and I had images on film, so I was a very happy person. In my opinion, editing is a point in film making that generally is the most rewarding time. I pieced together my "epic" and slowly saw a broken story emerge. Large sections of it were still not shot... the first 25 minutes for instance... but with the first "cut" I had 58 minutes of screen time... With this, I felt I could raise more money. I transferred the film to video tape (by taking a camcorder and shooting off the screen of the flatbed... remember... no money) and then Paul Martin (the producer) and myself started hunting for the cash. Truthfully, it is not as hard to get money, when you have half a product... truthfully, I never felt the same depression and desperation as when I first tried to raise money with nothing but a script and a dream... but truthfully, it felt worse in many ways... Now the actors and crew all were hoping and dreaming and asking "When are we going to shoot again?" I had told them that I expected to start again in July... I thought the last money raising process might take a month or two. But it wasn't until October that we were able to start again. I didn't have enough money but I also was fighting a changing season. I knew that if I didn't do it now, it would have to wait till spring time... and I couldn't bear to wait that long. In my mind, a year between shoots would completely kill the validity of what I was doing. Much of the money came from within the close circle of friends that had developed on the film. Jack, the D.P. (and my best friend) had a heart of gold and luckily a fairly decent sized pocket. He had already been putting money into the project and now he continued to do so. I know that many people must have told him that he was crazy but thank god for him. Paul the producer, dropped many more thousands into the production than he had originally committed, and my father, the generous person he is, lent me everything he could... to the point of making himself financially very insecure. This is what it takes to make a feature film when you have no name...
When we started shooting again, there was a certain sense of confidence with the crew that I hadn't felt before. Now everyone knew we were indeed making a movie and they knew that it was going to get finished one way or another... so we started shooting again. The second round of shooting commenced with what would be one of the final scenes in the movie... it was a scene where the "bad guy" would crash his car off a road. Joe Wicen (the pyrotechnics and all around crew guy) had, in my mind, earned a reputation for being "the man that can". Whenever I would make a seemingly impossible request, he would somehow get the job done. My request this time was for a car that we could crash, that wouldn't cost any money... or if it did; no more than fifty bucks... oh and it had to look like a car that could really run... and it had to match the bad guys personality... couldn't be a little Honda or something. He found a car we could crash and it was free, and it was in good condition... three perfect things... but it was a station wagon... a fucking 1972 brown Malibu station wagon." No problem" said Joe once it was at his farm. Then with a mighty "nothing is impossible" attitude, he took a welding torch and with the additional help of some plywood, window panes, white house paint and sponge brushes...converted it into a sedan. The next thing we had been trying to figure out was how to make this thing jump over an incline and crash... we knew we couldn't have anybody drive it, and the engine, transmission and gas tank, among other things, had been pulled from the car. Joe came up with a pulley system that is, we later found out, the way its done by the big boys.
THE FIRST NIGHT OF THE SECOND ROUND OF SHOOTING
We all gathered in a field on Joe's farm and set up large HMI's for the night shoot. A large engined car and driver (a racing friend of ours) stood at the ready to pull the car to the ramp. This was going to be cool! Twelve hours later, as the sun was coming up... we had nothing except for a converted Malibu station wagon that had avoided the ramp several times, hit trees several times and finally, on its own, engineless accord, driven around the ramp and continued for about a quarter mile through a soybean field and off into a creek. After looking at it 6 feet below us I yelled "It's a wrap... and pull the exposed film from the cameras... I don't want to process this shit!" Then we went on to shooting easier things that would not be as expensive to light. The largest scene we shot, in terms of people, was a scene in which Mitchell, the lead, goes into a restaurant and eventually sits down to talk at a table. We looked at a bunch of restaurants for the right mood, and eventually decided on the Doylestown Inn, the deciding factor being that they gave us permission to shoot at all. We spoke to every friend we had and got about 75 extras to appear in the scene. We knew it was going to be big and we went all out on it. We had HMI's lighting in from the street, Jack (who is a certified steadicam operator) rented a steadicam, and I made sure that we had enough crew to do the job. It was one of the few times where I really felt like a "cool filmmaker on a big shoot" I don't think the Inn had expected the size of the shoot. We had played it down, and I think they were expecting a "camcorder and a light or two" but things went well and the extras drank and ate a lot, so the restaurant was happy. Shooting days continued, never smooth but somehow we did them and finally we were back to the hallway scene...
Dale rebuilt the set in the same location as before and we matched the lighting and continued as though it were six months before. Again it was a brutal 24 hour a day shoot, but this time I felt that we squeaked out of there (Monday at 7:00) with enough to somehow cut a scene together. A couple of key shots were missing but I felt we could do them in someone's basement with foam core and close-ups...We had other things to shoot and a couple more locations to go to but we were nearing the end. The last shot we did with Margaret, was a shot that was to be integrated into the hallway scene. It was a scene where Laney, already shot twice is shot five more times while back down on a bed... We did the scene, I drove her to the airport, and then that night when I returned, we shot one more scene with the two male leads. With that, principal photography was complete... I hoped.
It was now November and time to edit again. There were an additional seven or so days that we shot over the course of the next few months, but they were a day here, a day there... things that we did once I had cut the rest of the film into the first section... these were difficult in a whole different fashion. They felt like "cleanup patrol" after a big party. The little things that had been missed in the crazy days of shooting... a cutaway here... a look there...etc. and I still hadn't shot the pre title sequence of the film. I would have to wait till spring time to do that...Production--- so much to do, so many emotions to deal with, so many problems... These are a few moments that I recall three years later... I will write more in the coming days and weeks.