I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell

I don’t know how people who don’t love being a producer can do this job. I would not be able to do it if I wasn’t completely and totally obsessed with getting this movie made.
Today wasn’t a bad day, it was just so…exhausting. I start the day not being able to go see my beloved Kentucky Wildcats play in Anaheim. This may have turned out for the better, as they lost to a crappy community college whose existence I refuse to acknowledge.
As I am watching the game on TV, the production lawyer decides to email me and tell me that he can no longer work on the movie (he took a job as in-house council at a big company). OK, not a big deal, except that he was supposed to talk to the casting director’s agent today to negotiate the terms of his deal. This is vital because our casting director has been working basically for free for two weeks as a favor to us, but his agent is quickly losing her patience. And she is right to be upset–it’s bullshit that we don’t have at least the outline of his deal done yet. Don’t get me wrong, we have zero intention of dicking him around in any way, but nonetheless, a deal isn’t done until it’s done, and we need to get it done.
This means that before the end of the day, we need to find new production council, get them up to speed, and get them on the phone with the casting director’s agent to start the negotiation process. It doesn’t have to be finished today, but it needs to be started by today.
Oh, did I mention that we have a casting meeting from 2-4 that we also have to do? All this is on top of the constant calls, emails, meetings I have with potential financiers (no matter how much money you have, it isn’t enough and you can always use more).
It’s 8:45pm as I write this, and after going constantly from about 10am until now, we have solved all the issues. The director is a pretty big, well-established guy in Hollywood, so he sent the script out and we had several big-time lawyers willing to take us on immediately. Had a meeting at 4:30pm with a firm that was very impressive, and not only got my artistic vision for the movie, they totally understood all the cool backend stuff I want to do and the implications. Plus, they were not only smart, they had balls (well, one lawyer was a woman, but you get the metaphor), which is rare in this town.
The casting session was different. I took Bunny to this one, because she probably knows me as a person as well or better than anyone on earth, and more importantly, she knows SlingBlade and all my other friends really well, and can give a woman’s perspective on them to the casting director and the director.
SlingBlade is such a difficult character to cast for because he is a character without antecedent in cinema. There is literally no character that you can reference and say, “He’s just like that.” Most art–and movies are no different–is very derivative. You cast for DIE HARD by saying, “I want a modern, hipper John Wayne,” and bam, you know Bruce Willis is right. But SlingBlade is so different, so unlike any other character that is cast like that.
Bunny really gave a new perspective to the casting director and the director. She told some stories about him, with the rich details that really illuminate his character. Most importantly she answered the key question about SB:
CD: “I get why he’s funny, I get the delivery, I get his bitterness. But why do you like him? What ultimately endears you to him?”
Bunny: “Even though he has that angry, caustic shell on him, beneath it he’s just a scared, vulnerable, hurt little kid. Everything he does is a defense against exposing that. You just want to grab him and kiss him and tell him it’ll be alright, even as he calls you a whore.”
At that point, something clicked in the director, and he went on this ten minute riff about SlingBlade and all kinds of artisty, film school crap that to be honest, I barely followed. He was talking to himself out loud, not really to us. But the finish was good.
Director “If we get the right actor, the guy who simultaneously exposes his vulnerability while covering it with his bitterness and intelligent humor…we’ll create one of the great characters in American cinema. I’m not kidding.”
God. Damn. Right.
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