The first couple of times I showed people Railed Up, they always seemed really surprised that it was good. This kind of surprised me at the time…Because I’m thinking to myself, when would I have given people the idea that I’d make something bad. But after the last few days of checking out the early “Neil the filmmaker/actor/editor” stuff, even I’m surprised that I was able to get a decent finished product. Really. My old stuff is so bad. With the exception of maybe the Big Rock commercial for last year’s eddies, everything is brutal. And even the Big Rock commercial incomprehensible to everyone but me, so probably a miss, overall.
As soon as I got my Panasonic HVX200 camera, I was testing everything out and practicing editing with final cut pro, so I made a 13 minute short “Coke Sharking”, which inspired the Sharky scene from Railed Up…which is the first dream sequence. Incidentally, this was where I came up with the idea of playing multiple guys, and have half of it be a dream, because originally Billy, Glenn, and Sharky were different guys. But I wanted to practice, so I played all three. This of course didn’t make sense as a complete short film, so I added a scene at the end where I wake up and realize it was a dream. Not a bad idea. So anyways, I made this short film, it was bad. Bad writing, bad acting, slow slow pace, overall quite painful to watch.
But what I’ve concluded, is that there is so much practice that is needed in order to be good at this. You have to make a lot of embarrassing garbage before you can come up with anything decent. I guess the lesson here is that as bad as Coke Sharking was…it was practice, and it gave me an idea that was essential to Railed Up and Wrecked. So as painful as it may be to watch now, it helped the process.
And once again, the jury’s still out on whether Railed Up is any good. I, myself, think it’s good. But I also thought all that old shit I did was good, and it wasn’t. So I hope it’s just that I’ve gained perspective, and not that I’m just being delusional. For those people that have seen it, I’m honestly not fishing for compliments here, I’m just trying to illustrate how truly alarming it is to believe something to be true (that my early shit was actually good) and then realize how false that belief turned out to be. In short, blind spots in my perspective are currently my biggest fear.
But on to the important stuff: On March 9, 2010 about 150 people showed up to watch a screening of the film at the Plaza theatre in Calgary. This was amazing, because this was supposed to be friends, family, and crew screening, but pretty much everyone I knew showed up. It was truly amazing. I’ve really got to thank everyone so much for coming out!
The posters were up in the lobby and out by the front door. People were flooding in right before the show popcorn and pop in hand, the 300+ seat theatre was more than half full. Super super cool. And to have “Railed Up and Wrecked” on the marquee right under best picture winner “the Hurt Locker” was pretty outstanding to see.
To see the movie, on the big screen was awesome…I think. I don’t how much of it I actually watched because, as cool as it was, it was also one of the most nervewracking experiences of my life. I hardly remember watching the movie at all, after the first 2 minutes. I was more interested in watching everyone else watch the movie. And what I’ve discovered is that it’s very hard to read people’s reactions when you’re looking at the back of their heads haha. I was getting a pretty good sense that people were into it, but I was never sure. There weren’t a lot of people fidgeting in their seats, or yawning excessively or anything like that.
Nonetheless, the whole time the movie’s going on, I’m wondering “are they still with me” “If they can make it to this point, I got ‘em,” then that point comes, and I proceed to repeat that process in smaller increments until the end. And I feel the end of the movie’s very strong, and so as the end was approaching, my heart was beating sooo hard, because I’m thinking if the ending hits, they’ll like the movie.
Haha even reading this I feel ridiculous. I realize now that I had completely lost all perspective on the movie as a movie. I guess that happens after the 100th viewing.
Making a very personal movie is essentially like putting all parts of yourself out there for people to see. And when “people” happens to be everyone you know, it gets pretty scary. So after the hour and a half long panic attack, the movie ended, and it got a big ovation, followed by lots of compliments from people as they flooded out into the lobby and then later to the pub across the street.
As a side note, I’ve been to enough indie productions to have seen that, in spite of what people actually think about the movie, it’s mandatory to say how great it was to the people who made it…because they expect you to say something, but what are you going to say “it sucked,”… probably not. But I got the sense like people’s compliments were much more genuine, because I got a lot of “I wasn’t expecting to like it, but I actually did,” And that would be just a malicious thing to say if it wasn’t true. Because if they didn’t like it, a simple “that was really good” would have sufficed, but to add the “I didn’t expect to like it” comment if it wasn’t true would just be unnecessary.
Haha, I’m fully aware how self indulgent this all is, and how much I’m over-analyzing everything, but when something takes over your life to the extent this movie has, these are the things you think about.
So what now. Before this, people had no expectations of me. Now they do. So what now. Immediately comes the fear that, “that was it…that’s all I’ve got in me, that was all I had, now it’s done, how am I supposed to come up with another story that can exceed the first one,” But I realize that’s just my mind being a little bitch. The important thing, is to get going on the next one, to be sure to put in a lot of thought and effort, and to use the things I learned on the first one, and just fuckin give’r haha. As Jay-z would say it’s “on to next one,” Incidentally check out that video…very cool.
Oh yeah, and now comes that small task of trying to continue to take Railed Up to the next level… film festivals…and attempting the near impossible task of trying to get distribution of any kind. I don’t think most people are aware of the sheer number of movies that never go anywhere. “Not even dvd?” you ask. No. Not even dvd. Getting Railed Up distributed on dvd would be AAAMMMMAAAZZZING. Stars would need to align to see this thing in your neighborhood blockbuster video. So I’m going to do my best to move some stars into alignment.
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