Film and Television

REMAINDERED was the good news/bright side in an article in today's Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer about the unfortunate cancellation of the NDX Film Festival. The article said, in part:

Though the festival has been canceled, a short movie will still be filmed in Owensboro in September.

"Remaindered" was written and will be directed by Lee Goldberg, a veteran TV writer, author and member of the Mystery Writers of America. The film was set to premiere during the NDX Film Festival.

"Remaindered" is about a once famous and successful author who is on a downward spiral in his career and in the midst of a self-funded book tour. The movie takes its name from the term for a book being relegated to a store's bargain bin. Students taking classes in the recently created theater arts degree program will have the chance to participate in the filming.

Newton said he and Goldberg hope to show "Remaindered" and "Murder in Kentucky," a short movie filmed during the 2009 International Mystery Writers Festival, in October at the RiverPark Center. A round-table discussion about filmmaking and what filmmakers learned from the two movies would then be held, Newton said.

Roxi Witt, general manager of the RiverPark Center, wrote in an e-mail that RiverPark staff members need to discuss the possible showings with its board of directors at this month's meeting."

In REMAINDERED, the short film I will be directing in September in Kentucky, the central character is a once-successful writer now on a self-funded book tour through rural America, signing at K-Marts and stores like it. The story unfolds at two discount stores and a house. We've locked down the house location, but we are still looking for a discount store to shoot in (and that would double as two different stores). It hasn't been easy. We're only four weeks from filming and a couple of possibilities have emerged… but the uncertainty is driving me nuts.

I suspect whatever location we end up at will require some adjustments to the script and some cheating. For example, one possible location is an office equipment store…which makes no sense at all story-wise. But if I use an establishing shot of a discount store, and then shoot tight in one corner, and have a bunch of people pushing shopping carts filled with groceries, garden items, etc. past where my protagonist is signing books, I might be able to sell the notion that we are in a K-Mart or Save-A-Lot…and not in an office equipment place.

But I sure hope it doesn't come to that…

I’ve spent a lot of time tonight trading emails and photos back-and-forth with our two leads — Eric Altheide and Sebrina Siegel — discussing their wardrobe for the film.

Wardrobe is not my strong suit (no pun intended. Okay, maybe intended a little). And it can be awkward discussing what I’d like the actors to wear… or not wear…and what I’d like to see…and not see…in seduction and love scenes. It’s not so hard this time, since we aren’t going to actually see anybody making love, but it’s still a delicate topic, even when the nudity is more implied than seen. So tonight I talked about different kinds of briefs with Eric and the choices in bras, nighties, and the like with Sebrina. It was fine…and they immediately understood what I was going for.

It was more awkward for me when I exec-produced FAST TRACK, a TV movie/pilot I also wrote, and that we shot in Berlin a couple of years ago. In that film, we had two sex scenes…and a key dramatic moment centered on a guy catching his lover as she’s having an orgasm with another man. Discussing what we would see, what we wouldn’t see, and how the seduction and those scenes would be staged, was something new for me. And, to be honest, I worried about how I’d be able to discuss it with the actors.

But I knew exactly what I wanted, and what I needed, in order for the scenes to work dramatically and visually.  And I figured that all I really had to do was convey that vision to the actors, and then the actual details (what to wear or not to wear, what to touch or not to touch, etc.) wouldn’t be so hard to discuss, because they would understood what I was going for, too. And that’s how it went. They trusted me… and I trusted them…and it turned out very well.

I can already tell that the same is going to be true for REMAINDERED.