Are Audiences Lazy???

Or are audiences today too impatient? My short movie is only 8 minutes long (!!), yet I've already had some people tell me that they think it's too long. Too long!!!???

Man, whatever happened to the days of the 1970s, when movies like China Syndrome and Klute could unfold at a nice leisurely pace and nobody complained. Now, movies like Brokeback Mountain get attacked for being "too slow" and "boring" because they actually take time to reveal characters to us. Have audiences gotten so used to being assaulted MTV-video-style that we get antsy if things don't move along at a breakneck pace? I think so. I think audiences today are L-A-Z-Y. I actually hear people saying that 2-hour-long movies are too long. Anything over 90 minutes is now looked at skeptically. Man, am I part of a dying breed of people who actually love big epic Hollywood movies? Give me the Lord of the Rings extended cuts any day over the original theatrical releases. I was thrilled to hear that Peter Jackson added 45 minutes of footage back into his recent remake of King Kong. It's in the slower, more subtle stuff that the real meat of the movie comes out. That's when you get to know the characters, instead of just watching them DO things.

I know I'm in the minority here, but I don't care. I think everyone else is just lazy. TRUE film lovers want as much of a good thing as possible. They don't complain that there's too much of something that good.

Oh well, I'm not going to worry about it. I'm just going to keep on seeing long movies, and my next film short might even be 10 minutes long. Uh oh!

I Made My Own Movie!!!

Well, folks, it's done: My first-ever movie. I moved to Los Angeles just about seven years ago to get in the movie business, and I'm finally getting off my butt and doing something about it. I'm loving film school, and the opportunity to do something like this has been a huge inspiration to me.

We shot the movie over two days in the Pan Pacific Park, which incidentally is where they shot the exterior of the disco in Xanadu. So "movie magic" was all around us. Haha. I shot it on a budget of $100 (for food and snacks for the actors) and with the fear that the police might come and kick us out at any moment because we were filming without a permit! But we never had anyone bother us in the two days we were there. On the contrary, everyone left us alone, though the families with their kids were quite amused to see six mimes walking around the park on that first day.

The assignment for class was to do a chase film. I wanted to do something slapsticky and in the vein of Benny Hill, except without the gratuitous T&A shots. I ran through several scenarios until I came up with this idea: A man reading a book in the park is bothered by an excitable mime who won't leave him alone. This leads to the mime stealing his book, which leads to the big chase. I was lucky enough to find a professional mime on Craigslist. Mark Wenzel was awesome to work with. He came with his own props and ideas on fun things to do. The whole unicycle bit came from him bringing it along. I thought it would be great to shoot all kinds of fun comedy bits during the chase. It really worked out well.

My director of photography was Michael Bosman, who is also my next door neighbor. He had graciously offered to help me out on my project a while back, and he was instrumental in the movie looking as good as it does. He shot on his professional camera, and we sat together for five late nights and collaborated on the editing. It was laborious, but great fun just the same.

I wasn't supposed to play the Guy, but you really find out who your friends are when you're making a movie. I couldn't find anyone to play the Guy, so I stepped in and did it myself, but I really had a great time doing it, though I gotta tell you, all that running about killed my legs. I fell at one point and totally scraped up my knees. They are still recovering! Anything for your art, right?

Here's one interesting tidbit for all you NCIS fans. Mark couldn't really whistle that well, so we had to dub in someone doing his whistling for him. So I asked my neighboor and good friend, NCIS star Pauley Perrette (aka "Abby") to do the whistling. So yes, I have a bona fide TV star in my movie. How cool is that?

Anyway, there you go. Some of the fun behind-the-scenes facts about the making of my very first movie. I hope you enjoy it!



XOXO,
Hollywood Ken