Cut above: Tony Anderson at the editing coalface
You haven't lived until you've sampled the chicken fried steak at the Route 66 Diner in Albuquerque. It sounds like something Elvis would have eaten and yes, if you count the mashed potatoes, gravy and chilli beans, it probably comes dangerously close to the fat content of a deep fried peanut butter and banana sandwich. But I tell you something, it's delicious and was a fine treat after two solid days in the edit bunker.
I now have a 'director's cut' of Maconie's List. I don't know why I felt the need to put that in quote marks, as I'm the director, it's my cut and there's nothing ironic about that statement at all.
The new version is amazing. This is the thing. I had a marathon five-week battle of wills back in June and July to keep the people at Duke City from changing my script.
At one point I wondered whether or not I should pull out of the festival because the changes they wanted to make were so huge. Turns out that this was the first year in their seven-year history that they'd assigned script mentors to every writer/director and it's fair to say that I had a few run-ins with mine.
Turns out (part two), that so did every other writer/director. At one point, even after nine extensive rewrites, my script was taken away from me and totally rewritten. All I remember about that day, is that after reading it I couldn't physically speak for four hours. Now, I realise completely and utterly that in the film industry re-writes are part of the process but why pick winning scripts to change them?
The upshot of this was that I fought tooth and nail to preserve my story, the compromise being a different ending. This imposed ending has now been cut from the final edit. I cannot tell you how happy this makes me feel. The film is now, according to my new assistant editor Tony, "a completely different beast" from the version that was screened at the gala night back in July. And oh yes, we now have proper special effects, gun shots, bullet holes, muzzle flashes, good audio and a better narrative flow.
Actually the bit about good audio is a lie. It's 8pm and in an hour I'm going back into the studio to record some voiceovers with Jermaine Washington, aka Maconie. For some reason his original dialogue makes him sound like he's talking through an old sock.
Tomorrow, I hope to finish the colour correction, get the newly edited score added and make a 20 second promo for the film's new website. As if that's not enough, I've just FedEx-ed a rough cut of the film to the Sundance Film Festival. I spoke to a lovely girl called Megan in the office, who said that I could secure my place with it, as long as the final cut followed pretty soon after. So that's what I've done. That's a very satisfying paragraph to write.
But I have to say none of this would have happened without my brilliant (and now virtually comatose) second assistant director, Celeste, who has once again been my best friend in Albuquerque, chauffeuring me around and generally making sure I was OK. She's so amazing that she managed to talk me into to staying at her house in the mountains even though she has two pit bulls and a Boston terrier. Anyone who knows me also knows that I am petrified of dogs. But last night as I sat at the dining room table with her pit bull Kubla Khan at my feet, I had to think to myself, this year really couldn't get any more bizarre.
Or could it?
