What sort of problems did you run into, shooting right around the
time of 9/11 in New York?
Actually, 9/11 happened on the second day of our shoot, which was crazy. We were shooting in Brooklyn. In independent film, there's this notion, by any means necessary; you get your movie done, no matter what. And sometimes things happen which are weirder than your movie, to say the least.
It was a really strange time, because there was a big question of whether we should even keep trying to make this movie. And I felt in my gut, on a personal level, I really wanted to keep working on it, because I didn't want to just sit at home and watch television freak out. Also, the story we were shooting when 9/11 happened was the second story. It was the one with the mother collecting the robot toys, which is essentially a story about a woman coming to terms with her son's death. And the actors were tremendous to work with, and on a personal level, I really wanted to be working with those actors on that material at that time, you know? It was my way of kind of dealing with that whole situation.
We sat down on the day, because we were shooting in Brooklyn when ash started to blow over our set. And we had no idea what was in that ash or what was going on. And when we came back the next day, we shot out that scene. And then we took several days off while we figured out what all was going on.
We had tons of logistical craziness. We ended up shooting all the stuff we could shoot outside of Manhattan. And we had hospital stuff that we shot in New Jersey and other stuff that we shot in other areas and came back into Manhattan. And a lot of other locations came at the very last minute. Originally, we were going to shoot at Grant's Tomb, but security changed around that time. And also we had this crazy thing where every day we'd be an hour or two hours, because traffic laws would change in the middle of the day. It was just a crazy time to try to do it. But we were very fortunate.
Originally, we had a lot more planned crossovers; characters who were major characters in one story were originally going to be smaller characters in another story. And the notion was you'd get to know them as a small character and then later on you could see them in another aspect of their lives. We've lost a lot of those crossovers, because in the wake of 9/11, schedules went crazy, and a lot of actors couldn't be there for the kind of time that we wanted.
You mentioned that you had three stories already written and that you wrote a fourth to complete the screenplay. Which one was that?
The one that was written last was "Machine Love," which was the third story. Because I did a screenplay reading with the other three, which went over really well. We had tremendous actors, and people cried, and it was really great. "People are crying, man, it's going to work!" But I realized doing that screenplay reading that the film was exploring different sort of moments, different kinds of love in a person's life. And what it was missing was this sort of young, romantic love. And also what was missing was a breathing space, a kind of lighter moment. All of the stories are kind of threaded through with a kind of sadness. But definitely, "Machine Love" is the lightest of the three, I would say. And so that was the last one that I wrote, as kind of a reaction to what was missing in the other stories.
Did you intend to play Archie from the time that you wrote "Machine Love"?
Yes. I've acted for years, actually for many years before I became a filmmaker. I did improv comedy for many years in college and then in New York. I've had this notion of finding a role that I could play in one of my films. But I held off for a long time, because I wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing as a filmmaker first. I didn't want to push myself into a role that didn't make sense. And Archie was a role that I just got him. That's one I felt very confident in tackling. And I had a really great film crew who helped me, who made it possible. The other actors were tremendous and really made it work.
Are you working on any new projects?
Yes. Actually, the big thing I'm doing is I'm writing comic books. I'm writing this comic called Warlock for Marvel Comics. And I'm also writing a Phoenix miniseries. So that's paying rent, which is cool. I grew up reading comics, and it's been a dream come true.
Plus, I've got a couple of screenplays that we're trying to raise money
for. I've written a couple screenplays for hire. So hopefully, some
day something will happen with those.
