Last Call?

I had kept busy since the failure behind Sifting. I had begun to note down semi-autobiographical scripts loosely based on various misadventures in my life. It began with a novel i started in High School, simply titled, “The Book”. The new stories would all interconnect somehow, somewhere down the road. It was supposed to be huge sprawling saga that I hope would emulate Jack Kerouac’s body of work but simply began echoing Kevin Smith’s View Askew-niverse.

If I worked at Fast Food restaurant, there was a script about it. If I vacationed in Germany there was a script about it. If I had a crush on a girl she’d be a major character. And so I went, writing down ideas, but I never completed any of it. There always something else distracting me. That is how Last Call came to be. At the time Leonard and I worked at a Major South Florida Grocery outlet. There was many colorful characters that worked there and many awkward and interesting things would happen to them. Odd sexual pairings, violent outbreaks and even a murder conviction were all fodder for our script entitled “The Last Temptation of Joe Brown”. The story of a simple ordinary guy who would be tested by the Lord in the form of a Jesus-loving girlfriend and tempted by evil in the form of conniving assistant store manager.  This project was a favorite of ours and someday I will return to it. But back then I was sidetracked by the idea behind Last Call. Leonard’s rocky relationship with his then girlfriend and now wife.

I knew we needed something we could shoot. We couldn’t shoot Joe Brown without having access to a Grocery Store and a cast of characters. It would be a script we could never finance ourselves so I set it outside, and thought about what i had to work with. I had access to friends and The Great Outdoors. The Great Outdoors just happened to be Miami, Florida one of the most popular cities in the world, and one that has not be seen to much on film yet. Who better to tell stories about the Magic City then someone who travelled on public transportation and on feet. I certainly knew it better than Will Smith.

So I put pen to paper and Last Call was born. The title taken from track 9  on the Skanic album of the same name. The film centered around four friends. Three dealing with recent breakups and the fourth on a quest for love, with Miami as the background. I culled my memories and personal life along with the experiences of my friends. And whenever possible I embellished. Because I never got the nerve to ask Kristy out and that girl who tried to trick us into becoming Scientologists, well she didn’t go home with Eric.

I finished the script in record time. I wrote it on bus benches, in the break room at work. Wherever I could steal a spare moment. But when it was over, I took it and stuck it on a drawer. Never to be seen again. 

Cut to 4 years later: Leonard and I sat at a Denny’s restaurant eating lunch. He was lamenting the fact that he had given up his job at Channel 7. It may not have paid as well as he liked, but at least he was in the business.  We both were now working for The Answer Group, a mind numbing, soul crushing concentration camp thinly disguised as honest labor. It was killing out spirits. It really began to hurt to go to work. I was becoming ill and Leonard began to develop job stress. But we gladly cashed the checks from the bastards that were destroying us. Hell it was more money than either of us had ever earned up until that point. What was really sticking in Leonard’s craw that day at lunch was that former Channel 7 co-workers of his had completed their first short movie, and were now making the festival rounds. I confided in him of a cousin who i met a few times growing up and had never showing any interest or care in films or filmmaking was now a high level executive at Paramount Studios. So if these people had achieved this success, what was stopping us from even completing a film?

I began discussing each one of our failing points. How lazy we were, how afraid we were to take risks. Scared To put money where our mouths were. Now that we had a better sort of pay, I at least had some disposable income and yet still did not own a real camera.  I never finished any scripts. And even the ones I did finish, Sifting, Last Call and Donk Pirates, they just sat there unable to take the next step into becoming a movie.  Leonard had his own demons, which included online gaming. Mmorpg’s like Anarchy Online consumed hours of his life each day.

We decided that Enough was Enough. “We had to get busy living or get busy dying” and by dying we meant living the rest of our lives in mediocrity, Institutionalized. We decided that at that moment we would take every bit of energy we had and focus it on making this film. I then made a declaration. I said we would return to that spot, That Denny’s the following year and if we had nothing to show for the past years work we would end dissolve our friendship. Over a decade of friendship we had and it had not taken us one inch. What reason did we have to remain friends, we barely saw each other outside of work anymore. Maybe putting our friendship on the line would become the motivator. The thing that would light a fire under our ass.

Leonard had now asked for my 4 year old script. And I asked for some time. I needed to polish it, type it up.  And above all make it filmable for two dudes on a budget.  He reminded me of my earlier declaration, and said he would give me 30 days. Thirty days and our friendship would be over.  He doubted me. I doubted myself, could I complete the rework/rewrite of the script? Or would this be the “Last Call” for our friendship?