PART I - PART II

“It’s not scary enough.” “It doesn’t work the way we thought it was going to work.”

The message from FOCUS was loud and clear, they expected something else from the film.

We were all disappointed but we knew we had something cool and they were looking at a very rough version of the film, with no sound and no music. While we felt that the film was never going to be as scary as BLAIR WITCH, we did feel that there were some great tense moments in there. It was a different kind of film than BW, it was a monster movie. It was more of a fun ride. Creepy, with action and some crazy gore.

Also, the script for this film was called PROBED, so a bit of that feeling was still living in the film, which is what I really loved about it. FOCUS urged us to change the name right after they bought it and I came up with the name ALTERED, which we were all very happy about, but just because we changed the name didn’t mean that all the PROBED spirit was going to be instantly exorcised out of the film.

So we kept plugging ahead, finished the edit, and Gregg and I spent two glorious weeks with our families at SKYWALKER RANCH in December of 2005. The holidays were approaching and we were eager to show the film off. We all felt we had something special.

We headed to New York City (man, my palms are already starting to sweat) a few days before December 20, a birthday shared by Rob, Jamie and me. We rented a screening room at TECHNICOLOR and showed the film in the early morning, before the FOCUS people arrived. Everyone was happy. Proud. The projectionist told Andy Jenkins that it was one of the best films he’d seen at this place. A good omen, we thought.

FOCUS arrived. I made my speech, thanked them for believing in us and helping us make the film better with their solid notes. We headed out, went to a nearby restaurant and waited. We were supposed to meet for lunch after the screening and discuss the film. We were nervous and joked about who would be at lunch. If it was just a few people, they didn’t like the film. If it was the whole gang, we could expect some good news.

The call came. There wasn’t going to be a lunch. Big problems. They were going to hold an emergency meeting at their offices in an hour or so. Jesus Christ. And we were joking about a few people meeting us as a worse case scenario. This was a fucking disaster!

The meeting was short and sweet. The film didn’t work. They called it a “tweener.” Not enough horror, not enough drama, not enough action to categorize into any of those genres. They felt it would not play to the basic horror crowd. They didn’t know what the hell they were going to do with it.

Needless to say, my birthday was ruined, as well as my holidays. Well, as ruined as they could be with two little ones running around at home reminding me of how lucky I was every second of the day. But I felt like I totally let everyone down. I wasn’t thinking suicide, of course, but man, it got as worse as it’s ever gotten for me outside of some fucked up times when I was a teenager. I just felt like complete shit. Worthless.

Sophomore slump, here I come!

I was thinking of contacting someone like Kevin Smith to see how he dealt with MALLRATS. He got a serious beat-down for that one. We have a good mutual friend so I was really considering it. Man, the doubt was massive. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to be a filmmaker? Maybe I should stick to handheld, $35K HI-8 video films? Maybe I should
go work at TARGET. That wouldn’t be bad. I love TARGET!

Down the spiral I went, but there was hope. FOCUS was going to do a test screening and we were going to redeem ourselves. We were sure of it. The FOCUS people just didn’t get it, man. Yeah, that was it.

Well, that certainly wasn’t IT…

-ed

PART IV

ALTERED

MYSPACE

ALIENPAYBACK

YOUTUBE