Ocean Park… one of my fave spots growing up….

I look up at the calendar and the days of pre-production are vanishing. Tick, tick… With each passing day, I have my fair share of painful beats, but, man, I’ll take all of it just to get the chance to finally make this film. I absolutely love each and every minute I breathe on this thing. All of it.
It is a humbling pleasure to have so many wonderful actors step into our office and push real life into our characters. It is honestly invigorating to drive the streets of Venice and have strangers welcome us into their homes, businesses and lives in order to offer up authentic locations. It is the absolutely greatest feeling having so many talented collaborators on the crew pouring their souls into this film, into Sticky. I cannot express what all of this means to me, to this longstanding vision, to BDL. Just know, time may be ticking down to production and it is short, but, my God, will it all blow up when we step under the lights. Tick, Tick, Boom….

Another gem from Nick Haas… Santa Monica just before dawn… Dang.

We had an amazing scout this past Friday and the look and locations of this film are very much beginning to grow a spine. We found a perfect Smith House, an absolutely perfect group house, and a perfect space for Ruben and Carmen. Visions have changed on all three in my mind, but I like what we found and I love the direction that we are going now.

It was quite freeing to read de la’s blog on book-to-film musings because it reminded me that it is time to let the book go. I fell in love with the book when it was 3 Stones Back, when it was printed on recycled/used paper, when it was a pipe-dream looking for a publishing rack. Now it is more, and less, than I remembered. Lines are altered, words are moved, story-lines are gone, but it is still Sticky at its core. It is at once more full and more skeletal than the book I first read. It is different.
The script is a variation on BDL: The Novel.

Busy, but mad exciting week ahead. Many of our keys start work today and, as a whole, we need to kick it into that next gear. This is most true in our location hunt. Planning on spending the afternoon with production designer Shane Valentino and director of photography Matt Jensen in our desired interior location for Lincoln Rec. We will walk through our plan of attack down there and sign off on the gym for shooting. If we are able to agree, it is a major piece of the puzzle solved. Then we’ve got to agree on an exterior vision of Lincoln. Unfortunately, we haven’t found one location that can serve as both so we must search for the perfect interior and the perfect exterior in separate locales…

Should get a clearer picture on the cast front this week and I hope to share exciting news on our acting troop soon. We will be casting again and deciding on some roles mid-week. All very exciting. I can’t wait to work with a cast that is deep and rich with talent. Extremely thrilling for a director. So, big things are going down this week. If I can keep up, we’ll all be good.

If you don’t know…

An image shot on Lincoln by our title designer, the skilled Nick Haas… Lincoln is Venice’s main artery, its pulse - Sticky’s storied grounds…

Yesterday was a great day. Spent the morning with Matt Jensen, our DP, building and am feeling good about our visual strategies for this film. We really came up with some exciting ideas. It’s great to be in this space. There are few elements of filmmaking that are filled with purely innocent creativity: The writing process before you start showing it around, meeting and thinking on the creative in a vacuum before the reality of budget, time and schedule forces compromise, working with actors in auditions, and seeing dailies and a rough cut for the first time. These things are untainted by reality and are so pure in one’s artistic thought process that there is nothing quite as exhilarating as these moments in the journey of making a film.

Things are hectic as we start to really ramp up on this picture, so my blogs may start to read like quick journal entries, but hopefully that’ll actually means we get more up on the site…

We find ourselves in an interesting position as we are now real and have a date. Actors’ schedules are suddenly becoming a hurdle… We are trying to get folks signed up and are working with their other commitments, but it’s proving to be a challenge with some.