Hate bad movies? Try acting in one...

It's venting time...

So I'd been working with this group who are doing a TV series that they are hoping to sell.
(Being Veronica Craven and “In The Cellar.”)

Fangoria magazine has some contest for filmmakers to submit a short 15 min. horror film to "win.“ The prize is the winner being included in a DVD-released film. (Whoop-d-doo)

WE, the involved parties, get nothing. No pay, and no rights to sell the film.
Neat. But our TV group decides to participate. The film was to be called, "The Necklace."
From there it got ugly.

I go to San Francisco to shoot the scene I'm in.
I read the script the night before, that the director had written.

I quickly realize that not only does the story really have no focus (other than attempting to be... "oooh spoooky"), but it is totally convoluted without reason. In the first 2 minutes my character goes from stabbing needles in a voodoo doll to being a palm reader to selling an amulet to a guy as an anniversary gift to his wife. I tell him he's going to die, and he's cheated on her.

Oh, and the amulet is a million years old and possessed by a 100,000 priestess from another dimension, which... has been also given to the Eros, the Roman god of Love.

Hmmm... love the continuity.

So... I cut all that crap out of the script which sent the director and lead actor scrambling.

Then came the discussion about how film directing is NOT the same as theatric directing (again, the brilliance of the director). Ohhhhh man! If I had to do it all over again... I wouldn't. Stay tuned for my own film projects coming soon enough this summer...

I should mention, as it turned out, that the ”director“ was actually a film buff who, along with his partner, had never actually made a film before. This was their first attempt, and somehow earned them the right to not take advice from those in the industry, and to be cranky about it.

Stay away from amateurs.