Road Movie Again!

Here we go again. It Donned On Me just picked up the Best Sound Design Award for "Tail" and now we're jumping into another 48 Hour Film Project. Another weekend of junk food, no sleep, and running around like chickens with our heads cut off. Why do we put ourselves through this? Oh yeah, because it's fun and we absolutely love it.

6:34pm.
Rick, Dinah, and I arrived at Camera Cinemas 3 in San Jose a little after 6pm and went straight to the meeting place. It was fun to see familiar faces in the room, as some teams from the San Francisco 48 Hour Film Project and last year's San Jose competition were present. The producers took us into the small theater in the back, and we eagerly waited as they gave the run down on logistics. When it was time for our screening group to approach the stage to pull our genres out of a hat, my left leg got stuck between the aisles, and as a result, I ended up in the front dead last. This was not a great position to be in, as the anticipation made me go crazy. Do you know how hard it is to stand by while your competitors are pulling their genres? Comedy, drama, horror, spy movie, film de femme...oh boy, what the heck are we going to get!? In the back of my mind I was thinking anything but historical fiction. I really can't tell you why, but there's something about that genre that made me nervous.


As I watched each group pick their genres, I mentally kept track of what everyone pulled. I began to freak out because that historical fiction slip was still in the hat! Fortunately, the girl ahead of me pulled that genre, so I let out a big sigh of relief before diving into the hat. I stuck my hand in and felt around. There were only two slips of paper left in that hat, and I had no idea what they were. Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Mo, catch a tiger by it's toe.......ROAD MOVIE.

I have to admit, I was less than thrilled to have received this genre, since we have already made a little road movie called "Urgent Care" for last year's San Francisco 48 Hour Film Project. I really wanted something different, but at least we didn't pull historical fiction! The funny thing is that we later learned that the team who pulled historical fiction changed for the wild card genre. This got me to wondering, maybe we should have done the same thing. I was really annoyed that we pulled a repeat genre, but in the end, things really do happen for a reason. Plus, "Urgent Care" was technically not a "road movie." Just because we had an ambulance driving along Highway 280 does not really make it a road movie, so this year will be our chance to actually make a film that truly fits the genre.

Genre:
Road Movie

Character:
Chris or Christy Doyle, drummer

Prop:
Pin

Line of Dialogue:
“What just happened?”



8:51pm.
Evan, Rick, Tom, Rob, Dinah, Rick's lady friend Colleen, and I met up at my place and we all sat at my dining table and brainstormed ideas for this road movie. There were plenty of ideas flying around--some more absurd than others--but no story. What we had to work with was a dapper British gentleman, a convertible, a hazardous material suit, and possibly a bee suit. Here's a sample of some of those random thoughts:

• A guy is lying in the middle of the the road. He is contemplating something. Suicide maybe? Monologues on the side of road, perhaps?
  
• Urgent Care: The Sequel. Granny ends up killing the EMT during a wild afternoon of nookie in the ambulance. She ends up driving that ambulance around town trying to get rid of the body.
  
• A movie about roads!
  
• A guy is walking down the road and he sees a bee. The two of them walk together on this road and does something interesting or meaningful.
• An Olympic rhythmic gymnast goes on a road trip to Beijing. Of course, the gymnast is from Saigon and only speaks Vietnamese.
  
• A guy goes on a date with a girl who is confined to a bubble. She has to wear a hazmat suit to protect her respiration. She has some sort of disease. In the end, he kisses her and he dies.
  
• A comic road trip. A comedian drives around the city and tells jokes.
  
• It's not a road movie, it's a RUDE movie. We tell the judges that we misunderstood the genre and made a rude, crude, and crass film a la the Farrelly brothers rather than a road movie!

11:48pm.
Nothing. We kept throwing ideas out, but there was still no story line! I brought out Vietnamese thinking caps for everyone hoping that inspiration would hit us, but nada. I had to walk away to reboot my creative hard drive, so I disappeared for about an hour to find my bee suit. Unfortunately, I came up empty. No bee suit, no story line, 11pm, uh oh! To top it off, everyone's blood sugar began to drop. Having champagne at the beginning of the brainstorming session relaxed us, but what we really needed was food! So, I sent the red headed chiropractor out for nourishment. While he was out and about getting donuts and chips, Rob went delirious. Check it out:



1:30am.
After hours of throwing ideas back and forth, we came to the conclusion that all we had we had was an idea. At 1:30am, we decided that it would be best to call it the night and come back in the morning to try to piece together a story for that idea. The premise: a Vietnamese ribbon twirler goes on a road trip with a dapper English gentleman. That's all we had! We all agreed to congregate at my place a few hours later. All I knew was that I was going to be this ribbon twirler, so before I went to bed, I prepared for this role by jumping online to do some research on rhythmic gymnastics.

2:47am.
At about 3am in the morning, it donned on me that IDOM was officially in unchartered territory. Never before have we walked away from a Friday night brainstorming session without a story! Boy oh boy...