HAVING MY BABY Now Available on DVD

You can now purchase HAVING MY BABY on DVD. Almost five long years after I began producing HAVING MY BABY, I can finally see the fruit of my labors. Many thanks to all who made it possible.

http://www.havingmybabymovie.com/Store.asp

Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only the Movie Producer

I have a story concept for an over-the-top exploitation film. I have a friend with around 300 acres in the boonies of Parker County, Texas I could film on. I was going to have my art director build a small village with grass huts, etc., and have a bunch of topless Mexican chicks in grass skirts and a bunch of Mexican vatos in loin clothes portraying cannibalistic natives.

The story line is a film crew arrives in the jungles of a fictional South American country to begin filming a soft-core porno movie in the jungles. They get lost in the jungle and attacked by a cannibalistic tribe and have to outwit them and escape from them. The movie will have lots of bullets and lots of babes. The director is a dictatorial asshole. The female star is a preening primadonna. The male star is a handsome, ex-Marine who drinks a fifth of vodka a day and is going to seed. The production assistant is an innocent farm girl from Kansas. The star's bodyguard is a bone-crunching, karate slinging bull dyke to die for. Throw in some missing shipments of gold, some drug lords, federales, rebel armies, rich gringos from Hollywood hiring ninjas dropping out of trees.

Shoot it all guerrilla style, with digital equipment, natural lights, limited makeup, baloney sandwiches and daily stipends and/or points, all pp shot within a two week period with one day off in between. Balls to the wall, seat of the pants, do or die, fuck all, shoestring budget.

Any takers?

[I got the idea for this after watching the 70's German independent film, Man From Deep River.]

"Elvi, I Was Only Kidding! Fly, Pelican!"

Scarface... helluva movie. "First you get the power, then you get the chicks." The immortal words of Tony Montana, as penned by the Dilligaf revered screenwriter and filmmaker, Oliver Stone. He wrote the screenplay in Paris while kicking a cocaine addiction. Oliver Stone is one cool dude... my favorite filmmaker of all time. [David Lynch is a close second. "We hunt buffalo now, Reggie! Remember the number 10!"]

Trying to raise money to shoot a remake of Man From Deep River, a German-made indie from the Seventies. That might be more practical than the biker flick, Dead or in Huntsville, since I'm living in the boonies now instead of the big city of Dallas. I have access to a lot of acres for exterior shots. Dead or in Huntsville seems to be jinxed, anyway. It's a long story.

Going to try to make it happen on the cheap again. Going to have to pool resources and combine talents with some heavy hitters to pull this rabbit out of a hat. Gonna write a killer script, though. Could be a lot of fun. Writing the script is the fun part. May have to come up with a proposal or private placement memorandum (PPM) to raise the money. Or save some money from my "job" in the "real world." Oh, I forgot, I'm unemployed again. I swore I'd never make another movie without the money first. In the words of Blaine Carson, "Dad gummit!"

I could even get rubbed out by the Mob. I own the screen rights to the definitive biography of Crazy Joe. I adapted a screenplay from the biography, Joey, by Donald Goddard, when I conceived and produced 3 Violent Plays with Thin Dime Theater Company in 1996. What if the Mob doesn't like it? What if I got it wrong? What if Joey Gallo's side lost the gang war and the winners of that gang war don't appreciate my version of the Crazy Joe story? Maybe I shouldn't even call him Crazy Joe... he hated that name. Nobody ever called him that to his face. (He was also known as Joey the Blond. He was shot down in Umberto's Clam House in NYC in 1971 on his 43rd birthday.)

My asking price for my script Joey & Jeffie is one million dollars... what if the Mob wants a cut? What if they send some Pauly Walnuts kinda guy to jack me up? Maybe he'll just stab me in the leg with an ice pick if I'm lucky? Holy shit, what have I done? What wicked webs we weave. Maybe I should give up this movie business and become a florist. Nah.

Back in the Saddle

I've been trying to get back into the groove to write more about Dilligaf Productions. I've been very busy moving Movie Central to our new location in Springtown, Texas, now known as Movie Central West. We all hated to see our location change due to monetary problems.

Our last location in Dallas was where it all happened... the bunkhouse, the beer binges, the steel balls, the shouted obscenities, the loose women, the working girls, the 99 cent frozen pizzas, the 3 for a dollar frozen burritos, the Bugler brand, hand-rolled cigarettes, the all-nighters, Mako shoveling coal in the engine room, the unmentionables, and the the 700 movie DVD and VHS archives to choose from when anyone cared to watch a movie instead of make, film or edit one... they will all be missed!

Now it's onward, wagons ho and don't look back. Coming soon... the biker flick, Dead or in Huntsville! More to come!

Dispatch from Les #6 - What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been

We're back! We're back, we're bad, we're in business. We have an excellent new trailer maestro David Dixon has put together. We have our fledgling new website, thanks to actor, star and computer guru, Stephen Brodie, and we're doing an AV test very soon on the big screen, thanks to executive producer and head honcho, Samuel H. Roden, III.

I'm putting together a press kit and soon to be released press release to inform the public and elucidate the masses concerning our little indie Texas gem, Having My Baby, and will hopefully, after four years of persistence, have our premiere in July: "If the 'Lord' is willing and the creek don't rise." Yes, our little action drama, soap opera, tear jerker of a movie has arrived. I know that after four years since preproduction (August 2005) and three years since beginning principal photography (September 2006) that some of you are like... yawn. What movie...? GTFOOH. Life moves on....

But we're back! Dilligaf Productions is back! We come back like a ghost in a dream that you can't shake. We're like that bad penny that keeps showing up on your doorstep. We're like the house guest that won't leave. We must be the center of attention! We demand it! Get hip, people!

I'm "betting the farm" that interest will pick up as more and more people see our little $80,000 wonder. The famous French filmmaker, Jean Luc Godard famously said, "All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun." Just remember, at the end of the day, when all is said and done, that Having My Baby is just a love story about two people named Blaine and Sophie; nothing more, and nothing less. A girl... a gun... a Bible... and a baby.

Dispatch from Les #5 - "You Wanna See Helicopters?"

Yes, we are still here. Life and the 40-hour work week go on in the real world. The editing continues in the movie world. (On weekends, that is.) The mind numbing attention to detail and constant search for that best combination of scenes that is editing. Most scenes shot at a 3 to 1 shooting ratio, if we were lucky. Viewing the same scenes over and over for three years is like water torture. It's like eating chocolate cake until you puke. Whew! But we are so close! We're at the finish line! Still planning on that March 2009 premiere for Having My Baby, fingers crossed! The media blitz will start soon. Look for us on the telly, as our British friend would say, as we countdown our fifteen minutes of fame.

What kind of movie takes 3 1/2 years to complete? What were you doing on Labor Day? Editing. What were you doing on Thanksgiving? Editing. What were you doing on Christmas Eve? Editing. (Eraserhead supposedly took David Lynch five years to shoot. The torture that man must have gone through. Five years of anticipation to see a completed project. Some people call Eraserhead unwatchable... some call it genius... an audience is a fickle thing. I fall in the latter camp and call it wholly original.)

"You wanna see helicopters?" I got the helicopter shots just hanging around Addison Airport for a couple of Saturdays. Inserted those shots where needed, and voila! Used the helicopter sounds to sell other lean scenes in the woods... indie movies at bargain basement prices! Life is good. Guerrilla filmmaking is a blast! And it looks good! And sounds good! Gotta love the Canon XL-1. It's a workhorse. Probably almost obsolete by now, but hey, it works. The medium is not the message in cinema, the story is. All you pretentious filmmaker wannabes and poseurs clucking from the sidelines like matrons in some sewing circle can't see the forest for the trees. Show me your movies. Oh, you've not made any.... Our little movie is looking good, Holmes. Dilligaf has mucho cajones. (Translated: Big drawers.)

Long story short, we're not giving up. We have survived scenarios in movie making that would make Oliver Stone blush. (Incidentally, we love Oliver Stone at Dilligaf Productions, so back off, Phil.) We don't give up at Dilligaf. You can knock us down and we get back up. We keep pushing. We're like wounded soldiers moving through the bush, pushing to make it to the chopper so we can some day see our loved ones again. Keep pushing... keep pushing... keep pushing....

Walking my three miles every other day... doing my chin-ups every morning... meditating during the week when I can... eating my veggies... drinking my green tea and red wine... haven't had a cigarette in three months... pushing fifty... a vain, cranky old man who wants a cigarette... pushing past that donut aisle... pushing, pushing pushing! March 2009: be there.

Dispatch From Les #2 - How Badly Do You Want It?

How badly do you want to make that low-budget, DV movie? What is your motivation to do such a thing? How much pain can you endure? How far can you push yourself? How much can you do by yourself and how much help will you need from others?

Are you willing to let the electric bill go unpaid so that you can have production funds; waiting until you get the disconnection notice, then getting an extension on the due date, knowing that when you do finally pay it, it will be twice as much because the new bill as well as the old bill will be due by then? Are you willing to survive on frozen pizzas and burritos chocked full of trans fats just to have production funds? Are you willing to live in a dirty house because you worked and filmed or line produced every waking hour, every day, all week long, and your energy level is nil? Are you willing to work forty hours a week in the real world, and add to that the burden of making a low-budget, independent film?

Are you willing to be vilified, such as is in the hate mail posted below? Are you willing to fail? You'll never accomplish anything monumental unless you are prepared to fail and fall flat on your face in total embarrassment. Do you truly have something to say that warrants a movie, or is it a vanity project so steeped in subjective filler that no one really cares?

Are you willing to coddle an actor who halfway through filming decides that your darling script he adored during auditions he doesn't like so much after all, so he decides to change the lines you sweated blood to create, knowing that with half the movie already shot you cannot recast and reshoot his parts? How much torment can you endure without losing your cool? Just how important to you is your script and the dialogue contained within?

Have you done your homework, and read books on indie films? $30 Film School, by Michael W. Dean? Rebel Without a Crew, by Robert Rodriguez? Feature Filmmaking at Used Car Prices, by Rick Schmidt? Can you walk into a restaurant unannounced with your cameraman and actors and steal a shot guerrilla-style, without permission? Can you talk friends, family, relatives and complete strangers out of money for production funds? If your girlfriend of seven years says she will leave you if you make another movie, because she wants to spend the money buying a house, can you handle it? Which is more important to you, your girlfriend or your art? You better say girlfriend, if you want to keep her. How badly do you want it?