Thank God for the 'Undo' Button

Nearly a month after I began, 'Do Over'- the short film written and directed by my friend Christina Raia- is done being edited. It's the first time I've ever edited a film and I learned a hell of a lot, it just frustrated the hell out of me getting to this point. But now it's in the can and I can move on to editing 'Paroxysms'. You can check out the trailer on my kick ass new website- alanlawless.webs.com

Rooftop Drinking

Thursday night Erin (my new best friend) and I were knocking back some Guinnesses and white Russians in a little place on 27th called Jake's. We made a new friend when the guy on the stool next to Erin started talking to us. His name is Fred and he's from France and very nice. Erin's boyfriend joined us a few drinks into the night and Fred invited the three of us to his place to continue drinking. We sat on his balcony and kept drinking till Freddy had to call it a night. Erin, her boyfriend (Keith) and I rambled to a rooftop bar on Fifth Ave where I broke out one of my Cuban cigars and we sipped down wayyyy overpriced martinis. Keith's a decent guy and the three of us had a fun time. Who knew actors could be fun to hang out with?

'Paroxysms of Caesars' the movie

Hotter than hell in Williamsburg, Brooklyn but we went on with the filming anyway. There were some amazing abandoned warehouses and buildings under construction that made for great backdrops. Starting at noon we filmed Betty ('Carrie') walking on her way to school, then we had a fight scene between Joe, Andrew and Justin (playing the hero) and a few scenes of running thru the streets. We went thru twenty bucks worth of bottled water, but it was fun and we got the job done. Everybody did a phenomenal job and the footage we got was amazing. More filming on Thursday and next Sunday. Keep your eyes here for more footage.

photos by John Gebhart.

Up and Down on the 6 Train

I've been locked in the office for about 10-13 hours almost every day for the past two months working on 'Belle' and generally running things at First Line, yet I still managed to put something together for 'Paroxysms of Caesars' auditions. I rented a studio in Midtown from noon to two and was expecting a dozen guys to show up and read with Betty for the part. No such luck. Far less than the dozen guys who said they'd be there showed, but we got our guy, so it's all good. After seid auditions Christina, Justin and I walked over to the east side carrying armloads of gear in the sun and nearly died from heat exhaustion. Christina and I bid farewell to Justin in Grand Central then continued on to Hunter College to finish shooting her film, 'Do Over'.

After a lot of complications with air mattresses (them not having air pumps to blow them up, or having pumps but no batteries) and me riding the 6 train up and down from 68th street down to the Sports Authority on 3rd Ave and 53rd street we finally got the situation under control. Why did we need an air mattress you ask? Because our scene was supposed to be taking place in an insane asylum- even though we were filming in a classroom at the college- and we needed somewhere for our actress to sleep. So, I rode the train back and forth 5 times, buying a mattress, returning it, buying a new one, returning that one and finally getting one that was usable, before we were able to finally commence with the actual filming part around 7 hours into our day. Aizzah is an amazing actress- able to play insane as hell one minute, then cry on cue the next, and we got some amazing footie. After we finished filming the six of us ate some slices of pizza and hung out for a while, which is always fun. Then Christina, Yuritzel and I took a nice moonlit walk thru Central Park to Barnes and Noble for some coffee. We sat at a table in the cafe and discussed our next project till Christina had to bolt. We walked her out to the train and then Yuritzel and I finished our coffees on a park bench in Columbus Circle under a light rain in the quiet, peaceful Manhattan night. It was a great way to cap a long, intense, productive and fun 12-hour day of work in the city.

Right now though, I'm in the middle of editing 5 tapes (nearly five hours of footage) down to fifteen minutes for Christina's film, as well as working on pre-production for 'Paroxysms' which is set to begin filming next weekend, writing 'Belle', and putting together my first book of poetry/short fiction/photographs as well as working on my own feature length scripts. All in a days work kids.

Quentin Tarantino, 'Belle' and I

'Belle' is finally finished. The script went off to the printers on Friday and lands on the desk of Angelina Jolie tomorrow morning. The last week I'd been working from 11am till about midnight pretty much every day. And the two months before that had been pretty much 8-11 hours a day six or seven days a week writing. I went nearly a month between days off (from July fifth till July 30th I worked every day), but now it's done and we move on to the next phases of pre-production. All the hard work has really paid off though- now I'm getting an associate producer credit on a major motion picture, I'm getting a very large paycheck this friday and apparently (according to Ed) Quentin Tarantino read our script and loved it. He wants to play a small part in the movie. So this was not all for nothing. Stay tuned.

Part I of a short story

"Skies Become Cloudy"

I was sitting in a not-too-comfortable clubchair outside the store manager's office in May's department store the first time I saw her. She was cute but kinda plain looking- despite the earrings nearly everywhere that a hole could be punched. I watched her as she walked down the hall and past me.

After my interview I spent a couple hours watching the requisite training videos and filling out a mountain of paperwork before going outside to have a celebration cigarette. I was walking along the sidewalk when somebody said, "You get the job?" It was her.

She was seated at a picnic table taking a drag on a cigarette of her own.

"Yeah," I said as I sat down across from her and lit up.

"Cool," she said with a smile as she flicked ashes tumbling towards the ground.

"Now all I gotta do is wait for my roommate to get outta class so he can come pick me up."

"That sucks." She puffed on her cigarette and exhaled a cloud of smoke. "I hate waiting."

"Me too. But my car decided it didn't wanna work and now I gotta wait for it to get outta the shop."

"I'm sorry."

"Ah. I'll survive."

We came to the end of our things to say for a moment and smiled weakly at each other as she played with the raven black hair that hung down to her chin and obscured the right side of her face.

"So, do you like working here?" is the brilliant remark I came up with to break the awkward silence.

"Oh yeah. The people are great." Again she flicked ashes carelessly as she pulled her hair behind her right ear. "It could pay more though," she said with a huff of air.

"Every job could pay more though, right?"

"True." She stubbed her cigarette to almost nothing on the side of the table before flicking the remains aimlessly. "Well, I gotta get back inside." I nodded. "My name's Cynthia by the way."

"Trevor."

"See ya around."

"Yeah."

I bumped into Cindi again in the elevator the next morning when I showed up for work. She took one look at me and said, "Not used to being at work at six in the morning, are you?"

"No way. This is crazy," I said slowly shaking my head, trying to force myself awake. "The sun isn't even up yet." She just laughed and said that I'd get used to it.

After a week or so of making polite small talk whenever we happened to bump into each other- which seemed to be often- we both happened to be on our way to lunch when we met at the timeclock.

"What are you gonna do for lunch?" she asked.

"I dunno. Probably just find somewhere quiet to write and smoke a cigarette."

"Oh. Well, I was gonna go to the foodcourt if you wanted to come."

"Sure," I said with a smile and followed.

"So what do you do for fun?" I asked Cindi as we sat over our slices of pizza. "I watch a lot of movies, drink, and.." it seemed like she couldn't come up with another answer, so I jumped in. "I love movies. Seen anything good lately?"

"I just watched 'Party Monster'."

"Sounds familiar," I said and took a big bite out of my lunch.

"It's about these club kids in the city and one of them kills the other. Macaulay Culkin’s in it."

"Oh yeah. Yeah. I know what you mean."

This simple back and forth started a rather fast and deep routine. Every day at about 11:30 Cindi would come find me, we'd punch out and head off to our restaurant together. We were only supposed to take thirty minutes for lunch, but often found ourselves deep in conversation- oblivious to time and everything else around us- nearly an hour later.

Drinking and Drawing

Gershwin Hotel lobby at 7pm. Lots of people awkwardly milling around not exactly sure what to be doing- to talk to the other people around or concentrate more on the art- and mostly concentrating on the free glasses of wine. Mariana's boyfriend was the featured artist of the exhibit and after a handful of people that I used to work with showed up we spent a couple of hours talking, catching up and taking full advantage of the free wine.

After a couple hours of that we went to Live Bait, a little bar/restaurant on 23rd and 5th that's set up like some kinda southern crab shack. The Guinnesses were only $6 and the pulled pork sandwich was delicious. George, Will, Brian, his girlfriend Katie and I spent a lot more time talking about film and life and chicks and such, then eventually the party had to break up.

Except for George, Brian, Katie, Lucy (George's friend) and myself who stumbled around the area 'til we found another bar, this one a little Irish pub called the Limerick House where we kept talking about films and such. Around 3ish we called it a night and headed back to our respective pads.