"Thats
impossible" I said.
"Right.
Want to do it?" Mark replied.
I agreed.
I like a challenge. So I went over to talk to Denise who turned
out to be a very attractive redhead with a super smile. She was
a respatory therapist but wanted to make movies. And Denise
wasn't only pretty, she was smart too.
I
can't remember all the details but I remember that we shot it
mostly with Bolexs. It was plus-X and Tri-X,
black-and-white. (In case you didn't know plus-X is a super fine
grain daylight film stock and Tri-X was a bit grainer but still
an excellent high speed night stock. Today the new film stocks
are so damn sharp and with such fine grain if you shoot Super 16
and blow-up to 35mm it looks almost like you shot in 35mm to
begin with.)
The
opening of NIGHT SHIFT has actor Jay Andriani (KISS OF MEDUSA,
INVASION FOR FLESH AND BLOOD) reading a book in a house near a
fireplace in the dead of night. He slowly grows tired and falls
asleep. This scene was filmed at Denise's house.
We shot
scenes in a cemetery with Denise playing the robbed and hooded
white faced ghoul moving amongst the headstones, then shifted to
my backyard for the rest of the shooting.
She had in
the script that the ghouls were burying bodies wrapped and
tied in sheets.
I thought
it would be cool to have a shot from in the grave looking up as
they dumped the bodies at the camera. So we built, in the
shape of a dug grave, this mini house of 4 walls and when a body
was to be dumped into the grave I was in this fake grave
shooting up and the ghoul was on a high ladder level with the
top of this fake grave throwing the sheet covered body down at
me.
When
the "Dreamer" enters this dream and watches the ghouls
from hiding, he accidentily makes a "snap" sound
stepping on a twig and all the ghouls stop and look at him. He
tries to run but is grabbed and drug to the grave and thrown in.
I put a sheet of glass so dirt wouldn't get on the camera and
had a ghoul shovel dirt down at me from his ladder post.As the
dirt hit the glass, I cut to Jay bolting upright back at
Denise's house and figuring out quick it was just a bad dream.
Angry, he throws the book into the fireplace fire and as it
burns he gets up.
I suddenly
zoom in on his shocked face and then cut to a ghoul stepping
foward from a dark corner of the room. Another grabs him from
behind. One ghoul quickly raises a big knife and stabs him. At
the crunch sound of the blade entering his chest, I cut to black
screen and the credits.
It was a
cute little weird thing that reminded me vaguely of the first
Amicus movie made in 1959 called CITY OF THE DEAD (AKA HORROR
HOTEL) with Christopher Lee. I always enjoyed that
witchcraft movie and this had that same feeling to it. I have no
idea if CITY OF THE DEAD was Denise's inspiration or
not.
The
resulting movie called NIGHT SHIFT was played on Manhatten Cable
maybe 125 times. It was short enough and inoffensive enough that
it was used as filler alot. I really didn't get any
positive feedback as to whether people liked it or not, but if
they thought it sucked I'm sure they wouldn't have aired it that
many times.
One funny
thing I do remember was the night we shot the ghouls grabbing
Jay and throwing him in the grave. In all the filming up to that
point Jay had a beard, but he shaved it off before coming to the
shoot that night.
"Jay,
where the hell is your beard!!??!" I said politely :o) .
"Just
do an effect, y'know?" he responded.
I ended up
shredding a wig and using vasoline to attach a fake beard to Jay
which worked but was a rush emergency kind of thing I would have
done right if I had the time. You never know where the next
problem is going to come from and alot of making movies is
coming up with fast answers to sudden problems that keep you
shooting.
Denise and
I fell in love during the filming and it was intense for awhile
and there was even talk of marriage and looking at rings but the
idea of me having to quit doing the movies and work for her
father and she already had a house picked out gave me alot of
second thoughts and I broke off with her.
She was a
very nice person and the split was friendly I think. She ended
up, I was told, in Florida married to a doctor.
I have
never married and I think one of the reasons is I never found a
woman who was truly supportive of my goals. It always, not
matter what they said at the beginning, ended up with them
asking me to quit making movies and take any job and support
them and be an average nobody, another brick in the wall. Thats
too high a price to pay for me. The quickest way to end a
relationship with me is to expect me to give up making movies.
As I said, making movies is part of who I am. I really hate the
word, but I am an artist. "Artist" sounds so
pretentious!
