"Of Rats and Men" Production Blog #4

Sorry it took a while. Here’s the recap for Sunday.

Sometime late, late Saturday night I got a really bad headache. I’ve been trying to quit drinking sodas for a little while now, but can’t go a day without caffeine without getting a really intense migraine. I really didn’t need to have a headache all day, so myself and young Trenton struck out at about 3 AM to score some caffeine, despite having no idea where we were going. Eventually, we ran across a 24-hour CVS right next to a Huddle House. After we noshed on shitty diner burgers, we headed back to the house where we were filming, and spent the rest of the night chilling (literally, because it was too hot inside) in my car, and listening to an episode of Never Not Funny (a hilarious podcast hosted by genius comedian Jimmy Pardo). The podcast ended at exactly 6:00 (on the dot), right as the food, provided by the wonderful Stephanie Norton, arrived and Kaminski came outside to meet her. After breakfast, we started shooting.

As with Saturday, we again had to rush to get everything with Diane and Steve out of the way, so they could be wrapped by 10:30. And again, we managed to wrap them just in time. We started off with the final scene in the film, a fun scene to shoot for me, because I didn’t have a whole lot to do. So, I spent the entire scene doodling on a sheet of paper, which I hope Kaminski can find and post up here, but I don’t imagine he will do soon, because it is supposed to be a testimonial, which I wrote in character (for no reason) and it is full of spoilers.

After that, we went around and finished up all of the scenes that had Steve and Diane, and we sent them on their merry way, to be brilliant somewhere else. The last scene we shot with Diane was in the garage, which was hotter than the rest of the house (and possibly even Hell) and was an extreme hassle for all involved, but especially Craig and I in our jump suits. But whereas I was a whiny little bitch, and ran out to get some air every time we cut, Craig persisted and hung in there like a champ.

After we left the furnace, I made myself scarce while Trent and Steven shot a couple of scenes outdoors. To be completely honest, I have no idea exactly what happened in these scenes, and I’d like for it to stay that way until the premiere. I like there to be some surprises when I watch the final product. It’s no fun watching a movie for the first time and knowing every single thing that’s gonna happen before it happens, so I always like to be elsewhere while certain scenes that I’m not in are being shot. Lucky for me (and maybe the viewer too), there were a lot more scenes that I wasn’t in in this film as opposed to Tim and Katie, which had such a tiny cast that we all had to be there for pretty much everything.

As I said before, we had to recast Chris into the “Vernon” role, which made the scene he had already shot, a hilarious soap opera spoof, unusable. So, everyone was really excited that our original choice for “Vernon,” Mr. Jan Lefrançois-Gijzen was able to come in and make a small cameo in that re-shot scene, along with his girlfriend, Katie Causey. Given such a quick scene to shoot (it only took about 10 minutes) Jan and Katie really brought the funny in a big (and sometimes uncomfortable) way.

After the soap scene, we shot what was the funniest, craziest, most high energy scene to shoot for the entire project. It takes place in the climax of the story, and features myself, Steven, Craig, Dasha, Chris, Trent in full-on Billy Hutton mode, guns, a rat costume, a lot of screaming, and a LOT of insanity all going on at the same time. It was intense. I’ve never been a part of insanity such as this in my life. I can’t wait to see how this scene looks on the screen, because it was a blast to shoot. There are a few scenes that I am really excited to see how Jerry cuts them together, and this is one of those.

Unfortunately, I was wrapped after that scene, along with Steven and Trent. Trent and I had to head out early so that we could drop Matt off at another gig. Jerry filled in on sound for the final couple of scenes. The first marked the return of Lake to do his final scene with Dasha. Everyone was nervous because it was starting to look like rain, and Lake was running behind because he was coming from North Carolina, where he was doing another shoot. Just before he got there, it stopped raining just long enough for them to shoot the scene, which I hear went really well. Then, the cast and crew packed up, waved goodbye to the house (I’m guessing that part, like I said, I wasn’t there), and headed over to the final location where Craig and Richard Hoard reportedly knocked it out of the park in a matter of minutes. I got the call just after I got home that we filming had been completed.

So, that’s that. It’s a wrap, as they say. Principle photography is completed on “Of Rats and Men.” I think we managed to do something that is interesting and a lot more diverse than any of our past projects, but it still has the core of what makes it a KREJ film. There has been talk of shooting an extra scene or two, nothing crucial, just a couple things to bring everything full circle story-wise, but we haven’t officially decided whether or not to do so. For the most part, we managed to shoot everything we set out to shoot as planned, and in a lot of places, things turned out WAY funnier than we expected. That’s what you get when you hire great talent.

On that note, I’ll go ahead and admit it, we got lucky. We somehow managed to pull together an amazing cast and crew for this film. If it wasn’t for some of the stuff we’ve been doing outside of KREJ (improv, acting classes, etc.), we wouldn’t have never met most of these incredibly talented people that we had the immense pleasure of working with on “Of Rats and Men.” I would like to take this time to thank everybody that was involved in some capacity or another, alphabetically or course (sorry Craig). Here goes:

Matthew Aschberger
Nick Bilz
Brenda Breedon
Katie Causey
Diane Dicker
Brett Grueber
Richard Hoard
Johnnie Holland
Keegan Ingram
Dasha Jordan
Jeff Kaminski
Carla Larson
Jan Lefrancois-Gijzen
Matt Levy
Regina Nicole
Stephanie Norton
Melissa Owens
Chris Parsons
Steve Pryor
Kelley Roark
Lake Roberts
Hakim Robinson
Trolle Selander
Steven Teuchert
Trent Whitmire
Craig Zeiss

I don’t think I forgot anybody, but if I did, I’m really sorry. Keep checking in, because we will be announcing when the premiere of “Of Rats and Men” will be as soon as we set a date, and hopefully, since we’re done with shooting, we can start blogging again soon.

-Grantzy