KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid (I didn't)

Carlo Fiorletta & Tara Westwood in Detours

I learned a lot from making my first feature, Surviving Family.  I swore that I wouldn't repeat the same mistakes on my 2nd feature, Detours.  I didn't.

I love the cast of Surviving Family (you can see the full list HERE), and there's no one who I would get rid of.  But when I wrote the screenplay, I put a lot of actors into many different scenes in many different locations.  This created major logistical challenges (working with the actors' schedules, transporting them from place to place, and - not the least of the problems - blocking the scenes).  I promised myself that I wouldn't make that mistake in my next feature.  I didn't.  But I created new production challenges instead.

Detours is a road trip movie:  a newly single New Yorker (played by Tara Westwood) must re-locate to Florida for her dream job.  She travels south with her widowed dad (Carlo Fiorletta), her mom's ashes in a coffee can, and a GPS with a mind of his own (played by the delightful Craig Wollman).

On the plus side,  I DID limit how many scenes each each actor is in.  We put together a wonderful cast, including TONY award winners Michael Cerveris and Richard Kind, and iconic Italian-American actor Paul Sorvino.   Each one is only in a couple of scenes, and they truly shine in those scenes.  But it's a damn ROAD movie.  Which means you need to (a) shoot car scenes and (b) move from point to point and show it.  There is nothing - and I mean NOTHING - simple about shooting a road movie.

Is Detours good?  Absolutely - it's terrific and people will love it.  It's a fun story about a father and daughter, starting over, and falling in love.  It has great actors and wonderful music (more on that another day).  But if you'd like a look inside the challenges of shooting a road movie, here's a behind-the-scenes look:

Writing Truth Within Fiction

Surviving Family is fiction inspired by real life.  So nothing is literally true but many of the stories in the movie come from things that happened to people I know.

My mother's family was populated by alcoholics:  some were charming even (especially?) when drunk.  Others were angry and belligerent.  All were unreliable.  There's a scene in the movie where Terry's dad doesn't show up for her wedding - yeah, that happened.

When I was a kid, my best friend's mom used to scream and throw dishes at her husband, for reasons that no one could quite understand.  He would stand out of range and quietly ask her to stop because they couldn't afford to keep buying new dishes.  This became the inspiration for much of the character Lucia Giaccone (played by Lorraine Farris).

Check out this clip from the movie  - it features Phyllis Somerville as the wise and wonderful Aunt Mary, Sarah Wilson in the lead role of Terry Malone, Tara Westwood as her sister Jean, and Bill Sage as Lucia's husband Jerry.  In the flashback portion of the clip, Stevie Steel and Carleigh Chirico can be seen cowering on the stairs as the child versions of Jean and Terry, as their mom Lucia literally clears the table onto their dad.

A brief Introduction....

I'm a NJ-based writer & producer, with my 2nd feature - Detours - ALMOST done with post-production.  I'm very excited to get it finished soon.  But as any indie filmmaker will tell you - you're not done when it's done.  You've just moved on to phase 35.  Or is it 36?

I'll be writing more - much more - about Detours very soon.  But first a little about my first feature - Surviving Family.  It's a romantic drama - with a dose of comedy - about alcoholism, mental illness, suicide, and love.  And garden gnomes.  Not necessarily in that order.

The most amazing thing - for me - about writing & producing a movie that takes on subjects that are often taboo is learning just how many people are directly affected by these issues.  A stunning number of people have told me that it's their story or their family's story or their friend's story.   And that is damn cool.

Click HERE for the Surviving Family website, with links to watch the trailers & rent/buy on Amazon Prime or iTunes.

And here are a few of my favorite images - Billy Magnussen as Alex D'Amico + our poster, featuring photos of Sarah Wilson (left) and Tara Westwood as sisters, plus (left to right) Vinnie Pastore, Billy Magnussen, Bill Sage, Johnny Hopkins, and Phyllis Somerville.

Billy Magnussen in Surviving Family