I'm the writer & producer of the feature movies "DETOURS," which is available exclusively on Amazon Prime, and "Surviving Family," which is available on iTunes & Amazon Prime.
I blog about indie filmmaking, writing, and occasionally something tangentially related.
We had a great screening of DETOURS on September 18 at the Strand Theater in Lakewood, NJ - it was a terrific return to one of the Ocean County locations where we shot back in October 2014. The team at the Strand was wonderful, both then and now, and I hope to have the opportunity to work with them again.
The crowd included a lot of our wonderful extras, and I was so glad to see that they really enjoyed the movie. It was such fun to actually HEAR when people recognized themselves on the screen.
Photos:
Top left: Actress Celia Schaefer, director Rob McCaskill, stars/producers Tara Westwood and Carlo Fiorletta, me, and actor Craig Wollman.
Center: Stars and producers Tara Westwood and Carlo Fiorletta
Bottom: Carlo Fiorletta taking photos with our extras in the lobby of the Strand before the screening
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:
