Working With Police on Film Sets | Rolling Tape interview

I had the pleasure of being interviewed earlier this week by Forris Day Jr. for his podcast Rolling Tape. We had a terrific discussion about working with police on film sets, which I did for both of my features: Surviving Family and DETOURS. We discussed the differing experiences in Jersey City and Ocean County, NJ, shooting with a process trailer (check out some great shots of that), and the police officer who let us use his house as a location.

It was a fun interview to do, and hopefully it will take a little bit of the mystery out of something that many low-budget filmmakers find intimidating.

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: