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by Rusty White
Where did the title come from?
We had a piece of paper with a list of scenes we wanted to put in. At
first the title was "Our Town: Not the Play." Then the waitress brought us
the menus and Mark just said "Friday's Menu." I said, "That'll work." We were
just sitting there and it hit Mark. He's an artist so things just hit him a
certain way. We got the whole idea. We wanted to weave through the town with
what these two guys were doing. The script became very large. We cut it down
and we cut it down. We started shooting the first three scenes we shot we cut
because we kept losing actors and we needed them later. It's a shame because
there is a scene of me in my boxer shorts we're never going to get to see.
That's a shame. You can save for the sequel.
I don't think so, me and my boxer shorts need to stay out of it.
There are some scenes with the residents of Bond Street (a couple of
winos). That's you isn't it. Is that Mark playing the other wino?
Yeah.
I noticed one scene where you are filming the winos but we hear the
conversation between JP and Ricky. Was that some kind of symbolic statement?
We cut to the bums a lot. They are two characters who never leave the
dumpster. They have these ridiculous conversations. They believe that Reagan
was still president. They couldn't believe you could get food at Walmart. All
kinds of crazy stuff. We had this long 15 minute dialogue, but no one told
use you can't record dialogue next to a big air conditioning unit!
EI and RH laugh uncontrollably.
So we had all this footage of sitting there dressed up in these dirty ass
clothes. Ended up during the editing I'd say to Rusty, "Damn we need
something to cut to." We'll cut to the bums. We just cut into the bums. After
a while it became some kind of a joke. "Let's stick the bums in there."
I didn't know if you were trying to make some comment about JP and Ricky.
(laughing) Yeah, it was all a subliminal comment on how Ricky and JP were
going to end up.
At this point film editor Rusty Herring joins in.
Rusty Herring: What it is, is that there are two ways to learn something. You can read
the book, go out and do it and read between the lines, or you can go out and
make all the mistakes you can and back into the right way to do it. That's
what they've done on this. That's a lot quicker way to learn.
Jeremy Benson: You go out and you fuck up as much as you can and you say, "Ah, I won't
do that again."
Rusty Herring: You will only have to learn that lesson once. You may have to read the
book 4 or 5 times.
Jeremy Benson: Yeah, I've got a notebook at home called "Fuckups Not To Make Again."
"Must have lights! Must have camera! Must have somebody operating camera!"
The look of the film is real impressive. When we talked on the phone you
told me that this was done on Super VHS. I'll admit that I had a preconceived
notion coming into the film. It opens in color but the rest is Black and
White. Is that because it is a dream?
Jeremy Benson: It has a lot to do with the fact that I'm a big fan of "Clerks." I told
Mark that I wanted the dream sequence in color and the rest in black in
white. It's kind of backwards from reality because your dreams are black and
white and reality is in color. It does change back to color at the end
when....
Don't tell me the ending. I'm looking forward to seeing the whole thing
on the big screen.
Jeremy Benson: It changes back to color at a pivotal spot.
Rusty Herring: When the story comes back full circle....
Jeremy Benson: You get a piece of color which ties the movie up.
What I was impressed by was, well, a lot of the movie is shot outside at
night. The images are crisp and clear. You're shooting in cars, outside of
cars. Just the small things. For example, there is a scene when Kelly and
Ginger are walking to their car before they leave to go to the movie theater.
They are lit, but the background is dark like it should be. Was this trial
and error, because they stayed lit as they moved? You don't see flood lights
lighting up the whole yard. This is impressive for an experienced filmmaker,
much less a first time filmmaker.
Jeremy Benson: That has a lot to do with being at Denny's at 2 in the morning with
William (William Chambers III). We would follow the shooting schedule. We'd
do Mark and Rezia on Tuesday nights, Jim and Jacob on Wednesday nights,
Thursday was Ginger and Shannyn, Friday nights we'd try to take off and
Saturday was Travis and Wallace. Tuesday night after we would get done
shooting Mark and Rezia, we would go home and watch the footage. We'd make
sure everything was all right. We didn't always check the audio which was a
bitch when we got in here (the editing studio). We'd watch everything, and
then Will would complain that he was hungry, so I'd run him over to Denny's
and I would go over with him what we were going to shoot the next day. I'd
tell him "We'll be walking from the house. I want the camera to move this way
and we're going to have to keep them lit." So he would come up with different
ways to light it. The boy's a genius when it comes to rigging something. For
the scene you were talking about, he had a florescent light, square, he taped
it to a large stick. Mark walked right in front of them with the light. Ricky
walked with the boom mike and I had the camera.
 CONTINUE INTERVIEW (Part III)
Rusty White
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