SPIRITEUR diary

Once Kimberly and I had set up the locations and estimated the proper time to get into it - the second and third week of October - I had to make sure the actors and crew were in place.

This part wasn't so hard. SPIRITEUR only has basically four main actors, and three of them (Neti Leddell, Daniel Van Thomas, Les Mahoney) would be returning from Dirty Red Hands. Les put me in touch in Dana Hayes who agreed to jump on board, and who, after our first meeting, I knew was totally MONGREL and just right to collaborate with.

Having great actors is essential to making a good MONGREL movie. Since you don't have any money for fancy FX or production value (or lights), you need to have strong actors who can work quickly and are ready to deal with all sorts of strange conditions and sudden changes. If you've worked with people before who are this good, you really have to try to keep with working with them because they're worth their weight in gold. Bad actors will flake and not be prepared, and both of those things will kill your MONGREL movie. For the team of actors I was lucky enough to collaborate with on SPIRITEUR I will happily change huge parts of future scripts (during my Hollywood tenure I wrote about fifteen specs, the majority of which were deemed "too" something to try to sell), just to showcase their talents.

MONGREL movies are based on the punk rock garage band ethos. Get a small group and bang exciting shit out. With HD and guerrilla insight you don't need a forty person cast and crew. All you need are really good people, and it helps if they're multi talented. Daniel Van Thomas is also an amazing graphic artist, and has done all the posters and fliers for us. Neti and Dana are both really talented musicians. Dirty Red Hands was lucky enough to feature one of Neti's songs. We're planning on having Neti and Dana both do more extensive music for SPIRITEUR. Ed Joyce directs and does his own DP - better than anyone else I've ever worked with. As well as writing and producing and cheerleading I hold the boom mic when I can't get anyone else to. MONGREL is all about making art you love and collaborating. Working with multi talented people only makes the process more rich and rewarding and inspiring.

The hardest part of scheduling is finding time when all the actors are free, since paying day jobs and gigs always come first. This is why the last two MONGREL movies have both basically been shot over the course of two three-day weekends. Most traditional movie shoots are at least twenty or so days long. When you're shooting guerrilla I think anything over ten is a serious risk. Dirty Red Hands was shot in 5 days. The SPIRITEUR shoot all told will be approximately 8 days.