Wanna Make a Movie???

And action!

So you wanna make a movie? Being a first time director of a low-budget film, I can pretty much guarantee you have no idea what you're in for. I know I didn't. And as you can imagine, hilarity, fear, and utter craziness ensued, but in the end, we were able to make a pretty cool film.

How did it all start? That's a great question. Well, I was born in.. .never mind. We don't need to go back that far. Let's just say I've been in the software sales business since I got out of college, but I didn't grow up saying "Geez, Ma! When I grow up, I wanna be a Software Salesman" because everyone knows that software salesmen are super cool and get all the chicks. Nope. I grew up wanting to be in film. But that's a tough gig. So I got a real job because that's what you do.

I always fancied myself a creative guy, so while I held down my first software job, I was in a band playing bass and writing songs for a number of years, but we never made it. I did get to play at some cool places like The Stone Pony, The Troubadour, The Viper Room, etc., but playing in cool places doesn't pay the bills, so once I hit 30, I had to give it up. Good thing I always kept the software gig. But the creative juices didn't get turned off, so I turned back to my first love, which was movies.

I wrote my first script which was awful, then my next which wasn't as awful, and eventually I was hired to write my first script. For $100! Didn't matter how much it was for because I was now a professional screenwriter! Nothing ever happened with that script, but I had the bug.

Fast forward a couple of years and after having one of my scripts made with a friend of mine (Choice Skinner—Director of Wingman, Inc.), I decided I wanted to direct a script myself. I never went to film school, but I watched Choice direct so I figured I could do it. How hard could it be? Right? Right?!?! So I had an idea for a script, wrote it along with an actor I knew, and off we went. Of course, when it was time to shoot, they all tried to talk me out of it. "You might want to let someone else direct." "You sure you want to do this?" Um, yeah. I'm pretty sure.

Anyway, we wound up making a pretty solid movie called Bad Frank (shameless plug—it's on Amazon Prime, iTunes, Hulu, etc.). We got some good reviews, won some awards, etc.

Now I don't know how much I had to do with it, but I thought I did okay. Especially since we made the thing on my days off from my actually paying job. (You read that correctly. For writing/directing/producing this film, I got paid 0, nada, zilch, bupkiss, but I'd do it all again in a heartbeat.) Good enough that I went on to make another one, but that's a story for another day.

And scene! Moving on. On Set stories coming up next.

Poster for My First Movie - 'Bad Frank'