The Fox Force Five

Well, let me start by saying that I have been a buffoon for not paying attention. I have been so stressed lately for I haven’t completely cast my project and it’s next month! Anyway, the point is I sort of forgot to go back to nowcasting.com and check for submissions. I am super ultra busy and it just sort of slipped out of my head. If you can make through this diatribe, then you are an amazing person and you are probably someone that can work with me. What I mean is someone that can deal with my personality, not saying that “you are good enough.” It’s not like I am some god director. I am just a guy with a vision, a dream and a knack for telling interesting stories. For whatever reason, I can’t write a novel. I can write full screenplays in weeks, but no novels. Anyway, this message will be very long, so if you can’t make it past here, then please stop and go on with your life. If you think you can make, then read on and maybe you will want to join my project.

First, about me, I am a 32 year old white guy that found a knack for spinning yarns back around the time I left college, I mean quit. I always thought it would be neat to get into movies, but never saw a way. As I watched more movies and found that I really had an interest (Shawshank Redemption was probably the turning point), I searched for ways to get into movies without movie to LA (like many people from NorCal, I hate LA) or going to film school (more on school in a bit). Somewhere along the way I learned about film festivals being a way for “nobodies” to get into the industry. Ah, but how does one fund a film project. Though I had heard about the movie Clerks, I hadn’t watched it, but then I took a look and realized, “I can do that.” Well, maybe not make such a great comedy, but get some guys together and shoot a movie. Well, this was around 1997, so it’s been a while and I have been talking to friends about this for so long that some are like, “Yeah, sure Joe, you are making a movie…” One of the things that held me back was I was stuck on visualizing a story I wrote back in 1992 that is quite short and I wanted to make that into a movie and I still do, but when I finally got around to writing a screenplay for that a few years ago, it somehow wound up half animated (Stephen King says that we don’t write the stories, but they write themselves, we are just conduits). Animation and low budget don’t go together. So, up to last January, I had either written or started three screenplays, but nothing was complete. Then, I had an epiphany, I thought, “no one has made a movie where every character dies. Well, at least I haven’t seen one anyway. There is always someone that survives, even in those slasher flicks or disaster movies, someone always survives.” So, in the span of the next three weeks, yes only three weeks, I took a concept and wrote a feature length, sorta, screenplay. It’s now in it’s fourth form, but movies are almost always morphing into something else, right? Anyway, then I had the problem of how do I pay for this? Wouldn’t have been such a problem had I not met a girl in Japan back in 2002 and over the last three years the relationship has blossomed into what will be a lifelong commitment starting with me moving to Japan for a  year or two, and then her coming here. That’s a long story and it could make this message two to three times longer. This is already very long and I am not even close to being finished. Anyway, in the last two and whatever years I have been to Japan five times and she has been here once. These trips are quite pricey. Since I hadn’t finished school, I couldn’t move to Japan since you need a University degree to get a visa in Japan. So, last summer, basically giving up on my project, I started back to school, which I hate. I am quite talented with computers, so I am getting a pretty useless, for my future anyway, degree in computers. The classes are too easy and quite boring, but it still eats up my time, just like my full time job. I work nights in the security department of a Satellite manufacturer in Palo Alto. It’s this job I was offered last September that has made this possible. It was a 70% raise over what I was making before and now I can do this. YeeHaw, or as Homer would say, “woohoo!” Anyway, what’s all this about? I just want you to know that I am a regular guy making his first, probably of many, movie. Maybe this will scare you away, it has scared others away, but don’t forget that Kevin Smith made that comedy I mentioned earlier in much the same way after dropping out of film school. I guess you could say he is “educated,” but I don’t know if starting counts. You could say I am just as educated as a journalist and accountant since I was both majors during my first stint in college. Anyway, my point is that you don’t have to go to film school to make movies. Some of the greatest filmmakers of all time didn’t go to film school, like Hitchcock, Orson Welles and Kubrick, though they are guys from the early and earlier days and film schools weren’t so prevalent. I believe that my “calling” is to be an entertainer and my medium is movies. I think I can carve a little niche in the movie industry just for me, though mind you I said little. I am one that truly fears fame, so I don’t want to be a Spielberg or Eastwood. Anyway, enough about me. Let’s talk about my project.

Okay, in January, 2004 I had an epiphany, the story I mentioned above. This happened while I was driving to work. I remember this moment very vividly as if it were yesterday, not just over a year ago. I then came up with a title, no plot or story yet at that time, but the title “Sometimes Everybody Dies.” I know that I will probably change that, but I thought the slug line, “Sometimes people cheat. Sometimes people find out. Sometimes everybody dies,” was a bit catchy, no? I know it gives away what happens, but I think it’s still intriguing. We all knew the ship was going to sink, but we still watched Titanic, no? Though, that’s a memory I would like to lose. Anyway, I proceeded to write the screenplay in the next three weeks, faster than I have ever written anything. If you haven’t written a screenplay, then please don’t scoff at that timeframe, it really is fast (that’s more my shock than trying to pat myself on the back). My first screenplay took several months and I had already written the story for that one many years before, so that should have gone faster. Well, so there I was with this screenplay that I really liked and no money. So, I gave up and thought about going back to school, which I did in June, so I could move to Japan. But, in August I was given the opportunity to work where I am now at $20k per year higher pay, give or take. Well, at that point, I was a bit perturbed because I realized that I would be able to finally achieve my dream, but I had this school thing that was eating my time. I know I could quit, but I will be done in August, so that would be a stupid waste of money. Oops, sorry, I’ll get back to the movie now. In this movie, there are a few story lines. The first one is Beth and George, two coworkers having a nice sexual relationship. The problem is that they are cheating on people that they live with, Bud and Gabrielle (alliteration is intentional). Bud was originally a beer chugging moron, then he was a software engineer and now he’s a guitar player. Originally, I was going to play that part, but then a friend was going to play the part, but he had to back out do to a serious illness in his family. I believed he has more than enough talent to play the guitar player and then become the short lived psycho, but now that’s me and he will still be writing the music, which he is working on now. So, this adds a whole new stress back to my plan, but let’s get on with the story. On one fine evening Bud notices something and figures out that this woman he loves and has been working so hard to make a good life for, through recording a great album, has been cheating on him. He loses it and kills her and goes on a mini rampage before he is killed by a security guard on his lunch break with his coworker at a fast food joint. Along the way he kills a nun who rear-ends him while driving, talking on her cell phone and holding her little pooch in her lap, the staff of the FF joint (two guys) and all the clientele (three women and two guys) and a mime in the wrong place at the wrong time. On this same night, six guys get together for their monthly poker night. One guy has a bit of temper and doesn’t like to lose. After losing all his money on this fine night, he disappears to his room (poker night is at his house), only to return and shoot each person at the table accusing them of cheating. Also, on this same night, is when Gabrielle is planning the murder of her cheating boyfriend. She has developed a fixation on the knife she recently bought and enjoys such things as slicing some ham for a sandwich, yes that’s in the movie, plus lots of buffing and shining. It will all make sense if you read the screenplay. So, she kills George in a gory mess, while having sex, no less. She then tries to stage an, “Oh my god, my boyfriend was murdered,” with her across the street neighbor, who happens to be Gary, the guy who lost it and killed the “cheating” poker players (they aren’t cheating; it’s just what he thinks). So, when she goes over to his place, he shoots her. It’s after this that the two security guards from the FF joint happen to drive by and notice a guy holding a gun standing over what appears to be a dead woman. So, they stop and Gary shoots the first SG while the other hunkers on the other side of their vehicle. When SG #2 jumps to shoot Gary, he does but he wasn’t thinking and Gary shoots him simultaneously. Boom, they are both dead. Sometimes everybody dies. That’s the point of my movie, all the people that appear on camera will not just die, but violently. I am not a pro-violence person, but I have been watching slasher flicks since I was pretty young, so gore doesn’t affect me like it does other people. I am not meaning to make a horror movie, just a drama with flair or panache if you want to look cool. Not quite a shoot ‘em up actioner either. Nor is it a porno. There are a few sex scenes, but they don’t need to be pornographic, though some of the dialogue is. My object here is to punch people in the nose. I want people to not just notice my movie, but remember it. Would people remember Reservoir Dogs if not for the extreme amount of blood? Tim Roth is a little guy and he must have bled a good four to six gallons of blood while waiting for the cavalry. Yes, I am a fan of Tarantino, but I don’t want to be him. I don’t want to be any famous or not so famous director, I just want to be me, Joe Bittner, or, Joseph Bittner, depending upon what I am doing.

I hope you have noticed something in this email, well, several things really. First, I am an open and honest person, sometimes too honest. I’m fat, I know and it’s just reality, though I have been fighting it for a while and going up and down. I have promised myself that I won’t be another fat director, but it seems I will fail that for my first movie, oh well. Anyway, also, I enjoy talking to people and I treat all people the same. If you are a retard sitting in the corner picking your nose or the President or Rene Russo, then I will treat you the same. We are all people who eat, breath, shit and bleed the same as all others. Skin color, religion, education level don’t affect how I look at people. I get annoyed by intelligent stupidity, but that’s another story, and I can’t stand cigarette smoke, no really, I mean I really hate cigarette smoke in a way that’s far beyond normal. I feel like people are urinating in my face. It’s that bad to me, or maybe more like someone is reaching inside my chest and choking me, squeezing my lungs with some giant hand, not that I have an opinion or anything. Here is what I still need:

Bud – Me (with goatee and contacts)

Beth – unknown or Jessica Hanson (nudity may be required or partial)

George – unknown (partial nudity required)

Gabrielle – Jessica Hanson or Judy Cerda

Nun – Judy Cerda or uknown

Poker night

Gary – unknown

Seth –Antonio Sarabia

Enrique – Pedro Quinonez

Jack – unknown (maybe Mario Carrasco)

Joe – Me (without goatee and glasses)

Bob – unknown

FF joint

Sam (SG 1) – Thomas Bluhm

Jim (SG 2) – Scott Howard

FF worker 1 – Isaac Cullinan

FF worker 2 – unknown (maybe Joe something)

Five victims – Housemates and others

Mime – unknown

I have readings on Sunday and Wednesday to make certain that some of the above are going to be what I hope. If you are a talented guitar player and want to read for Bud and decrease my stress, then that would be good, but I may be very picky about that. Please let me know if you are interested in any of the roles and if you want to work with a  screwy guy that will be making his first movie without fallowing all the supposed proper ways of making a movie. I hoping for Sundance and believe that my movie can make it, even though they receive about 6000 entries a year, though I am sure many of those are shorts. Thank you if you have read this far and please send an email as soon as possible so that we can set up a reading time. Thank you.

(He signed his name here but I'm omitting it for his sake)

Writer, Director, Producer, Casting Director, Actor, Student, oh, and a really nice guy too.

P.S. my days that I am available for readings Sunday evenings and all day Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday morning. Thank you.

P.P.S. My crew is full, though it might be nice if someone is an explosives expert. Thanks.

His second email to me:

P.P.P.S. I say thank you alot because my girlfriend is Japanese and it's a huge part of their culture. So, I say thank you again. Smile.