Bitter/Sweet

About the making of Bitter/Sweet

O ne of the things that's been a staple in my films is they usually involve very large casts - even the short ones. The reason is quite simple, I like to hear what people say and love to write quick scenes where we get in, tell the joke and get out. Bitter/Sweet was a film where I kept my own rule and kind of broke it as well. We have a lot of quick scenes, a lot of characters, a lot of laughs, but I also included scenes that last several minutes. When I was writing the script I was just having so much fun learning about the characters that I kept the scenes going.

When I started writing Bitter/Sweet I had no idea what story I was telling, or how many characters would be in it, or anything about anything other than I was writing a movie for Ruby Sketchley and Aliciya Angel. I served on the board of directors of California Film Arts Alliance (CFAA) with Ruby and had wanted to work with her, and I had just finished working with Aliciya on Meow! and wanted a chance to work together again. So I decided to write a script for both of them.

The very first words I wrote were: "I can tell you the very minute I became middle-aged..." and then the rest of the script kind of just wrote itself. I'm not sure how long it took me to write (with the many drafts it was probably two months), but I think I wrote the first draft in a matter of days. It was a real fun experience. And one of the biggest differences between this script and the previous short and feature film scripts, is I allowed my humor to be mean all the way around (usually it's directed at the beta male character), but here it's kind of directed at everyone ... and I don't pull any punches.

I was very fortunate with the cast who agreed to appear in this film. They are many of the best actors I have worked with ... and that's saying a lot because I've had the opportunity to work with many talented actors in Sacramento. The first scene I shot in Bitter/Sweet was during the flashback and fantasy sequences with Lori (Kat Monda), which we shot before the script reading ... okay that's a little backwards, but since there was no dialogue and both Kat and Aliciya were going to be at my apartment for the table read anyway, I figured might as well kill two birds with one stone. So I had some other actors show up just to be in the scene with Kat and we had two scenes wrapped before the official filming even began.

To this day Meow! was the hardest film to shoot, but this one was definitely the most grueling. We had some long days because of the number of characters per scene and the amount of dialogue. When filming a movie you shoot the wide shots, the medium shots, the reaction shots, and the close-ups. Well, that's a lot of shooting for when what seems like a third of the film takes place in a living room with 6 characters and tons of dialogue.