Meow!

About the making of Meow!

When it was announced that the year's "Creative Inspirations" contest theme for the Sacramento Film & Music Festival was to create a movie trailer, my first thought was "musical." When I emailed a number of my actress friends to see who would be interested in doing a musical, every single one said she would be. Every. Single. One.

So I knew I had to write a short musical film with a large cast. And then while I was still thinking about doing it, I met Aliciya Angel at an open audition for the 48 Hour Film Festival. She told the person running the audition that she was a singer, so he asked her to give us a sample. I introduced myself to her because she could sing, had a wonderful look and had a certain chemistry. Although we didn't work together on the 48 Hour Film (I created Terror Detectives and she was in her own film with another director), after it was over I told her I was going to go forward with the musical trailer (I think I had mentioned I was thinking about when we met) and asked if she'd be interested. She was.

I started writing the script and what I had written just didn't sit well with me. It was too foul to be funny. I had the concept and I didn't sway from it, but the songs were dirty just for the sake of being dirty (and to me that isn't funny). I was lying in bed, unable to sleep, when in the middle of the night a line hit me, so I got up and wrote what pretty much is the movie in a couple of hours. I tweaked it here and there, but I took most of the filth out of the songs (don't get me wrong, they are still very much adult in nature) and I think it's much funnier.

I emailed all the actors, got more as needed, and then the next thing to do was to convince my music guy Dan Wallace to help. So I took him to get a beer. He was reluctant, because he wasn't a fan of musicals ... so I told him my idea. It wasn't to write musical numbers but more rock (and maybe a little country) and I sang him a couple of the songs. And then I told him we'd be the perfect fit -- he didn't know anything about musicals and I didn't know anything about music. Dan got on board.

So Dan arranged the music, and in some cases, flat out rejected my melody and wrote the tune (apparently I can't write music as good as I think I can), and with the help of Cameron Johnson and Win Meyerson who did the piano for other songs, we had ourselves a set of short songs.  The only song we had to change was Doot! Doot!, which was originally titled Smash Her and was a hard rock number. But after hearing the music and the scratch track Dan laid down, I knew the music was all wrong for the song. The lyrics are so violent and using hard rock, there was no contrast, so I rewrote some of the lyrics and we rewrote it as a slow, methodical number. I remember singing it to Dan, and then including the words "doot doot" after the first verse and then saying: "we'll actually have her sing 'doot doot'." It worked much better. We then had the actors in to record the songs. Perfect.

Now I just needed someone to actually shoot the film. So I called on Jeff McPhee, with whom I had never worked. Jeff and I met after the screening of the 48 Film Festival where Inside "Scoop" played. And then had run into each other a few other times. I had seen a few of his films and admired his work. I thought this would be a great chance to work together.  I took him out to lunch, played him a couple of the songs we recorded, and he enjoyed them and got on board.

I wrote, directed and produced Meow!, but apparently I didn't have enough pull to actually get to sing in it. I was originally going to play the part that Galen Howard played, but when we went to record my one singing line, after about three takes I heard Dan's voice over my headphone's. "Uh, David, why don't we just dub my voice over yours?" So much for my singing debut. I went home and thought about it, and being vindictive I decided if I couldn't sing in my own movie, neither could Dan, so I contacted Galen (who had previously starred in Pilgrimage to Becca) and asked if he could carry a tune. He said yes, so I cast him. And then I added me to the opening to be Summer Hairabedian's suiter and Dan was Tiffany Norvella's.

After the songs were recorded, we were just about ready to shoot. In fact, I had it all scheduled to begin on Saturday. When one of my actors informed me her friend passed away and she would be at a funeral Saturday. And although she could come Saturday afternoon, there was no way to be there in the morning. I felt horrible for doing what I had to do, but I replaced her. She had her priorities right, which were with her friends and family; but unfortunately, I only had one day to shoot everything I needed and I needed all my actors on set for the entire day. I don't remember how many days it took to shoot (there were a lot of little scenes that we shot individually), but the first day of shooting was the biggest. We shot 5 songs in one day, plus all the outdoor fighting scenes (basically every outdoor scene, but the one with Stephanie Hyden and Rae Wright in front of bricks). So one missing actor would've just screwed up the entire filming.

When I asked Rae if she knew of anybody who could come in last minute, she passed on Tiffany Arscott's name. I contacted her and she agreed to do it. So we recorded her singing on Wednesday night and she was there on Saturday to do her part. For me, meeting Tiffany has been terrific. Not only is she extraordinarily talented, but she arranged the set location for "Oh My God!" and introduced me to Win Meyerson who arranged the piano music for the song "Oh My God!". And she's been helpful in other films as well.

When Meow! played at The Crest Theater during the Sacramento Film & Music Festival's "Creative Inspirations" contest, it got a thunderous response. It's always fun to watch the audience reaction to your film and I did that. But the most pleasing part was as we were walking out of the theater into the lobby, I heard someone singing the song "Oh My God!"

Meow! was created solely for the purpose of this contest. It took 3rd place. The two films that won ahead of it, were movie trailers for actual films with production budgets. It was without a doubt the most work I've ever put into a film, but also the most fun.