Here’s the newest edition of Please Respond. It’s called “‘Hot Ebony, Horny Ivory’ OR ‘Do The Right Thing’”

(96.8mb) Click play and then pause it to allow it to load a bit.

What I thought would happen:

This script has been around since the beginning of the project last year and I never thought it would actually get made. I didn’t know two people who could actually pull the roles off effectively. It was only half written until Todd said he was interested in doing it, so I rewrote with him and Stephanie in mind.

Before it was one page long and mostly about “the blowjob,” but the 4 pages of additions I made in the rewrite turned him into amateur photographer who didn’t seem to understand the distinction between art and pornography.

Since I wanted all of these new Please Responds to be more visual than the previous ones (not just a face talking the whole time), that new conceit gave me three main visual ideas:

• 1. Juxtaposing “Fine Art” photography and pornography
• 2. Creating distance and conflict between Steve and Julia without Julia being able to talk.
• 3. Manifesting Steve’s ideas about racial/sexual domination.

For #1, I needed a lot of porn. Apparently porno mags are expensive, so I made up a bunch of fake covers and stuck them to regular magazines.

My favorite

Problem solved I thought…

What actually happened:

…And then about 30 minutes before shooting, I lucked into getting a garbage bag full of real porno magazines without having to pay for them. Since I had so many, I was able to use the ones I made myself as the major set pieces and use the rest as decoration.

Todd and Stephanie were so good together. Between the day old stubble that Todd decided not to shave and the scarf that Stephanie let him borrow for the end, it turned out so much better than I thought it would.

Problems:

After rehearsing the lines, I told Stephanie to scale up her performance while I was shooting the first master. Afterward I didn’t like the more cartoonish performance, so I told her to scale it back it down for the other shots. I didn’t shoot another master, so Without any other usable takes, I had to use that first master. That’s why at the beginning Julia’s performance looks so theatrical, and by the end, it looks so natural. It could’ve been easily avoided if I stuck to my usual routine of shooting two masters like I always do.

I also got giddy and ended the shoot early before I realized that I didn’t have any cutaways for the ending three paragraphs of the monologue. It’s all one take, and it drags a bit at the end just because the visual irony and kenetic cutting of the first section sort-of disappears there.

In Conclusion:

Bravo everyone who helped out with this one… Rafael, Ben, Nora, Andrew, Nick, Todd and Stephanie. I think these are actually starting to turn out really good. I think the next one I do, I might actually nail it.