ACT ONE
We open on a fog-shrouded street in the Sunset District. Saturday, 9 a.m. The fog clears to reveal a two-story house of pale gray stone. A crowd is gathered in the front yard. Bleary-eyed young people mill about, checking their watches, anxious. "Got any coffee?" one of them murmurs. We move past the crowd. Through a gate and an interior courtyard, piled high with spools of black cords. Up a twisting flight of Spanish-style steps.
Inside the house, IAN TAKAHASHI bustles through a crowded hallway. IAN, 20, wears a gray T-shirt that says "PRODUCER" on the front. He bought it last month on the Internet. Across the back of the shirt, on a strip of masking tape, someone has written "Big dude." IAN's black hair is cropped short. His smooth, clean-cut features are placid. He exudes a humble confidence. He is in control, but approachable. Movies are in his blood: Last semester, while earning a 4.0, he worked on 17 film projects in 15 weeks. He's been shooting movies since he was 12, when he staged epic screen battles in the back yard of his parents' Napa home between a cardboard Cyclops and G.I. Joe figures. In high school, he helped shoot and edit for a guy who produced videos for country clubs and corporations; last summer he worked at American Zoetrope, Francis Ford Coppola's production facility, on a top-secret project he's not allowed to talk about.
Clearly, IAN is comfortable in his role as producer. A silver cell phone is glued to his right hand. He speaks with an authoritative tone into a headset, nodding as he passes members of his crew, who are busy uncoiling cables, hefting furniture, taping down wires. Some look up and ask IAN if he's gotten The Call yet. IAN shakes his head: "Not yet." CUT TO:
A digital clock. It reads 9:17 a.m.
We pull back from the clock to see a kitchen. The floor is stacked with oversize bags of burger buns and tortilla chips -- sustenance. The counters are covered with cases of Monster and Rock Star energy drinks -- fortification for the two nutty nights ahead. Lighting equipment is piled in the corner, where IAN consults with PETE PADUANO, his production manager and loyal right-hand man. PETE is big-boned and solidly built. His square face is bright and earnest beneath a black knit cap. IAN and PETE are getting nervous, despite their well-laid plans, and sweat beads on their brows. A faculty proctor was supposed to have called IAN at 9 a.m. to divulge the all-important "log line" -- the scenario, picked weeks ago by the contest's sponsor, Pioneer Electronics, which the San Francisco team must base its script on. The professor hasn't called yet, and the two writers secluded in the basement are antsy. The two-hour window IAN has allowed for script writing is rapidly shrinking, threatening to derail the meticulous schedule he's spent the past few months preparing. He tells PETE to drive the proctor crazy until he answers his phone: "Call him over and over and over again." CUT TO:
A digital watch. 9:33 a.m.
The man checking his watch is a bearded, burly guy named DAVID LOPEZ-TIBBS. This is his house. "But I don't even recognize it anymore," he says. A student at the college and a friend of IAN, he lives here with several other roommates, spread across five bedrooms. IAN chose the house last week as the set and headquarters because he liked its ample street parking, proximity to the beach and other possible shooting locations, and spacious back yard. As DAVID watches a steady stream of strangers cart all the furniture out of the living room except for an L-shaped couch against the far wall, he says: "I'm expecting something to be broken today."
IAN sags against the couch, checking his watch again. 9:45 a.m. The crew needs an XLR sound cable. IAN digs into an envelope of cash -- $500 from Pioneer, $200 from a guy named Frank (his donation earned him the title of executive producer). PETE bounds into the room. He's called the faculty member 15 times -- no answer. IAN wonders aloud whether the professor has had a heart attack or gotten run over by a bus or something -- it's not like the guy to flake. He chews his lip. Should they continue working without the log line, not knowing if they'll be disqualified from the contest? "We can't just say, 'Fuck it,' and go home," IAN says. CUT TO:
A low-ceilinged basement, dominated by a squat couch opposite a wide-screen television. The walls are plastered with the modern film student's typical poster collection: Scarface, Casino, The Godfather, Pulp Fiction. We meet the two writers, JOSH BUCHIN and RUSTY IRANI, who auditioned alongside 15 others to win the job. RUSTY, who is originally from Bombay, is in a wheelchair; JOSH paces the room. Screenwriting software awaits, blank, on the screen of a nearby laptop. IAN enters and tells them the bad news: There's still no log line, but they have to start writing. Write anything, he says. If the log line arrives later, they'll work it in somehow. You can almost hear JOSH and RUSTY gulp -- this is the first large-scale production for each of them, and now they're on the spot.
Upstairs, most of the crew has heard about the delay, and some of the grips and production assistants are openly wondering whether they're going to even need all the equipment they've piled throughout the house. Cigarette smoke clogs the air, drifting in from rear bedrooms. In the editing room -- a nook between the kitchen and living room that's been curtained off -- members of the postproduction crew kill time by watching the contest entries from last year. They are unimpressed. We meet JESSE FILIPKO, a lanky stoic with a camcorder, who will be filming a behind-the-scenes documentary for inclusion on the DVD. "Nobody else wanted the job," he says. With the crew growing ever more restless in the living room, PETE tries to raise morale by telling the story of getting hit by a cab last weekend as he crossed Haight Street.
PETE: I remember talking to a paramedic, fuzzy images of talking to my mom on the phone from the hospital. I got hit in the right side, I think, and then I hit my head. Today's really the first day I've been able to think clearly. Perfect way to gear up for the 48-hour challenge, huh?
We learn that PETE, who hails from Connecticut, is a veteran hockey player who has sustained 12 concussions, six that he terms "major." But he has never had problems with his memory until the past week, when he has occasionally "spaced out" for upward of four hours at a time. "I didn't want to miss this project for anything, though," he says. Then an actress -- one of the dozen or so middle-aged locals who have come out to audition for roles -- stomps in and asks, "Do we have a script yet?" IAN, in his first visible sign of stress, snaps at her to go back downstairs. Eye-rolls abound. Someone mutters: "I don't want to hear any actor bullshit." CUT TO:
A clock on the wall. It says 11 a.m.
Down in the basement, the writers have hammered out the first three pages of a script. It's tough to tell, exactly, what the point of the story is, but it's about a sleepwalker named Pookie-Wookie (after the phrase he mutters in his sleep) who wanders through a party full of yuppies. IAN sits beneath the Godfather poster and peruses the draft, such as it is. "I like the first three pages," he tells the writers without conviction. "I laughed out loud twice." This pleases JOSH, a clownish type with a mop of curly hair. He dons his "lucky coat" -- a battered green blazer -- to gain inspiration for the final two pages. MARIO DeJESUS, the first assistant director, races in and hassles them to finish. It's 11:30 a.m., and they've already fallen 30 minutes behind schedule. The question on everyone's lips: Where's the damn log line? CUT TO:
IAN, clicking off his cell phone, his head thrown back in relief. "He forgot it in his office!" The producer looks at the phone again. 11:58 a.m. IAN races downstairs and gives the writers the log line the faculty member has just, finally, called in: A young man tries to discover why he's at a train station. RUSTY and JOSH stare, stumped. A train station? The casting director pokes her head into an adjacent bedroom, looking for a quiet place to hold auditions. The room looks like a frat house the morning after a wild Friday-night party. Empty beer cans are pyramided everywhere and Britney Spears posters line the walls. "We can't have them read in there," she sniffs, and slams the door.
We follow IAN back upstairs. He grabs PETE in a hallway: "Find me a train station." PETE zooms out of the house. IAN runs a hand through his hair. Even with a three-hour extension of its deadline, the crew has lost valuable light on its day reserved for shooting. "I feel like I'm two years older, and it's only been three hours," IAN says to no one in particular. He pauses near the main bathroom, the setting of the first scene in the script. Gaffers are already setting up lights, and a sign on the door says "Do not use."
An hour later, the brain trust huddles with the writers, who are polishing off yet another ending to the script, to set the production schedule for the next two days. Watch alarms go off, signaling 1 p.m. Sunset is six hours away. They are really behind schedule, and every face in the room is drawn and tense. Head shots are scattered across the couch, the torn ones belonging to actors who didn't show up. MATTHIAS KOENIGSWIESER, the very focused director of photography, has already storyboarded what he's seen of the script. He's thinking of an Edward Scissorhands-type look, a "real simple suburban feel." He tells the costume designers to avoid bright colors -- better for contrast. Clumps of sweaty hair stick out of his black-billed cap; he tugs on the tuft of hair on his chin. He asks about a makeup artist for the actors. "I can do gothic," one crew member volunteers, "but I can't make them look pretty." MATTHIAS hurries out to film the first scene: a middle-aged woman plunging a toilet. Not exactly Patton, but it serves to get the crew moving.
Outside, on what's now a bright, gorgeous afternoon, DAVID and his roommates serve up burgers and hot dogs from their brand-new barbecue. They've been looking for an excuse to buy it, and the film needs a party scene. Crew members who aren't occupied gather in the front yard for some grub, and it's a friendly, lazy contrast to the craziness inside. The middle-aged actors -- some of whom look as if they've already been awake for 48 hours -- swap apartment-finding horror stories.
A cheer erupts from upstairs. "They must have gotten the good script," someone at the barbecue mutters. CUT TO:
A middle-aged Latino actress emerging from the bathroom. "The toilet splashed all over me," she says. The first scene is complete.
But IAN's ability to hold the production together is about to be sorely tested. We move behind closed doors. In a rear bedroom, the film's director, CRYSTAL MILLER, who wears a jean jacket with a furry collar, confronts IAN. CRYSTAL, who describes herself as an anal-retentive who starts worrying about a dentist's appointment two months in advance, has been smiling steadily all day behind her wire-rim glasses, calm under the pressure of an unconventional grind. But now she drops a bombshell.
She refuses to shoot the script. She tells IAN: "It just doesn't work."
ACT TWO
The back yard of the Sunset District house. It is 5 p.m., and the sun is rapidly sinking against the horizon. An autumn chill has set in. Actresses ask for sweaters to wear over their thin dresses as they wait for the cameras to roll. The crew sets up a huge piece of equipment called a Jimmy Jib, a crane for the camera. MATTHIAS still hasn't eaten, and he asks MARIO to get him a bite. IAN and PETE compare notes. PETE found a Muni stop at 19th Avenue that could serve as a train station in a pinch. The script is better now, the result of constant reworking by several different members of the crew: There's a different premise, a new main character, and a completely transformed ending. CRYSTAL is happy with it, and has agreed to continue directing. IAN consults a list. Out of 18 scenes, they've shot four. He asks about the scene with a car. Hasn't been shot, PETE reports. IAN's face falls. He grabs an assistant cinematographer: "You're shooting this scene. I'll direct it."
IAN buttonholes two actors and hurries to the street in front of the house. Neighbors poke their heads out of windows, curious about the commotion. Passing cars slow to a crawl. The crew films the scene, in which the sleepwalking Pookie crosses the street and is nearly hit by a car. In fitting with the time-crunched theme of the weekend, the actor playing Pookie -- who hangs out all night in a bathrobe and never complains -- must finish all his scenes tonight because he's flying to Mexico at 6 a.m. The two writers, who have watched their original script die a long, much-revised death, wear gloomy frowns as they watch the shoot.
RUSTY: I don't want any credit for this. You can just credit me with the characters.
JOSH, sighing and shaking his head: I haven't even read the whole script. We just kinda wrote it in pieces. We bombed it.
RUSTY: Things shouldn't have been as late as they were, but it's nobody's fault. I still think it can be done. There are some good people here, some very professional people. And I like the new ending: Apparently the two male actors are going to do an on-screen kiss.
CUT TO:
Back yard. As the sun sets, the crew prepares for a beautiful, golden-hued shot of the party guests. Clapboards snap. MATTHIAS yells, "Quiet on the set!" In a few takes, the scene is wrapped. But that's the only exterior shot they can get. Darkness has fallen.
Inside the house, there's more bad news. In their curtained-off room, the editors have begun reviewing footage from the afternoon. We see the bathroom scene, marred by a light flare and a boom mike moving across the frame. We see IAN's and CRYSTAL's shoulders sag. We hear her lament: "Everything changed the minute we didn't get that log line." CUT TO:
A rear bedroom, dark. IAN, PETE, and CRYSTAL go through the depressing inventory of which shots they have and which shots remain. They've already agreed to shoot "day for night" and move much of the outdoor party sequence into the brightly lit courtyard and pass it off as an interior. But IAN and PETE tell CRYSTAL that they suspect this is not enough. "At this point, I just want a product, something I can burn on a DVD," IAN says desperately. And then he and PETE drop a bombshell of their own.
For the past three hours, PETE and IAN have been operating under the assumption that their movie will fail. And so, they inform CRYSTAL, they have developed a Plan B: The behind-the-scenes documentary will become their project, telling the story of IAN's disastrous film shoot. They could even incorporate the log line: shoot IAN waking up on a bench at the train station, wondering why he's there, then flash back to the documentary footage that sketches the disintegration of the 48-hour project. It's risky, but what do they have to lose? At this rate, the scripted film will never be finished anyway. CRYSTAL embraces the idea.
There's one problem: They can't tell the cast and crew. If work stops on the scripted film, there won't be a behind-the-scenes story to tell.
We see a montage: The crew works through the night. IAN, PETE, and CRYSTAL share their true plan with only a few of their fellow students. JESSE, the documentary cameraman upon whose slender shoulders the project now rests, has mixed feelings about how important his role has become.
JESSE: On one hand, it's like, "Wow, I'm doing the movie now." But also, it's like, "Oh, I'm doing the movie now." Fifty people are here, and if we blow it, if we don't show what their work deserves, then I'd feel really ... dishonorable.
By necessity, IAN must conduct a disinformation campaign with much of his crew. We see IAN chatting in the driveway with the actor playing Pookie, their faces illuminated by the harsh lights spilling out of the courtyard. IAN steers clear of any discussion of Plan B. He's bantering about the meaning of cinema, how Man's ability to appreciate film separates him from the animals. Typical words, perhaps, from the mouth of a film student, but IAN's ability to look beyond the immediate chaos and cling to his idealistic view of Movie Magic is somehow heartwarming. "I can go out and get a real job, do what everyone else does, but then I'll be 90, sitting there, wondering what could have been. So I'm just going to go for it, give it everything I can, and I'll have a good time doing it."
We see MATTHIAS squatting against a wall in the courtyard, his eyelids drooping as he watches the party scene unfold. We see MARIO in the kitchen, spotting an open energy drink of IAN's on the counter that could potentially spill and ruin an adjacent camera. He moves the can to a table. "Makes me nervous," he mutters.
Around midnight, crew members begin swaying with exhaustion. Empty drink cans litter the floors. IAN and CRYSTAL tell the cast and crew they should leave. Nobody does.
Shooting continues until 2:30 a.m. We see most of the crew departing in cars that disappear into the fog. IAN tells MATTHIAS and MARIO about Plan B. MATTHIAS, at first, doesn't like the idea, and MARIO, although his face doesn't show much emotion, is heartbroken. IAN tells both of them that they should continue working on the scripted film. It could still pan out.
So all night long, while he should be sleeping, MARIO slaves away on yet another draft of the script, still seeking to construct a cohesive story around the scenes they've shot. CRYSTAL drives home to take a shower, turning over alternate endings in her mind.
IAN spends the early morning hours alongside the editors, staring at footage. We see a progression of the completed scenes: disjointed images of people at a party, beautifully shot but totally incoherent. There's no narrative, nothing connecting one character to the next. One of the editors refuses to work on the documentary, and the other isn't so hot on the script, so IAN assigns one to each project. He now has two full-blown movies cooking, and they both must be finished in a little more than 24 hours. We see IAN curl up on the couch in the basement, where the house's occupants are watching a movie at full blast, and immediately fall asleep. CUT TO:
A digital clock reading 5 a.m.
In the pre-dawn blackness, IAN drags himself off the couch. He looks exhausted. He has slept for 30 minutes. He slips on a black sweater and wakes up PETE, MATTHIAS, JESSE, and a wiry gaffer.
We see them driving together in a car, their faces pale from lack of sleep. IAN asks, "You're sure we have the camera?" They arrive at the Muni stop at 19th Avenue and unload their equipment to shoot the crucial opening scene of the documentary: IAN waking up on the platform. Then they realize: Their camera has no battery. PETE and IAN make the 15-minute drive back to the house. We see the battery lying on the ground, uncharged. PETE picks it up: "Completely dead." CUT TO:
The kitchen. A digital clock indicates 5:30 a.m. It's another race against light. PETE and IAN sprawl on the floor, their faces pressed to the battery, willing it to beep and indicate 50 percent life. BEEP! They grab the battery, run to the car, and race back to the Muni stop.
MATTHIAS has designed a complex shot, timed to the sun coming up on IAN's face as he lies on a bench. IAN holds his position in freezing wind for more than an hour. When the sun finally comes up, it proves that the cosmos is officially aligned against the 48-hour movie project: Because of the sun's position on this particular day, it is all but obscured behind a roof across the street. Only the tiniest triangle of light appears on IAN's otherwise shadowy face. "What are we supposed to do, triangulate the sun's position?" he asks.
Whether it's from lack of sleep, lack of hope, or both, the five of them sit down and start laughing. It's the kind of laughter that verges on crying, and it doesn't stop for half an hour. Nobody talks, nobody jokes; they just shake their heads and laugh like hyenas as the sun continues to rise. And we FADE OUT.
ACT THREE
We see the street in front of the Sunset District house. IAN is carrying a container of gasoline. It's 7 p.m. Sunday, and the day that began with chaos at the train station has just ended with the final scene of the scripted movie. Not everything has gone well, however: The car they were filming in ran out of gas, and IAN and PETE have just returned from the corner station. Both of them sport stubble and dark bags under their eyes. PETE, however, has felt no ill effects from his run-in with the taxi last weekend: "I don't know why, but I feel good. Whatever happened, my head has definitely cleared."
We learn that last night, MARIO rewrote 2 1/2 pages of the script, figuring out ways to flesh out parts of the story that badly needed it. MARIO is finally leaving, his eyes bloodshot and a backpack slung over his shoulder as he waves goodbye to IAN. The footage is in the hands of the editors now. After a hectic but productive day of shooting, thanks largely to Mario's heroic efforts on the script, there's an open debate on set about whether the scripted movie or the documentary is stronger. Which one should they go with? CUT TO:
CRYSTAL, one hand on each of the editors' chairs, her eyes flicking back and forth between two computer screens. Her brows scrunch as she studies the documentary footage on one monitor and a rough cut of the dramatic movie on the other. It's the wee hours of Monday morning. Soon the postproduction people must begin burning DVDs. IAN sits on the couch, face puffy and lips cracked. It's decision time: Should they submit the drama or the documentary? The key crew members have weighed in with their preferences. CRYSTAL, her throat raw and her diminutive frame sagging, makes a final case for each option, reiterating the stance she's articulated several times this evening.
CRYSTAL: Half of me just feels that Plan B is a cop-out. The judges are going to think, "These people couldn't get the story done, so they did this," and I don't know that there's any way of seeing that differently. But I also know that something like Plan B has not been done in this competition before, and the sleepwalker story still has problems. Are you going to bet on the long shot and win it all or bet on the safe thing and not take a risk? It's an all-or-nothing kind of thing.
IAN nods. It's up to him. And he's thinking -- or trying to think -- on 90 minutes of sleep in the past two days. The room is quiet, except for the hum of computers. Then he speaks.
IAN, letting out a long sigh: You know what? I like the documentary better. It captures the raw emotion. The structure's better. It tells a good story. That's what we're going with. CUT TO:
The inside of a van, sunlight streaming through the windows, the streets of San Francisco roaring past. IAN checks his watch: It's 11:45 a.m. He reaches into his pocket for the envelope of cash. There's $24 left. "On time and under budget," he jokes. Maybe they really will get jobs in Hollywood.
We see IAN handing over the DVD to his professor, relief spreading over IAN's face. They will find out in January which school wins the contest. We see IAN and PETE return equipment throughout San Francisco. We see them cleaning up the house, moving the furniture back into position, tossing out huge bags of garbage. We see IAN, as the sun sets, driving all the way to Stockton, returning his girlfriend's van. He looks beyond exhausted, his eyelids slowly descending as he crosses the bridge back into San Francisco at the end of the night. CUT TO:
A sushi restaurant in downtown San Francisco. Afternoon, a few days later. IAN has slept, and the weekend's adrenaline has finally begun to ebb. As he picks over some tempura chicken, he talks about the unlikely lessons he took away from the project.
IAN: I probably wouldn't do this ever again, but I wouldn't trade the experience we had for anything else. It pushed all of us close to the edge. If the story had worked out perfectly, we wouldn't have learned as much -- about ourselves, about everybody, about the whole process of filming. We could have made a nice little short, and that's what it would have been -- a nice little short. At least now we have something that really pushes the boundary, something that's different from everything else. We have a real story.
FADE TO BLACK
