WAMG Interview: Wyatt Weed – Director of FOUR COLOR EULOGY

FOUR COLOR EULOGY opens in St. Louis April 8th at The Ronnies Cinema

Shot in the St. Louis area by the  team behind SHADOWLAND, FOUR COLOR EULOGY is a dramatic comedy that shows it’s never too late to let go of the past or to create a new future. Growing up the only child of a single mother, aspiring comic-book creator Chris (Jason Contini) escaped St. Louis 10 years ago and moved to Portland, Ore., with girlfriend Anne to forge a new life. But when Chris learns that his mother is ill, he and Anne have no choice but to pack up their lives and move back home. Uprooted, his life completely disrupted, Chris is forced to face both his mother’s mortality and a nagging childhood question: Who was his father and why wasn’t he around? With the help of longtime buddy Brian, a pop-culture geek, and family friend Rich, a bartender with a secret, Chris will have to determine what’s ultimately more important: the hero’s origins or his ongoing journey.

Wyatt Weed, the director of both SHADOWLAND and FOUR COLOR EULOGY, took the time to talk with Tom Stockman of We Are Movie Geeks about his upcoming film.

We Are Movie Geeks: What locations did you use for FOUR COLOR EULOGY?

WW: I would say a third of the movie took place in the South city home of a woman named Michele Bolen. We shot there for about eight or nine days and that was the majority of the film. Another major location was Melrose bar over on Southwest Avenue.

WAMG: So that ‘Sassetti’s’ sign was a digital overlay I assume?

WW: Yes. FOUR COLOR EULOGY is not the kind of special effects film that our last film SHADOWLAND was, but it still has a lot of subtle visual effects. For example, we could never get the pretty thunderstorm over the tops of the buildings that we wanted so we got a thunderstorm someplace else and then put it over the top of the buildings ourselves, in the computer. Also, there’s a scene where the main characters travel from Portland to St. Louis. Obviously we never went to Portland. We went to the Larson Park area of Webster Groves, then out to Wentzville and shot the countryside and dropped Mt. Hood into the background along with some freeway signs, making it look like Portland. There were many other locations. We shot at a great comic book store out in Maryland Heights called Newcastle Comics. That was one of the few locations that was not in South city. It is supposed to be a South city film but we never found a comic book store that was big enough and would let us take it over for the required amount of time. Newcastle Comics was big and they had periods of time where they could let us come in and shoot, so we turned it into “South City Comics”. We were originally going to do something elaborate with the sign outside, make something really cool, but we realized that no local comic book store has that kind of big expensive sign. That would have screamed “digital effect” so we just painted out the Newcastle logo in the white box over the store and replaced it with a plain “South City Comics” text. It couldn’t have been more simple, but that’s the type of effects in the film – simple, but very effective and money-saving.

WAMG: So you shot in South City and Maryland Heights, where else did you shoot?

WW: All over the place. We shot at SSM St. Joseph Hospital in Lake St. Louis. There are a couple of hospital scenes near the end of the film but if we’d had to pay for that, we wouldn’t have been able to do it. St. Joseph provided a room and some equipment for us and it turned out fantastic, really great production value. We also filmed at Crane’s Country Store which is way out in Williamsburg. They were so cooperative and friendly, really willing to bend over backwards for us. Then there was U-Gas, that big gas station that looked like it was out in the middle of nowhere, which we made look like it was out in the desert. That was in Wentzville. They were really great, too. They were a little concerned at first, wanting to know if we needed to block their whole parking lot. But we just needed to film at one pump for 45 minutes and they were fine with that. We also shot at Uncle Bill’s Pancake House, which I’ve wanted to do for years, so I was really excited about that. In addition to the cooperative locations, I have to say that the in-kind donations and the equipment that we were able to arrange from places like Bad Dog Pictures and Avatar Studios really helped us out. I’m not exaggerating when I say there are parts of the film we couldn’t have done without their help. I know other film productions are chasing the money, chasing the tax credits, but this was a $15,000 film. It wasn’t worth our time or energy to leave the city – we wouldn’t have even qualified for a tax credit in Illinois. But once again, St. Louis really came through for us. All of the locations that we took over and all of the food and donations we received was really just stunning.

WAMG: There are scenes all throughout the film in a church. Was that the same church you’ve used in SHADOWLAND?

WW: No, it was a church called St. Mary and Joseph Chapel and that was also in South city. There was the main church that was a couple of blocks away, then there was the chapel, which was only used for certain functions. They handed us the keys on a Monday morning, we went over there, lit, redressed, and shot all day. Then we moved outside in the early evening to shoot a short scene and got rained out. That was the scene at the end of the film where two characters exit the church and are talking to each other about the service. The chapel was nice enough to let us come back for a pickup day to shoot that.

WAMG: You said the budget was $15,000. What was the shooting schedule?

WW: It ended up being a total of about 23 days. We had 21 principal days and two days of pickups. We shot over the course of two months. We started shooting in early June and we didn’t finish until late July. With so little money, we could afford to pay people something, but most of the actors had to maintain their day jobs. So we’d find a five day block where everyone was available and go and shoot in the house. Then we’d find a four day block and go shoot at the bar. The comic book store we broke up a bit. We would go there at 8 o’clock at night after they closed and we didn’t have to be out of there until noon the following day. But we didn’t push a lot of super-long hours either. I think most of our days were just 10 to 12 hours. There was one time that we got rained out on a night scene, and the schedule was getting tight so we pulled everyone aside and told them that we really needed to pick up this night scene that we had lost and the only time to do it was on a certain day, which meant they were looking at a 16 or 17 hour day, but everyone was cool and agreed so we pulled the long day and got caught up.

WAMG: Speaking of rain, there’s a big dramatic scene that takes place in the rain. I assume that was scripted to take place in the rain. How did you film that?

WW: It was scripted to take place in the rain and we thought it would be great if it was raining that day, but of course it was not. Jason Contini wrote the scene to take place in a rainstorm. I was originally hesitant because rain is tough. A couple of days before we were scheduled to shoot that, we were really exhausted. We were pushing the boundaries on a couple of things; pushing our technical limits as we had so little resources. I tried to talk Jason out of it, but he really wanted to do it, so all we got garden hoses with those adjustable spray nozzles and rigged them to light stands. We had a couple of stagehands off screen and had them adjust those nozzles from about 20 feet away, spraying them up and into the air so a light rain would come down. The shots you see in the film, there was no rain to the left or the right of frame – we had just enough rain to cover the main area in any shot. Rain is hard to photograph so we kept adjusting the lights and we ended up back-lighting very heavily so the rain would pop out. The big master shot where they bust out the front door and argue we did in one take. We knew that if we had to do that more than once it would be a problem because everyone would have to re-dry their hair and their clothes, and we didn’t have a wardrobe truck or mobile homes standing by. So we rehearsed it and blocked it for lighting and sound and camera, really got it down, then fired up the rain and did it just one time. After that the actors were already established as wet, so the scene where Jason and Jessica come out and argue could be shot more than once. We did the lightning with photo strobe units. Bob Clark had some big flash units that could be manually operated, so he would hit the strobes and create lightning on cue.

WAMG: One thing that surprised me about the script, after reading about it the past few months was that I was expecting more comic book culture and trivia. There is some of that, but the film is primarily a cancer drama.

WW: I think maybe we all thought the film would have more of a geek element than it did in the end. However I do feel that we nailed what we set out for in that these people are real, they live in the real world, and have real world problems. They aren’t a complete fabrication, like some of Kevin Smith’s characters can be, or like the guys on The Big Bang Theory. I know we’ve talked about taking this film to Comic-Con and places like that, but I don’t think that’s the film we have now. I think there are fan-boys who will appreciate the references, or at the very least this will be the first “cancer drama” that fan boys will enjoy!

WAMG: This is Jason Contini’s story. Did he have experience with cancer in his family?

WW: Perhaps not cancer, but health scares within his family. The story is a combination of Jason wanting to do certain dramatic things and John’s concept to do a one-act play set in a bar, I believe. Jason and John melded their concepts and came up with the story that now drives the script. Jason did a couple of drafts on his own and then he started working with me and Nick Hearne. So this really is a balance of three or four different writers. Typically, I don’t like to work that way, but I thought it worked really well for this project. Everybody had strengths. Jason had strength in drama, Nick had strength in comedy, and I had strength in structure. No egos, no protectiveness – just whatever was best for the script.

WAMG: I think one of your films greatest strengths is the acting. John is superb. I think when we talked several months ago you were going to go with a movie star. I believe you had talked to Dee Wallace. I assume that was for the role of Carol?

WW: Yes we talked to Dee and to her agent. She was asking for a very reasonable sum and we really wanted her, but it was tough enough raising $15,000 and at that point we all voted to just get the movie done and not worry about a name. I think Jason originally wrote the park with Amy Loui in mind, and we auditioned a half a dozen actresses, but Amy really was the best and she’s the one who finally got the part. The irony was that she has known John as long as her character has in the film. There are actually photos on the wall in the background of the film that show Amy holding a baby Jason, so this has been a most incestuous acting troop. Jessica Laney had been in plays with John. Taylor Pietz had been in plays with John as had some of the other supporting players like Dean Christopher and Whit Reichert, who play the drunks. It was a real community of theater actors who had all worked together or knew of each other.

WAMG: I remember Whit Reichert from local TV commercials 40 years ago.

WW: He was really great. EVERYONE was really great. As a director, I did less directing of the actors than I ever have because they were so good and so prepared. For me it was more about blocking the scenes, making sure everything was going where I wanted it to go and then pretty much leaving the actors alone. Occasionally I would dial a reaction or line reading in a different direction but it’s amazing to me how little I had to adjust the actor’s performances.

WAMG: If you had more time and money, what would you have done differently?

WW: It would’ve been nice to have a bigger crew and more specific equipment. We shot with the same camera we used for SHADOWLAND which is a great, venerable camera but HD standard is now 1920 x 1080, and we’re still shooting 1280 x 720. It looks fine, kind of filmy and grainy, but it would’ve been nice to step up to a higher end camera. It would’ve been nice to get a better set of lenses more suited to the widescreen cinematography style that we were shooting. We had dolly track with us and a doorway dolly for the duration but a doorway dolly is a far cry from a real dolly that has a boom on it and steerable wheels. Gayle, one of our producers, doubled up as a sound person, but it would have been nice to have a dedicated sound person so she could concentrate on putting out fires, as we say. But in all honesty, we rarely shot outside the range of what we could do. We didn’t write a script that was beyond us…other than maybe that rain scene! We wrote to the equipment and locations we were sure we could get

WAMG: Who did the songs?

WW: Taylor Pietz, who plays Katie the bartender, wrote and performed the opening song ‘Color Me’. That was an original song for the film. Then we had songs from the bands Manitoba Rock N Rolla and Clockwork, and from artists Patrick Conway, Rhyan Sprague, and Abby Stahlschmidt, who also appears in the film.

WAMG: Were these songs original to the film?

WW: No, these were songs by local performers that we were given permission to use. It should be mentioned that we are currently using some stock score from the great Kevin MacLeod. He is a very prolific composer who allows his music to be used for free, if you give him credit. There has been interest from local composers to add their music to the film, but for the SLIFF screening, it will be Kevin’s score, in addition to all of the songs.

WAMG: What about the comic book art in the film such as the old pages of art with Captain Arabia and Prince Lancer?

WW: John Contini was an aspiring comic book artist back in his youth, and those are actual pages of comic book art that he drew as a young man. For the new stuff, we worked with a company called Lion Forge. Lorenzo Lizana did the “Kota” and “Conquerors” covers, and Aaron Allen contributed posters and new comic pages for scenes where Arabia and Lancer are being revived. When we were filming in the comic store, we worried that when we panned around, we’d see a bunch of DC and Marvel stuff and potentially get in trouble. So there were a lot of times where we would put a SHADOWLAND poster over a Marvel poster or put Jason’s artwork over someone else’s artwork. There are scenes with the comic book racks in the background where we just laid issues of Lion Forge comics on top of the Marvel and DC titles. We didn’t want to get in trouble if Batman or Ironman ended up making an unauthorized appearance.

Be sure to FOUR COLOR EULOGY on the big screen in St. Louis starting April 8th at The Ronnies Cinema.

This interview was conducted by Tom Stockman November 7th 2014 when FOUR COLOR EULOGY was set to premiere at the St. Louis International Film Festival.