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Tell us about “I Killed Awesome Man”
“I Killed AwesomeMan” was a feature screenplay I wrote a few years back. It got a little buzz in Hollywood — emphasis on little. I did have a full-time staff reader at Paramount recommend it, and for a couple of weeks I was on top of the world. And then not much happened.
(For those uninitiated with the screenwriting trade, “readers” are the screenplay gatekeepers of Hollywood. They read the flood of scripts that make it to the studios — which is a small percentage of all scripts actually written — and rate each one a Pass, Consider or Recommend. If a script gets a Consider or Recommend — which is rare — a studio exec might read it … or more likely, the exec will read the “coverage,” the Cliff Notes version whipped up by the reader.)
The script is a scifi-action-comedy about some schmuck who accidentally kills his favorite superhero, and then has to assume his identity and save mankind.
In the world of the story, AwesomeMan is the one real superhero — or more precisely an alien with highly advanced technology who acts and is treated like a comic book superhero. He has become a celebrity with his own line of comic books, action figures, groupies, the works.
The lead character, Kip, is a comic book geek who enters a contest at ComicCon (the big annual comic book convention in San Diego) and wins dinner with AwesomeMan. After dinner, Kip tries on a spare AwesomeSuit (kinda like the IronMan suit) and flies around a bit and everyone is having a fun time until there’s an accidental laser blast misfire that fries the real AwesomeMan.
AwesomeMan’s butler — because every superhero needs a butler –convinces Kip to assume AwesomeMan’s identity (via the spare AwesomeSuit.) Kip reluctantly agrees and then finds out that, oh, btw, there are these invincible alien supervillians on their way to earth who are most likely going to kill you and destroy civilization.
I really love the story, because it has this poor kid trying to do what’s right, but scared out of his mind and badly overmatched. He’s got a hilarious (to me, at least) wannabe sidekick who has no superpowers at all. And the bad guys are, literally, invincible.
There are a couple of other twists in there, but that’s basically the story. It would’ve been a big-budget blockbuster along the lines of Men in Black or Ghostbusters.
Since it didn’t sell, it was just a stack of paper sitting on a shelf, so I figured, hey, why not produce it myself as a multi-part audio series? There’s no way I could ever make this as a movie, but I have plenty of sound effects and lots of great actors, and an audience that might enjoy it with Well Told Tales.
So I rewrote the script, cast some excellent voice actors, assembled all the raw materials … and have fallen down on putting it all together.
Five of the eight episodes have been published, but I kind of ran out of steam on the final three. Whenever life got crazy, poor AwesomeMan seemed to get the shaft.
But I do have all the raw materials I need to get this finished and my goal is to get it done before the end of summer. The plan is to get the final three episodes in the can, then run a refresher episode that reminds listeners of what’s happened so far, and then role out the last three episodes in bang-bang-bang fashion.
Then, who knows, maybe I’ll put the whole thing on a CD and sell ‘em for a pittiance on Lulu. Or fling them over the gates of all the major studios.
How was it directing such a large cast? Was putting it altogether difficult?
It’s hard for me to really “direct” voice actors from afar. We were usually communicating via e-mail, so I gave them a summary of the story, the gist of their character and maybe a cultural reference or two, and let them have at it.
Again, I’m a big believer in casting well.
Norm Sherman of the Drabblecast podcast plays the lead role and is absolutely perfect as an average (though somewhat geeky) likable guy who has to deal with a lot of insanity.
His “hilarious” sidekick is played by a very talented voice actor named Steve Anderson. Steve has read a few Well Told Tales, including some very dark fare, but he always brings a comedic touch to his readings, so I knew he was the guy for this role.
My wife Chrissy — who has read a bunch of Well Told Tales and wrote one of my favorites, WTT 04: The Red Hurricane — did a great job as the female lead, with barely any direction.
And AwesomeMan himself is voiced by Jacob Keebler, a radio guy and Well Told Tales regular, who has the pipes to play a square-jawed classic superhero.
Jacob and I chatted quite a bit, actually, because his character was a bit more than meets the eye. To the public, he would be the epitome of a Saturday Morning Cartoon superhero. So I sent Jacob a bunch of YouTube clips of the 1970’s SuperFriends cartoons — stuff like Superman uttering “must … stop … giant ? dino-bird” through clenched teeth, or declaring “this looks like a job for Superman! ”
I had never worked with Kerry Finlayson, the British actress who played the villain Icee, but she was spot-on. If you ever watched the Showtime series “Dexter,” I was thinking Icee should sound sexy, smart and menacing like Dexter’s short-lived British gal-pal, and Kerry delivered.
I also got a bunch of big-name podcasters to do cameos. Rick Stringer of Variant Frequencies really went all out, providing a tour de force performance AND original foley! Scott Sigler’s alter-ego “Soupbone the Wonder Pimp” chewed up scenery as you might expect. Everyone did a really great job.
So, no, directing was easy.
Pre-production was a bit of a pain, because I basically had to slice up the script a dozen ways for each actor. Rather than make them hunt through 120 pages for their lines, I gave each one their own script, which had just their lines (with a bit of context around them), along with the full script in case they wanted more context.
Anyway, the toughest parts were pre-production and production/post-production.
Pre-production was a pain because I had to cut up the script and present different versions for each actor (I couldn’t just send volunteers a 120-page script and tell them to find their lines.)
The real nightmare is production — stitching together all the audio pieces and adding music, sound effects, etc. It’s not really hard work, so much as it is time-consuming and, at times, tedious work. For someone who always feels pressed for time, and who’s not blessed with a ton of patience, it can feel like digital water-boarding.
How does it compare to your short film “Side Effects” as far as production efforts?
Making a movie — even a 10-minute movie — is a lot of work. I’d messed around with a video camera before, but this was my first “real” short film. I made it as part of a UCLA Extension class, so we went through all the steps the right way – breaking down the script, planning every shot, drawing detailed story boards, making a shooting schedule with specific call times for actors, crew, etc.
And we had to do things pretty much legit, which means permission to use locations, legal permits, insurance, the whole nine yards.
I didn’t make my life any easier by writing a script that had a bunch of characters and locations and a lot of running around and fighting and a few special effects (that I didn’t really know how I would pull off, but figured I would figure it out.)
Pre-production may have been the most work, believe it or not. For weeks leading up to the shoot, I was breaking down the script and drawing storyboards, hunting for crew members and auditioning actors.
The highlight of pre-production, though, was visiting the Universal Studios lot to rent props from their prop house. My wife and I had a blast checking out all the crazy stuff they had there, wondering what feature films they had appeared in.
We got some faux medical supplies, uniforms and a very convincing fake fire-ax which scared the hell out of the sound guy — I neglected to tell him the ax was rubber, so he thought I was going to get one of the actors killed and another charged with manslaughter.
And, of course, there were some unexpected bumps in the road.
SPOILER ALERT: You may want to see the film at http://welltoldtales.com/SideEffects before reading the next paragraph.
The story is about three volunteers in a medical study for an anti-anxiety medication. Of course, the test goes awry and they each experience their worst fear and turn on each other in bloody fashion. One character was supposed to be a former fat guy, who lost all his weight and was now a ladies man. His worst fear was being fat again, so I planned to have two actors play the same character — a thin actor when we showed how the character really looked and a heavyset actor for when we showed his delusional self.
It was tough finding an actor in L.A. for the “Fat Danny” character, believe it or not. But we did find a guy who gave a great audition and who looked a lot like the actor I liked for the “Normal Danny” character. With the same hairstyle, goatee, clothes and fake tattoo, I thought we could pull it off.
And then the fat actor pulled out of the project three days before the shoot.
After a fruitless day of looking for a replacement, I rewrote the script to make the playboy Danny character a former ugly guy, who had fixed his huge nose and bad teeth and acne problem but had a deep-seated fear of being homely again. Our makeup artist went out and got a fake nose and teeth blackening gunk and stuff for phony pimples, and I figured we were OK.
And then the night before the shoot, the makeup artist called me to say the nose had a defect — a big hole in the tip, caused by an air bubble or something — that she hadn’t noticed until she took it out of the package. The makeup store was closed for the weekend, so she didn’t think she could get another schnoz.
I went a little nuts, and she managed to reach the owner of the shop and call in some favors, and she was able to get in to get a new nose the morning of the shoot.
Whew.
After all that, the shoot was pretty smooth. I had a great sound guy, who helped out a lot. And all the pre-production paid off. We shot on the UCLA campus over two days, probably freaking out a few students with our bloodied, ax-wielding maniacs dropping F-bombs at the top of their lungs … but then again, maybe not, this was UCLA after all.
I also had a one-day shoot at an abandoned L.A. jail, which was a fantastic location. Unfortunately, none of my extras showed up (d’oh!), and the front door I wanted my maniacs to storm out of had been nailed shut, so the jail sequence ended up being trimmed down quite a bit.
A very accommodating woman, a friend of a friend, let me come by her apartment three times to shoot her pet boa constrictor against different backgrounds so I could use it for an effects shot.
Post-production took a couple of months, but it wasn’t steady work. It was a few days here, hit a technical problem and figure it out, and then a few days there. I was learning the finer details of Final Cut Pro as I went along, so that added to the load as well.
As the guy who made the movie, whenever I watch it, I tend to see all the flaws and all the ways the finished product didn’t live up to the picture in my head. But in the end, flaws and all, I think it’s a fun little movie.
On the movie-making front, I will say that it gets easier with repetition. I just finished up my second short film “Denied,” which will be released on the Well Told Tales feed later this year, and it was a whole lot easier. Part of that was due to the script — which had pretty much one location and two main actors — but I also loosened up a bit on dotting every i and crossing every t and stayed focused on emotion and the story.
BTW, for film geeks, our shorts are digital, shot on Mini-DV with a Panasonic DVX100B camera and edited with Final Cut Pro.
Come back next week when Kevin gives his perspective on Well Told Tales relationship to golden age radio as well as some of the technical aspects of producing a high quality fiction podcast.
Tags: AUDIO FICTION, awesomeman, Horror Fiction, interviews, podcasting, short story, Well Told Tales
