My Vision Has Come To Life!

Mike Lake

It would be an understatement to say watching Catching On get made was one of the greatest experiences of my life. In the previous short films and scenes I’ve written or co-written with Nick there was always some separation between what we think is funny and what others involved think is not funny or downright offensive. And when push comes to shove it’s easier for most people to take the road of not going for huge laughs, and also not pissing people off. With Catching On, that’s not the road we chose to take- thank goodness.

I think problems we had run into in the past were that we would take ideas that were seemingly normal and put outrageous things in them, which most people didn’t want to take a chance on. This time around, the premise itself was so outrageous and polarizing that before anyone has seen the film they either love the idea or want to throw big stones at me. When the starting point is gays taking over the world- there’s not much else that could be put in to make it more controversial.

I would imagine a huge problem that most screen-writers have is the worry that so much can change throughout the process of taking the script and making it a film. There is just so much involved with making the page come to life that it leaves a lot of room to screw it up. For instance- had I also starred in this movie it would be downright unwatchable.  Actually, I think it’s safe to say that had I done any more than write, get coffee, and hold a boom pole we would have some serious problems.  What made this film really magical for me seeing everyone do their specific job so well in order to make the film.

Catching On was the first thing we’ve done in a while that I knew once the script was out of my hands the integrity of what was on the page would remain intact. I knew there would be changes (and there were tons of them) but at the end of the day I knew everyone that stepped foot on that set- from the actors and actresses, to the crew, to the idiot in charge of cooking the hotdogs (me!)- was there to make what I had written come to life. No matter how many times people made suggestions for changes, those changes were in the spirit of helping the story that was already there, not making something different.

The only way to do justice for the people that worked on this project would be to sit down and watch the end product with the script in hand so I could point out what’s on the script in comparison to how it came out.  It would be a 6 hours process in which I would pause the movie for 20 minutes to explain how the “dingy apartment” they live in became the most ridiculously trashy living room I ever could have imagined.

At the end of the day everyone believed in the script and was only trying to enhance it. Tons of people worked countless hours not only to make something I had written come to life, but to make it a hell of a lot better than it had ever been on the page. It was this dedication that truly made the filming of Catching On one of the most memorable and inspiring experiences of my life.

Mike

Bigots and Hate Mongers: My Inspiration

Mike Lake

The questions I am most often asked on set are, “Where’s breakfast?” “Can you stand in for Autumn?” and, “how did you come up with this idea?” The first is a valid question in that I have the glorious job of picking up breakfast in the morning. The second relates to the average height of the crew, and mine being lower than that average. The third is probably the most valid. It’s only natural for someone working on the set of a film about gays and lesbians taking over the world to wonder, “who wrote this, and what the hell was he thinking?” Well, I did. And here’s what the hell I was thinking.

In my first fiction writing class at Emerson College I was required to write two stories in the semester. The first was a dreadfully bad story about a boy being lost in the woods (because being lost in the woods is an original idea that’s never been done before!). The poor souls that read it were nice enough to say things like, “this part was funny,” even though the whole thing was supposed to be serious, or, “I was thinking recently about how it’s been too long since the last time I vomited, and your story solved that problem for me” (not actually said, but surely thought). So for my next story I set out to write something critics would call… better.

So there I sat two days before my next story was due without a single idea. So how does a professional writer cure such a dire case of writers’ block? Well, you’ll have to ask a professional writer to find out, because I just procrastinated and surfed the internet. While wasting time not writing, I came across a page (http://www.nogaymarriage.com/tenarguments.asp) that was arguing against the legalization of gay marriage and gay culture in general. This page, obviously written by someone on the religious right, made points about the repercussions of legalizing gay marriage that I had never imagined. The main argument that caught my attention has to do with the repercussions of redefining marriage, and I was going to paraphrase the argument, but reading what nogaymarriage.com actually thinks may knock you out of your seat.

Once marriage can be so easily redefined by a judge, “the family will consist of little more than someone’s interpretation of ‘rights.’ Given that unstable legal climate, it is certain that some self-possessed judge, somewhere, will soon rule that three men and one woman can marry. Or five and two, or four and four. Who will be able to deny them that right? The guarantee is implied, we will be told, by the Constitution.” I doubt I have to point out the clear missteps in logic found here, and yes, that is a direct quote. I skimmed down the page and came to the argument that would eventually inspire my story, “Argument #8.” “Marriage among homosexuals will spread throughout the world, just as pornography did after the Nixon Commission declared obscene material “beneficial” to mankind.” At this point, being the good student I am, I went to bed… still without a story.

And then it hit me. What if nogaymarriage.com was right? What if all these horrible (and seemingly) impossible things happened to us?! What if not only gay marriage spread across the world, but gay itself spread across the world? That would be… hilarious. So I popped back out of bed and had what is referred to a “coffee moment.” I got up, made myself a cup of coffee, and just started typing away. By the time I took a sip of the coffee… it was cold. I wrote most of the night and by the time I was done I had something that… wasn’t very good (It didn’t have an end! Who writes a story that doesn’t end?!) despite its lack in quality, the idea behind it was good. If you think all this bad stuff is going to happen because gay marriage is legalized, I’m going to show you just how ridiculous it sounds by showing you something… ridiculous.

So what’s the ultimate goal of this script? I’d be lying if my main goal of writing this wasn’t to make people laugh. I write comedy and if I’m not thinking about that first and foremost I’m not doing my job (and Nick and Chuck will yell at me!). But I was told once not to write anything unless you have something to say, and I think it’s clear what my statement is in this film, and with the recent vote on Proposition 8 in California this issue has only grown. Living in Massachusetts I’ve seen that legalizing gay marriage won’t hurt anyone. I don’t even remember when it was legalized, that’s how little impact it’s had on me personally.

It’s given the hype of an apocalypse inducing decision that will change our lives forever. Realistically, if you didn’t tell any of the straight people in MA about it, no one would have noticed. My biggest problem with the Prop 8 situation is the public’s idea that it’s up to them to decide. Sorry, this isn’t an issue you should be able to vote on. It’s our government’s job to uphold people’s rights, regardless of public opinion. If you disagree with that let’s go back to the 1860s and let the public vote on the abolishment of slavery and see how that goes.

Mike

A Bad Short Story Becomes a Good Script

by Mike Lake

Well, I guess it would be fitting to begin our blog at the beginning with how this project got started.

Last fall in my first semester at Emerson College I decided to stretch my ability as a writer (which up until that point included a few scenes for student films and several horrid standup comedy routines) into the world of fiction writing. My first experience as a fiction writer was an outstanding bout of writer’s block. The day before my first story was due I was having a conversation with one of my professors about gay marriage and he told me a story about how he had recently been in Nashville. The story went along the lines of many people asking him what it’s like in Massachusetts now that gay marriage was made legal. They were under the assumption that gays were running a muck and doing, well I can’t possibly imagine what these people thought was going in the Bay State. The real answer was that if no straight person was told about the gay marriage thing, they wouldn’t have noticed.

That night I had a ten page story to write… and zero ideas. Out of boredom, I began looking into different views on how society would turn out if gay marriage was nationally legalized. Needless to say, I found some of the extreme scenarios they spoke of very entertaining. I don’t remember what I actually read, but it doesn’t take much searching to find some of the far-fetched hypotheses people have concerning gay marriage. As I lay in bed that night, still without my story, I started thinking, “What if these people were right? What if the mother-father system our society has been based on for the last 300 years (and perhaps more than that!) was suddenly ripped apart from the seams? What if these ridiculous ideas were only the tip of the iceberg!?” Two cups of coffee and four hours later “A Queer Theory” was born. It was a very original, yet very shoddy short story about gays and lesbians taking over the world and turning others gay by grabbing their hind quarters. May sound like something worth reading, but the quality of this piece can be seen in the fact that it didn’t have an ending- yikes!

Fast forward a couple months (good story telling, Mike!) to when Chuck Pistorino, Nick Pistorino, Greg Walsh, and I find ourselves looking for a way to produce a script that Nick and I had been working on for some time. After much discussion we came to the conclusion that we didn’t have the funds to make a feature length script, and rewriting it into webisodes would still be difficult to shoot and not make any money because it’s the internet. Therefore, our best bet might be to make a “calling card” short film. I mentioned that I had a short story kicking around and told my cohorts the premise. Nick thought it was a fabulous idea (gay zombies = attention getter) while Chuck and Greg were not as fond (gay zombies = public relations nightmare). I rewrote the story into script form, gave it an ending, and rewrote some of the scenes I thought we may not be able to shoot (Fenway Park, for instance, would have been just out of our league). Nick and I finally talked Chuck and Greg into the idea that something so controversial would be good as far as drawing a buzz goes (it also helped that my professor who is a lesbian read and loved the script). So we were off to produce a short film, and 35-40 rewrites later we had a script worth showing to people.

There’s certainly much more that happened between the writing of the script and the start of filming, but alas, this is where my part of the pre-production story ends. Up next, more entertaining posts!