Making Funny Papers

Jeopardy's early, early pre-production stages has already surpassed the early stages of 'Meter' by over a mile in the tolerablebility race. The pre-production stages of any film can be pain stakingly, slow. In the case of my films... Deathly slow. Meter was agonizing and the 'conceptual art' or 'art department' was utilized by the count of big goose egg. Jeopardy... A whole different bird. I won't say it has been agonizing though. Sure, I want all the red tape to be done so I can begin really planning the shoot but I know I have props and sets to build on this one so I've tried to keep myself a little more grounded. The schmetics of the newspaper stand are complete and building has begun. (Even if it just be nail a day... HA! HA!) On my week off from the "norm job," I managed to storyboard the first 2 pages of the script and even cooler, really began to spend time on one of the more timely jobs of prepping the film, the Art Direction/Set Design.

In the original story the "Serial Killer Threat," was told through third person narration. For the film, the Narration was not going to work so a 'Backstory Catalyst" had to be inserted. From the first draft until the final draft we had the same idea on what that catalyst would be. In the big cities I've lived in, I was always a frequenter of the street vendor newsstand. You could get any magazine, newspaper, tabloid in any language at most of those vendors. If you wanted a Playboy in Cantonese at midnight on a Sunday.... No fear... The corner of Ventura and Coldwater's LA Times Stand had you covered. I thought, what could be more fitting than to use the street newsstand as the narrator for this fast paced, light dialogue driven film. I knew going in that committing to this would mean building an actual stand.... Or fly to a metropolitan area to find one and get them to let us shoot in front of it with little control over one of the key scenes in the film. I chose the first option. I was not worried about building the stand. It was filling the stand with periodicals that I semi worried about. Building the stand would mean I would inherit the task of making at least 2 newspapers and five magazines of my own to cover the racks of the stands. When I say making, I mean creating my OWN funny papers. I may even have to create more than than that. We will have to see. (If I were to use Time Magazine, Baltimore Sun etc... My budget would quadruple times another quadruple.) So like Quentin, who created 'Kahuna Burger,' and 'Red Apple Cigarettes'

and Kevin who gave us 'Mooby Fast Food' and 'Nails' Cigarettes,

Garrick gets to create his own brands and world. Of course, there are no cigarettes or fast food needed, but like LA Confidential, you can assure there will be some cool tabloid titles like "Hush Hush" Magazine in there.

The actual story is based in Baltimore, but we may leave it ambigious so we can make our own world with our own rules. Here is the traditional newspaper conceptual drawing, 'Metro Post.'

 

There will also be a more New York Post style paper. (My personal preference over the NY Times.) There is the 'THE METRO MAGAZINE', (the logo will stay like that, but the cover will change to a more autumn feel, since the story takes place on October 18^th.)

Then there is the Reader's Digest slash New Yorker magazine, "THE CITY STORY." The sketched belt and blood will be a real photograph for the final print. Stuff like this is extremely fun.

You got any good ideas for magazine or newspaper names. Let me know. I'll be happy to use them and give you credit for them as well.