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I made a movie called Point Man and it finally released today

PhillyB

By PhillyB,
in Carolina Panthers

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JARROD Contributor

JARROD

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2 hours ago, PhillyB said:

brother, you're telling me.

aside from the usual long list of suspects that hamper low-budget independent productions, i tried to run international production dates on my first-ever film and it almost sank us. i chose cambodia as a production location because of its sweeping topographical value (the film's landscape is unmistakably southeast asian) and because its attempts to launch onto the international production stage have its commissions literally advertising that you should film your movie in cambodia because you can blow poo up there without insurance.

unfortunately the downside is the infrastructure isn't quite there. i filed all my paperwork with the cambodia film commission well ahead of time and waltzed into their office on new year's day 2017 with my permit in hand ready to pick up the thousands of dollars worth of film props i'd mailed over - M60 machine gun, M16s, bayonets, dummy grenades, .762 bandoliers, the works. commission rep turned a unique shade of gray when i handed him the paperwork, excused himself for an hour, and came back gleefully announcing that while the film commission failed to file my paperwork with the ministry of the interior, he'd just taken care of it for me and my props would be available in a month!

my flight home was in a month. we were shooting in a week.

this was my ninth time in southeast asia - i was no stranger to greasing palms to get poo done. i started handing hundred dollar bills and cigars off to everyone i thought would possibly take a bribe. turns out cambodia had just entered a fuging anti-corruption campaign and NO FUGING BODY was taking them. seven days dwindled to five, then three. actors were in san francisco hopping on flights. two days, one.

out of pure desperation i pulled out all the stops and had my line producer run me out to a military base 60km west of phnom penh. There we met with a cambodian army general who owned some gun ranges that rent out soviet era weapons for backpackers to empty magazines into sand banks (or chickens for a few extra bucks) and bribed him $3000 and the remaining box of cigars to shoot on his military base and rent his weapons for a couple weeks. he took me through a warehouse in the jungle, popping open crates of grenades and ak-47s and stocked my outfit.

so we shot for the next couple of weeks in pristine wilderness, unfettered by traffic, cambodian sergeants standing guard outside the sets to make sure nobody messed with our stuff, and we got unparalleled production value on top of actually having the fuging weapons we needed.

they even built and detonated an explosion for us for fifty bucks.

16300491_618934088317906_6371189762206913905_o.jpg

point man was a success only by the skin of my fuging ass.

Kobayashi Maru 

 

 

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Chaos

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When one piece of pie just isn't enough...

Mince-pies.jpg

 

Congrats brother!  I will be watching one night this week on Amazon, and a review most certainly will follow.  Like others have said, I can't wait to see where this leads, and you need to recognize my acting skills.  Unfortunately there is no tape to share since my theater days ended years ago lol.

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JARROD Contributor

JARROD

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2 hours ago, PhillyB said:

ha, i realized after the fact that the third shot from the bottom is derivative of FMJ.

PM 47.png 

michael-herr-dead.jpg

 

honestly FMJ didn't actually influence the film in any real sense - in fact i wanted to avoid the tropes present in every vietnam war film that's been done, especially when directors encased them in cement in the 80s and 90s. i don't think point man pulls from anything stone or kubrick or any of those guys did.

it's very film-school-neophyte of me, and probably reflective of my utter lack of industry knowledge when this thing began, but i was a huge fan of tarantino when i was writing this. the opening scene of inglourious basterds is masterful and was a profound early influence in how i wrote, and some of the dialogue structure reflects it (or did in the original uncut version.) i think some of the deliberate anachronisms i use have shades of his work as well. i really admire how alejandro inarritu and his cinematographer used space in the revenant to pit hugh glass against his topographical nemesis and i attempted to draw from that as i first immersed the protagonists in dense, choking jungle and then hurled them into the negative space of unconfined, exposed rice patties. 

i liked what the colorists of saving private ryan did - they took the grays and browns and enhanced them by casting a blueish tone across the film. it cooled it down, made it feel gritty and dreary. i went the opposite way with point man. vietnam is green and lush and wet and hot and sticky and humid. we went with slight oranges to warm up the tone of the film, draw out that lurid heat and sticky saturation from the jungle, get it up on screen the way the guys feel it as they're traipsing through it.

Actually, many of the pictures look a lot more like the opening scenery of Born on the 4th of July,..

my father,. A Khe Sanh Marine vet said for him Born on the 4th of July was the most accurate picture of his memories of being in Vietnam, the pace, scenes etc.

Im a movie and show buff, current addict of binge watching a lot of shows, so I know I’ll watch it soon—

Again, big respect on such a crazy undertaking. No matter what happens from here,.. im sure you have a book!

actually, a Tropic Thunderish type of film depicting all the wild stories you went through to make it,.......

 

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PhillyB Grand Master

PhillyB

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7 hours ago, WoahW said:

Grabbing on Amazon, I remember the whole gun/customs issue from back in the day and was actually curious whatever happened with the progress of it all.

@PhillyB what’s this other movie IMDB has listed for you? You already got a second project in the works? 

i do! it hasn't been officially announced yet but we'll be shooting in south america next spring, hopefully with woody harrelson in tow.

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