Why Detention 101?

So, why did I make a film that had to be shot during a pandemic without the ability to be with actors in the same room? And why this film in particular? These are the things that I reflect upon when I think about all the work that went into this film that likely very few people will see…that’s the truth about the indie film world. One thing I can tell you is that it helped me keep going despite the fact that I truly felt humanity was collapsing in on itself.

Well, there were a ton of reasons. First and foremost, I was hoping to have the funds to make the film THE GHOST IN THE ATTIC (formerly known as PINK MIST) and the pandemic squashed any hope for that. And I was crushed. Really crushed at the thought that I’d never get to make a film again. That’s what it felt like anyway. So, I felt like I had to prove myself wrong. I WAS going to make a film again and I was going to do it right NOW. Not wait around for things to be better. Not wait around for someone to green light the project.

There were a few actors that had already agreed to be in my next film so I decided I should include them in my crazy endeavor because (a) they are good people and (b) I hate to disappoint anyone. I promised they would be in a film, so they WOULD BE IN A FILM.

Then the question was, what the heck was I going to make? It takes years to really hone a good script and I didn’t have that sort of time. I needed to get making something. So I decided stream of consciousness would work best. And so, I reached into my crazy sub-conscious and all it came back with was The Breakfast Club. I mean every day, more and more I felt that I was sitting in detention (#lockdown) only I wasn’t a high school student, I was an adult. And then I thought what if a bunch of adults were in detention…ongoing detention. This of course is similar to home incarceration. So it began there.

And then, I started to write a stream of conscious script. A very honest stream of conscious script. Everything that had been plaguing me about the world since the pandemic began a few months before I wrote the script (films take forever to make when you are the chief, cook and bottle washer) and all the different points of view about that world and it’s issues coming to all of us through social media and the news. This film is not about COVID at all. That was something I found odd about my writing. Never once was that a prominent topic my mind went to. My mind had sort of accepted this virus ridden world (or maybe it just couldn’t wrap itself around it) and it just never came up as I wrote and wrote and wrote. I wrote 95% of this script in one sitting. It just poured out of me. It’s not Pulitzer Prize winning writing, but it’s honest and each character is in some way a part of me or a part of what my brain was reflecting on. There is only one reference that eludes to the virus and that was added in towards the end of the film because I needed to break a scene up. It’s random and comes out of nowhere but I realized as I did it that this is exactly what the virus did. It was a random thing, came out of nowhere and affected all of our lives.

It’s amazing what your subconscious mind can reveal and how humorous it can be about those revelations.