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Alan 216

Commentary -by Alan Winston There needed to be a framework for all of these sketches to be hung from. So to speak. So we needed a reason to put my character into this 'crazy world'. Originally the ideas were supposed to be more screwball comedy-ish, with me trying to get rent money from everyone or figure out who stole my Chewbacca action figure or something. But with the types of segments everyone produced, those weren't really plausible, so I came up with the Alice in Wonderland-esque bumping my head entrance to the dream world. There's not a lot of hidden meaning to my segments, they were just meant to be funny little breaks from all the heavy art weirdness. I never actually wrote anything down in script form. I shot the opening scene where my character wakes up alone. Running the camera and acting in front of it. As usual. The scene where I fall down the stairs was interesting. Probably a good thing no one was around or I probably wouldn't have been allowed to do it. Didn't hurt at all, no bruises or anything. I figured that someone would come home and find me passed out at the bottom of the stairs with a camera taping me. No such luck. Um. Threw in lots of little things in the background of the shots of the sequence. Pieces of my costume (the gloves, the tie, the vest) can be seen under the bed and on the dresser and so on. I wake up when the clock hits 2:16. Which I thought was clever somehow. And the Keaton book on the nightstand - had originally planned on making my character inexpressive and Keatonesque, but didn't really end up doing that. And as for why I had that costume - I can't remember. It wasn't a Keaton reference. Maybe had something to do with Tim Roth's bellhop costume from Four Rooms.... Anyway, on the second scene, Warren shot that one. He wanted an excuse to put the camera in the fridge, so I came up with a sequence of me drinking copious amounts of hard lemonade and needing to use the bathroom (giving me a reason to return to Eli's skit). Quick shoot, ended up doing only three shots or something for that scene. And I had to do the pee dance. Which was a proud moment... Oh, and the panning shot of all the empty bottles is actually an homage of sorts to the early Random Foo movies, where drinking and shots of many empty bottles always seemed to be a theme. Anyway, I think the second scene was shot on the night that the gas had finally been turned off in the house (we were in the process of moving out). Which was bad since Warren was trying to cook a pizza in the oven. Out of desperation and hunger, I came up with the bright idea of cutting the pizza up and stuffing it into my toaster to cook it. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Doughy goodness. Nothing like Mountain Dew and raw pizza at a shoot. I guess my piece was important since it led off the movie. It doesn't really set a tone or give much information. Just gives a reason for my character to go through what he does... I think the scenes worked well. I enjoyed the little gag with my socks in my first scene. The fall down the stairs could have been better. My second scene had some camera/tripod wackiness issues, but worked out alright as well. Not bad, not great. I think 216 stands for :     NOTHING.