The Story behind the Story
In 1993, we were theatre students, attending the Little Theater of the Rockies, a (still) virtually unknown school, in this small, podunk college town, located in Greeley, Colorado. The college was U.N.C. (University of Northern Colorado). It was (and still is) known for it's theater, and those who have had the good fortune of watching productions there know what great theatre school it is. While we were there, we had some of the most proficient professors and talented young artists of the time. It was an exciting time to be there. It was what drove the seven of us to create a film.
Our film began as a video project. It was a script written by Jason Tecza, who at the time, had written a few short scripts. He literally typed this out on an electric typewriter. We had filmed it on video earlier that summer, but it just didn't look right. Jason had written 5 drafts of the script when we finally presented our idea to the University (in Mid - October of that year) in front of a committee. He had spent long hours writing out each shot and how and where it was going to be filmed along with a proposal to the University. Back in the day, if you filmed on actual film, you're film was considered ligit! There was no digital. We decided to film it on Super 8mm, and (like anything all we needed was money. After pitching our idea, the University agreed, granting us $650 to purchase the film.
We set out to film around our Christmas break. Because of our extremely busy schedules, we agreed this would not only be the best, but only time to do this if we were to finish the film. It was fun and challenging two weeks. Our budget allowed us 19 rolls of 8mm film, which worked out to barely enough film to shoot our movie. We were allotted 1.5 takes, per shot, which meant we had very little room for a second shot if we made a mistake. This took a lot of rehearsal and time. After completing 95% of the film and two weeks of sacrifice from family over Christmas break we were hit with the sad realization that our film had no sound recorded, and the project was abandoned.
Fast forward 21 years later. Christmas 2014. Jason sends out a group Facebook message to the cast saying basically, "Hey guys! Sorry for screwing up your Christmas 21 years ago! Here's the lost footage, still with no sound. Enjoy!" It was so great to see our silent film again, even though it was tragedy at the time. I was living in Los Angeles, CA and to my surprise, Jason was now living just 15 miles away in Marina Del Rey,CA. So, I dropped by to see my old friend. We laughed at our old ugly film and finally I said, wouldn't it be funny if we made a movie about finishing the last 5 minutes of the movie? He was like, if you can find everybody. Everybody was everywhere. Some of the original cast was in Seattle, Arizona, California and Colorado. We called everyone up and they all wanted to do it! We wrote everyday throughout most of 2015 and in August of that year we got together for the first time (for some of us) in 21 years and read the first draft together in Denver Colorado!