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ADAMSTAR PICTURES
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The making of DECONSTRUCTION
The following are excerpts from Mark’s book TRULY INDEPENDENT FILMMAKING; In March of 2001, during
the production of my film SOMETHING, my mother passed away at the age of 73.
After her death several things happened that affected me. First my father, only
a couple of months after her death, announced that he was selling the house I
had grown up in and was moving to Florida. Before he left, I went back to Kansas
City one last time to the old house, and packed up my belongings that were still
there. He showed me several things that belonged to my mother that she
apparently never told him about; boxes of personal items, ranging from photo
albums from her childhood to her wedding dress from her first marriage. (About 5
years earlier I found out she had been married twice before she met my father,
but that’s a story for another book.) To his amazement he discovered she kept
the wedding dress and wedding album from that marriage, even though it ended
badly resulting from his abusive behavior. I realized there was a part of my
mother I never knew about, a life she had that now I could only guess about from
these few items: Photos of people and places with no explanation. A glimpse of
someone who had dreams of what she wanted to be, knowing now what life she did
have. She had even kept every Mother’s Day card I had ever given her. But I
felt I was too close to the subject matter and didn’t know how to present my
ideas in a film. Then another aspect of these changes started intriguing me. After my mother’s death
and my father moving to Florida, I felt like parts of my life were disappearing
on me and I could do nothing to stop it. What if I made a film about a character
who feels the same way; he feels like parts of his life are disappearing…and
they really are vanishing. It was almost a TWILIGHT ZONE-like story about
someone dealing with this incredible situation. This became my next and most
acclaimed film to date: DECONSTRUCTION (2001). Yancy Young had this
observation about the story, “This movie is about a man’s journey in life,
and somewhere – the way I see it – he kind of messed up. Or he’s taken a
wrong turn on his path. And the way it works out is – pieces (of his life) are
taken away, and he sees that. And he starts over, not remembering it but that he
can maybe change the way it happened. He can redo his life. I’m not sure there
is any reason for this movie. (Laughs) The guy goes through Hell.” For Bobby Sloan,
DECONSTRUCTION was confusing to make, “I think Yancy’s character in the
movie described it as, ‘turning the pages backward in a book’. I think that
kind of sums it up. It’s like you’re turning the pages backward in a book,
or a photo album, or something that shows your life and it’s slowly being
flipped backwards and you’re losing everything you have. One of the first
things you told me was that you compared it to a TWILIGHT ZONE. It was a
whirlwind to make – it was a lot of fun. Reading the script and seeing how it
pieced together as we filmed it was really interesting. There were some things
that I didn’t even quite get until we filmed them, and I was like, ‘oh,
yeah! That makes sense now!’ (Laughs)”
The first day of shooting was on February 25, 2001 in the Brentwood Clothing Store in Great Bend. I knew the owner, Mark Mingenback, and he let us have the run of the store on the day they were closed: Sunday. Yancy Young remembers, “Oh, yeah. The very first day of shooting. (Laughs) Well, I didn’t know you very well back then. The very first day of shooting was an experience as well. We were kind of getting a feel for each other. But I really enjoyed listening to you and having some direction for that because the character wasn’t so solid back then. It was a good time building into it and building our friendship and having that location and the camera and the lights – it was just a good first day.” I didn’t realize
until later how much that day meant to Bobby Sloan, as he explains, “When we
first started shooting the very first scene, the Brentwood scene (on the first
day of shooting), that was very memorable to me because that was the first time
I’ve been on camera like that – the first time I’ve been shot for a movie.
So I’ll always remember that because I was actually nervous. Even for stage
stuff anymore I really don’t get that nervous. I get excited about it and
I’m ready to say my lines and do everything. (The first day of shooting) kind
of felt like a stepping stone, I guess. Since that’s what I want to do. So it
felt like a stepping stone for me. So I don’t think I’ll ever forget the
first time that you said, ‘Action!’ when we were filming. I don’t think
I’ll ever forget that. Every time we filmed was so much fun. It would be hard
to forget any of them. It was fun when we shot the scene with Nate Miller - the
last scene that we shot. That day was just fun. Nate’s a really funny guy. We
had a lot of fun shooting that. But that first day, no matter what, I don’t
think I’ll ever be able to forget that.”
The most complicated day
of shooting was when we shot the office scenes, consisting of the first scene
where Ken is working and everyone knows him and a later scene when he returns to
work and no one has ever met him. It became a confusing day in terms of having
to shoot certain shots together that belong in both scenes, and keeping track of
Ken’s emotional state as Yancy explains, “(The Office scene) was cool too.
It’s kind of a jump (shooting the two scenes where they know me at work, then
they don’t know me). But it’s a good jump because the feeling is something
you have to get used to. Especially with filming stuff like that – jumping
from emotion to emotion and adapting to everybody else around you because there
are other actors present. The whole thing about acting is playing off of other
people and being able to make your character whole. It was fun to work with the
people in those two scenes, and see everybody else’s reactions.”
I asked Randy Allen to be
one of the office workers in the background. Since he had been in several
previous films with bigger roles, I wasn’t sure what he reaction would be.
Randy actually seemed pleased with this shoot, “I remember it was fun
(shooting the office scenes for DECONSTRUCTION). You had intended that the part
I was to play was just going to be furniture, basically, filler in the
background that was just going to sort of fill in the room, so to speak. Needing
people as objects in the back of the room so Yancy can pass someone (Chuckles)
as he walks by. Which was a good idea. I can play furniture as well as anyone.
(Laughs) Most of the parts I’ve done for the Mark Adams movies have always
been speaking parts, and the idea of just being in the background and just being
an object was really appealing because some people believe that my best acting
is not saying anything. (Laughs and shakes his head) And I like the subject
manner, too. I like the story a whole lot more, because you had never done a
drama. (Snickers) Oh, maybe you have and I just didn’t realize all of these
other films were dramas. But I always thought these other films were funny. But
(with DECONSTRUCTION) being a drama, I liked the story element of a person’s
life disappearing. I liked it because it was also more of a character thing, of
the one person and all of the ramifications that happened or failed to happen.
It was more independently one person trying to see all of these pieces and
trying to make sense of them…and it was mostly him trying to deal with them. I
think that was a bit different. Slightly similar to JUDGMENT DAY, maybe in that
sense, but different to most recent movies.” “The
‘Hurry-up-and-wait’, I guess I didn’t expect that. (Smiles) Because I
didn’t take into consideration the moving around of all the equipment. It’s
not a bad thing, it’s just something I didn’t expect. It’s a good thing to
experience and you learn patience.” – Yancy Young
The library scene had an
interesting approach to the scene, where many angles were shot through the
stacks – as if to give a sense of voyeurism. It gave the impression that the
audience was literally peering through and eavesdropping on a conversation two
people were having. For Bobby, it was an interesting scene, minus the TWILIGHT
ZONE elements, to do from an acting stand point, “I thought that (the Library
scene) was a real dramatic scene. I thought that was a real good scene between
friends. He’s just feeling like everything is falling apart. I want to help
him. I want to support him, but at the same time I’m having a little bit of
trouble believing it. I thought it was a really good characterization between
two best friends. I think that was probably one of my favorite scenes as far as
emotions played out.”
The scene at Ken’s
father’s house was a scene that was shot exactly as I had planned. Every shot
was storyboarded ahead of time, and I was amazed how well the shoot went and how
the scene fit together. I knew this was an important moment at the beginning of
the film, where Ken first encounters something wrong. He thinks that his father
has suddenly and mysteriously moved away, but can’t make sense of how Brenda
Osborne could be living there for 10 years. This is the scene that sets the plot
in motion and sets the mood, and I knew it had to be done well. It was shot at
my house in Great Bend, with my wife, Tracy, playing Brenda and our daughter,
Morgan, playing her child. “Your wife was a treat to work with,” Yancy said.
“It was fun working with them. Working with little kids is always a good time
because they’re kind of unpredictable, and Morgan did a great job.”
I wanted the weather to
play a key role in the story, representing the flux of both time and the
emotional state of Ken. I was able to film the earlier scenes of the movie in
sunny weather, and the middle scenes with very dramatic partly cloudy days in
the springtime weather of Kansas. I shot footage of the clouds at various stages
leading up to stormy weather to be used in the film as transitions, speeding up
and reversing some of the footage. I wanted to give the sense that this strange
occurrence happening to Ken is a natural process, and that it can really happen
to anyone at any time – thus the Déjà vu reference at the end of the movie.
This was not a result of an alien invasion or a mad scientist’s time machine
experiment gone horribly wrong. Thus I wanted to down play any science fiction
elements and concentrate on Ken’s attempt to understand what he cannot
possibly understand. It was not important to know why this was happening. I was
more interested in how this was affecting Ken, and how he dealt with it.
I was waiting to film the graveyard scene that occurs later in the film on an overcast day, to fit in with the use of the weather in the story. We we’re able to shoot the scene on April 14 on a very overcast Saturday, and then shoot the previous scene at the strip mall later in the afternoon. Of all the scenes in the film, I was the most disappointed with the strip mall scene in terms of how I shot it. As we were filming the last shot of the graveyard scene it actually started lightly raining on us, and continued as we were setting up at the strip mall. So I had to change my shots so that both the camera and the actors could stand under an overhang of the building, and I wasn’t able to shoot the more dramatic footage I wanted.
For Yancy it provided the right mood for his character, “I think the graveyard
scene was a good shoot because of the atmosphere. Atmosphere can be a big part
of developing your character for that scene. It can really get you in the mood
when you have a cloudy day and you have black birds and headstones and things
like that. That was a good shoot. It brought me into the atmosphere. It helped
me develop the part.” For Bobby, however, the ‘atmosphere’ didn’t have
the same effect for him, “The day we were at the grave site – I wish that
had gone longer. I wish we could have had more time to shoot when it started
raining on us. That was probably the dreariest day, anyhow. But when those cars
kept driving by (during the shoot immediately following the graveyard scene),
that kind of pissed me off…(nods his head and pauses with a scowl on his face,
then laughs) But other than that - it was all good.”
I asked Sam Wright and
Kristy Koelsch, stars of my previous film SOMETHING, to come back and play
Ken’s girlfriend, Lisa, and her boyfriend, Mike. They were at Emporia State
University, and came back to shoot the scene one weekend in a cameo. I asked Sam
what he did to prepare for the role, and he replied, “I did an extensive three
month back-history on my character, deciding his lineage, ancestry, the color he
likes, his favorite car. The maiden name of his grandmother’s dog’s previous
owner. Until I had a pretty well rounded idea of what my character had to
say…for four lines. The key remark for my character in this film is, ‘Get
out of here’. I think that kind of encapsulates the entire theme of the movie,
perhaps even the outlook on life for giving in this particular film. It’s
revolutionary. It’s breakthrough…Nah, I’m full of shit. (Laughs)” It was
a fun time shooting the scene, and I discovered that Kristy and Yancy had known
each other since kindergarten, and he and Sam had acted together in high school.
The scene in the doctor’s office proved to be a challenge, since I wanted to have a certain look and feel. My original concept was to have the office in the basement of an old building with a desk overflowing with folders and papers, as if the doctor is an over-worked and under-paid psychologist stuck in a basement of a run down institution. Ken would just be another patient only known by his number and one of 50 he had to deal with that day. There would have been a small window behind the doctor in the corner of the room at the ceiling, providing the only illumination and serving as a spotlight on Ken. Since my films are not low budget but essentially ‘no-budget’, I have to use what I can find rather than build a set from scratch. I couldn’t find such a room, but I still wanted that feel of a basement or completely enclosed space. What I ultimately used was
the office of Barton’s Vocal Music Instructor Vern Fryberger, which provided
me with an unusually shaped room and good places to put lights. It was a
basement room with no windows, so instead of the outdoor light like I originally
envisioned I wanted the look of a harsh light directly overhead. It would add a
dark, dramatic touch to the scene. It still had the feel of a mysterious
interrogation, while making the area beyond the light represent the life of Ken
that has disappeared. Yancy also picked up on the mood I was trying to achieve
with the scene and the film, “(The Doctor’s Office scene was the most
memorable shoot), putting the effect where I disappear into it really completes
the film. I’ve seen SOMETHING and I like the comedies, but I think I picked up
on what you wanted here (in DECONSTRUCTION). I wanted to try my hardest, no
matter what, to make this serious and make real for people to watch. There can
be some funny parts in it, but for the most part it needs to be spooky and I
think it has that atmosphere with what we’ve given it. All I wanted for this
was to be a good film and to be serious, and I want it to affect people. I hope
it does that through what we’ve done with it.” “(Making DECONSTRUCTION) has been awesome.
It’s been a great experience. I hope to do another one because you can go
through your whole high school career and your college and you can do all kinds
of plays, but if what you’re really trying to do is films then this is what
you need to do. It’s a completely different world. I’ve always been good at
doing plays but this is a different way to embody the character. We’ve done
scenes out of order, and it’s a good way to develop your character and make
him solid - because you are going to have to make transitions with doing scenes
out of order. Working with the film and the mics and the cords and the cameras
– it’s a good time.” – Yancy Young
“I really enjoyed filming the movie. One
thing that I really respect about it – and that I would tell people about it
– you know you have these multi-million dollar budget Hollywood movies and
they’ve got thousands of people on a crew working on everything. We’ve got a
director, producer, writer, stage crew all in one guy. I would always tell
people about that, ‘You guys wouldn’t believe – he writes it. He directs
it. He produces it. He edits it. He is his own stage crew. He has to move his
own equipment. He’s working with two cameras. He’s working at the community
college and doing these films on the side.’ I was just really impressed with
how it came together. It’s always a pleasure working with people who know what
they’re doing. It was just so much fun to work (on this film) and I look
forward to doing more.” – Bobby Sloan I showed it to some friends back in
Kansas City, and everyone seemed to like it a lot. Adam Leatherwood told me,
“Mark, this is one of the best, if not the best film you’ve ever made. The
feelings, the story, the actors were all phenomenal. There were scenes that
surprised me; scenes that I did not expect what happened. The scene when Ken
returns to work and no one knew him. The last three scenes of the movie I
wasn’t expecting at all. That was great.” The true test was to show
it to my father, who was living in Florida. On our first trip to visit him I
showed him the film, and he had this reaction, “I could see, and sympathize,
with the whole inspiration of the film. I enjoyed seeing you do something you
obviously drew from your own personal feelings. Sometimes when you do the
science fiction things, I don’t think there’s a close association. But
(DECONSTRUCTION) is really personal. I think that gives it an extra boost.
There’s something about taking a sad story, a sad event in your life, and
turning it into a story like this that I hope helps you get past that point.
It’s like acting out a feeling and talking about it that seems to help
dissipate it a little. But, yeah, I like the film very much. I like the fact
that you’re going to a shorter format. And for somebody like me, (who also
went through the experience), it made me possibly understand a little bit more
how you felt. It was a sad time - there’s no two ways about it. After your
mother died, I was like a lost cat or something. I just didn’t know what to do
or where to go. It was really a bad time for me. That’s all changed since
then, and I can look back on it now. And it still has a little hurt to it, but I
can look back on it and it’s not like I have to live it everyday like I was
doing for a while. And it’s a good subject to deal with – it’s a subject
we all have to go through and there’s no avoiding it. So the best way to deal
with it is to face it head on, which I think you’ve done that with this film.
One of the things that I really liked was the handling of the clouds. And even
the guy starring it in was pretty darn good. But I like that whole feeling of
the cloud process, because it’s kind of like that. That whole passage is kind
of like that. And I think that was a very descriptive use of time. (In the scene
where Ken goes to visit his father who has left), I was the other side of that.
That’s pretty much the reaction that I thought you probably would have felt.
You made it seem like it was almost a TWILIGHT ZONE event. After your mother
died, I can’t remember the number of times I thought I heard her in the house.
I thought I heard her move and she’s just down the hall. And then the reality
would hit you and it’s not possible. She’s not there. Maybe I haven’t
gotten over that, I don’t know. But handling it like a TWILIGHT ZONE event was
a pretty good solution for depicting it. And I thought Kerry Marsh’s music
worked well in it. He did a good job. He’s great. But I’d like to see you do
more stories like that. That was probably my favorite one that you’ve done.
But again, if you can just do things that draw on you personal happenings in
your life, they’re usually richer stories. I think this was very much one of
your better films, if not your best film. I like some of your early stuff. WAR,
DEATH AND PIZZA I thought was a great film. It was just an off the wall sort of
thing. (Laughs) But I think (DECONSTRUCTION), for a story and for being well
done, has a good quality to it. I think you did an excellent job and you should
be proud of it. I’m just so glad you don’t stop making films. You still keep
trying and doing different things. I think that’s very necessary in the whole
creative process. Just keep making them.”
I entered DECONSTRUCTION
into the 11th Annual KAN Film Festival in Lawrence, Kansas. I didn’t know what
to expect, and when it was a finalist I traveled to Lawrence on June 1st with a
certain amount of trepidation. To my surprise (any award would have been a
surprise at this point) I won 2nd place. Unfortunately the budget problems of
the states of Kansas and Missouri (and the U.S. for that matter) had an impact
on the KAN Film Festival. Instead of the really nice looking statues, the
winners received cheesy looking framed certificates. But it was a welcome
accolade in the shadow of the earlier “-5” experience. The judges comments
for DECONSTRUCTION I received were varied but a little more positive than for
SIDETRACKED. One judge wrote, “Enigmatic but promising…I think this
filmmaker has a lot of promise.” But his comment for the films acting
performance was rather confusing, “Some on OTAC/ I Sulu.” (It was hand
written and that was the best that I could interpret.) A year later Yancy had
this to say about the film, “I love DECONSTRUCTION. It came out a lot better
than I thought. I mean I didn’t think it would be bad, but I didn’t have a
real sense of what it would look like and it came together really well. I like
all of the shooting styles and how you put them together. I was proud of it. I
think everyone did a really great job in the thing as a whole.” Bobby also had this to say about the film a year later, “I love DECONSTRUCTION. I like things that confuse people. And that movie confused a lot of people, Mark. (Smiles) Even a year later I still had someone asking me, ‘What is the deal with this guy’s life just disappearing? Is that it? Is everything just disappearing around him or what?’ And I keep running into these people who keep seeing only half of the movie (when it is shown on the college’s cable channel). And I tell them, ‘you’ve got to see the whole movie from the beginning and you’ll understand it a lot more. And just kind of open your mind and you’ll understand it and you’ll get it.’ ” |
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