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ADAMSTAR PICTURES
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The making of PROPHECY, DEATH AND OTHER FUN THINGS
The following are excerpts from Mark’s book TRULY INDEPENDENT FILMMAKING;
After the length of OMEGA RED I wanted to make a shorter film, but ended up making PROPHECY, DEATH AND OTHER FUN THINGS 2 hours and 20 minutes long in it’s original edit. I knew this was much too long and cut it down to 2 hours for the World Premiere Presentation. But after that screening I knew it was still too long so I cut a final 1 hour 38 minute version that proved to be a much better with pacing and continuity.
Nearly 90 percent of Father Prophecy’s dialogue was improvised. Shooting this film with such an open approach to allow improvisation proved to be both good and bad. It was good in that it made a lot of the scenes less contrived and more spontaneous and unpredictable. Cody was incredible with some of the truly funny sermons and moments in the film, and I tried using improvisation in scenes with other characters. He told me about his thought process in preparing for these improvisations, “I knew going into the scene where the character (Father Prophecy) started, and I knew where the character needed to end the scene. And all I had to do was to link it together. Before we actually turned the camera on, I would know that I wanted to do this idea, this idea, this idea and get to here. Because I tried to put together two to four or five statements, comments - things that I wanted to bring up, things that I wanted to talk about. And we would shoot them, sometimes I would start here and go one, two, three – no we’ll stop there! And then I’d go back and I’d go one, two - and then I would change three - and then I’d do four and then I would get to the part where I wanted to (end). It was just all off the top of my head. I tried to keep in my mind two to four things that I wanted to mention, and I’d kind of play it out in my mind and rehearse it in my mind. And we’d rarely walked through things where I did it, we usually just said, ‘you’re going to start here, you’re going to walk down to here and you need to start here and end here in what you’re saying.’ But for ten or fifteen minutes before that, I was thinking while you were setting lights and people were doing other things. And then when it came time I’d say, ‘Give me just a second!’ And I would have 30 seconds to a minute, and then we’d do it. I mean it was just all right off the top!”
Because of these improvisations, shooting with Cody became a new experience, as Bill Cordes observed, “Spending time shooting with Father Prophecy was an experience, because a lot of times I didn’t know how to react to him. I feel like I’m pretty way out there, but his character is WAY out there! And he was just so spontaneous. I think those were fun too, being with his spontaneity.” Jennifer Palmberg never forgot shooting the only scene that she had with Cody Hunnicutt, “I’ll never forget (the shoot) with Mr. Hunnicutt. I’ll never forget meeting Mr. Hunnicutt! (Laughs) I’ve never had him for a class, but I’ve met Mr. Hunnicutt now. All of my friends were like, ‘You shot with Cody Hunnicutt today? What did you think of him?’ – ‘He’s amazing, that’s all I can say.’ (Continues to laugh) He’s quite a character. That was a very memorable shoot (in the library), especially the one where (Father Prophecy wakes up from the dream). We only had to shoot that part twice; I was shocked when he was talking about, ‘And they will fornicate and procreate…’ (Stops to laugh) I just busted a gut!” “Working with Cody; it was laughs a minute, we had good times,” Brian Chestnut recalled. “With his witty humor, his rambling on – it was pretty good. He pushes the envelope a lot. I liked working with Cody. And if in the future again I could work with him, that would be awesome.”
For Craig Siefkes, Cody was fun to be around between takes, “Cody was fun to work with, he was hilarious behind the scenes. He was fun to work with on the set itself. He would come up with some of the strangest dialogue! Like the scene that happened on the Fine Arts Stage, he’s sitting there rambling on, rambling on – we shot it about three or four times. In a couple of the outtakes he’s going into these long sexual innuendoes. Sometimes you’re thinking that Cody needs, like, professional help. (He’s) really fun, I wish I had more scenes with him.” David Baldwin had the most scenes with Cody Hunnicutt, and enjoyed the time they spent together, “A lot of my favorite scenes were with Cody when he had to ad-lib, because you just never knew what he was going to say. Then you‘d try to react according to what he said, and then it makes it interesting when you gotta play however you feel you need to play it. Cody is a very funny guy. He can come up with stuff off the top of his head and I’ll react differently than he expects, and then he’ll change what he had originally wanted to do because I reacted differently to something. He’s a brilliant guy, he’s real smart and funny.”
A memorable scene to shoot was at the Pembroke Hill School in Kansas City. I wanted to have a scene take place there for two very personal reasons; the first was that my father was retiring at the end of that year, and this would be the last chance for me to shoot with him in his art room. The second was that the school was planning to completely remodel the campus, tearing down buildings and changing the others. In the end the Pembroke Hill School would not resemble the school I had attended since second grade, and this was my last chance to shoot one of my films at the school I remembered and wanted to showcase. I have known Johnny Johntz since I started at Pem-Day and he had helped me shoot my films since the beginning in high school. It was a lot of fun to go back and shoot with Johnny in my father’s art room just as we did 10 years earlier with THE HONEY THIEF. It was bittersweet though, with the knowledge that the room and building we were in would be torn down in less than 8 months. I also stayed an extra day and filmed my father to document a typical day for him at school. When I was in high school and I had the video equipment, I shot very little of my father at school, and I regretted that. Since this was my last chance, I took this opportunity.
Another location that was fun to shoot was the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson. The plan was to be as out-of-the-way as possible, using the available light from a wall of windows instead of setting up lights. We shot the scene when the museum first opened, and only used its very impressive open lobby. Short on time, I didn’t have much of a chance to enjoy the exhibits, and we had to race through the scene outside where Rob explains what “PUC” stands for on the PUC device. The Cosmosphere was very helpful and went out of their way in allowing us to film there. It was another important use of such a location to add a sense of realism. Brian Chestnut remembered shooting in Hutchinson, “That was pretty neat (going to the Kansas Cosmosphere). They had updated some things so I had a chance to look at the new exhibits. Even after we filmed I did go through the museum. It was just different filming in a place where there were people were walking around and it was more of a realistic (setting), where it’s more of a closed set filming at the college. As far as going to the Cosmosphere, there’s people walking, it’s more of a real life setting. I kind of enjoyed that.” For more information on The Kansas Cosmosphere click here to visit their web site at http://www.cosmo.org/
The Cosmosphere laboratory/workshop was actually filmed in one of the garages on the Barton Campus. Rob meets his father, played by David Lake, to ask to borrow some NASA artifacts for his science project. David remembered that day of shooting, “We were in a simulated Cosmosphere office/laboratory area, and one of the shots was on top of a hay bailer – (laughs) - was the landing pod for the moon? What was that? But, Brian (Chestnut) was late – as usual. We were ready to start on time but Brian wasn’t there. But I’ll tell ya, it’s so much fun working with the kids and being a part of that.” Of course, the NASA equipment was props made of various bits and pieces of useless things. The most notable prop, which was used throughout the film, was called the P.U.C. Device. The Portable Urine Collection Device was such a ridiculous looking thing that I think people actually thought it really was a portable toilet for astronauts.
One of the longest days of shooting was in the Barton County Community College library, where the final confrontation occurs. It was a hard shoot for all of the actors, but they still seemed to enjoy it. Cody Hunnicutt remembered, “My favorite scene (to shoot) was with everyone in the library. That was my favorite scene where we had cornered the Antichrist Rob and Mary. I think I was the biggest then (with my character), and that was also interesting because we had everyone here. That was the biggest group I shot with, usually I just shot with one to two people. There I shot with five. That was fun because it was the biggest, but I enjoyed everything we did.”
Craig Siefkes had a slightly different perspective about the library shoot, “The Library scene; it was a very fun scene to shoot, but I was feeling sick throughout the half of it. The helmet - it was getting hot. And it was such a long shoot, I was just so glad to get out of there after that. It was raining that day, and it hadn’t been a good day that day as well. (Shakes his head unwilling to explain further what caused his overall feeling of misery when remembering that day.) I wore this stupid helmet during the film. I’ve had so much difficulty because it kept flying off all through production. First of all it hurt; every single time I wore it, by the end of shooting, I had a headache. Second of all, it looked stupid! It’s just not my style. Another part of the equipment I hated was the gas mask. It was absolutely - (shakes his head) - you couldn’t breathe in it. It was hot. (Shakes his head again and laughs from an apparent memory of utter misery while shooting.) Yes, I was the guy who wore all the stupid props.” This movie was shot on broadcast-quality video, but I did shoot the dream sequences on Super 8 film. I wanted these sequences to have a different look to them, and the dark, grainy film images helped to create the non-reality based world of dreams. I had two unused cartridges of Super 8 film left over from the shooting of TIMELINE and started filming with these. Unfortunately I found out that Kodak no longer manufactured or developed the Ektachrome Color Super 8 movie film that I just used, and I had to purchase the Kodachrome 40 color Super 8 film instead. After the initial panic I discovered there was only a handful of labs in the country that could still develop my film, for a higher price of course. So I had one cartridge sent in, while the other was developed two years later. I call it the lost footage of PROPHECY, DEATH AND OTHER FUN THINGS. (I took the 'lost footage' and made it a short film called A BRIEF ENCOUNTER WITH A MADMAN, which was a finalist at the 2000 KAN Film Festival.) I felt I had to get the one cartridge developed right away because it was a scene I shot in my wife’s hometown, and I told her brother and nephew that they could be in the movie.
This footage was a small surreal scene during Father Prophecy’s dream that was shot in State College, Pennsylvania. At one point, he has a childhood flashback to the time he first met an evangelist, and how he had a hidden sponge with fake blood to create a stigmata. I shot this over the Christmas holiday while my wife and I were visiting her family back in her hometown. Her brother, JR Strailey, portrayed the evangelist in the woods, and JR’s stepson, Wesley Pady, played the young Fred Boarman. It was freezing that day and actually sleeting on us. I caught a cold and was very sick on the way home, so I was very determined to keep this scene in the film.
The main scenes for Father Prophecy’s dream sequences were shot in the tunnels underneath the campus, where he confronts the leader of the evil vampires (why evil vampires? Well, why not?), as Cody recalled, “The dream sequences down in the tunnels; I didn’t like being down the tunnels in any way, shape or form. It was dusty. It was dirty. I wasn’t sure how the dream sequences fit in; I still went off and did a lot of improvisation. Two of the people were suppose to be there that day - I was suppose to have two people to work with and interact with and they didn’t show. The day that we shot in the chapel when one person was an hour late, and we shot around them, and then they showed up and then we shot again – I didn’t care for that. I think that…(Laughs)…I have a lot more respect for Mark Adams’ level of patience because there were three or four times where people were late, and I was suppose to shoot with them - two or three times where people did not show or showed up an hour or two late. And I would have gone ballistic on them. Even though it’s volunteer and they were here doing their own thing, but yeah I would have had a problem with them being late or not showing at all. Because I was on time every time.”
Because PROPHECY, DEATH AND OTHER FUN THINGS was a longer film, and took longer to shoot, the production was a lot more strenuous, especially for Cody Hunnicutt, “The overall experience; it was a lot more physical work! There are about four bruises on my wrist, my knee, my shin! I kept falling down a lot! You’ll see those in the bloopers. I hit myself in the head with a helmet, yeah. But it was tiring, we came and shot this one little scene that was to take an hour – it took us two and a half hours to do it! We ended up with something much better than what we started out with, I think. But it was tiring. I was tired every night when I went home. Actually it would be fun to shoot one of these if you had a whole group of people, and shot one of these in three days to a week. Because to me that would be fun, to be able to do this everyday – eight to twelve hours a day – for a week or two. I think that would be great. Because the energy that you get when you were doing a scene, and then (with this film) 30 days later you were doing (the same) scene. And that was difficult.” PROPHECY, DEATH AND OTHER FUN THINGS, to my surprise and the surprise of others, turned out to be a darker satirical film that I had originally intended. In fact, it turned out to be my most controversial film. Part of the reason for this, I believe, is the character of Father Prophecy. When Cody and I started developing the character, we saw him as an obvious con-man that used wild, over-the-top theatrical sermons that would be seen as unrealistic and exaggerated. When we watched the movie it turned out that what appeared to be over-the-top acting on the set was very close to reality in the final film. Instead of a funny spoof, Father Prophecy was disturbing in his realistic portrayal of any typical TV Evangelist you may find flipping the channels. The satire had a bite to it that left the viewer disturbed by the fact that they were laughing at what they perceived as something sacred and real. I wondered if the “con-man” qualities to the Father Prophecy character would have been more apparent if I left in the deleted footage from The Father Prophecy Show and the interviews by Brandon Rock. Or better yet, make Father Prophecy a traveling spectacle wherever he went: with Vegas showgirls and an obvious theatrical approach. Of course this was something I couldn’t afford doing, so anything that ‘over-the-top’ was cut down to Father Prophecy in a purple coat intensely giving sermons with broad gestures, but with more subtext. But I must recognize the fact that a satirical comedy involving religion is a very touchy subject. I can only theorize that someone who is a deeply religious individual may not see the difference from satire of a person who uses religion for selfish reasons (as in my film) from just making fun of a person who believes in God and truly feels he is doing the right thing. Or that any film showing a character doing the things that Father Prophecy does in the name of God will make people uneasy or offended. My father watched it and made some very good and constructive criticism (i.e. it wasn’t his favorite). My mother never said anything, just sat quietly and politely watched what her son had created. My wife, Tracy, told me it wasn’t her favorite film, “I can’t believe you made that film! We live in the Bible belt. (Laughs) And Cody Hunnicutt’s offensive. He’s very boisterous and very confrontational about religion. I can’t say I particularly care for (PROPHECY, DEATH AND OTHER FUN THINGS). It’s too far off the beaten path for me. But it was a leap for you to make that movie. It was a leap out there, and a leap out there on religion in the middle of Kansas. It’s a touchy thing.” Craig Siefkes watched the film a year later and felt more critical on his own performance, “I just saw that a week ago, and the more I’ve seen it the more I wish I could have done different with my character. Maybe I’m just being too critical but some of the scenes I could have done something else to make it better. Personally I like it. Since it was my first full-length movie I like it, it was fun to do. Portions of it Cody was a little too risque; when he’s sitting there going through the battle plan to defeat Satan with the little sex books as his pointers. That was a little risque. But on the most part I liked the movie.” “I’ve had people look at (PROPHECY, DEATH AND OTHER FUN THINGS) and they’ve treated me better than those critics did. In other words they got the humor. (Chuckles) They saw through the darkness and saw the humor.” – Cody Hunnicutt
To my surprise PROPHECY, DEATH AND OTHER FUN THINGS won 2nd Place at the 1999 KAN Film Festival in Lawrence, Kansas. I attended the screening of my category, and found that I was competing against a beautifully shot (on 16mm film), but rather confusing film called PEAR, and a compelling drama called DEFINING JAY; a story reminiscent of THE BIG CHILL based on a true story. The director, David Moore, explained to me the inspiration for the film, “My Dad died in 1993 in an accident at work, and I made my first movie the year before that just to make a movie and it really wasn’t that good. We just did it to learn the process of doing it. And it was a really bad year for me; my friend Jay died, my Dad died and my Grandma died later that summer. My friend Jay died in a car accident, and my Dad died at work and then my Grandma was dying of cancer. So when it came around to our second film I wanted to something that actually meant something. We wanted to focus on more of a character piece, with more acting in it and how to develop characters. So I thought we needed to do a movie that was personal to me about my Dad, and how I was dealing and had dealt with him dying. It was always very unusual to me that when people die, unless they’re dying of some sort of terminal illness and you know they’re going to die – My Dad died very suddenly so I never got to tell him that I loved him and how I felt about him and vice versa. So I thought wouldn’t it be interesting if we made a movie where we had a group of friends who had somebody die of a terminal illness. But before he died he exiled himself and wrote a book, a memoir of his life, with each chapter devoted to his girlfriend or brother or each of his friends and what he thought about them. And he was suppose to go back and be with them for the last days of his life but he ended up dying after he wrote the book but before he had a chance to go back. And when they went up to clean up his parent’s cabin in which he had stayed they found the book that was meant for them. They went up there with angst and disgust in the fact that he had just left to go die when they were there to help him. But that was the whole point of the movie – is that I’d always thought that it would be great if you knew when someone passed away how they thought about you and they knew how you felt about them. Which none of us get to do but these four people (in the film) did.” Although DEFINING JAY was technically not as well made (shot on 8mm video), it deservedly won 1st Place with it’s emotionally driven ensemble acting and dramatic direction by David Moore. At the screening my film got the biggest response of laughter during the show and applause when it was over, but PROPHECY was also the only comedy. David Moore seemed to really like my film, “I thought it was – (Laughs) don’t take this the wrong way; I thought it was one of the most bizarre movies I’ve ever seen. Which is why I liked it. It’s not like anything I’d ever seen before. I remember seeing it with the group of people that comes to these things and we thought that was one of the greatest characters (Father Prophecy) that we had ever seen in a movie because he was so unique and so out there. I liked it a lot.” Two enthusiastic college students named Kris and Sean asked to buy a copy of the film, and various members of the crowd including a free-lance film critic told me they really liked it. A month later I received the judges comments of the film. To no surprise they varied greatly, some loved it and some didn’t. One judge wrote, “Camera work was not too creative.” while two other judges commented, “Good Camera Work & Spec. Effects.” & “Very nice editing – your timing of the edits creates a nice tension…Good overall vision and execution. You have a good eye for the camera. Good Job!” You can’t please everybody, I guess. But I learned that the hard way with my earlier films. Cody Hunnicutt was happy to read comments like, “Good acting – especially Father Prophet.” & “Father Prophecy GREAT!” “I thought about that film overall, and you had some real talented guys in it – the guy who played Father Prophecy, he was really talented. I think as with all of your films there was a lot of really good stuff, but (PROPHECY, DEATH AND OTHER FUN THINGS) was too long and if you (cut it down from the 2 hour 20 minute version), you could make it a better film. It would be more watch-able and more enjoyable. I think one thing that people really responded to in our film WAR, DEATH AND PIZZA was that it wasn’t an hour and a half long. I would really like to see (the shorter version of PROPHECY, DEATH AND OTHER FUN THINGS). In the longer version, even his talent as Father Prophecy - and I know you liked it when he ad-libbed, after a while it was too much of him doing this. But there was some really good stuff in that too, some really funny scenes.” – Johnny Johntz
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