Michael Egan - Director
I first read Bernie’s script in July of 1997 after a friend of his passed on my advertisement for scripts in the American Film Market issue of Variety. I thought it was fantastic. It was very funny and had great heart. I thought it would be a slam dunk for casting and finance. Little did I know how hard it would be to eventually make it a film. After four frustrating years- hiring casting agents in Sydney and London to attach a “name actor”, travel to Milan for Mifed and L.A. for the AFM begging for money, endless phone calls and emails to distributors and getting nowhere I decided to finance the film myself.

My original idea for the production was a “Dogma” style film: multiple handheld mini DV cameras, a drift and stop shooting style using mostly available light, long continuous takes with lots of improvisation from the actors, very little set design. Dispensing with the normal rules of shooting a movie so I could shoot it cheap and quick since it was my money. Fortunately for me and the film Tor Larsen came on board March 2002 as producer. We had previously worked together on two short films- one in 1992 and the other in 1997. He quickly dissuaded me from my Dogma mentality and began putting together an awesome microbudget feature film which was well and truly punching above its weight.

Saturday August 3rd 2002 we began the first day of our 19 day shoot. We shot the film with a single Digital Betacam camera with a full crew of over 40 and a cast of 32, over 100 extras, 12 locations and 48 sets including 5 days use of the entire 60th floor of a prime downtown office. During the shoot everyone worked together to make miracles happen every day. Most days we shot 7-10 pages of script, only having time for 1 or 2 setups per scene, 2 or 3 takes per set up, sometimes 1 set up 1 take for a whole scene. There never was an easy day, we were always rushing to get through our day but somehow we did it, everyday for 19 days. A truly remarkable achievement given our meager resources.