So now and then you'll likely hear me talk about Something Remote, in passing or otherwise. For those who didn't know me back in 2008 while it was being shot or otherwise just don't know what the hell I'm talking about, this page will hopefully serve as a bit of a cliffnotes.
So first, the basic definition. Something Remote is a feature-length independent comedy film I co-starred in, back in 2009. It was written and directed by Alex Laferriere, produced by Nick Allain, assistant produced by Steve DiTullio, and starred C/J Haley, myself, and John Selig as the three main characters Neil, Mat, and Erik as they try to deal with an onslaught by Neil's crazy psycho ex-girlfriend Lisa, played by Rebecca Davis.
Something Remote has a Wikipedia entry, and is distributed by IndieFlix, where (if you click on that link) you can purchase a DVD or buy a license to watch a streaming version online.
Now the long definition.
Back in the fall of 2007, Alex Laferriere was a member of a WPI comedy troupe called Kilroy Sketch Comedy (a group which I had just joined). During the production of Kilroy's first (of four) shows for the year, Alex and his roommates Neal Humphrey, Matt Lowe, and Eric Kolodziejczak permanently lost their television remote. In a clever ploy, Alex decided to pitch an idea for the second show that would involve three guys on a couch such that a prop remote would have to be purchased (and would subsequently be snatched by Alex).
Yes, this entire story begins with prop theft.
So the pitch goes off without a hitch, and Alex becomes the director for the second show of the year, titled Sofa King Kilroy. A first for Kilroy, rather than having a show whose sketches were entirely separate, several sketches were written to accommodate the "Three Guys" (named Neil, Mat, and Erik, after Alex's roommates). The overall story was written by Alex, while Caleb Wrobel helped edit several sketches to fit the "Three Guys" mold. Ultimately, the show became a 17-minute stageplay starring Ryan Keough, myself, and Adam Nakama as Neil, Mat, and Erik, while unrelated sketches were woven into the plot as the result of channel surfing, all taking place on the Three Guys' television.
The show was a huge success, and still ranges as one of the most memorable Kilroy shows to date.
Early 2008 hits, and Alex assembles his film group Broken Wall Films (unofficial at the time) to discuss the next project. I was among one of the newcomers to the group, and while they'd primarily done shorts and short films no longer than 15 minutes in the past, Alex wanted to take a shot at filming a feature-length movie. A pitch was made for a script called Three Guys on a Couch, based on Sofa King Kilroy, and Alex took off and ran with the idea.
To South Africa.
Alex was on a project in South Africa, primarily focused on filmmaking, and when he returned he had a script over 110 pages long. Alex would direct and Nick Allain would produce with the help of Steve DiTullio. All was good.
Then it came time for casting.
Most of the movie's cast were chosen as a result of auditions, including those who knew Alex, Nick, and Steve. I auditioned for the role of Mat and was cast, and would later meet the rest of the folks cast that day including John Selig as Erik, Rebecca Davis as Lisa, Sarah Neslusan as Shannon, Matt Heron Duranti as Skott, and Jeffrey Desautels as Bruce. We had no "Abby" at the time, and our original Neil was a guy by the name of George Aldrich. However, after one too many late and or non-appearances, he was replaced by C/J Haley. Hunter Giles was also cast as Homeless Al after needing to replace the actor the production team was hoping to get. Sarah's friend Sammi Lappin was cast as "Abby", and the cast was complete.
And so, filming began on July 1, 2008. It was a hot day, the first of very many. We stumbled through the first scene and not much else. We returned the next day to find... that our first day of shooting didn't record. At all. Well fuck. So we did it all over again. And it was lest crappy, thank god. And so over the next forty days we filmed the entire movie, minus the television skits. The Skott and Shannon scene somehow only took a single day of filming, despite being about a sixth of the full movie's runtime. The skits continued to be filmed until October 26, and the next day our film was shipped out to a dozen festivals. And on January 9, 2009, we premiered our movie at the Elm Draught House Cinema to a friends-and-family audience of over 300. We all had a good time, and that was that.
The movie's had some legs since then. The summer of 2009, we had a DVD release hovering in the future, with no real advertising scheme to think of. So Something Remote was born. No, not the movie. The webseries. Set as a prequel to the movie, it followed the Three Guys in the weeks leading up to the events of the film. And so, eleven episodes were produced from July to September 2009, and the film was released (independently) to DVD on September 14, 2009. We later released it to distribution by IndieFlix on February 10, 2010
But that wasn't the end of the road. In October 2009 we also went to the Silk City Flick Fest in Connecticut, and managed to walk away with both the Best Feature and Funniest Flick awards, beating out movies with -- literally -- over one thousand times our budget. And then there was Gen Con Indy in Indiana in August 2010, where we showed our movie to a whole new audience of now-raving-fans. And then we went back to the Silk City Flick Fest in 2010 to hand off the Best Feature award to A Safe House, and the Funniest Flick award to The Burial Boys. We were selected in the first Wanderings Film Festival in Alabama in 2010, and it looks like the road isn't quite ending just yet...
