Repo Chick has wrapped

Alex Cox (he went to my school) has finished the shoot for Repo Chick, his sequel to the excellent Repo Man. It started filming last December. He mentioned the wrap on his blog (well worth a read):

The REPO CHICK shoot is done. We wrapped half a day behind - actually half a day ahead, since, having lost a day due to our robbery we made up half a day. We never managed a 13-page day, but there were at least a couple of eleven pagers.

Having shot RC this way, and SEARCHERS 2.0 likewise, I wonder how it would be possible to shoot a picture the old way? An independent film averages 3 pages a day; a 'real' movie maybe a page. How do those involved deal with the crushing boredom element? Whenever we had a brief break in the RC shoot I remembered what it was like making REPO MAN: wait for a long time, shoot a little bit, then wait again, listening to the Teamsters telling stories about guns and dangerous situations, or the Executive Producer sharing his raft of insights, or the producers getting on my case for not going fast enough... No wonder wanker actors like Christian Bale lose it and beat up on the cameraman. They are bored to the extent of insanity.

The microfeature is the way to go! The London Film Council stymied the London microfeature project for a reason; while the Pool's bureaucratic oiks were terror-stricken at the prospect of an eight-film microfeature project. By going fast, and using the same resources, microfeatures eschew idle hanging around and replace it with real work, which must be done, pronto. They are also empowering, and apt to blossom out of control.

REPO CHICK couldn't have happened without big pictures, of course. Our line producers, our DP, our gaffer, our grips, our designers, our hair and makeup artists, all need to make a living. They do so by working on monster, unknowably-profitable studio films. And yet the Studio Cartel claims it's about to go belly-up, and seeks a $25 billion hand-out from the White House (they'll get it, eventually. But it won't go to make films - any more than the Big Bank Bailout went to endangered mortgage-holders. Like the Rockefellers and the DuPonts, the Studio Cartel believe in socialism for the rich!).

I am so grateful to our crew, cast, and production people, all of whom survive on 'real' pictures (or by showing up at Home Depot early in the morning) so as to work on films like REPO CHICK for a dollar a day.

But just imagine... a world without socialism for the rich, and without studios. A world without Studio Cartel Distribution. A world in which films are shot in two or three weeks, instead of three or four months. A world in which - instead of working on two films, or maybe three, over the course of a year - we work on twenty or thirty features, all costing $200K or thereabouts.

Most would be bad, some would be good, one or two might be exceptional. There would be an excess of horror films: the first refuge of the mediocre filmmaker. But the constant production might provide a working wage. It would create jobs, and huge potential for originality and creativity. And it would certainly make a change from the superhero- and talking-animal-themed garbage the Studio Cartel foists on us.

I can't wait to see some of this. Street Pete and everyone else, what do you reckon? Will it be worth the wait?

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