Act Naturally

The above title is a country song which, when I heard it on the radio yesterday, depressed me a little bit. It's not really about making a movie.

The title of the blog refers to something that has been in the works for a couple of months: The Lubbock 5th Branch Movie!

It started in June, when Layne was put in charge of his department's end-of-the-year roast movie. Apparently, Texas Tech Orthopaedics has a long-standing tradition that, at the end of the academic year, they send off the graduating residents by making a movie that completely defames the character of each of their attending faculty. In recent years, efforts to curb this practice have been taken. However, it did not stop Layne from fulfilling his third-year resident duties and using his "research rotation" to create a movie based on (among other things) stereotypes, Tourette's syndrome, and gangsta rap. The results were pretty good. It won't be shown at Cannes anytime soon, but he was pretty proud of it, and those present in the private screening were pretty impressed. Plus, he still has a job, so apparently the faculty were okay with it, too.

From that time, Layne was smitten with the idea of being a filmmaker, and expressed a desire to make a movie about the branch. We kicked around ideas, but nothing more was said for awhile. Then, in July, during a Sunday School lesson given by Stephanie, I had an inspiration for the branch movie which I whispered to Layne. I feel partly responsible for the fact that he paid no attention to the rest of Stephanie's lesson, and, instead, spent the rest of Sunday School and, I suspect, Elders' Quorum coming up with skits for the movie.

Thus, the Fifth Branch Movie was born. I don't know if, originally, Layne was planning on me being as heavily involved as I now am. I know I wasn't planning on it. However, when he started to talk to me about skits (that same day at the branch's Mix and Munch), he was envisioning the movie as a musical. I think, at that point, I gasped, clutched my chest, and said, "I have always WANTED to make a musical!"

We decided then and there that it had to be a combined branch effort, but that, being the control freaks we are, we wanted to retain creative rights. So, while I was in Japan, he pitched the idea to the branch presidency, billing it as an FHE project. Surprisingly, they liked it. They even agreed to be in some skits we had already developed that made fun of them.

The goal, besides making a "super awesome movie" was to a) re-energize the FHE committe co-chairs who are now on our second year in the calling, and b) to hopefully get branch members involved who wouldn't normally get involved. It was a great plan.

I will now address some of the concerns I had, which are probably points readers will also bring up:

a) Neither one of us knows anything about moviemaking. Nothing about photography, lighting, editing, scenery, costumes, any of that. And, since it has to be a musical now, let's throw in the fact that neither one of us knows anything about choreography or music composition. However, I think we both have high opinions of ourselves, and we have a pretty good idea about what won't work.

b) We both have slightly demanding day jobs. In theory. He "fixes bones" but not the ones that protect vital things like the brain or the spinal column. There is scholarly debate as to whether or not I actually DO anything in my profession. Nevertheless, we both have a lot of other things that should be higher priorities in our lives, or must be higher priorities in our lives. For example, on Thursday night, Layne had to show me how to work the camera in case he didn't get out of surgery in time to shoot our opening scenes.

c) Do members of our branch actually want to participate in something this geeky, or is this something that only we think is cool because we're old and have lost our ability to gauge pop culture relevance? We actually took a straw poll at the beginning, and younger people seemed to indicate interest in such a project. We administered a more sophisticated Likert-type measure that included items such as: How awesome is it that we are making a branch movie? (1-a little awesome, 2-kinda awesome, 3-awesome, 4-super-awesome, 5-way awesome). Besides not having a large enough sample to get sufficient power, there were also some reliability and validity issues. For example, can you really say "kinda awesome" is better than "a little awesome." We lost sleep over that one. However, we got a positive response from the branch members.

d) Can we actually write things that other people will find funny? We're definitely not the Frosts, and, let's face it, there's nothing worse than something somebody put a lot of time into that seemed funny to them, but fell flat when they screened it before outsiders. I actually have no rebuttal for this one. Like I said, we have written things. He has written things I think are funny, and I have written things he thinks are funny, but we haven't really tested them out on unbiased people.

e) Isn't this a lot of extra work for something that isn't technically gospel-related? Yes, but couldn't you also say the same about The Phone Call, and who isn't grateful for that gem of Mormon cinema?

I'm sure there are many other concerns people can bring up, and I welcome any feedback from other, more seasoned, award-winning moviemakers. However, we went forward to shoot our first skit on Friday.

Despite our initial fears, Layne made it to the shooting, which meant that my job for the day mostly consisted of making sure our actors (about 10 in all) were well watered and fed, and to start and stop the Austin Powers music.

The basic premise of our opening skit is a complete rip-off of the Austin Powers opening montage, which, most of you Beatles' fans will recognize is really, largely, a rip-off of the opening scene in a Hard Day's Night. How Hollywood are we? Plus, it required no writing. Our Austin Powers was played by Kip, whose name is actually an acronym. He is pictured above wearing the plaid jacket. We found a blue, crushed velvet jacket in a vintage store in Austin, which we debated about, but settled on this one because Layne could also wear it disco-skating. Which is a topic for another post.

Above are Seth and Micah. I believe Seth's clothing belonged to his father, and somehow managed to escape being thrown out by his mother. Micah's clothing was Layne's Nacho Libre Halloween costume from last year. This information is completely superfluous, but I just have to let it be known that those are women's exercise pants and women's underwear (there was lace around the waistband that he tucked in).

Stephanie found this dress for 99 cents. She is my hero.

So, let me explain:

There's sort of a running joke about me chasing after Kip, which started when I was trying to make him uncomfortable by sitting on his lap. When Layne and I were talking about the concept for this part of the video, we wanted a lot of people in random costumes. I immediately thought about a wedding dress, and called Anne to see if she could lend me one. She mailed it to me, and, while I wasn't planning on wearing it, it did fit.

There's an episode of Friends that is one of my all-time favorites. In it, Monica goes to pick up someone else's wedding dress as a favor. When she picks it up, she ends up trying it on, and then not wanting to take it off. She ends up wearing it at home, and then Phoebe gets one, too. The greatest scene is when Rachel has had a bad day, and all three of them put on the wedding dresses to cheer themselves up. They are seen sitting on the couch drinking beer and eating popcorn. I realize most of you are married, so it probably won't mean anything to you when I say this really works. There's something about being in a wedding dress that kind of lifts the spirits. Given that, along with the fact that it fit me, and approval from Layne that it would be really funny if I were chasing after Kip in a wedding dress in one scene, I decided to wear it. That's Bruce in the football uniform, who thinks it would be funny if I tried to convince people that he and I actually got married.

Another thing that's ironic about me making a movie is the fact that I am a lousy photographer, as evidenced by the above picture of Layne, where he is demonstrating a move he wants the dancers to do. I almost didn't include it because of its overall badness, but it's the only one I took of Layne on that day, and since he has somewhat dominated this post, it seemed appropriate to put in a picture of him. If he hadn't shown up, the entire movie might look like that picture.

I wish this post could end with a clip of what we have already done, but since I couldn't get ahold of Layne who has the video in his possession, it will have to wait for another day.