PRODUCTION NOTES
by Gary Walkow

CRASHING is the sequel to my first film, THE TROUBLE WITH DICK, which won the Sundance Grand Prize in 1987. CRASHING is the first sequel to a Sundance Grand Prize Winner.

THE TROUBLE WITH DICK is about a writer in a state of crisis; in CRASHING, I recycled THE TROUBLE WITH DICK into lead character Richard McMurray’s first novel. CRASHING revisits the themes and situations of that earlier work: what does it mean to stay alive as an artist?

CRASHING is a completely fictional but very personal film. Much as Richard McMurray in CRASHING is trying to get his inspiration back, so was I. Like him I had a critically successful first work. My more recent film BEAT began as a very small movie but evolved into something unwieldy. It had seven executive producers, only three of whom I ever met. Its budget increased twenty-fold and then was cut by more than half. For the first time I was not able to shoot my script the way I wanted. Like Richard McMurray’s second novel, BEAT was a personal calamity.

In the half-dozen years since BEAT, changes in technology have made personal filmmaking more feasible than ever before. Alain Silver, who produced BEAT, purchased a Panasonic 100A camera and used it to shoot a movie with a tiny crew. He offered me his camera and his help to make a movie in this same manner. After the unhappy experience of BEAT, the idea was to get back to the basics of filmmaking.

Andrew Huebscher came on as DP -- talented, enthusiastic and unafraid to shoot a feature without any assistance. Our first sequence shot on a rainy weekend with a 2-person crew, Andrew and Alain. This shoot was also Stephen Gyllenhaal‘s acting debut. I’ve shot with small crews before, but but this was my first experience shooting a dramatic scene with a crew of two. Everyone had to wear a lot of hats, and not just because it was raining. The speed, mobility, and intensity of the experience got me hooked on this style of shooting. It was like making a student film again, only now I sort of knew what I was doing.

Executive Producers Joe & Anthony Russo helped considerably with casting, and they facilitated, literally, our second shooting day -- again with Andrew and Alain as the entire crew. Joe and Anthony persuaded David Cross, co-star of the series ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, to be in CRASHING. While ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT was out on location, we ventured onto the 20th Century Fox lot, borrowed a piece of grip black and a light, and shot on their sound stage. There were just the three of us behind the camera on this enormous stage where John Ford filmed THE GRAPES OF WRATH.

Campbell Scott was a true mensch and got totally into the spirit of CRASHING. He flew out from New York on JetBlue, borrowed a car from a friend and stayed in another friend’s condo. He even brought his own snacks to the set -- and shared them. On our first morning with him, some of the crew got stuck in traffic, so Campbell put half the cast in his car and drove them to our shooting location.

We shot the first two days with Campbell while he was town for the release of OFF THE MAP (which he directed); we still didn’t have a soundman. Alain rigged the microphones and Andrew listened to the sound on a headset plugged into the camera. Afterwards, I asked Ron Judkins, whom I knew as a fellow independent filmmaker, to give me his opinion on our production tracks. Ron was so intrigued that we could shoot a feature with such minimal resources that he volunteered to be a one-man sound crew for the next six days with Campbell. Ron used the same equipment for our tiny movie that he had just used as the mixer on Steven Spielberg’s WAR OF THE WORLDS.

With the crew expanded to six, we then shot the remainder of the film. My apartment is the principal location.

Shooting the bowling ball bouncing down the steps is the most dangerous thing I’ve done in my career (which includes shooting in a Mexican jungle with Courtney Love). There were just two of us: Alain rolled the ball down the steps, I ran the camera. But the bowling ball careened past me and into the street. We were at the top of a half-mile-long hill -- luckily it bounced under a parked car. There was no take two.

Shooting ended like it started, my core collaborators and one actor packed into an old Volvo and driving around downtown Los Angeles looking for a dark corner to stage the manuscript-burning scene.

The same minimalist approach carried us through post. Steve Vance edited the film on Final Cut Pro in the office in back of his house, where he also created the opening title sequence which recounts Richard McMurray’s downward spiral in sixty seconds.  Ernest Troost, the composer, and Mike McKone, the sound designer, also worked out of their homes. This is a garage movie from start to finish.

This film got made only with the help of my friends. No one made any money, but we had fun doing it. The film is dedicated to Andre De Toth, a master of the small budget. I love Andre’s epitaph; it’s in the closing credits. “Don’t be careful. Have fun. I did.”

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