Indie Film? July 24, 2011
I am walking up to this hotel in the middle of a forest in the Northwest US. It looks old as if it was built in the 1970s. It has this “tries-to-be-modern” look that seemed prevalent of 1970s architecture.
I check in at the front desk and head to my room. For the next three days, I go skiing even though I don’t know how to ski and even attempt snowboarding which I’ve never done before.
One night, I hear noise from the room next to me. Someone knocks on my door and I open it to find a young woman with brown hair but an indiscernible face. She holds up in front of me a book made of glossy thick paper.
The young woman asks, “Want to join us? We’re filming a movie next door.”
Confused but for some reason, I immediately accept her offer.
I walk next door and enter the room. It’s relatively small and cramped especially with the camera crew, two other actors, the producer and director. I find a spot next to the closet and sit on the red velvet carpet with a strange gold-colored pattern of swirls on it.
The young woman sits next to me. I open up the script but it looks more like a graphic novel than an actual script.
I ask, “What are you filming?”
A man who I assume was the producer replies, “Don’t worry we’re not filming a snuff film.”
“Or a porno,” the woman next to me replies as the whole room bursts into laughter.
“This is an indie film,” the producer tells me.
The producer then tells me that the story of the film is about this man who travels to Italy to take revenge against a mob family. They tell me I’m playing a minor role but for some reason I’m also appearing in the end of the movie as well.
She tells me to go there and take a look at the lines. Again, it looked more like a graphic novel than a script. On the pages she pointed out was a stylized picture of a car being chased down a street somewhere in Italy. Behind the car are two men in another car.
A tall man with blonde curly hair standing next to me says in a thick Italian voice, “You’re that person.”
He points to the person in the first car that’s being chased down.
“How can I be in a minor role if it seems I’m actually the protagonist?” I ask.
Apparently the hero of the movie keeps changing until the end and I’m the last person that seems to have survived.
We begin to enact a scene from somewhere in the middle of the “book.” The woman is to play the dead mistress and was found lying on the bed in the hotel room from what I was told. I am supposed to bust into the room and quickly shoot the tall, Italian man with blonde hair then run to face the dead body of that woman. She apparently is, well was, my friend’s mistress up to that point in the film.
Since I messed up my lines several times, the producer decides that we take a break. I head downstairs to the hotel cafeteria. Determined not to mess up another line, I take the book with me and just buy something quick to eat– honey buns.
I sit at the bar and read over the scene to myself. The young woman with brown hair sits next to me and asks if I’m alright with this role.
I tell her “Yes.”
She just smiles and strokes my back with her right hand.
“It’s unusual to have an actor appear in front of us all of a sudden because we lost the other ones.”
I ask what happened to them and she replies with a blank stare on her face, “They’ve all been shot to death the day before.”
I suddenly hear gunfire in the hall next to the cafeteria. She pushes me off my barstool and onto the floor. The woman kneeling on her right knee pulls out a silver handgun from behind her back and begins firing in the direction of the gunfire.
I look up to see what was going on. There was the producer and director trading gunshots with this young woman. She tosses me a handgun and asks me to help out.
“You’re going to help me out!” she stammers back to me.
Holding what looks like a 9mm handgun in my right hand, I begin firing at the producer and director. The Italian man then jumps through the window and begins shooting at us.
The whole scene turns chaotic and the woman grabs my hand and tells me to make a run for it.
We exit the cafeteria into the outdoors outside the hotel. The three men make haste and beginning chasing us. We try running towards the parking lot but are slowed down by the thick layer of snow that has suddenly appeared within a half hour.
I hear two gunshots and the woman falls into the snow face first. I turn and fire towards the direction of the three men but I feel a sharp pain inbetween my eyes.
I was shot dead by one of them.
I wake up at this point.