Delays are an almost expected part of the movie-making process. Sometimes there are delays to tweak the script or shoot additional scenes. Sometimes it’s on-set accidents or an act of God. Sometimes a last-ditch effort to try to fix what is broken. Sometimes, stuff happens.

In October 2002, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo went on a killing spree in the D.C. area, using a sniper rifle to terrorize an entire community. It was a jolt to 20th Century Fox with Phone Booth about a man held hostage in a phone booth by a sniper. Set to release November 15, those involved felt the topic hit too closely to home for a still grieving area. The opening was pushed to April 4 of the following year. Likewise, when the attacks of September 11 occurred, it put Warner Bros. into a difficult situation. With a nation’s wounds still raw, they decided to push the release of Collateral Damage to the following February -- the film showing a terrorist attack in the United States mirrored life a little too closely.

When Miramax scheduled Priest to open on Good Friday in 1995, it should have expected the backlash. A film that features a member of the clergy cruising bars for gay lovers, another who is having an affair with his housekeeper, and another who is an alcoholic would only stir up controversy when released on one of Christianity’s holiest days. By pushing the release from April 14 to April 19, Miramax reaped the rewards of the controversy the film generated while still looking responsive to Catholic concerns.

A recent example of a film delay in which cultural backlash is a concern is The Kite Runner. One of the key parts of the film is a rape scene involving two young boys. After consulting with a CIA operative about the possible ramifications of the scene, Paramount opted to delay the film’s release date to December to allow time for the boys to be removed from Afghanistan. Many feared for the safety of the boys in such a volatile area.

While reasons for a film’s delay can be many, the ultimate goal of both director and studio is to put out a successful product. Whether the delay is beneficial to this goal or not can be seen in the final result.

One giant step would be to use a children’s script but cast adult actors, with an adult twist made specifically for a grown-up audience. Consider a children’s movie remade for adults. Could it work?

The Last Starfighter (1984) fits the bill as a children’s or teen movie that could easily be remade for an adult audience, without many script changes. This film is about a teenager, Alex, who lives in a trailer park and wants to attend college but feels hopeless about his future. Alex finds himself thrown into the center of an inter-galactic war when he is chosen to be a spaceship fighter-pilot because he plays video-games to perfection. This movie would be a great remake for adults.

Change the depth the story -- Alex is instead a cubicle-squished thirty-something office worker who still plays video-games and gets the chance to save another planet as a spaceship pilot. It might be a comedy, and probably a good one. Better yet, studios could release two versions of The Last Starfighter, one for adults and the original for kids. Two for one. Could be both a studio and an indie idea - but certainly a new idea.

There are an innumerable number of classic children’s stories that could be brought into the light of adulthood, but need story revision to appeal to adult viewers. "The Little Matchstick Girl" comes to mind because it has had several film and TV productions - so scripts exist which could be adapted, without many changes, for an adult audience. Just cast an older teen to play the matchstick girl trying to survive in modern New York. She sells whatever she can get her hands on to passersby to help her dad, a struggling inventor, to pay the rent. Add a do-gooder social worker, a handsome electrical technician, some slight-of-hand friends, a copper here and there, and the tale of old city harshness instantly transforms into a tale of a modern slum-city, but -- with a tweak to the ending -- everyone could live through the wintry holiday .

And, if the writer’s strike gets much longer maybe producers can try to remake "Little Red Riding Hood" as an episode of Desperate Housewives. Only one question remains: who will be the wolf?

Can one financial dud actually kill a career? Whenever this topic is raised, Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate always rears its ugly head. While it is one of the most notorious flops in Hollywood history, it didn’t completely end Cimino’s career. He continued making movies, they were just on a smaller budget and the critical and financial success of his early work eluded him.

But things don’t have to be that dire. Some of the biggest actors, directors and producers have suffered an embarrassing flop, and every time that happened, there was someone willing to declare them washed up.

With the release of the colossal bomb, 1941, Steven Spielberg’s honeymoon with the critics and studios seemed over. It didn’t take long for Spielberg to issue a response in the form of his next film, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Francis Ford Coppola’s impressive run in the seventies came crashing to a halt with 1982’s One from the Heart. A financial and critical disaster, it bankrupted Coppola who had poured his own money into the ballooning budget. While he hasn’t returned to the form he had in his heyday, he has turned out several solid films since that painful lesson and acted as the producer behind the burgeoning career of his daughter, Sofia.

Saddled with a disruptive studio and a sub-par script, David Fincher’s feature debut on Alien 3 was a resounding disappointment. Despite this popular opinion, Fincher rebounded to deliver Seven, Fight Club, Panic Room and Zodiac.

The list could go on and on: Joel Silver and Bruce Willis suffered a humiliating flop with Hudson Hawk. Kevin Costner’s career has been nothing but ups and downs. But for every Waterworld or The Postman, he has delivered a Dances With Wolves or Open Range.

Coming back to Apatow, can he find the ability to bounce back from the Dewey Cox debacle? Perhaps those who are unable to remember the troubles of the filmmakers discussed in this article don’t realize that this isn’t Apatow’s first disappointing experience. As a television producer, he oversaw the critical darlings, The Ben Stiller Show, Freaks and Geeks, and Undeclared. None of these programs made it past their first seasons. In feature films, he has produced such disappointments as The Cable Guy, Celtic Pride, and the Will Ferrell vehicle, Kicking & Screaming.

If history has taught us anything, it’s that too much success breeds jealousy in others. This backlash was almost inevitable. But if history has taught us that bitter lesson, it has also taught us that Apatow will survive this disappointment.

Everyone knows about big films being shot in Boston. Everyone -- from appliance salesmen proudly describing their neighbor, actor Chris Cooper, in his recent role of lobbyist for the film tax-credit passing, to grade school teachers moonlighting as extras. Even in a city with deep union roots, some extras are ambivalent about joining SAG even with the incentive of significantly higher pay. These two indicators do not bode well for those who would claim we're ready for our close-up.

Zoom in: What a Closer Look Reveals
A recent lunch with an industry insider highlighted fissures in the basic business model upon which so much of studio financial and managerial decisions are based. For example, if a blockbuster (estimated at $30-70 million movie) is successful, then a sequel is a safe bet to be successful, too. How success is calculated can be as difficult to follow as any shell game. When costs rise or profits fall, the hunt begins for ways to tip the balance in the studio’s favor.

During the last strike in 1988 the industry is said to have lost $500 million. In Los Angeles the entertainment industry contributes about $80 million a day, much of it goes to those who work “below the line,” the caterers, dry cleaners, portable dressing rooms, food stylists.

When location shots were cheaper in Canada, studios found locations there. When the exchange rate shifted, it was overseas. When films that are intimately tied to locations still film elsewhere, following incentives and cheap labor costs, no one questions whether there is a better way to build a film's budget. They simply seek the next, newest, cheapest venue. Boston can be Paris. With the right incentives, you'll see it, too.

If 2,000 feet of trucks need to be parked on a city street for 2 days instead of the half day it was budgeted, where do those costs go? Who renegotiates the police detail when the shooting schedule changes? Where in the ledger are these costs buried? These issues are the daily business for directors, managers, vice presidents. Often, these are the costs that draw studio focus.

Wrap: The Longer View
Chasing profits by finding cheaper locations or cheaper extras, while clinging to an inefficient model is a short-term fix. The tax-credit movie making bonanza in Boston-as-Paris was fortuitous or far-sighted depending on whose press release you read. Scratch that. Everyone's press releases credit brilliant foresight and strategic business minds at work. But those are press releases. The real writers are on strike. Any sustained operating efficiencies will require a courageous leap no studio executive seems willing to make. Someone will actually have to lead, rather than follow. Someone will have to step forward, proclaim the emperor naked, and offer him some new threads.

Despite the mild R rating that accompanies Teeth, the subject matter has had audiences crossing their legs in horror. The story follows pro-celibate high school student Dawn as she resists aggressive sexual behavior from the men in her life. Dawn has another problem -- one best described by the film's website: “A stranger to her own body, innocent Dawn discovers she has a toothed vagina...as she struggles to comprehend her anatomical uniqueness, Dawn experiences the pitfalls and the power of being a living example of the vagina dentata myth.”

Is it possible that a contemporary director has sunk even lower than Cronenberg and Lynch and brought the “artistic-porn” movie genre to new heights? The vagina dentata myth has existed for centuries in culture, literature, surrealistic art, and psychoanalysis. However, it has been many years since our current civilization has discussed the myth.

Writer and Director Mitchell Lichtenstein has an educated background, having graduated Yale School of Drama. His motivation in creating the outrageous black comedy slash horror film? Lichtenstein commented to Zoom in Online, “The narrative is always a hero must go out and conquer the woman--or tribe of women--that have this toothed vagina and become the hero…. I knew that I wanted to turn that around so that the hero would be the woman with the condition, and that she would never be conquered.” Lichtenstein further commented he wanted the film to be seen as a positive story and the condition as a sort of “superpower.”

Say what you will about the death of good taste in cinema, Teeth is garnering some positive attention. At Sundance Teeth took home a Special Jury Prize for lead actress Jess Weixler for a “a juicy and jaw-dropping performance” and a nomination for Mitchell Lichtenstein for the Grand Jury Prize. Many critics have rallied behind the film. Cinematical's Scott Weinberg commented, “Teeth is precisely the sort of genre movie that we need to see more of.”

Critical acclaim is all well and good but what about distribution—the determining factor between Teeth smiling upon opportunity or turning into cinematic dental calculus? Lionsgate and the Weinstein Company have scheduled a limited release for this month. As for the man who makes superheroes out of the most unlikely characters? Director Mitchell Lichtenstein is currently working on a film adaptation of "A Charmed Life" and another film entitled Happy Tears which is a family comedy. It's easy to set your sights higher when you're all the way down.

The key is to focuson what each scene is saying rather than how it is saying it. Locations can be changed, special effects can be removed or minimized, crowd scenes can be cut entirely, but each scene's meaning and its place in the story can be preserved. The mob of CGI monsters attacking the protagonist on Times Square can become a single menacing attacker on a jogging path -- retaining the emotional content of the scene and the conflict and suspense that keep the audience glued to the screen. Some of the external trappings of the story may change, but the real story, the protagonist's journey, can remain the same.

When writing low-budget, it's also good to remember that as fun as big scenes are, little scenes can sometimes pack even more emotional punch. For a well-known example, take Monster's Ball. While it wasn't a big-budget movie to begin with, it did have a lot going on: deaths, prison, eviction. But it's the simple scene with the ice cream that everyone talks about.

The key to writing low-budget is to focus on the important elements of each scene -- emotion, conflict, suspense, resolution -- while working within the parameters of your budget.

Currently, the most contentious issue with this technology is whether to shoot a movie digitally or on film. Like any new technology, digital cameras promise solutions to the old problems, while creating an entire catalog of new ones. What are the benefits of shooting digital, what are its shortcomings, what are the unexpected complications?

The first solution digital cameras offer deals directly with the media. With a digital camera there is no film. This means no loading mistakes: i.e. flashing the entire days work, no jammed cameras, and no light leaks.

Digital is not without its problematic counterparts. Cameras recording straight to a hard drive are susceptible to coding errors, file corruption, and a solid enough drop or bump has been known to ruin stored images. These problems are being ironed out, but just as expert hands load film correctly 99% of the time, these issues will become infrequent, not extinct.

The main advantage is that film and processing are expensive and with a digital camera film and processing do not have to be factored into the budget. This argument is ideal for those without a budget to support these costs. Identifying a budget that cannot support film is a little tricky. Filmmakers can find 16mm film on eBay for peanuts. Some of the film is expired, but that hasn’t stopped frugal filmmakers from making the purchase.

This is where filmmakers bring up the image-quality argument. The trouble is, there is no objective answer. It all depends on two things: personal preference and distribution. The major creative minds of the project should discuss (1) what they think looks best and (2) what better suits their distribution needs. What does the cinematographer say? This may be the most important opinion on the topic.

Digital works very nicely for non-theatrical release, including a smooth post-production. Then again, some digital cameras hold up just fine for the big screen. Apocalypto, A Prairie Home Companion, and Zodiac were shot digitally on high-end cameras and they finished on film.

On the other hand, 28 Days Later was shot using Canon’s XL-2, a digital prosumer camera, and a 35mm lens conversion kit, and it finished on film as well.

Make the decision early to shoot film or digital. It doesn’t have to be the first decision, but the sooner the better. It’ll be easier to plan around. Whoever is writing the budget will offer their most sincere praise. And anyone experienced in the movie industry will agree that a thorough pre-production plan is a lifesaver.

Reviews highlight several problems such as lack of humor, but it seems as though the critique is not of the films themselves, but of the elements within the long line of Allen films that have made him popular.

One of the more audience-accepted character themes about Allen’s older work was the portrayal of his own neuroses. Essentially playing himself, Allen worked through the same issues that other people could at least relate to. While it would be difficult to always center a film around this idea, his leap in the opposite direction seems to take away from what has drawn viewers to the director.

Indeed, respected critics have speculated that the overwhelming welcome the director received at the Venice Film Festival where Cassandra’s Dream premiered should be attributed not to the film itself, but to the relief that audiences felt at finally seeing Allen again. In writing himself into films less and less, the characters that the viewers see are no longer relatable, and are instead indistinguishable from other one-dimensional characters from typical Hollywood blockbusters.

It has been postulated that Allen’s problem may be that he is no longer in his element: as much as his neuroses, New York was a major player in early Allen works. New York was an element of its own, and, like Diane Keaton, an Allen film without it seemed to be lacking.

Allen has since moved on to a new muse (Scarlett Johansson) and a new city: London, which has featured in his last three films. However, while he has discussed his love for London in several press conferences, critically, it does not come through in Cassandra’s Dream such as it did for New York in Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1987) and Everyone Says I Love You (1996).

Allen’s decision to move away from comedy was perhaps the most detrimental of all. At the press release for the official premiere in Venice this past September, he explained that his favorite concept is no longer comedic neuroses, but death. While he explored death in some of his earlier work, such as Love and Death (1975), it was never in the gritty, dark way as now.

Directors evolve, and, judging from critical reviews, Allen’s new decisions are not the sole reason for the unpopularity of his latest films. Allen has been an important figure for many fans of independent cinema. In changing his M.O., he has abandoned some once-loyal followers.

His new films have merit in and of themselves: the cinematography in Cassandra’s Dream is gorgeous, the themes are explored in a fantastically fatalistic way, and the sequences are thick with tension. However, there is something decidedly un-Woody Allen-esque about his newest films, and his old fans don’t know quite what to do with it.

For a greater part of their adult lives, independent documentary filmmakers Mary Jones and Jeff Pearson have found creative underground venues in public access television and, as expressed by the title of their recent documentary, in Pirate Radio USA. Pearson credits a great deal of the film’s narrative style and quirky visual elements to years of trial and error in television.

The film begins in the corner of a dilapidated garage in Seattle, Washington and expands to cover our rights as American citizens. Says Pearson, “I originally thought this would be a film about radio, but it turned into a discussion of our basic freedoms.”

According to the film, the concept of pirate radio production is nothing new, and until government regulation of the airwaves in the early days of radio’s emerging commercial validity, homemade radio broadcasters were as plentiful as neon lights in Las Vegas. What few people realize is that low-frequency broadcasting sometimes transmits to radiuses counted in city blocks. Such transmissions are now, very often, very illegal.

Shooting for Pirate Radio USA began in 1998 and gradually evolved into a puzzle whose pieces didn’t all turn up until late 2005. Initially, Pearson wanted to make a film solely about those dangerous and sexy alternative voices he heard resonating within pirate radio’s pocket universe. Before long, the film’s vision began to expand into what Pearson ultimately saw as the rise of the current “American Police State” and its hand in the centralization of the media. “What is never really stated in the film is that our message is not about left versus right, it’s not about right versus wrong, it’s really about Big Versus Small…and just how expansive is our human experience.”

Pearson admits that it is almost impossible to construct a documentary film without some kind of agenda. In the subtext of Pirate Radio USA the filmmakers admit it was impossible to remove themselves entirely from the action.

Says Pearson, “If the film has a particular agenda, it is post-objective. In our mainstream media we are creating a condition in which we avoid the obvious for fear of not being objective. It’s impossible to document things with any real objectivity—I mean, can you really excuse yourself from being a human being? What we tried to do was document our experiences as we had them—that was our goal…And only by placing ourselves within a situation as people who have been affected by those experiences was the truth most likely to be revealed.”

Resonating within each frame of Pirate Radio USA is a discovery Pearson holds very close to heart. “Through the making of this film, we learned that our freedom of speech is a tool by which we keep ourselves free. It’s not an end in and of itself. Pirate radio, in a sense, is one small, self-organizing effort to create a better world.” Clearly, in seeking to capture something small, Jones and Pearson set sail into the straits of something much bigger.

Pirate Radio USA has been awarded film festival kudos by Austin FF, Zion Independent FF, and the Wine Country FF where it won Best documentary Film. B-Side Entertainment has accepted the film for distribution.

Jim Mickel (director/co-writer) and Ryan Samul (cinematographer) had very little time to plan the cinematography. The time they did have was spent watching films and discussing what works visually in the genre.

The original plan was to shoot the film in an over the top B-movie style similar to The Evil Dead or early Peter Jackson films. Then as Mickel explains, things changed, “I think as we went along and the script kept getting better and the characters kept getting more real... it felt like it would be cheating the movie to do it that way”.

Mickel and Samul started looking at other films and Dion Beebe’s cinematography for In the Cut proved to be a major influence. “It’s beautiful. It feels like a 70s movie but there is a weird kind of handheld, intimate thing and that was really the big inspiration. It was a movie that felt timeless, it could have been the 70s, it could have been now, but also it had this weird fantasy element... There’s a feeling that you are constantly being watched on screen that you are in the middle [of everything]... We tried to capture it that way - the camera is constantly just another character in the scene... I think, especially in New York, that works so well. I don’t know why they don’t do it more in New York movies.” Explains Mickel.

To achieve this they decided to utilize hand held prosumer grade digital video. “There is something immediate and intense about handheld video that we both agreed would help our cause.” Says Samul.

“The movie felt like a two-act movie in a lot of ways,” says Mickel. To symbolize this they utilized a similar technique to the one used in the invasion sequence of Saving Private Ryan.

Samul points out, “There is also a distinct point in the film where the film switches from a movie about gentrification and living in the city to a movie about defending your family from a hoard of rats. We wanted to have a visual change to signify that, so we switched on the 180 degree shutter to increase the crispness of the image, to make each movement more detailed and abrupt.”

The choice to shoot hand held with a digital camera also proved to be helpful in utilizing Guerrilla shoots. “Shooting in NYC on a shoe string budget is not easy, so guerrilla shooting had a big part in the film making process for Mulberry Street.”

A large amount of establishing footage was acquired from a parade. The crew was on their way to shoot another scene when they drove past the parade and decided to capitalize on the opportunity. “[We] hopped out and just kind of shot stuff, a lot of times just hiding the camera under a coat and just walking along hoping we were actually getting shots. I remember turning it a couple of times as we walked past police cars saying, ‘Please be in the shot, please be in the shot,’” remembers Mickel.

These kinds of shots are easily manipulated says Mickel, “You know you throw shattered glass sounds and screams behind it and it sounds like it’s a riot.”

Samul is particularly proud of a late night shoot. “Our finest hour would probably have to be convincing a yuppie couple drinking wine on their fire escape to plug a cable in for us so we could shoot a scene in their alleyway. Their neighbors threatened to call the cops when we were making too much noise and [we] had no permit to shoot, so we decided to shoot the scene with the headlights of the gaffer’s Ford Bronco and bounce cards two streets over in an abandoned construction site.”

Next: Going Digital

One mild Tuesday morning in September Doss turned on his television and was greeted by images of smoldering towers with gaping holes, and people fighting to get through the flames to safety. He watched in horror as the buildings tumbled down carrying with them so many who had not succeeded in their fight for life. Academic plans were set aside with his acting dreams. Doss walked into the Air Force recruiter’s office. He wouldn’t know it at the time, but his decision, spurred by outrage and patriotism, would lead him back to acting.

While stationed at Holloman Air Force base in Alamogordo, a senior ranking officer spoke of a film crew coming to visit. Doss remembers, “They were preparing a film called Prime Directive. I met with the film crew and…Michael Bay. I helped sell them on using the base.” This film came to be known as Transformers.

Doss worked behind the scenes to coordinate things for the production. During this process, he learned the casting agent was having difficulty filling a speaking role, so he auditioned for it. “I did one read through and she picked up the phone. Next thing I know I’m on set working with Michael Bay.”

This small role sparked a renewed interest in acting. “When it wrapped, I felt like someone had stabbed me in the chest…I thought that I was done and I’d never get to do it again.” Doss didn’t want that to happen. He decided to take a chance and, after an 8-month deployment to Afghanistan, he returned to Alamogordo to begin pursuing his dream.

From base, auditions consist of a four hour drive to Albuquerque, reading for five minutes, and making the return trip - and he must be ready to do it again if he gets called back. The process, though trying, has begun to reward him. He has landed numerous television roles and just wrapped a featured extra part in Swing Vote with Kevin Costner.

As he prepares to leave the Air Force in March 2008, he is making plans to move to Austin, Texas to be a part of the independent film scene there. Doss credits his time in the military with preparing him for the strain of being an actor. Aside from the discipline and the training to follow directions, there in one intangible that isn’t listed in the brochure.

He explains,“When you’ve sat over in the desert, and you’ve been mortared, not doing so hot in an audition really isn’t that scary any more.”

Handle featured extras the same way. If it’s not imperative to get exactly the minister you pictured to stand in the background, put out an “extras” call and sort them accordingly.

2. Choose a Method of Audition
You may plan to use more than one method from the three better-knowns: improvisation, prepared monologues, and reading sides from your script.

Each highlights the talents in different ways -- dramatic parts, a monologue provides a good example of how the actor will perform; comedy, improv tells how well the actor reacts to humorous situations. Sides are the most popular way to go.

3. Reserve a Place and Time
Plan as far ahead as possible - post your call at least three weeks before the audition. The longer it is up, the more turnout you will likely get.

You’ll need a professional, neutral location with an area for actors to wait, a rehearsal room, and a sound-proof or separated area for the actual audition.

The more comfortable the actors, the better their performances are likely to be..

4. Create a Provocative Casting Call
Employ the screenwriter to develop a teaser-esque summary of the film and each character in the appropriate tone. If the story is funny, write with an edge of humor. The same for tear jerkers and suspense flicks. If your casting call stands out, people will want an appointment -- and will keep it.

5. Advertise your Casting Session
The surest resource is the Internet Try Craigs List to call for local actors. Also try sites that apply to your regional area (ex. greenroomorlando.com, bostoncasting.com). Post your casting call with a specialized email account and phone number.

Posting calls in art houses, coffee shops, and college campuses will also get turnouts. However, be careful with your personal information, and list only the email address.

6. Make Appointments
Once people start responding, schedule them starting at the center of your workday -- if you're casting from 9am - 3pm, your first appointment should be around noon. You will have a balanced day and can expand if necessary.

It's good to schedule two people in every 20-minute spot. Auditions are notorious for no-shows. Make sure to send out detailed directions to your location and information on how the actor should prepare.

7. Bring the Following:
- Essential Crew Members (Director, Casting Director, etc.)
- A Camera and Monitor: Your actors will look different in two dimensions
- Reader(s): To act opposite the actors as they perform
- A folder for notes and head-shots

8. Audition the Actors
A few minutes of small talk about the production or the actor's career is good to break the ice with your actor before he or she begins. This puts the actors at ease and gives you an idea on how easily they communicate.

Run through whichever auditioning method you chose, first, without directions to see how the actor uses the material, then suggest several alterations and observe how direction is taken and interpreted.

Take notes, and try to tape each performance close up and mid-shot to observe facial qualities and movements that will not be apparent simply by watching.

9. Callbacks
Once you've narrowed your choices, conduct a call back of competitors for another run- through, including pairing possible costars. If there's no chemistry, or if the performance isn't as striking the second time, you’ll find out before the parts have been cast.

10. Rehearsals
Once your parts are filled, have a few "table read" meetings to associate your actors and refine their interactions.

This is the best way to assure the performances will pay off when the cameras begin to roll.

Traeger, finds comedy in incongruity. He divulges, “I wanted to write a sweet movie, and I thought the best way to do it was to make a porno.”

Traeger’s main character, lovable loser, Andy Sargentee (Jeff Bridges, The Fabulous Baker Boys) entices the sleepy hamlet of Butterface Fields to go along with his salacious plan. He persuades his best buds Barney, (Tim Blake Nelson, Syriana), Otis (William Fichtner, The Perfect Storm), Moose (Ted Danson, Cheers, Becker), Emmett (Patrick Fugit, Almost Famous) and the dysfunctional duo, Moe and Ron (John Hawkes and Brad Henke respectively), to become producers for the amateur porn.

Sargentee’s desperation when he is humbled by opulent wealth - not his own - struck a resonant chord with the screenwriter. Traeger confesses he has struggled with feelings of inadequacy. He admits, “I started making a living very late in life. I knew what it was like to be poor, but once you hit thirty it’s just horrible.”

Traeger’s screenwriting career stalled when a project could not find funding. He had the opportunity to pitch his porno comedy to producer Aaron Ryder, and it eventually became The Amateurs.

Ryder secured financing from Qwerty Films. Bill Fichtner and Joe Pantoliano quickly joined on. Just like in the movie, the production hit a few bumps -- it stalled for two years. Finally, when it was a sure thing, the original director dropped out. Traeger turned his lemons into lemonade. He convinced producer Michael Kuhn (Being John Malkovich, I Heart Huckabees) that he was the best man for the job. It was his first outing as a director.

Traeger cast his actors against type. Tim Blake Nelson, usually assigned to playing a buffoon, portrays the lovelorn best friend. Danson plays a gay man hiding behind false bravado. Joe (Joey Pants) Pantoliano depicts the sad little man with the unfortunate nickname of "Some Idiot."

“Everyone knew who everybody was,” Ryder reminisces, “but nobody had a close friendship. It was important...that the actors spend time together.” Traeger, prone to off-the-wall ideas much like his hero, gathered the cast together at a beach house for a bonding weekend. He wanted his actors to be friends first.

Ryder recalls that weekend, “Six amazing actors are doing our movie after two years of the whole process of -- are we making a movie or not -- and suddenly it was a tangible thing.”

“As Traeger has always said,” Ryder continues, “we know the end of the story, and it’s just like the end of the script. Everything is going to work out real, real well.”

Today: Production Disasters and Performances

Sixteen hours before the production began the film was faced with a rather large disaster. Every tenant in the building whose apartment was going to be used pulled out. Jim Mickel, director/co-writer of Mulberry Street, comments, “If it was film school, then it would have been, ‘Oh no! The shoot’s falling apart. It’s a nightmare and we’ve got to wrap up.’ But there was such a good kind of momentum that everyone was like, ‘alright [lets pull though]’. It was actually pretty calm.”

Nick Dimici (actor/co-writer) and production designer with Beth Mickel and the rest of the crew set about changing Dimici’s apartment into the lost locations. Fortunately the Comedy Central show Stella had just wrapped and Mickel was able to acquire what was left of the sets. They repainted and refurnished Dimici’s apartment three times, finally converting it back to its original state to pass as four different locations in the film. Dimici explains two years later, “I’m still pulling paint off the sealing and finding stuff. I’ve still got two light polls in my closet.”

In addition to Dimici’s apartment being used, the other primary location was his girlfriend’s bar, which also acted as a holding space. His brother, Leonard, loaned his truck, and his father, who had no acting experience, played one of the old tenants. Dimici refers to it as a completely “family/friend-made movie.”

With a cast made up of many amateur actors and only a three week shoot you would expect that the cast felt the pressure. But, Dimici is adamant in denying it. He claims that since the script was tailored around many of the individuals involved, it was simply a matter of being as real as possible.

Even with the short shooting schedule the production was fairly relaxed compared to other productions. Mickel says, “Somehow we never went over 12 hour days, which is kind of really the standard in film and usually you’re all over the place. Especially in an action movie packed into a really short amount of time.”

Mickel credits this largely to the versatile lighting of cinematographer Ryan Samuel. Instead of setting up the lighting specifically for each scene and then taking hours to change it as the shot changed Samuel’s set up ensured that the crew could quickly shoot from different angles and keep things productive.

Mickel himself has changed his approach to working with actors. Talking about a previous film he says, “Everything about it was very composed and really kind of pre-planned to a‘t.’ And you can feel it in the movie... it’s like watching a painting.” On Mulberry Street he learned to trust his actors more, “Most of the time I’d just make them feel comfortable so that they can do what they want to do and not feel that they are strapped down to these exact lines. Especially with people like [Nick’s dad]... whatever the hell came out of his mouth was more amazing then anything we could have tried to write for him.” Or as Dimici sums up, “He’s a hands-off director, which is the best as far as I am concerned.”

Next: Solving Cinematography and Guerrilla Shooting

After walking in those shoes, actors seem to seek out equally challenging roles. Hollywood's move in this direction has made it possible to create more in-depth films about other intense topics such as sexual abuse, mental illness, and homosexuality.

It seems impossible to discuss actors taking on the question of how to portray characters with AIDs without discussing Rent. After years of questioning how to turn the well-known stage production into a film, director Chris Columbus finally pulled it off in 2005. One of the songs, “La Vie Boheme,” encapsulates the entire key of how this production portrays its characters: “To people… living with — not dying from — disease!”

Roger (Adam Pascal), Mimi (Rosario Dawson), Tom Collins (Jesse L. Martin) and Angel (Wilson Jermaine Heredia) all portray people living with AIDs, and, though these are not the biggest names in Hollywood, they’ve taken on other complex roles since then.

Pascal’s American Primitive is due out in 2008, tackling the difficulties of a daughter’s relationship with her homosexual father.

Martin has taken on a number of television roles, but is currently working on a project focusing on the later years of Marvin Gaye’s life, titled Sexual Healing.

Dawson showed up in Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, as well as winning an award at the Sundance Film Festival for A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. She also teamed up with Heredia again in 2007 for Descent, a harsh examination of the effects of rape.

But just as Rent honored characters living with AIDS, Ed Harris portrayed a man succumbing to the virus. Harris was nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of Richard Brown, an author in The Hours. While his role was seen as supporting, it was a crucial thread tying the three storylines of the film together, and did not gloss over the pain of the bad days towards the end of his life.

Since The Hours was released in 2002, Harris has taken on equally difficult roles in A History of Violence and Gone Baby Gone, as well as roles in numerous other films.

Equally moving, but very differently portrayed was Robin Wright Penn’s role as Jenny in Forrest Gump. In the movie, Jenny lives a difficult life, only finding happiness as she is dying from AIDs. Penn followed up that bittersweet role with work she found satisfying, rather than the sure-to-be hits that many other actors seek out.

She’s known for turning down roles in Batman Forever and The Firm, while taking on Lori, the battered waitress in The Pledge, and the eminently troubled Phoebe, whose story is told in Sorry, Haters. She did take on a character in a big Hollywood production this year: Penn plays Queen Wealhtheow in Beowulf.

When Hollywood answers the call to care, many in and out of the industry reap the benefits.