Bad movies I love part 23

It's been a while since I've written about bad films. Today though I'll take a trip down memory lane and recite to you dear readers about a film that is near and dear to my heart. It was actually a small film I starred in, a movie called 'Grip Loss'.

About ten years ago my friend Ryon was unemployed and decided to pass the time by locking himself in his bedroom and writing a screenplay. The result was an ambitious undertaking of a film and he decided he would take the reigns and produce and direct it. He casted me and various other friends in the film so that we may be immortalized.

Grip Loss tells the story of James Stark, played by your author here, who's a suicidal hitman that avenges his girlfriend by taking the hands of her child molesting father. Still not content with revenge he decides to take his own life by having one of his targets kill him. For whatever reason James changes his mind at the last minute and goes ahead with the scheduled hit after a long dialogue.

Confused? Hell I read the script from it's first inception to it's final draft and I still don't get it.

The movie will always have fond memories for me though, cause the production was so much fun. To give you an idea of how shoestring the budget was Ryon came to me one night asking for money to shoot the next day. I didn't have any being young and broke so he asked me to take him to the local Indian casino. He went to the blackjack table with his last twenty dollars while I sat at the bar and nursed a beer. After about an hour he sat next to me and stated he had won enough money to shoot the next day.

That's basically how the production went for the next two years. Shot on S-VHS the script had numerous rewrites, last minute casting changes, reshoots, condiments as special effects, continuity screw ups due to my hair growing and being cut over that period of time, one kooky actor who is quite seriously insane, lighting problems, etc.

Then there was Frank. Frank was the actor who I was referring to earlier as mentally off. It's hard to describe such a man actually as he seems like a caricature out of an old Irish novel. Having the mental capacity of your average cheese mold Frank didn't take to method acting too well. In fact simply reading lines was quite a chore for him. In between takes he would tell stories of how he fought inner city gangs and how he was the baddest ass I would ever meet. This middle aged gent really tried my patience at every instance. We only had one scene to shoot with him, but it wasn't uncommon for Ryon to spend 20 minutes to get Frank to recite one line correctly. It was painful.

Still with all the production delays and nonsense associated with such a huge undertaking we had a lot of fun shooting the film. We drank and argued and flubbed lines. We laughed at ourselves trying to portray characters that were completely foreign to us and had dialogue that sounded almost alien.

Regardless of the ending result of Grip Loss I'm proud to say that I starred in it. Ryon took a huge risk in tackling a 40 minute film as his first directing gig, but I admire his perseverance in finishing it. Others would've given up at pre-production.

No I won't post any video of this film ever.

"Go see it and see for yourself why you shouldn't go see it." - Samuel Goldwyn