Synopsis

Merle McNally loves his pet fishes, and for most of his twenty-four-hours-a-day, this simple fact provides a serene sustenance. But when waves of rhetoric and some half-a-world-away ugliness seeps through his subconscious, the comfort of his structured routine is threatened, and the very foundation of his everyday life lies in the balance.

Background

Created in response to a challenge from Seattle's 1 Reel Film Fest, Bodybags answers the posed question "War ... What Is It Good For?"

Kirk flew down from Seattle so we could shoot Bodybags in a marathon three day period over the Fourth of July weekend. We almost didn't get a change because his bags with all the props were mistakenly diverted to Alaska. Good thing the Department of Homeland Security didn't find the toy gun packed in his luggage - which was weird - we didn't even need it for the film.

We did try to shoot the entire thing during magic hour, aside from the scenes we shot after midnight in a cheesy Eagle Rock motel - and a few we shot on the construction site of the soon-to-open light rail line in Pasadena.

The end segment was a beautiful accident: Kirk and I were finishing the editing of the rough cut and needed some temporary sound to place at the end of the film. We know we wanted to use a speech by President Bush, and picked one of the ones we had downloaded at random - a placeholder. Amazingly, when we played the audio back with the video we had roughly edited, it was perfect. We almost cried with joy.

Three fish were frozen to death prior to filming; two more died during production; and one more was abandoned at the Petco customer service desk.

The cereal: my now-brother-in-law George is famous for coming up with this concoction of corn flakes, powdered milk, and tap water.

Bodybags also features an original musical composition by our friend Cret Wilson - "Devil with Angels Wings" (2.3 MB MP3). On his end, Cret used some fancy-pants software to make it sound like an old 78 rpm record.

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