Two Roads Diverged

Monday October 6, 2008 | 2 comments (now closed)

This hallowed month of October has proven more haunting than most as we’re merely six days in and I have already been visited by numerous specters from my past. Much of this has to do with my recent initiation into the Facebook community – where the mere mention of your name calls old high school friends, college drinking buddies and illegitmate offspring from the shadows in droves. After getting acquainted with my long lost progeny (Stay frosty, Surie!!!) – I spent time bridging the multi-year (and decade) gap that’s been erected between some of these relationships.

Then, last Thursday evening, I engaged in a little playful banter with Andi – letting her know that I felt pretty damned sure that should I unexpectedly kick it, she’d probably despair for a day before that insurance check would allow her to turn the page. I know that it’s not wise to tempt the Fates, even when you are just goofing around but fear not, I made sure to replace all of the antifreeze with Blitzkrieg Blue GatorAde. And now, I can drink deeply of every unexpected cocktail she brings my way with the curious toast – “To your health.”

Ahhhh, nothing like a little spouse-icide humor to grease the week ahead of your 8 Year Wedding Anniversary. (BTW – I just Googled ‘spouse homicide’ to see if there was a real word for the sake of that joke (i.e. patricide, matricide, etc) and now I just know my PC is going to end up in the hands of the Feds through some unfortunate sequence of events. Nice knowing all of ya’.)

Anyway, as I was tossing the notion around of who would grieve for me should I take that dirt nap, I had most of my friends, family and acquaintances pegged at one day of mourning (just a 24-hour bug) but I singled out my long, lost friend Rich as someone who might despair through a second day. That guy coined the word bromance a full two decades before it became popular.

At the mention of Rich, Andi shot back – “Who?”

Exactly. Rich who? My good buddy from the Rockland High days who journeyed alongside me to UMASS Amherst where we roomed together for two years and stayed great friends all the way through. The same dude who I stood side-by-side with at his wedding and who played his pivotal role as one of my Groomsmen. The same guy who’d dropped so far off the grid that I thought about thawing the Cold Case on him last year before I was permanently distracted by more pressing matters (C’mon – The Hills is just soooooo damn good!!!)

Anyway – screw Rich. This isn’t about him, even if he did resurface last Friday, not 24 hours removed from Andi and I saying his name three times (making me wish I didn’t waltz around the Old Navy fitting room yesterday muttering “Candyman”, “Bloody Mary”, “Candyman”, Bloody Mary“).

No, the point is, when Rich and I got together I dragged out the DVD I had made a few years back which served as a chronicle of those goofy “student films” my friends and I had made over the years. You’ve seen snippets on this site of the older offerings and you know how anemic our talent is… errrr, was. Those were the early works where we lacked a basic understanding of the most primal elements necessary for building a better blockbuster – things like cinematography, action choreography, and command of the English language.

Rich had come over to watch the Sox push the Angels to the brink of oblivion and the next morning we dragged that dusty DVD out for a guided tour of memory lane. There’s a lot of unintentional laughs there but one thing is for sure, the older we got, the better the results. We were learning. Imagine that – men CAN evolve. Why just this morning, I left the toilet seat down. Sure, I ended up whitewashing the porcelain, but it’s a start.

The trailer below is one of the few that aspires to be something more than just a bunch of guys goofing around with a camera. Like most of the projects we started, time got away from us, but what we assembled was actually starting to take the form of something to be proud of. Yes – it’s as low budget as the rest but there was actually a concerted effort by all involved to tell a story and film it in some interesting ways.

The plot of Two Roads Diverged revolves around two life long friends who have found themselves at odds. The two were recruited into a specialized program which used a university setting to mask its illicit assassin activities. The program is called the Road Scholars and these two guys were recruited, reprogrammed and put into action. My character has a crisis of conscience and tries to pull himself from the organization, prompting the Board of Governors to issue a hit – friend on friend.

While this sounds like a mash-up of The Departed and the Bourne series, we filmed this in the late 90′s – way before those flicks. If I cribbed from anything in devising the scenario, it would have to be La Femme Nikita. To this day, I can’t show my face at Cannes.

Anyway, it’s a shame we never finished it. Sure, I still have the script kicking around but I’m not sure viewers would buy into the suspension of disbelief required to get beyond the fact that my character’s hair could vanish and reappear from scene to scene. Ahhhh – unless I write in an evil twin who just happens to be 10 years older (man, that’s one long labor).

One last note – my Uncle Ron continues to pester me about this flick. See, I had a role that called for a more senior gentleman to play the head of the Road Scholars. This character, the Professor, has a big speech where he talks about the policy of brinksmanship – of two nations pushing each other to the brink of war. He uses this as metaphor for the act of pitting friend against friend. He then officially calls for my death so there was a little bit of wish fulfillment fantasy written there for my Uncle as penance for all the times I pestered him as a kid to buy me ‘Godzilla this’ or ‘dinosaur that’.

Anyway, we never filmed his scene. So to this day, he wants to know when his call time is. I told him that I was ripping a page from the Cast Away playbook. We were shutting down filming for a decade or two while we waited for him to ‘mature’ into the part. It might take another 10 years or even 20 but I’ll have my Wilfred Brimley yet.

Anyway, that’s enough prologue. Remember, you aren’t going to get much sense of what the hell is going on through this clip but I wanted to post it here to etch my permanent record as well as show you that I once had the talent to rise to the level of middling amateur. And that’s something, I guess.

And now here I stand, arm-in-arm with Brett Ratner, cobbling together Rush Hour IV. Shoot, screw him – I could probably get Chris Tucker for my Mookiefish sequel.