On April 16th, 2016, we started production on our 4th feature length film – YELLOW SCARE. A World War II comedy (WITH THREE MUSICAL NUMBERS!) heavily influenced by classics like Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, Airplane, Top Secret, etc. Now, here we are, 8 YEARS LATER. And I thought I’d take a look back.
In 2012, shortly after we finished our 2nd movie RED SCARE, I started thinking about a sequel/prequel for it that would revisit that world and some of its characters. I came up with an idea for two movies to make it a trilogy – YELLOW SCARE & GREEN SCARE. I wrote draft after draft… not thinking that we would shoot it… Until 2015 when I had a draft I was happy enough with that it made me want to film it… which we did… in 2016.
It was our biggest (and most expensive) shoot to date. We had a huge cast, our largest crew (that was still small compared to higher budget movies), and a sweeping number of locations from an Airplane to a theatre to Wild West City. It was stressful, with time & money running out quicker than I would have liked, but it was also a lot of fun. (Like so many other indie projects.)
Post-production ended in the Fall of 2017, and we had a “preview screening” in Bayonne’s Frank Theatres. We followed that up with a fairly successful festival run that went from Summer 2018 until Summer 2019.
In the vein of those aforementioned comedies, Yellow Scare was not politically correct. In some ways, we went out of our way to be politically incorrect to make fun of the time period and the racism/sexism inherent at that time.
But the world of 2016 is not the world of the 1980’s… and it isn’t the world of 2024… Things change. What people find acceptable and funny change. There are some things that I would have done differently if I did it today… But I am proud of the movie. I am proud of what the cast & crew achieved. I think the performances are phenomenal and the movie looks and sounds great. I’m proud of every festival acceptance and award nomination/win the film received. I’m also grateful for all of the different places that the festival run took me (Florida, Texas, Georgia, Indiana, New York, and of course NEW JERSEY!!!).
I wish that it had done better distribution-wise. (TBF, I wish ALL of our projects had done better distribution-wise.) I don’t think we factored in how difficult it would be to get distribution for a B&W comedy that had no name actors involved. We did an early push to get a name actor to play Papa Steel for this very reason…
I never really published the list of celebrities, I reached out to, but here goes – I reached out to the reps for Mel Brooks, Kevin Smith, Patrick Stewart, Brad Garrett, Nick Offerman, John Goodman, Bill Pullman, Nathan Lane, Paul Rudd, Gene Wilder (before he died), Kevin Spacey (before everything came out about him), Peter Dinklage, Danny DeVito, Val Kilmer, Steven Weber, Gary Senise, George Wyner, Robert Hays, Steven Colbert, Jon Stewart, and Christopher Walken.
Two politely declined. Two asked for a copy of the script, and then declined. Most didn’t respond. So, we were not able to get a name actor in the movie… But in the end, I cast my own father to play Papa Steel (my character’s father), which is actually more meaningful to me.
In the end, it’s another learning experience. Everything is really. I’ve grown as a writer & filmmaker since then. Some people LOVED this movie. Some people HATED this movie. Some people were indifferent. And most people haven’t seen it, and don’t even know it exists.
If you’d like to watch, you can rent/buy it digitally on Amazon and/or Vimeo. I think it is still streaming on IFT Network. And I have a handful of DVD’s left from before Amazon decided that they didn’t want to have Media on Demand anymore, which is a whole different STORY. If you’d like to buy one, feel free to email me at Sam@NarrowBridgeFilms.com.
And if you’d like to support NBF’s latest project, go HERE.
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