Things I never thought I’d deal with in my life…

I never actually sat down and made such a list, but if I had, I’m pretty sure on the top of it would be the length and style of Brandon Routh’s hair.  Suddenly, I’m the (former) Man of Steel’s stylist and I’m not really sure how that happened.  To be fair, it’s not like I was asked to style it myself.  I’m not sure anyone in their right mind would ask that.  I did, however, receive an email informing me that we’d soon be taking pictures of Brandon with his hair set as it will be in the movie and sending them to the Bonelli folks for their approval.

This is exactly the kind of input we crave from our collaborators and want to get from them at every turn.  Sometimes, things get in the way and we can’t but we always strive to.  In my opinion, and it’s an opinion shared by a lot of people here, why wouldn’t you?  It was the creator’s vision that this great idea sprang forth, so we try to stay true to that vision as much as humanly possible.  Sometimes, compromises have to get made, but if people loved it in the first place, we want to stay true to whatever it was that that creator brought into the world in the first place.  Sometimes that is possible and sometimes it isn’t, as we’re often not the 800 pound gorilla in the room, but we always try.

But luckily on this project, we’re in the driver’s seat for a lot of this.  And we’ve got an amazing resource in Gioy Demarco, our foreign library specialist.  Gioy is Italian and speaks about 5,000 languages (slight exaggeration, but not by much), grew up reading Dylan Dog in Italy and has a more all-consuming love of the Bonelli library than I’ve ever had about any comic.  Gioy is currently in contact with the folks at Bonelli on a daily basis, getting their opinion on a variety of different things.  You can often find Gioy in the office at 4am to best accomodate the time difference and be able to go back and forth with them on everything under the Dylan Dog sun.

So when we receive an email from production folks, letting us know photos are coming, it’s Gioy who will be on the phone as soon as possible to get the creators input on them, probably at 4am.  This is how much we love this source material and the deep respect we try and show to the creators we work with.

And this is how silly my job is sometimes that I not only received an email about Brandon’s hair, I sat at wrote a blog post about it.  Life can be downright silly at times.

-Dan Forcey

Development Exec/Stuntguy/PTP (Part Time Philosopher)

“It’s a mystery…”

The above quote is from “Shakespeare in Love” and it sums up the essence of any collaborative group artistic project I’ve ever been involved in, and there’s been quite a few.  The actual quote goes like this:

“Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.
So what do we do?
Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.
How?
I don’t know. It’s a mystery.”

That particular exchange is about theatre but it can be applied to pretty much any place where a group of artists get together to create something and films are certainly no exception.  But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself.  Introductions are probably in order.
My name is Dan Forcey and I’m the VP of Development at Platinum Studios, the company responsible for the film this blog is about.  I’m a 15 year veteran of the film industry and have seen it from many levels and perspectives.  For this particular film, I’ve been involved with the development of the script for several years now and have been intimately connected to the production process for the last several months.

I started this blog partially [full disclosure] as a marketing tool but mostly as a way to show people in, hopefully, a unique way how the so-called “movie magic” gets done.  You don’t just wake up one morning, call a bunch of friends and decide to make a multi-million dollar movie that day, movie magic or no movie magic.  It’s a long, arduous and often frustrating road that sometimes makes your want to tear your hair out and other times makes you want to strangle the people you’re working with.  But it all becomes worthwhile, the years of toil to make 2 hours worth of entertainment, the first time you see it on the big screen and you realize that decades from now, people are going to be watching your work and, even if they’re laughing at it the way my nephews recently laughed at the Ray Harryhausen effects in “7th Voyage of Sinbad”, they’ll remember it and somehow remember you.  That’s the real movie magic: immortality.

There’s also the magic that makes the immortality.  The “mystery” that Tom Stoppard writes about in the lines I quoted at the start of this.  A short time ago, we started pre-production on this film after almost ten years of development.  (I’ll get more into that in later posts.)  Now, everyone is running around with that slightly panicked look on their face and the undertone to most of what people say is “Can we really do this?”  That look of panic is nothing to panic about, either.  I’ve seen it on almost every film set I’ve ever been on and usually felt it in my own eyes.  I’ve seen Peter Weir hold his head and wonder aloud how he was going to finish the movie.  I’ve seen Clint Eastwood hanging on to the side of a tank with a camera in one hand because it was the only way to get a shot.  I’ve seen Bryan Singer throw a cup of coffee against a wall for no apparent reason and be back to joking ten seconds later.  And yet, each one of those have worked out and some of them with the worst panic have turned out to be pretty good movies.  In fact, I’ve been in this panic place so many times with so many truly accomplished and gifted filmmakers that I actually look forward to it.  We all don’t know what’s going to happen, what wrinkles the universe will throw our way, who will end up hating whom, or how the heck we’re going to get to opening night, but we’re all taking the leap together and going on what I am confidant will be an incredible journey that will yield something we’ll all be very proud of.

I hope my part of this blog will let you come along with me on that journey.  Others will be stopping by to join me from time to time, but I’ll probably be your main guide here.  What insider scoops will we reveal here?  What trials will we face together?  What secrets or horrors will be revealed?  What disasters or triumphs?  It’s a mystery…

-Dan Forcey

Development Exec/Stuntguy/WMWMA  (Wandering Minstral Without Musical Ability)

Welcome

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the official production blog of the feature film adaptation of the popular Italian comic book “Dylan Dog” entitled “Dead of Night” starring Brandon Routh and directed by Kevin Munroe.  Kevin, Brandon, and many other members of the production will be stopping by from time to time to share updates on the production, photos from the set and fun stories.  This website will be updating often and will be the ONLY official source of information about Dylan’s adventures on film, so check back often and we welcome your comments, thoughts and opinions.