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 Michael Rissi (writer/director) Running time: 3:18 mins |
| Persistence
of Vision Entertainment
Director
Michael Rissi Writer
Michael Rissi Music Mladen Milicevic Cast Justine Priestley, Karen Grosso, David De Witt, Chuck Williams, Dan Roebuck, Willard Pugh, Reggie Bannister EQUIPMENT USED Lighting Profession Fresnel and softlights (Mole Richardson, Bardwell McCallister Dollies Professional Track, homemade dolly with track wheels, Losmandy Jib Arm Editing Dvision Pro and Speed Razor 4.8 Sound Mackie Mixer, Digital 16 bit 48 kHz Stereo, Audio Technica and Sennheiser boom mics Running Time 118 mins (movie) 3 mins trailer Date Completed 2-15-2001 |
Up Against Amanda from RissiProductions.com DIRECTOR’S NOTES ON Up Against Amanda A happy ending. As of December 26, 2001,
Up
Against Amanda was released worldwide by Roger Corman's New
Concorde Distribution Company. Domestically, DVD's and VHS tapes
may be purchased through any major video retailer. Or write
directly to
Info@RissiProductions.com
to order direct. Whenever you take on the
making of a low budget picture, you know you’re going to be in for
some serious challenges – at least if you’re trying to do
something really good…and we were. When I wrote Up Against Amanda, it was my goal from
the outset to make a thriller just as fun and suspenseful as other
pictures in the genre that I’ve enjoyed over the years such as Psycho,
Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct.
The trick was to write an engaging story using the limited
resources which were available to me and still make it stand up to the
biggies.
In the beginning when this thing was just an idea, my friend from back in my high school days, Chris Perez, who now runs a very successful PR firm, decided that he wanted to get involved as Executive Producer. Chris put some investment capital together and raised money from some true believers who also are basically all friends. Whatever wasn’t covered by this money was paid for by myself and my amazingly supportive and wonderful wife, Maria Lydia (see her well-deserved Co-Producer credit). Maria Lydia came through many times when we were short on props, etc. Not only is she my sweetie, but I think she’s just about the most reliable person I’ve ever met which makes me a very lucky man. The chief organizer and handler of logistics on the movie was Producer Chuck Williams. I wrote the comedy relief sidekick role of Buzz in the movie specifically for Chuck to play. Chuck has always primarily been interested in acting in movies and this was extra motivation for him to be involved. Unfortunately, during production this also meant he was often wearing two hats and that became a real problem at times, but we survived. Pre-production with Chuck was a lot of fun. We rented an office on a monthly basis at a complex a few miles in between where each of us were living at the time and set up shop. The office was our base of operations during auditions and crew recruitment, all of which went surprisingly smoothly. In those days, it was just Chuck and me and we had a lot of laughs and really enjoyed gearing up for the making of the movie. Then came production. The real test. Production is where it all comes together and also where things sometimes fall apart. On this movie, a good deal of action takes place at night and that was very hard on our mostly volunteer cast and crew. We fed everyone well and morale was mostly good. I say “mostly” because there were some rough spots to be sure. We had some really wonderful people with true enthusiasm and great attitudes. Kirk Smith, Michelle Torres, Joe Carson, Cynthia Pusheck, Mark Panik, Jeffrey Relf, Paul Pritchard and Ben Thompson particularly stand out in my mind as absolutely wonderful people to work with. This movie could never have been made without their cheerful and tireless participation. D.P. Matt Nelson also came through for us when Cynthia had to leave after the third week of shooting because of a previous commitment. Incidentally, the schedule was about five weeks.
Chuck has a lot of great friends who are actors and many of them donated their time and talents to our movie, even if only for a day or two. These included Dan Roebuck (Final Destination, The Fugitive), Willard Pugh (The Color Purple), Reggie Bannister (Phantasm) and quite a few others. The principle leads, Justine Priestley, David De Witt and Karen Grosso made up the “triangle” around which the story revolves. Justine probably had the most fun from an acting standpoint, because she got to be really evil. I think she enjoyed the many horrible things I came up with for her character to inflict on others, but she also played the role with a sense of humor along with quiet subtlety and pathos which I believe works very well. David was a real trooper. We put him through some really physically challenging paces and he never complained. He was terrific. He also happens to be a very natural actor. Karen Grosso got to play an up and coming blues singer, which she did quite convincingly and every frame she’s in benefits from her natural beauty and sparkle.
Karen Grosso’s singing voice is actually that of my very young aunt who also happens to be named Karen -- Karen Lawrence. With my aunt’s permission I was able to use many great songs by her former band “Blue By Nature.” This added some terrific extra production value to the movie because the music is really fabulous. Karen is a great songwriter. For example, she wrote the song “Prisoner” which Barbra Streisand sang for the movie “Eyes of Laura Mars”. The songs in our movie are no less impressive. She also wrote a lovely, brand new song, “I Couldn’t Help But Love You” specifically for Up Against Amanda. Another key participant in all this was our composer Mladen Milicevic. I originally was contacted by Mladen over the internet years ago when he was interested in composing music for one of my movies. Believe it or not, we didn’t even meet in person until something like two years after the internet contact. He has turned out to be a fantastic friend and collaborator and I hope we can work together again. It’s so rare to find people who are both talented, professional and exceptionally nice, and Mladen is just such a person. I should add in closing that there were many other people who contributed to the movie and I don’t have room to mention them all or go into detail but no contribution can be minimized on a picture of this size. My wife Maria Lydia along with my friends John Cork, Mort Zarcoff, Randal Kleiser and especially Chuck Williams contributed valuable ideas and feedback during the scripting stages. John De Rose and Mike Barker created most of the on screen computer graphics. My thanks go to all who were a part of Up Against Amanda. I just hope in the near future that a really good distributor sniffs out how special this movie is so that we can be picked up and the rest of the world out there can see what they’re missing! Michael Rissi Contact Info Info@RissiProductions.com |
