The Last Hurrah’s nationwide DVD release is this month and we’re throwing a party! If you’re in Los Angeles, come watch the movie and celebrate with our actors, crew, producers and distributors.
Sunday, February 21
7:00pm – Screening at the Downtown Independent Theater
9:00pm – After party upstairs in the bar. DJ: Jacob Safari
9:30pm – Special visit by the Kogi Korean BBQ Taco Truck (tbd)
Advance copies of the DVD will be on sale for a special price!
Movie Tickets are $10 at the door.
It’s my great pleasure to announce The Last Hurrah has signed distribution. I’ll have more information in early 2010, but in the meantime we’ve been busy with deliverables and getting materials squared away for the DVD.
It’s been an amazing journey. From three weeks of pre-production, to three weeks of filming, to a year of post-production, and now six months playing festivals. I don’t think any of us imagined that this tiny movie we filmed in one location would someday be playing in a theater or for sale in a video store. It’s a fun ride!
The Last Hurrah screened tonight at the SoCal Film Festival. It was a fun, enthusiastic crowd and we were very excited to have won Best Cinematography for the festival.
Actors: Steve Fite, Jon Weinberg, Zack Bennett, Sarah Scott, Gary Cairns
Actors: Steve Fite and Alicia Ziegler
Producers: Richie Molyneux, Jon Stokes, Peter Marr
Actor David Wachs and Director Jon Stokes
Actor Steve Fite and Director Jon Stokes
I’m happy to announce the next screening of…
The Last Hurrah
Official Selection
Tuesday, September 22 at 8:20pm
The SoCal Film Festival in Huntington Beach
We are honored to be one of six narrative feature films selected for the festival. And pleased to be included in a group of larger budget movies with box office stars such as Peter Gallagher, Michael Madsen, C. Thomas Howell, Ann-Margaret, Christina Ricci…and more.
The Last Hurrah’s own Sarah Scott is starring in The Grind with Tom Sizemore and Danny Trejo, also premiering at SoCal. We decided to apply to the SoCal festival at the behest of actor Gary Cairns, who stars as “The Trip” and is a long time resident of Huntington Beach.
Thank you Gary and thank you SoCal!
I arrive at the premiere, meet our publicist and producer rep, and begin greeting actors as they arrive.
Getting ready: our publicist Kim, Me (Jon Stokes), Valerie Azlynn, Alicia Ziegler
We sold out the theater the day before, and now everyone’s clamoring for tickets. Even actors can’t get a seat! I do the best job I can to handle everyone and deflect people onto Adam, Kim, Chuck, Jay and anyone who can help.
Chaos begins
The crowd arrives and I’m thrilled to see so many friends. My best friend Jordan surprises me at the premiere – he flew out from New York! This makes my entire night.
The audience lining up to buy tickets
Beautiful people arrive…
David Wachs, Gary Cairns, Jennifer Ann Massey, Hakeem Kae-Kazim
I join the red carpet photos. This takes practice. Which way do we look?
Jon Weinberg, Ravi Patel, Jon Stokes, Randy Wayne
The filmmakers get their picture taken…
Chuck DeRosa (Cinematographer), Jon Stokes (Me the director), Jay Trautman (Editor, Post-Production Supervisor)
The screening starts a good 30 minutes late. The Dances With Films staff struggles to pack in every last remaining seat. We turn away a crowd at the door.
I stand in the back of the theater with my producing team and the festival directors. It feels good. There is excitement in the air.
Jon Stokes (Me the director) and Valerie Azlynn (the female lead)
I’ve never seen The Last Hurrah on a full size theater screen. What will the picture quality be like? As soon as the movie starts, I breath my first sigh of relief. The picture looks better than I’ve ever seen it. When my name appears on the screen I get butterflies.
With each of the first five scenes in the movie I breath a little more relief – the laughs and momentum are there. The movie is underway, the audience is with us. Once we finally hit the Act One break I turn around and give a big thumbs up to my team: We Did It.
Sarah Scott, Jon Stokes, David Wachs
The audience response is amazing. Better than I ever imagined. They gasp, they cheer, they laugh, they clap. They root for the characters. When Will has a serious moment they are silent, when Jason gives Will advice they are on the edge of their seats, when Steve breaks up with Tara they laugh and applaud, and when Will finally kisses Nicole they cheer. It works. Finally seeing the movie with a live audience is transcendent.
When the movie’s over we get applause after applause. It feels great!
Zack Bennett, Alicia Ziegler, Valerie Azlynn
After the credit roll I’m called down for the Q&A. I invite all the actors and crew to come down as well. There is a lot of energy on stage and we all get some good laughs during the Q&A.
The first thing I always need to do when I walk out of a theater is find a bathroom. Code yellow! But it takes me 15 minutes to walk to the bathroom with the outpouring of congratulations. For a writer who spends most of his time toiling alone, hunched over a laptop, this night is a tremendously gratifying experience. The screening over, we all head to Libertine for the after party. It is packed and jumping and a great finish to a great night.
We are thrilled to announce…
The Last Hurrah World Premiere
Tuesday, June 9th 7:15pm at the Laemmle Sunset 5
Purchase tickets!
For more information, visit Dances With Films.
We are thrilled to be premiering here in Los Angeles. Out of 1200 – 1500 films submitted, The Last Hurrah is one of 19 films selected for the festival, and one of 11 chosen for the competition section. Thank you Dances With Films!
Jay and I knocked out a new trailer for The Last Hurrah. I wrote the outline during lunch break at a dance competition on Saturday, Jay mocked it up Sunday afternoon, and Sunday night we massaged it into place. We’ve both been so swamped, this is our process!
The trailer music is composed and performed by Dominic Mazzoni. Take a look!
We trimmed 2:14 of runtime from Act One, bringing our total movie down below 90 minutes. And we spent a good deal of time remixing and syncing ADR with the delightful Corey Eccles.
Complete with fresh titles, I think we’ve finally got the movie we can send to festivals. Now it’s time to take a well-earned break from The Last Hurrah.
Richie recording some new crowd walla-walla with Corey (above).
Many fun hours in the dub stage, but I think we’re finally wrapped.
Monday we had our first private screening of The Last Hurrah. It was a big success!
We showed the film in a screening room at Raleigh Studios to a group of industry friends. I’m thrilled to report that 29 out of our 30 comment cards were definitively positive.
Reviewing the cards, we are going to go back in to remix and sync ADR, polish up our front titles, and trim some run time from Act One. Our whole goal now is to make the first ten minutes of the film as accessible as possible to a festival screener. It’s this single-take concept that will either make people love our movie, or completely not understand it!
It was very gratifying to watch the movie in a live theater, and hear audience response. And such a relief to hear laughter – in the places where we want to hear laughter!
Now it’s back to work on completing the final version of the movie and getting it out to festivals.
Okay, I’ve said it before, but this time I think the sound is finally, basically, complete.
After bouncing around through several mixers, we are finally lucky enough to be working with the wonderful Corey Eccles on a state of the art dub stage. She is bringing our sound up to a level of quality I didn’t think was possible for our movie.
Recording a one take movie, mostly outdoors, we were saddled with all sorts of honking horns, airplane engines, police sirens, lav mic pops and static, boom mic distortion, and more than a few flubbed actor lines. After going through several sound mixers, I thought we were simply going to have to live with these issues. But Corey has been able to rapidly erase many if not most of these problems. I am, frankly, astonished at the speed and quality of her work.
Perhaps sound is like a tightly sealed pickle jar, where several people need to have a go at it before the lid finally pops open.
I’ll keep my fingers crossed until I get to spot the final output this week. But I think we may finally have a completed movie on our hands.
And now it’s a question of finding a festival for our premiere.
