You’ve heard of screenplays being written in a week’s time or even over a weekend? Not “Reckoning”. The screenplay took over 15 years to write, with many changes along the way. In fact, for most of that time, Abby was the main focus as she tried to determine which man she wanted to be with, Kevin or Lance. Eventually it became Kevin’s story and how much Kevin would give up to make his dream come true. Fifteen years is a long time, but don’t think that was all I was working on. I’m a teacher full time and there were long stretches of time when I didn’t work on the script for months. Before I became a teacher, I lived and worked in NYC, trying to break into acting so a lot of those early years of writing were at temp jobs.
I knew I wanted to make the movie myself so I tried to keep the locations to places I was sure I could get. For example, Madyson Healy’s (Colleen Lincoln) mom owned Kor Fitness, the gym we filmed at. Madyson was a former student when I taught 3rd grade (I teach 6th now). Yogi Berra Stadium at Montclair State University was a tougher get. That cost $1,000 but I was able to get an old friend, Bob Henry, to get two 18-year old teams to play and we worked our movie magic during their game. The New Continental Hotel and Restaurant owners were kind enough to let us film there because my niece Gina worked there. A side note: Babe Ruth stayed at the New Continental Hotel and Restaurant and we filmed in the room he stayed in! I just stopped by ProMotions Training Academy on Route 46 in Fairfield NJ one day and asked Scott and Guy if I could film there and to my surprise, they said yes! My house was used as 14 different locations for 3 different characters. You might think that I must live in a huge house but no, you turn the camera one way then face another wall and you have 2 different locations. That’s what you do when you have no budget.
This guy at ShopRite says I look like an actor. Of course I’m thinking ‘He must think I’m Brad Pitt’, but I say I’m not an actor, having given it up years ago to start my teaching career. He says he did a film years ago and I looked like an actor in it. Turns out he was the Director of Photography, Sean O’Halloran, and the film was “Where or When”. I told him I had a script I might be interested in filming and we kept in touch. Randy Schein, Mark Gray, Wayne Joseph, Eric Van Alstyne and Sarah Matthay are all friends and actors that I’ve worked with previously. Paul Bannon is a friend who ‘won’ his part by winning a Strat-O-Matic baseball league that some friends played in. The rest of the actors I found through submissions from a Backstage ad.
There’s always adversity on no budget movies and ours was no exception. We lost 3 actors within a week of shooting. First, the actor playing Sam seemed to be big-timing me so I called Ed Bergtold, who had already auditioned and was my other choice to play Sam, a week before shooting and asked if he was available. Luckily, he was! That just left an uncomfortable phone call to the other actor. Next, another actress set to play my mom had a family emergency and could not make it. She told me the night before filming. I called two other actresses I knew but neither could do it on such short notice. We ended up taking out her part and giving the necessary lines to Dad (Robert Sean Miller), Sam (Ed Bergtold) or me. Robert ad libbed the part about the Mom dying and the medical bills. Finally, the actress playing Abby (Megan Etheridge) told me the night before shooting that she wanted a makeup person. Usually on no-budget films, it’s assumed that everyone does their own makeup unless there are special effects, in which the director would get a makeup person. That was my first tip off that something was amiss. Later, we had a disagreement about the union contract. I was getting a contract so I could use union actors but the paperwork had not gone through yet and she thought I was not going to get the contract. I told her a number of the actors were friends and union and I was going to get it but evidently, she did not believe me and informed me after the first day of filming that she wouldn’t be back. Thankfully, I did most of her scenes. My lovely first wife Jennifer filled in for the car scenes. Notice her hands acting up a storm!
All together, we shot an 82 page script in 10 days over 5 weekends for under $7,000.