Cancun

Have you been following Dipstick in Cancun? Her daily blog posts can be found over at Curve magazine.

My Bags are Packed and I'm Ready to Go...

I think I've got everything. I head out tomorrow morning for my wonderful trip to Cancun with the ladies of Olivia.

On Monday, I'll be hosting a lesbian dating game. Later we'll have a Curve themed party and I'll do a book signing at some point during the week.

Mostly, though, I hope to be sunning it up by the pool, dancing the night away and snorkeling in clear and warm waters. While I'm there, I'll be blogging daily for Curvemag.com. Be sure to stop over and read about all the excitement. Since I'll be writing for Curve this week, I won't be posting much over here, except maybe some links to those articles. So have a good week. I know I sure will!

Do You Want to Star in "Til Death Do Us Toby"?

Call for auditions!

If you live in Vancouver and fit any of the below criteria, send us your resume and headshot. You can read a full listing for the call for auditions here. Remember, we have a super small budget...

PROJECT INFO

Title: 'Til Death Do Us Toby

Duration: Short film

Storyline: A film about freedom, the need to break out of the chains that keep us in our usual place and a mother’s propensity to put unrealistic demands/expectations on a child. It’s also a story about survival. The protagonist, Toby, is the family’s pug, who misunderstands a conversation between his owners—Mimi, the mom, and her daughter, Sam. The neurotic Toby thinks that they’re trying to kill him so he tries to escape. Sam, Mimi’s teenage daughter, has a friend that Mimi doesn’t like: Megan. Mimi thinks Megan is a bad influence on Sam because Megan is edgy/alternative/gayish. Financially, times are tough for the newly-divorced Mimi, who is trying to keep up with the lifestyle she and Sam have grown accustomed. To supplement her income, Mimi leads a double life as a business woman/high-priced dominatrix. (Role info below.)

Characters:

Name	Mimi Brennan
Gender	Female
Age Range	42
Description	Mimi is a controlling mother who is confident, sexy, image conscious. Her daughter, Sam, bares the brunt of Mimi’s controlling ways. Mimi wants to keep Sam on the straight and narrow. Mimi, who was recently divorced, has had a hard time making financial ends meet, so she leads a double life to supplement her income by being a high-priced dominatrix. Actor must be willing and comfortable to playfully wear dominatrix outfit for funny, brief flashback scene. (Age range: 35-45) Height: 5’5 – 6’0

Name	Samantha Brennan
Gender	Female
Age Range	15
Description	Sam is a precocious, impressionable teen who is feminine, but also naturally a tomboy. Sam may or may not be gay, but she can’t stand her mom’s controlling ways, loves to break the rules and is completely smitten with her best friend, Megan. (Age range: young-looking 17 - 19) Height: 5’4 – 5’7

Name	Megan Ross
Gender	Female
Age Range	15
Description	Megan is a cool, alternative, edgy dyke, who is pretty hardcore for a teenager. Megan is confident, comfortable in her own skin and enjoys that Sam, her questioning best friend, has a crush on her. (Age range: young-looking 17 - 19) Height: 5’4 – 5’7

Auditions are this Saturday! Check out Vancouver Actors Guide for details on casting.

Also, we're looking for a local queer photographer and an art director/wardrobe specialist, to email me at development@chateauentertainment.com for info on that.

Spellcheck is your Fiend

A friend shared this video with me. As a writer who relies heavily on spellcheck, I found it priceless.

Hot Pink Shorts - Day 3 + 4 (Pre-Production + Location Mentor)

Things are really cranking over here! So fast that I've had to get my oil out twice to keep the parts moving. (Interpret that how you'd like.)

On Saturday, we had our first pre-production meeting with our team at OUTtv's offices. It was yours truly, Patty (who's wearing the Assistant Director hat, among other things) and Ryan, our Director of Photography. We talked about some important preliminary stuff: where we were at with the script, casting thoughts, logistics around filming, crew update, equipment needed, etc. At that point on Saturday, we'd yet to lock the script, so that was priority 1.

P and I went to lunch afterward--a little Caribbean food at The Reef on Main--and worked on the script and than did another couple hours of brainstorming later. We finally locked the script on Sunday! There will be little tweaks along the way, but we're truly off and running now.

On Sunday, we met with our Locations Mentor, Mike Cates. It was a great meeting where we discussed:
- scouting locations
- permits needed
- effective scouting strategies
- the need to be flexible and resourceful and not to get sold on one location
- how to protect the place you're shooting at (laying down cardboard or rubberback carpets, tennis balls on the bases of lights, etc)
- the importance of prioritizing when you first start scouting (what is the hardest location to nail down, what is the most important location with the most scenes)
- he told us about the BC Film Commission and said they are an incredible resource for location scouting and have thousands and thousands of digitized photos of locations submitted by filmmakers through the years of locations that have been used or scouted

He was a great guy and very resourceful! Thanks Mike.


We've also been on the hunt for the perfect pug to play Toby and have been in touch with some animal talent agencies. We decided to throw up a post on Craigslist and whatya know?

[Drum roll................. ]

That is where we found our star! We met "Juno" on Tuesday and immediately fell in love. He's "big boned" and we think that adds to the humor that we're going for in the film. Also, Juno is one of our favorite movies and we thought that was a sign. This is coupled with the fact we loved his owner, Peter, and his son Adam. We thought we'd give you a sneak peek at "Toby" here. Juno is a retired show dog and a former Canadian champion. If he could talk, Juno would tell you why he's a champ: his perfect placed ears and perfectly round melon. He did lose a few points because his hind chops aren't as curved as they should be.

We had another production meeting on Tuesday night and met our Camera guy (although he is and will be way more than that). His name is Mic and he's from Australia. He's a super smart guy and is putting our script into a digital 3D storyboard program which makes me so excited I yelp and snort--like Toby--little when I talk about it. Not sure if that is something I can upload here, but hopefully I can share some of that, too. The program he's using is called Frame Forge.

All right, more soon. We've got to check some things off our "To Do" list.

Which Top Can Dipstick Pull Off?

Okay, Girls Dipstick needs your opinion. As you know, I'm getting ready to head to Cancun with the wonderful ladies of Olivia in just a few week. I'm still working on that bathing suit body, but what about the suit?

I've got plenty of board shorts, but what to wear on top? Can a handsome butch like Dipstick pull off a girly bathing suit top like the one on the left? Or should I stick to my standard sports bra type attire, like the one on the right?

Give your opinion in the comments section and add if you're butch, femme or neither. Thanks for helping me out!

A Mouse in the House

I used to have this awesome cat named Chicken. She was kind of clumsy and sort of lazy, but that damn cat was such a hunter. Every Spring she'd bring moles, voles, mice and birds into the house, let them loose and chase them around for a few hours. She was a great cat.

I now have a new cat. Herbie. Herbie also loves to bring mice into the house. Only thing is, she lets them go, they run behind a bookcase or the stove and then she forgets about them.

I knew there was a mouse in the house when I got up Friday morning because Herbie was camped out in front of the bookcase. I know she wasn't contemplating which of Tiger's collection of Stephanie Meyer's books to read next. She was waiting. Waiting for the vermin to reappear. Problem is, vermin is patient. And Herbie is not. Soon she was curled up and sleeping on her favorite green chair.

The mouse must have tried to make it's escape some time on Saturday because I heard the scramble of cat paws, followed by the scramble of dog paws on the floor. By the time I got to the living room, both the dog and the cat were sitting and staring at the book case. I moved it, but no mouse showed it's face.

Yesterday I was working out on my Nordic track when I saw a tiny flash out of the corner of my eye that let me know, indeed, the mouse was still lurking in the living room. At least it hadn't made it's way to the kitchen.

After I finished working out, I noticed the dog was sitting and staring up at the window. Somehow the mouse had snuck out from behind the bookcase and crawled up the curtain. It was just hanging out there, near the top. The cat was no where to be seen.

So, I grabbed an old rag, scooped the mouse up in it and brought it outside. Is it wrong that I deposited in front of my neighbor's house? It looked stunned for a moment and then it took off across the lawn. Herbie, of course, has forgotten all about it.