Imagine you’ve got seven hours to shoot a three minute dramatic short, and your crew is stuck on the ferry somewhere on Cape Cod Bay in eight foot rolling seas. Most shoots don’t begin with this much off-camera drama, but that’s how last Labor Day started for filmmaker David M.Young when he set out to shoot his first short, LOOKING FOR MR. RIGHT on location in scenic Provincetown. Pulling together a Boston area crew and ferrying them over on the morning of his shoot seemed pretty straight forward. But that was before the winds began. The voyage turned out to be one of the roughest crossings in the last five years. “The crew arrived late, and very pale,” Young says, “I had to give them an hour to recover. Apparently 70% of the passengers were sick. The boat crew ran out of sea sick bags and had to hand out coffee filters!”
Despite the delay, the crew, headed by DP Gary Henoch rallied and, according to Young, “pulled off a minor miracle. We had six hours to get through a thirty shot story board and Gary was incredible.” With gaffer Eric Forand and grip Jeff Herzog, Henoch recreated the high energy and flashing lights of a late night dance club world. “Gary and I did a lot of preplanning the week before,” Young said. “We decided to approach the project as if we were shooting a sixty second commercial.” LOOKING FOR MR. RIGHT follows a gay “everyman” as he visits a dance bar in search of love. Seen from his POV and privy to his thoughts, we witness an evening with unexpected consequences.
After securing Club Purgatory as his location last August, Young had only twelve days to pull together his cast and crew. “I talked to seven DP’s before going with Gary. He had just come off shooting Tony Shaloub’s MADE-UP and was the only one who had the right combination of hand held savvy, and an actor’s sensibilities.” says Young. “And Gary has the rarefied sense of humor I knew was key to pulling off this dramatic comic short.”
Young admits to one other curve ball the weather delivered that day. “I misjudged the powerful allure of Provincetown’s sun and beaches. I had verbal commitments from over ninety vacationers and local folks to fill the club from 1 to 2pm for my crowd shots. And since the day began with heavy winds and cloud cover I thought the gods were with me. At noontime, the sun came out and the winds died down - and I had only 22 extras over the course of the day. My widest crowd shot has only eleven bodies in it! Thank God I’ve been an editor for twenty years. With a little cinematic sleight of hand, most people think the club looks packed.”
The film looks to be a crowd pleaser itself. After a week long test run at the Coolidge Corner Theatre last February, and it’s Official Premiere at the MFA’s Boston Gay and Lesbian Film/Video Festival in May, LOOKING FOR MR. RIGHT is next screening at the 27th San Francisco International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival on June 21st.
Looking ahead, Young hopes to begin production on his feature script, CROAKED, a sci-fi/ horror musical comedy loosely inspired by the 1950’s CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, and set in Boston’s Back Bay Fens. That is, weather permitting.