Um, "The Heart Break Way" is not about being "nice" ....

It's about respecting and appreciating everyone with whom we work.

I realized recently that the Heart Break Productionz philosophy (we call our philosophy "The Heart Break way") of not allowing abusive language or behavior to others on our productions has been misinterpreted to mean that, essentially, because my business partner Gary Allen Tucci and I are "nice," we expect everyone else to be as well.

Um, no.

Here's the deal. Gary is about the most macho person I know. Seriously, he does the Kona Iron Man for fun. He leads massive groups of Teamsters and members of 30 other unions normally known for their tough, strong and protective work and behavior to do extremely dangerous work.

And you'll never hear an abusive word from his mouth.

Likewise, when I'm directing, you won't hear a derisive or abusive word from my mouth.

Because it's not about "nice."

It's about safety.

Gary runs industries that employ thousands of people to work in dangerous life and death environments - repairing, replacing and rebuilding utilities after disasters - electricity, communications, etc.

If one of these people, in the heat of working in downpours, snowstorms, explosions and other threats from human and nature, is verbally abusive to another worker - everyone's life in that vicinity is immediately endangered. They've no longer made their focus the work at hand, but their inappropriate personal biases or uncontrolled anger, which only impedes and intercedes with the high-risk job they are doing.

So somebody says, "Hey, you son of a bitch, move that line over!"

The immediate response is not to move the line, but to respond to the name-caller personally, detracting everyone's focus from where it should be.

The line wasn't moved, it was crossed.

It's all about safety.

In developing a professional, creative environment, actors, technicians, service people, key crew and everyone else involved with making a film need to feel safe in order to do their best work.

So by making people on the production feel safe to go about and do their best work, we are protecting the creative process, which is most vital to me.

The moment an actor feels unsafe because of the way he or she is spoken to or treated? The best performance from him or her is lost unless they have an extraordinary relationship with their director. So in most cases a decent performance might be delivered, but nothing like the person is capable of turning in if they felt safe in the work environment.

To me, that doesn't mean you "spoil" the person. It means treating them professionally, respectfully. Appreciating them and their work, expecting the best from them (behavior and performance) and protecting them from any abuse on the set they might receive from people who might think they can "joke" with them or give them "advice" on how to play a scene or worse, "feedback" about a performance.

Likewise, actors cannot abuse others. There's no reason or excuse for abuse, period.

A creative environment allows for fresh ideas. People feel free to speak up if they see an immediate or potential problem or experience a problem themselves without being on the other end of any retribution.

We can innovate, change things up and improvise to get a better scene without wreaking havoc or pushing anyone's nose out of joint. We're in it together. We make it happen together.

Filmmaking is probably the most collaborative work in the world if it's done properly.

In a safe working environment, people feel free to admit making an error straight away so it can be fixed quickly. Disappointment might be expressed but abuse? Never.

More - a film set is a physically dangerous place. You've read about people being injured and even killed in the news. In addition to possibly injurious sets and props, there are many, many thousands of volts of electricity searing through fat cables; crane shots in windy, rainy weather can be unstable.

Because her director, against the advice of those who knew better, made her look at hyper bright lights, Helen Hunt lost her eyesight for nearly two days during the shooting of TWISTER. What if her eyes had been injured beyond repair?

I've been "accused" of being overly protective of my cast and crew, but really, it's all about creating a professional attitude. No gossip. Respect and appreciate each other so we can create and maintain an environment of safety - protecting not only our physical, emotional and mental well-being, but the creative process and the film itself - which is, or should be, our primary focus.

Make no mistake - there are clear, insightful and sometimes tough love statements made to take care of any issue or problem immediately and properly. Including between Gary and myself. But there's never a doubt of our respect, appreciation, admiration and focus.

We give a great deal of thought to the folks we hire and cast. We've made a few mistakes, and learned from them during the filming of THE WHOLE TRUTH so we're totally on track personnel-wise for the production of THE LONELY GOATHERD.

Respect. Appreciation. They are integral to the definition of being a professional.

They equal not just a great environment in which to work, but a safe place to do what we all love to do most without putting our careers, lives or co-workers in danger. Qualified professionals who understand this work on Heart Break Productionz films.

And we at HBPz think that's really nice.

Opening, closing and credits

We're filling in temporary titles, credits and other written information that will cross the screen starting and ending the film. The permanent titles and credits are added after everything else is finished in post production.

Both are meant to be entertaining ... drawing you in right away and keeping you excited to see what's coming next during its screening and after the film ends.

Editor Stephen Myers and I are looking at it from beginning to end more often now to catch everything we can to tighten, correct, improve, brighten, enlighten, punch up and accentuate.

It appears we will not have to have anyone 'loop' lines .. that is, bring cast members into a sound studio to repeat lines that were somehow lost in the filming process. Our sound mixer Bob Marts is one of the best, and I'm a sound *nut* so while I wasn't counting on it (I've never had to loop any film I've made), I was hoping we wouldn't have to spend the money on looping, but instead on other things that will spice up the look of the film.

The time to have a private screening is coming up .. probably about mid-December .. then last minute touches and it goes in for sound sweetening, color correction and special effects touches. That may all be done in January because of the holidays and scheduling considerations.

Then?

Then it is unleashed on you!

Meanwhile, I'm simultaneously doing my usual director's image detail work and script finessing for our next feature, which is starting to feel pretty exciting to me. I've never worked on fewer than three projects at a time - it keeps me excited, focused (believe it or not) and organized. It also keeps me from going into a funk after I finish a project - at least for too long.

I'm so looking forward to casting the new feature - it's going to be so much fun and I'm going to meet such wonderful, skilled, talented actors as well as welcome back at least some of the folks who starred in THE WHOLE TRUTH! But who? We don't know yet, except for Elisabeth Röhm, who will portray one of the most unusual supporting characters ever to grace the silver screen.

Editing is rocking!

Editor Stephen Myers and I are spending our days finessing THE WHOLE TRUTH rough cut - we shipped the version we're refining to our composer Ragnar Rosinkranz in LA to flesh out the score.

We added the cues he sent us to our copy and they're perfect.

Opening and closing themes fit like a glove. Capturing the film's essence in about :30 seconds for the opening is amazing; the closing is longer because it features the credits and a lot of folks worked on the film.

Plus there's a special surprise included with the credits ... and no, I'm not talking about outtakes -- they are so yesterday!

I'm talking about something very fresh, fun, new and a first. Which I think we'll include in all our Heart Break Productionz feature films.

I start finessing the script for the next feature (a comedy) I'm directing this coming weekend. We may be in LA casting the first part of December, heading for pre-production in January.

Back to work!

The music arrives!

Ragnar Rosinkranz's music arrived over the weekend, which means we start working it into the film tomorrow morning!

We'll take a look at the entire rough cut of The Whole Truth, share notes on what we (editor Stephen Myers and myself) need to do to improve it through editing, including inserts of sound effects, tightening, changing what we can. Then we start adding the musical riffs Ragnar sent us.

That will be day #4 of editing.

Day #5 (Tuesday) will be more of the same .. refine, refine, refine. Focusing closely on every visual detail and movement with each pass, listening to every sound - electronically drawn out to catch every minuscule audible modulation.

This is where the film actually gets made ... and of course we can only work with what was actually shot. "Fixes" in post production are, while having much more potential than they did even a few years ago, are still fairly limited unless the film is shot properly.

We have one action scene that will have special effects, but we had to shoot it a specific way and at a certain speed, prepping it for the special effects folks at Modern Digital to modify after we've finished the editing process.

It's all pretty exciting. But our film is not really changing in editing - it's the same story we shot in the same way it was shot. Some films change drastically in editing because there were problems on the shoot. One such film was the award-winning Annie Hall. Most films that undergo such extensive changes in editing are not as fortunate.

Editing is underway!

Editor Stephen Myers and I are in the editing suite, working full days as of Wednesday.

Monday and Tuesday a group of us went on a location scout trip for our new feature, THE LONELY GOATHERD.

Stephen and I did an initial pass through the rough cut of THE WHOLE TRUTH in about 2.2 days; then we started finessing, adding sound effects and tightening scenes as well as putting scenes in more detailed sequence today.

It's fun and very specific, meticulous work. I am extremely focused on the editing process of TWT, but I enjoy working on more than one project at a time, which is why we're moving into developing our next feature, which we should start shooting in Spring, while also creating our third film, SPARE CHANGE, which I'll be writing along the way through TLG.

I'll have some finessing to do of TLG script which shouldn't take long because it's pretty well finished.

One thing about doing comedy - it's fun to re-live the laughter in the editing room. And the performances, which, in this case are uniformly excellent. We were blessed with a genuinely fabulous, talented, skilled cast, who were also a total delight to work with.

I've learned so much from THE WHOLE TRUTH, and look forward to doing it all over again, using my new knowledge, starting up THE LONELY GOATHERD even before we finish this project.

It's all very exciting.

And of course I'll be particularly excited to see what audiences think of the completed version of THE WHOLE TRUTH!

Confessions ...

Now that the film shooting part is completed for THE WHOLE TRUTH production, I have to tell you some behind the scenes stuff that doesn't necessarily make me the world's greatest comedy writer/director.

It has to do with uncontrollable laughter.

Namely, mine.

I had to bar myself from my own set *twice* for two scenes in which Elisabeth Röhm was performing what was in the script ... and I could not stop laughing. Everyone else was remarkably controlled, wearing muffler scarves in which to guffaw silently, looking at the ceiling as the scene played out, letting tears flow without making a sound.

I tried all those things, and even desperately attempted to "hold it in." I swear at one point I burst a very vital organ because I was in excessive merriment constricting pain the rest of the day. It was like suffering from unexpressed laughter constipation - one just can't back one's self up like that without hurting one's self.

I had to yell "action" and "cut" from a distant location holding a small monitor.

OK, in the name of full disclosure: one of those scenes was performed in a room next to where I was located. Elisabeth had a direct eye line to me and at one point got up from her chair, walked to the door staring at me, and closed it because watching me laugh sent her regaling - preventing her from saying her lines as pathetically as her character was supposed to be feeling.

It wasn't enough. She could still hear me stifling myself through the closed door, so as I say, I moved farther away and fortunately have a very loud voice so the cast and crew could hear "action" and "cut."

Seriously, do Christopher Guest and Frank Oz have these problems?

Elisabeth has a stealth laugh mode. You know she's laughing but she doesn't make a sound. My producer Larry Estes can do the same thing. Larry, his wife Debbie and I went to see Rick Overton and John Fugelsang perform stand-up at a local comedy club. There I was, falling apart at the seams, tears streaming, in genuine pain from laughing so hard, pounding the table with one hand, shielding my head from physical injury by putting my other arm on the table so it would hit only flesh.

Debbie laughed heartily, aloud.

Larry? Seriously, his body was shaking, tears were flowing, the mouth was open .. but not a sound. It was like flying owl laughter. You can't hear owls fly, you know. They're totally silent when their wings "flap." Eeery.

Now, Elisabeth can also make sound, but apparently when it's "appropriate" (whatever the hell that means), she's a stealth laugher.

Eric Roberts is an expressive, audible laugher. I'm proud to say we share that in common.

A few evenings after a long day of shooting a couple of us would get together and plan the next day of production. I would be tired and giddy and suddenly seized with fits of laughter as my colleagues would wait patiently, shaking their heads.

1st Assistant Director Megan Griffiths told passer-by Larry Estes they had no idea how to stop me.

Said Larry, "Watch this."

Tears streaming down my giggling face, I listened closely.

"Vice president Palin," he said, stone faced.

I immediately returned to work, completely focused, not a sound out of this mouth other than the business at hand.

We were all mighty impressed. As was Larry with himself.

Because of course, the election is not funny. It's urgently important that we all participate.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have fought and died over the centuries to achieve our precious right to choose our leaders and decide our future. Women have had the right to vote in the United States only less than one hundred years. Before that, we were not considered "full" citizens and were excluded from taking part in "mainstream" politics.

I mailed my ballot last week.

Vote.