8 Weeks humping prehistoric 35mm camera gear in the Pennsylvania snow climaxed with a daring wrap party to be forever unparalleled in dance, drink and carnal debauchery. The morning after: the day before Christmas, 2005. “Dude,” I said - gently but sternly stirring you from your nest of hung-over art assistants, “We have 24 hours to drive 1200 hundred miles or my family disowns me.”

“There’s a chorus-verse-chorus element to (Alice Neel) where we go into her life, then we come flash forward into my life and then we go back to her life…What (editor Luke Meyer) was trying to achieve, and I think he did a really good job of it, was making that chorus-verse-chorus work together in a cohesive way.

One of the important things we’ve done you’ll notice sometimes is to allow some shots to run a little longer than you might normally–for instance, the scene with the turkey in the field. In that case, we really did something that was unorthodox and let the shot and scene run long to break that chorus-verse-chorus rhythm and the predictable progression of the biopic.

“In a more subtle way, you’ll notice at the end with my father, when he’s talking about bliss…–the statement “Follow your bliss” is kind of a chessy statement. I feel like Apple markets their iPod with that statement–but, by editing (the scene) correctly, by allowing the shot to run after that and by allowing him to have an introspective moment to then say “I don’t think I can verbalize everything,” that was a very smart editing decision. Luke and I had a lot arguments about that sort of stuff throughout the film, and you see the fruits of our collaboration in that.”~Andrew Neel (Darkon, Alice Neel)

"(Jonah's) able to achieve these tracks that are unique but strick these chords that are universal. I love that he does a lot of those recordings himself, and there's a rough shot beauty to all of his tracks. I thought that was really appropriate for Alice because that's what makes her work really good, the mixture of the tightly controlled and yet the realistically sloppy elements."

"That was great, working with him. (Luke & I) had test tracks that we'd put in there from various people, and then (Jonah would) listen to our test track and try to come up with something that he felt was similiar but unique and interesting."~ Andrew Neel (Darkon, Alice Neel)

To hear tracks from Alice Neel visit www.myspace.com/aliceneelmusic

To hear tracks from Darkon visit www.myspace.com/darkonmusic.

Kendra Skeene hadn't planned on co-producing PEZheads-the Movie along with her husband Chris Skeene and director Chris Marshall. It was much more than an active desire, a happy accident. "(Chris) dragged me along to the first convention, and I just kind of figured that I'd be in the way," she says. "But, then all of the sudden I realized that they needed someone to take care of things like making sure people signed release forms or setting up interviews so they could go do other things. All the sudden it was like, "They need me to just run around and harass people and not worry about the filming aspect." It was just a random, "Well, I guess I'm doing this too."

"Chris and I would be thinking all these lofty things about what we were doing, going here and going there," Marshall says. "Kendra would ground us and say, "What are you actually doing? Do we need to pay for it? Do we need to get hotel rooms?" So we were like, "Oh, we're glad you're thinking of all those things."

Chris Skeene adds to this: "The one big trip we took without Kendra we went up north to interview Robbie from The Goo Goo Dolls, the PEZ factory and Easton Musuem, all of that stuff we did in one long trip. We just got in the car and drove up there. We didn't really make any phone calls until we were up there, and we were like, "Hey, we're up here. Can we come talk to you? Can we come to your house? Yeah, we're next door. Can we come over and hang out?" It would never have happened like that if Kendra were there. Everything would have been set in advance. We'd have a "this day we're going here, this day we're going here." But, of course, that means we didn't get release forms signed. We got some."

"The ones we waited for six months to get, we would have gotten if I was there," Kendra says, smiling and laughing, traits very much indicitive naturally of her personality.

"If she was there, it would have saved time later," Chris says. "It was totally a different process because it was just me and (Chris Marshall), and it was totally flying by the seat of our pants."

For more information on the film, visit www.pezheadsthemovie.com.

“When writing (Hohokam) the ‘friend from out of town’ was a girl, and it was going nowhere. Struggling with it, I was about to get somewhere until I went out to a bar with Tony and saw this guy, who looked gay–I know that sounds ridiculous, but he was wearing capris and had a man-bag. Anyway it hit me that Lori’s friend should be a gay man. That would be a more interesting and relevant relationship to touch on. Then add in this marine dude (Anson) who has never met anyone gay and doesn’t know the guy, but it is a guy and he is hanging around his girl–that’s it! So I was scribbling all this, and more, down in my pad; Tony interrupts me and introduces me to the man-bag fella that inspired this revelation.

He was Danny Rhodes an actor that Tony knew, and Danny had wanted to work with me after he saw the tire swing scene in Quietly on by. We shook hands and Danny said as much to me. I told him I am working on a part for him right now. Sometimes you have to trust things like that.” ~Frank V. Ross (Oh! My Dear Desire, Quietly on by, Hohokam)

Orphans was made with six women in the middle of a blizzard. It was a completely independent effort with the intention of making a film on its own terms and without the ambition to sell it and make millions doing a little horror flick. That’s something we stayed true to in the process. Our process was lengthy and really took advantage of the fact that I was working with people I had a long history with and knew. We had about a two-month rehearsal process where we would all, me and the two lead actress (Lily Wheelwright, James Katharine Flynn) and sometimes the DP (Ku-Ling Siegal), would get together and improvise, play games; we kind of created a collective childhood for these two girls. We went around town and showed each other different locations that they had been to before and talked about memories from their childhood so they could hyberdize their two childhoods and make one...A lot of Orphans is its subtext, is what you don’t see, is knowing that there’s this entire life outside of the film that happened before, that it’s past, that it’s gone. I wanted to make sure that was really rich and really alive for the actresses and for me as well so that then when we got on set, we had a script—and the actresses knew their lines and everyone was very conscious of where the script was going, and we followed it—but the film was not dialogue heavy, so we didn’t have to rely on the logistics of getting every word right and every single line because there was such a rich subtext that they were working with that made everything much more fluid and playful on set. In a way, as opposed to throwing my actors into something and letting them rock-n-roll on their own interpretation, we were able to create a united life that then these two characters could exist within.

There’s something really beautiful about your first movie—at least for me—because I didn’t know much about selling my movie, distribution and all these things I know now. I really just had an idea of the kind of movies I wanted to make from my heart and sort of just did everything I could and used every resource I had and found people who could see the draw to this movie and what it was about and worked with them. Also, I didn’t realize what a long haul it would be. Making a feature—at least for me—took years, almost two years, and it’s an endeveour. And, now I know what I’m in for in making another one, but I am excited to make another but using slightly different—using the knowledge I have now."