Tuesday, March 12, 2013

The Brass Teapot "On Demand"

by Pa Rock
Proud Father

My friend and co-worker, Vickie, came to work yesterday morning anxious to tell me that she and her husband and a friend had watched a great new movie, "The Brass Teapot," on-demand over the weekend.  Vickie is a sweetie, and she knew that the screenplay for the movie was written by my son, Tim, and it was based on a story that Tim published on the Internet several years ago.  She has even met Tim.

Being a typical proud parent, I felt that Tim's name should have appeared above the title in script a bit larger than the title.  But his name on the credits was rather nondescript and, in my opinion, seemed to race by as the credits were rolling.   I asked Vickie if she had seen his name in the credits, and she assured me that she had.  Then she reminded me of something that had completely slipped my mind.  His name (our name, actually) appears a couple of times in the film itself.  The two main characters, John and Alice (played by Michael Angarano and Juno Temple) have the last name of "Macy" in the movie.

Here is the skinny on how that happened, according to the screenwriter:  The story and the original script had only first names for the young couple.  At some point late in production it was decided that they needed a surname for return addresses on a couple of bills.  Tim received a phone call from someone involved in the filming and was asked about a last name for the central characters.  He responded that any name was fine with him.  Then he was told that the stars liked his name and wanted to use it.  My bashful son declined, but after some prodding he agreed to it if they would make it clear during any subsequent interviews or promotions that he had not written his name into the script.  It was only to be used by the art department for the envelopes.

Tim said he was on the set one evening watching Michael and Juno act out a scene when he heard Michael say, "We are John and Alice Macy."  It wasn't in the script - just an ad-lib - but it stayed in the edited version of the film.

I thought it was kind of cool, and suggested he could pull a Hitchcock and insert his name somewhere in any future film he wrote.   (Hitchcock often did cameo appearances in his own films.)   Tim won't do that, of course - his modesty is truly aggravating!  My dad, who had a penchant for putting his name on things would have loved seeing it in a movie.  Dad even managed to get a street named "Macy" in our hometown.  (The best I could manage was a personalized license plate, but now I've gotten past that phase of life!)

So "The Brass Teapot" is a Tim Macy signature film - and a damned good one!

"The Brass Teapot" will be in theaters on April 5th in New York City and Los Angeles.  It is currently "on demand" on iTunes, Amazon, XBox, AT&T, Brighthouse, Cablevision, Charter, Comcast, Cox, Insight, RCN, Time Warner, Verizon, VUDU, Suddenlink, and Dish Network.  It is not being carried by my cable provider, Direct TV.

Direct TV, you suck!

Did I mention that the screenwriter is my son?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Go, Tim Macy!!!