LOCATION LOCATION | No Man, or Woman, is an island.

Inspiration comes from strange places for me. I love movies, and I really don’t discriminate against genre. In the same weekend I watched The Sheep Detectives, rewatched Moneyball, and was on the verge of tears in each.

When making a micro-budget film you’ll be faced with many hard decisions based around, you guessed it, money. And for all the pressure producers get to make a budget work… There’s almost always a creative solution to a financial issue. I felt like I was bouncing back and forth constantly between dreaming something up and the reality to capture it.

So be ready to kill [or re-imagine] your darlings.

My producers and I worked closely in script sessions while budgeting. As one of them liked to say: “roll up yer sleeves here comes the TAKEDOWN!”

Said in jest? Yes. But were we brutally honest in our notes sessions? Also yes. Anything was on the table and every page of the script was stress-tested because every page costs money. Basically I like to read the script out loud and often.

So here’s the story of one such cut scene: HWC allowed us to travel to every borough – including Staten Island. I really wanted to get us to Roosevelt Island because it’s right in the middle of the city, under explored on film (in my opinion), and has a wild history.

You might ask why I became interested in Roosevelt Island to begin with? Well there’s this gap I went to look at:

No, sadly that’s not me – I wish. (It’s actually Walker Ryan a pro skater and a novelist.) However exploring the island I came across the statue The Girl and the Puzzle by Amanda Matthews. If you read the scene attached at the bottom – which I absolutely don’t blame you if you don’t, why would you read something within reading? That sounds exhausting – you’ll see that our character travels to sell something to a Security Guard on Roosevelt Island. The Guard is training to be a Parks Department Tour Guide – and tests out his tour on our main character, Cole.

There aren’t actually Park Rangers on the island, but I overheard a tour and it felt fun because Park Rangers wear cute outfits. :)

Additionally, I always love characters who surprise you with their knowledge. Does anyone else remember Joe Zaloom (incredible name) playing Jerry Parks the packed-with-trivia-knowledge truck driver in Die Hard 3?!

“No I’m a beautician. Of course I’m a truck driver!”
[Yes, not all my film references are in the Criterion Closet…]

Sorry back to the island:

The story our Guard tells is from the 1800s when Roosevelt Island was where New York City Quarantined its “insane.” At the time it was called Blackwell Island.

Meanwhile in Pittsburgh, a young woman named Elizabeth Jane Cochran was outraged upon reading an article in the Pittsburgh Dispatch entitled What Girls Are Good For. Which, as you can imagine, listed generally reductive thoughts and activities for the capabilities of woman. Elizabeth was unimpressed.

She wrote an anonymous letter passionately disagreeing with the editor. He was so impressed by her dismissal of his publishing choices that he asked her to reveal herself. They met and he gave her the opportunity to write her own article, which she titled The Girl and the Puzzle. She argued society needed better jobs for woman and more opportunities. All of this she wrote under her pen-name Nellie Bly.

She continued her pursuits as a crusader for women advocating for better work environments and wages before heading to New York where she feigned insanity to infiltrate the women’s lunatic asylum on Blackwell Island – motivated by rumors of flagrant mistreatment and abuse. Inside she found horrific conditions.

After the New York Paper The World secured her release her article was a sensation. Eventually leading to a best-seller Ten Days in a Mad House. Which, rightfully so, gave Nellie lifelong fame, not to mention she pioneered investigative journalism.

Oh and did I mention she was commissioned by Pulitzer himself?

Did I like the scene and the idea behind it? Sure did.

But when I really looked at it – it wasn’t essential for our main character’s arc and added a day of shooting that we didn’t have. I had scouted it, wrote a draft, and loved the location. But sometimes (lots of times) you must kill your darlings.

[If you don’t get the ref, go watch Die Hard 3.
It’s fun, it’s summer, it’s NYC.]

-MJT