Keaton

As the official "That guy who was here for a while that one time" member of the Turning Point crew, I felt it would not be out of place for me to offer a few insights from my point of view on watching this production unfold. My part has been atypical of how I initially envisioned my involvement in the film's manifestation simply because of how ultimately detached I was from it for the greater part of pre-production and shooting. However, I felt it was an even greater adventure for me once I finally arrived.

It may have been as far back as 2006 when I first heard about Turning Point. In fact, it may have been the first conversation I had with Ryan that was more than five words long. Ryan and I worked together at the oldest, most historically-burned-down-by-drunken-cowboys saloon in Arizona (a.k.a. The Palace). It was there that I first seriously began my involvement in film-making by talking with and getting to know Ryan. The first things he told me about himself was a mish-mash of different pieces of his personal history. I gathered that he had spent time in Hawaii, that he had done practically nothing but write a screenplay while he was there, that he was saving up money to go to Thailand, and that nothing is worse than being "donked by a mother-fucking donkey" in poker, whatever that meant.

Time passed. Ryan left The Palace and went to Thailand, but I heard from him shortly after he returned. At this point I had enrolled in film school along with another partner-in-crime, Mr. Winniford, and within 8 months time found myself a stones-throw away from a gen-u-ine Zeedonk, playing croquet at midnight on a tiki-torch lit lawn and learning more about the screenplay Ryan had written during his time in Hawaii.

It was carried out into the living room in a shoebox. The title page was so covered in blue ink notes and hand-drawn charts displaying the rise of tension by page-count that finding the actual title of the script was like searching for Waldo. Alright. Turn that page and here we are; page one.

You know how archaeologists digging for dinosaur bones examine the age of the fossil depending on what layer of earth they're buried in? That was how it was like looking at my first draft of Turning Point. Layers of blue, black and red ink. Then pencil. Then the actual word printed on the page, if it hadn't been crossed out and illegible, could be read. Alternate dialogue was written in a box off to the side, words and phrases were taken away and replaced with a better word.

If Ryan had continued to keep that first draft up-to-date with all the revisions I would read after that night, the pages be as brittle and yellowed as papyrus toilet paper by now. It seemed to me that most of the work had already been done, from the written word's perspective. But it didn't take long. Not five minutes after that shoebox was opened and the first pages were turned, the questions began.

"What would be a better way to say this?"

"Does this make sense?"

"Is it funny?"

"Is it good?"

I hadn't written a thing at that point. Arguably, I still haven't. However tattered and scribbled those pages were, there was something invaluably encouraging about the process of reviewing Ryan's work as a writer. It demonstrated to me that, until the words are actually filmed, the words could always be rewritten, which meant that it could always always always improve.

Fast forward three years.

Ryan lives in L.A. Finally the film is starting to come together. He's shown me audition tapes, sent me draft after draft of rewrites, test footage has been shot, locations being secured, and most important, plans to get the movie shot are being made. The transition from the page to the screen is being made. It's exciting, it's fun, it's scary. Ryan has made many films at this point, but never one on a feature-length scale.

As my luck would have it, it seems that it would be helpful to have me come to L.A. and lend a hand.

I'm not sure if this was more a favor for me or a necessity that I be there for the first week of shooting in San Diego, but it was one of the best times I had ever had doing anything. I'm not going to lie, airplane rides are still as fun as they were when I was a little kid, going someplace new is always great, and seeing old friends after a long absence even more so. The break from work doesn't hurt either. But the best part of it, by far, was doing something I love doing, and the validity of contributing to a project that I had watched grow bigger than the shoebox it was in when I first saw it.

I met a lot of new people, cast and crew, during my involvement on the set for Turning Point. I watched actors taking the words I had originally read three or four years prior and say them out loud, figuring them out and making discoveries with them that I hadn't realized. There were a lot of laughs, and a fair share of 3:00 AM shot 27 misery (as I knew first hand, as I tried in vain to keep up writing the shot number on the Sean-Marin-style slate-board). Although I blame Mr. Winniford for a lot of over-worked, under-slept laughing fits, my intention was to be present and participate as much as possible that week. Firstly because after I was done and got to go home, everyone else had to stick around for another indeterminate amount of weeks to keep shooting. But also, because these opportunities come so seldom after all, and you never know when it's going to come again.

By the time I was finished on-set, it was only an hour or two away from dawn, every single piece of equipment still needing to be wrangled, packed up and loaded, every inch of Mr. Bailey's parents house cleaned, and Mr. Winniford kept awake at the wheel for the 73 hour drive home. Everyone else still had a months worth of production left to weather, and I was too bombed out and depleted to savor the moment. I slept-walked through the cleanup and eventually we were on the road, driving back to L.A., watching the sunrise on the road.

I stayed awake as long as I could, and just before my eyes were literally shutting themselves,

Chase, "Hey are you awake back there?!"

"Yeah."

"Well, say somethin."

Forty minutes later we were a car stuffed full of deliriously high giggling baboons.

And then there was a record breaking heat wave to sleep through that day in Los Angeles.

And then I woke up to Spanish girls laughing at me on webcam.

And then there was egg rolls in China town.

And then there was a few hours sleep.

And then there was a car ride to the airport.

And then a fat, bearded lady had me take off my belt and my shoes and felt me up.

And then I was walking myself two miles home from the shuttle drop off at Super 8 in Sedona, Arizona.

And that was it.

It wasn't long before Ryan was sending me further updates on rewritten scenes that hadn't been shot yet. Head shots of actors auditioning for older versions of the principles followed. I got a few peeks at some of the new footage being shot at waterfalls and swing sets. I was allowed to take a look at a rough cut over Skype. It was great being kept in the loop, but not without a sense of melancholy that I wasn't there to see the rest of it happen.

Until finally I get an e-mail from Ryan about the Turning Point blog. Things are starting to wrap up. Loose ends are being tied, final touches are being made, the final day of shooting is fast approaching. Turning Point is now slowly going (nearly) full-circle from a pipe dream, to a project, to a happening, to a reality, to a memory. Amazing, really. Once the film is finished, it will officially be something that "happened", no longer something that will one day happen, or something that is in the process of happening. Past-tense. The film's own turning point. The turning point for the people who helped make it happen.

It's been a pleasure to be a part of it. More. I had always hoped that the film would get made, one way or another, but I never remember daring to hope that the film would ever be finished. It always felt like there were too many other things that needed to happen first. I didn't have my hand in the pie nearly as much as anyone else who took part. A lot of sleep has been lost, a lot of hours volunteered, a lot of frustration and exhaustion. I know this has been a journey for everyone in many different ways, but knowing something about the length of time Ryan has spent with these characters, with the drafts, with each word of the script, it's good to know that the whole Turning Point adventure was an eventuality from the beginning.

-K.S.Z.