August 5, 2002

So, here we are, three years later.  Sorry I left the diary hanging for so long.  There wasn't much left to say about Honeymoon, but I guess I'll say that little bit now and put this diary to bed.

After Huntington, the festival circuit had pretty much run its course.  Mitchell Banks managed only one sale of the film, to Cyprus TV, for $300.  It cost me much more than that to make a master tape for Cyprus TV.  I began to feel that the foreign-sales route wasn't made for a film like mine, with no star cast or genre hook to recommend it.  So I let my contract with Mitchell lapse at the end of 1999.  Some time later, he sent me a check for $93, which was the Cyprus sale minus his percentage and expenses.  That's what Honeymoon has made so far.  It happens that I have a friend who does the TV listings for a Cyprus publication, and he assures me that the film has never shown on TV there.

I had a plan to design a video sleeve for Honeymoon and sell the tape on Amazon or somewhere, but I never followed up on it.  Maybe I should, because friends and acquaintances still ask to see the movie, and it has made a few fans in recent years.  Feel free to write me (sallitt at post dot harvard dot edu) to encourage me.

I have a lot of trouble with the first fifteen or twenty minutes of the film these days, but I still like the honeymoon section.

Meanwhile, I'm on to another film project.  After I was laid off in 2001, I came up with a new script, titled All the Ships at Sea.  Sadly, it didn't run more than 55 pages, which means it will be less than an hour long.  But I couldn't figure out a good way to elongate it to feature length. After a frighteningly difficult preproduction period, I actually shot the thing on digital video in May and June 2002.  Preparing low-budget films is awful, but shooting them is crazy fun when you have a modicum of support.  Not too many of the old Honeymoon crew were around for this one, but my old camera assistant Duraid Munajim was the director of photography, and Edith Meeks and Dylan McCormick played in roles that I wrote for them.  Believe it or not, I actually used my parents' cottage again as a main location, though it was rendered only semi-recognizable by Kat Mathews' cool art direction.  My parents have done way too much for my film career, and we have made a covenant before God and man that I will never shoot at their vacation home again.

When I get some money, I'll probably edit the film on my home computer, and then have another go at the film festivals.  If it doesn't work, maybe I'll do it all again someday, and maybe I won't.

The Honeymoon print is sitting in a storage facility in Fort Lee, NJ.  If anything else happens to it, I'll be sure to let you know.

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