What’s your safe word?

When I was approached by Paul Mullin to create a promo piece for his Bloomsday event celebrating James Joyce’s 933 page epic ULYSSES my immediate response was “Isn’t that some stale old book from the turn of the last century? I mean, I like DOWNTON ABBEY as much as the next guy, but this isn’t exactly my wheelhouse.”

Paul is such a disciple of this novel that his family actually has a safe-word for when he gets on a rant and they want him to stop talking about it. Turns out that’s not the only safe-word we needed because this “stale old book” gets into some pretty saucy stuff, and the challenge for me was “How am I supposed to film THAT, without showing THAT?”

Paul set up a meeting between myself and actress Kate Kraay whom he wanted to star in the piece as “Gerty”. Paul was very hands off, and wanted Kate and I to collaborate on what the piece should be.

He supplied us both with the text that he wanted featured in the piece, along with a podcast wherein each episode is a reading of a chapter from the book.

Great, I don’t even have to read the chapter, I can just listen to it and get some ideas from there (I’m a terrible reader; reading makes me sleepy). So, I listened.

Either this book is too dense, or I am (there’s a pretty good chance that it’s a little bit of both), but I couldn’t make heads or tails of what’s going on. I’m the same way with Shakespeare, but once it’s explained to me I can see it; “Oooooh… they’re star crossed lovers. I get it. Well, that IS tragic, isn’t it?”

Thankfully, before our initial meeting was over, Paul spelled out what happens in the “Nausicaa” chapter.

Essentially… Gerty is seated at the ocean shore, when she notices that she has a secret admirer gazing at her from afar. Poor Gerty isn’t used to the attention, because as it turns out she has a lame leg which makes her “damaged goods”, so she relishes the recognition. What she’s unaware of is that her “suitor” has had his hands in his pants and secretly pleasuring himself this entire time.

Wait! What?!

What’s the safe word!? What’s the safe word?!

So, off I went to roll that around in my head.

A few weeks later, Kate and I met up for coffee and the first thing we decided was that the piece should be set in the era of when the book is set, just after World War I. Kate was also pretty sure that she could get us beach access through a friend who lived up north.

I pitched my concept to Kate, which was inspired by Covid.

During the pandemic, the masks definitely made everyone more alluring, in the sense that because I COULDN’T see someone’s face; I WANTED to see their face. I believe people are naturally intrigued when something is obscured from us.

If someone tells me, “Don’t ask what happened to me today.”

Of course, the next sentence out of my mouth will be… “What happened to you today?”

Well, our eyes work the same way. Obstruct something from us, and we naturally want to see more. There’s a legendary story about when Roman Polanski filmed Ruth Gordon for a scene in ROSEMARY’S BABY, the door frame covered her face. The studio execs wanted Polanski to reshoot it. He said “Wait till you watch this with an audience.”

When this scene played before an audience, everyone in the theater craned their heads in unison as they tried to peak around the corner of the door frame (SPOILER ALERT: They couldn’t, because it’s a 2 dimensional image).

I wanted to apply the same strategy to this piece, create allure by only allowing the audience glimpses of Kate; extreme close ups of eyes, ears, lips, hands, legs, obstructions like hair and fabric obscuring her face, and any time we’re about to catch a glimpse of Kate, we simply cut away from her. The idea being that if you layed all the shots out in a collage, you would get a sense of what she looked like, but during the piece, you’d only have an impression of her, hopefully creating some intrigue.

Kate was onboard with the idea, so we planned a location scout with Paul. It was a fun road trip on a sunny day up the coast, and Jennifer, our host was happy to not only let us shoot on her beach, but also in her home. Inside she had just enough vintage furniture that we could pull it off as long as we were careful to not show the modern carpeted floors.

Kate started sewing her own blouse, and we reached out to Seattle legend Ron Leamon for some additional wardrobe help - a skirt, and a fancy hat. Ron has never let me down, and once again came through with exactly what we needed.

I wanted to visualize Gerty’s impairment, so came up with the idea of a leg brace for the reveal at the end. This was one of those cases, that I knew what I wanted, but where does one go to rent an old fashioned leg brace… the leg brace rental store on the corner?

A friend recommended Mudlark Oddities here in Seattle, and I found several options. A really fun store to visit, if you need anything from arcane medical supplies to decorative dental x-rays.

While I knew this shoot was going to be pretty simple in that it was mostly inserts, and wide exteriors, I enlisted my photographer friend, Lucien Knuteson, along to assist with the lighting and to add a morose dry sense of humor for the drive up the coast. I’m so thankful he was there because as simple as this shoot was, it’s always nice to have a second pair of hands on set and I couldn’t have done this without him.

On the shoot day we lost about a 90 minutes of filming on the day due to troubleshooting some tech issues with the camera, meanwhile Lucien filled the time by getting me some great drone shots.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get the big giveaway of Kate wearing her leg brace down on the beach. Luckily I live pretty close to a similar stretch of water, so Kate came over and donned the wardrobe once again. Then she stumbled about 10 minutes through rocky shoreline in her outfit so we could reach the water’s edge. I mounted the camera on a monopod and held it upside down so I could get low to the shore, and emphasize the leg brace. Since I had no way of monitoring what I was shooting, we grabbed a half dozen takes; that way I had some options in post.

For safety I grabbed a few more clips of Kate while we were out there. Originally I was aiming for a :30 to :60 second spot, but after recording Kate’s voice-over, this piece was now clocking in at nearly 2:30 so I needed all the footage I could get. I was determined to only repeat a handful of images throughout that span, so the more footage the better.

The voice over was recorded at Cedar House Audio by Paul’s friend Lyssa Browne. Since Paul’s the ULYSSES expert, I wanted to let him guide Kate’s performance. Sitting in on the recording session was a fun experience, as each take became more and more ridiculously erotic. We managed to get out of there before any safe words were deployed.

When the recording was over, Paul and I headed back to my place where I plied him with Guinness as I filmed a couple of quick inserts of his eyes and mouth to function as the lurid James Joyce character - hopefully fulfilling some Irish personal fantasy for him.

Post-production on this piece took about a week. As an editor, I like to string out all my options and sift through them, keeping an eye out for patterns. I often find imagery that compliments one another that are unintentional, such as beginning the piece by sliding open a drawer, and then finishing it by closing a cabinet door. I liked the metaphor as this was a sexual awakening for Gerty, but at the end of the day it was a one time occurrence and the door is now closed again.

We filmed Kate getting dressed pretty much in sequence, so we had that as a guide to inform the underlying structure of the piece, knowing that I would save the reveal of the leg brace for the final act.

So much of this was just getting a sense and feel for the piece as I was building it, trying keep a balance of wide and close shots, indoor and outdoor. The running joke became “This is a Chanel commercial by David Lynch”, very impressionist, but also attempting to have a semblance of structure, bringing in the suitor at end of “Act 1”, a mingling of their spirits at the mid-point, and revealing the leg brace at the start of “Act 3”.

I layed down a sound bed of light sound effects, and bit of distorted music - a song that is referenced elsewhere in the novel. I did a rudimentary mix, which was then sent over to Meredith Wylegala who worked her magic by fleshing it out some more, and taking the hard edges off of it making it a seamless sound bed that meshed nicely with the images.

I did the color grade myself on this one as we had a limited budget, settling on something warm and vintage looking that felt like visual Guinness Ale.

I’m very happy with the finished piece, especially considering that the impetus for this was mostly Paul literally telling me what happens in this chapter, because I’m too dense to understand a dense book. More importantly, Paul was extremely happy with the spot and we’re currently collaborating on another adventure.

And just in case you ever run into Paul and he’s on a ULYSSES rant, his safe word is… Did you really think I was going to tell you? Now, aren’t you a little intrigued?

10 Modern Horror Movies to Watch on Halloween

2001: A FLAT ODYSSEY