Save the cat.

I have a crush on my friend's cat, Bailey. We are in love. (Drew, don't be mad.) Every day, he lies on my desk and stretches and purrs like Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys.

Held auditions today for the character Jake, goth-garbed fifteen-year-old son of the Derby City Racquet Club manager. Have I mentioned how much I hate auditions? I like the conversations with the actors though, except when I learn, for example. that an adolescent has traveled three hours down the California coast with his parents to talk to me for twenty minutes. Have I mentioned how much I detest auditions?

Broke down today and traded in my old 3G iPhone for a new one. People heard me speak tonight without static for the first time in weeks. (Months?)

Inspired by Bailey and, to a lesser extent, his brother George (above), I am going to put the screenplay through the Blake Snyder Save the Cat test. It's a rock-solid, step by step structure that I find useful. I have a feeling it's going to fall apart around page 60, then pick up again around 85. Just a hunch. More on this later.

Dew or don't.

Tan Lines takes place in the world of tennis pros in a small southern town. One of the hilarious--and true--recurring gags in the story is the consumption of Mt. Dew, the tennis ball-colored soda pop that (allegedly) contains the most caffeine. According to the screenwriter, James Markert, tennis pros all over chug the Dew with abandon. It makes sense to me, but even if it didn't, it's very funny.

But it might not happen.

Product placement is a delicate piece of this filmmaking puzzle. As much as people bemoan the obvious positioning of labels and brands, both visually and through dialogue, I think it's worse when a film that supposedly takes place in the U.S. in 2011 completely avoids product names. It makes the world of the story feel less authentic when someone orders, say, "A beer." (Full disclosure: I did that in one of my films. It still rings false.) People drink Amstel Light. Corona. Bud. They like Pepsi. Gatorade. Woodford Reserve. We are a nation of brands and tastes.

So, here's hoping PepsiCo, the makers of Mt. Dew, agree to let us use their yellowgreen liquid product in the film.

What makes you think I won't cut you?

Spent the last several days making cuts to the script. Trimming for space. For clarity. For budget. It's amazing how quickly you can get to the root of a scene, its reason for being, when you're told by your producing team: we can't afford to shoot that.

My trusted pal slash assistant, Daniel Crooke, walked with me through the story on Saturday afternoon, step by step. We scoured the words, the motivations of the characters, the actions, anything we could find that felt extraneous to the narrative. Daniel made some great suggestions (thanks again for the Giggles moment, Daniel).

I've been deliberately avoiding some of the more obvious sports comedies (Dodgeball, Caddyshack, Bad News Bears, etc), but now I think it's time to revisit them. Although I'm trying to think of TAN LINES (yes, it's official for now) as a more stylized comedy - more RUSHMORE, less SANDLER -- I think there is value in becoming acquainted with all of them.

Speaking of which, I just saw WIN WIN, a wonderful new comedy by Tom McCarthy, director and writer of one of my favorite films, THE VISITOR, as well as THE STATION AGENT. The cinematographer, Oliver Bokelberg, shot my film, LOGGERHEADS. His work is stunning. I loved WIN WIN so much. I found it moving and funny and real. Where did they find that blonde kid? Wow.

Opening Scenes

A conversation with the brilliant cinematographer Gabe Mayhan, who has signed on to do TAN LINES (or GAME SET MATCH, depending on what we choose), led me to a major revision in the script: I reversed the opening two scenes.

In the original version, we meet the hero at home, before his first day on the job at the down-and-dirty Derby Club, a public tennis facility. Second scene was going to pick up his last check at his former employer, the fancy Fountain Club. By reversing these two scenes, we accomplish two things. One, we meet Owen and his chief antagonist, Charles, head pro at the Fountain Club. Two, we have an opportunity for a time jump, which allows for Owen to have secured a new job at the Derby Club, where most of the action in the movie takes place. Seems so obvious now.

Cutting characters, scenes, dialogue = cutting budget.

I called a friend who works primarily as an A.D. on big budget Hollywood films.

"My line producer just told me something I'll bet Adam Sandler never hears," I said.

"Spill it," she said.

"We need to cut some speaking roles or combine some existing ones," I said, parroting the Line Producer. "And we need to get our page count down."

"You're right," she said. "Adam Sandler never hears that."

Not that we're making an Adam Sandler picture. No disrespect to him or those filmmakers, but even if we wanted to make a film like that, we simply don't have that kind of budget.

One of the joys of any creative project is boundaries. Limitations. Parameters. It is also one of the frustrations. As P. Lyn said in typography class, "Limitations free you." She was right then and it applies now. We're going to make a funny, smart comedy, full of heart. It's going to look beautiful and it's going to be well-acted. It's already well-written. The immediate goal at hand is making it affordable. We don't have the luxury of playing too much. Every frame, every shot, every scene, every sequence needs to be completely considered now, before we get to the locations. Before we shoot one frame. And that's what we're doing. I don't want to sacrifice anything that we need, but at the same time I don't want to be inflexible.

This evening, after combing through the script, I found seven roles that could be severed, at least as speaking parts. It wasn't even difficult. Every movie should be so lean.

Casting the tennis movie.

It's on. Or, as one character in James Markert's hilarious screenplay says repeatedly, "It's own."

Yes, casting has begun for the tennis comedy I'll be directing in June in Louisville, Kentucky. As of today, it's called GAME SET MATCH, according to imdb, though James called it TAN LINES AND TENNIS BALLZ. I like the simple, shorter TAN LINES (sans AND TENNIS BALLS), which is what everyone would call it anyway. "Hey, wanna see TAN LINES tonight?" It's also what would be on the movie marquee at a theater. And, once you've seen the movie, TAN LINES is an even better title. Of course, the trick is to get butts in seats, which begs the question: Does TAN LINES get people to buy tickets? GAME SET MATCH seems so overtly tennis-focused that it's not as interesting to me. TAN LINES!

TAN LINES/GAME SET MATCH reunites me with my long-time producer, Gill Holland, who found the script and shared it with me. It's the story of Owen Match, a washed-up tennis pro who gets fired from his cushy job at the local country club for holding "private lessons" with some of the wives of members—not to mention a few of their daughters, and for general bad behavior. When he takes a new job at the grittier, public Derby City Racquet Club, he meets a ragtag band of oddball pros, led by a smart, attractive single Mom with a fifteen-year-old goth son who needs help getting his serve over the net. In order to get back his self-respect and earn the respect of his co-workers and community, Owen has to learn to put his own needs aside and build a team to take on his former boss in an annual tennis match.

That's pretty much the pitch. Now comes perhaps the most important decision that is made in pre-production: casting. Kentucky native Mary Clay Boland and Gill worked together on a previous film, Spin the Bottle, so he suggested we hire her to help us find the right actors. We held our first auditions in Louisville last month, an open call for locals, then a New York session last week. I saw some wonderful actors for a few roles. The toughest is going to be the 15-year-old goth kid. I had forgotten how adolescent boys can look like they're both ten and twenty.

I have an Owen in mind - and an offer has been made to a certain actor. Fingers crossed his schedule works out. He wants to do it. I want him to do it. He's perfect for the part. If it doesn't work out... well, I've been down that road before, too.

What I know for sure: I hate auditions. I hate the process. I hate seeing actors go through it. I hate being there while they do. It is brutal. I especially hate rejecting them for the roles. That is not fun. The upside of auditions is hearing the dialogue over and over, which helps me see where it can be improved or made more clear.