Les Moore, Private Eye

One of my Video production movies was based off of a short story by my friend Sean. Back in high school, Sean wrote a screen play based on an epic movie making idea of mine that everyone was going to be in. It was a lot of fun to film the scenes we did film, but it was never going to get finished. Too many people, too much work. The guy playing the main character broke his arm, so half the time he was in a cast and then the cast was gone… what a disaster…

 Sean played the bartender at the Bucket O’ Blood, filmed in my parent’s basement. Alan played Butch and Reginald. Good and evil twins. Jay was to play a Mad Scientist with his assistant Igor, played by Mark. Dan played Winston, A mayoral candidate who survives an assassination attempt and becomes a vigilante. My prom date played Natasha, the Russian Spy. Just to name a few… and to show just out of hand this movie was.

 That was for fun, this time it was for a grade. I inquired with Sean about another treatment, and he gave me a short story he had already written. The story was not nearly as ambitious, and worked fine for me. Except for the ending. His ending had the perpetrator being a ghost. Not only was that dumb, it was impossible for me to film, so I made the butler do it. Mostly because Alan played the butler and he was hilarious at it. Sean disavowed all writing acknowledgement of the Hollywoodizing of his story.

Alan was back for a week or so on leave from the Marines and we picked Stacey up from the Bronx where she was going to school. Don, the only person with acting experience played the main character, Les Moore. We filmed it at my grandmother’s place. She was manager at a Women’s club and the house looked like a mansion. Filming the movie was so much fun and I couldn’t have asked for a better cast.

  The amusing thing about the whole thing, was after showing the movie a small budget producer was interested in the talents of both Alan and Stacey, but not so much Don. Don, who acted as if it were a stage performance and not film, was a bit hurt by this, but he still does plays to this day somewhere in New Jersey, so I’m sure he got over it.

  Later on, I also filmed a cheesy Sci-Fi movie that also had an eclectic cast of characters, but it’ll never match what we achieved on Les Moore.