If you haven’t seen Tyler’s new two-part summary of the show thus far go to myspace.com and search for “Dave Groves”. You can link to myspace from there. Over there. Right over there to your right. Down…a little further down. There it is. Click on that!

I now have a link to Ryan Cassidy’s fan site through Annie. He’s a great guy that I’ve been fortunate to work with at Invasion and his site is very informative about the goings on behind the scenes.

I’m glad to hear that some folks are going to be able to catch the Behind the Mask screening in New York. I’d like to meet anyone who’s a fan of Invasion at the festival. I think its going to be pretty crazy before the screening and I know the afterparty is going to be insane, but if anyone’s interested, I’m footing it from the cinema on 23rd over to the afterparty on 29th barring bad weather. If you want to walk it with me I’d be glad to have the company.

Nathan

…some cast, crew, and friends of Invasion went to a Hollywood restaurant to celebrate Kari Matchett’s birthday. The quote of the evening was from Alexis Dziena:

“I’m in love with a 26 year old amputee, but I used to be in love with my 17 year old step-brother. I’m a Freudian fantasy!”

Shooting for the second-to-last episode went amazingly well. We worked a lot slower than normal but given the scope of the story we did great. I got to work with Tyler for the first time really. I had a ball, and by the end of our four days of work we were buddies. Going out for drinks on Friday night I got to hear some of his experience this last season working on the show. He’s been working for a while acting, but I think this is the best reception he’s received as an actor for any project he’s ever worked on. Plus he has a film coming out soon that he’s really proud of and so he’s thrilled with how things are going. We both shook our heads in disbelief that we were participating in a show as cool as Invasion. And anticipating where the show is going? We can’t wait to see how it all turns out.

Speaking of which, I wish I could tell you what’s been going on in the story and what rumors have been floating around about the season finale! Its brutal, its exciting, its beautiful! It all starts up again April 19th…

For any East Coasters out there (Annie), you can catch a New York screening of Behind the Mask on April 8th! I’m flying out that weekend to attend the GenArt festival which is a celebration of new talents in the arts. The screening takes place at Clearview Chelsea theater on 23rd. Its a 5oo+ seat house. Very nice. And the afterparty should be a lot of fun. For anyone interested in going you can get passes to the screening and afterparty for $25 by going to the “genart.org” website. You can also find the site linked to the Behind the Mask website.

The film is hilarious, creepy, illuminating, and frightening. It takes place in a world where Myers, Freddy, Jason and the like are the serial killers of our age. Leslie Vernon is my character who is preparing to launch himself and his homegrown legend into the pantheon of the greats. A documentary crew follows Leslie around as he demonstrates and discusses all of the tricks of the slasher trade. And finally, as he is about to begin his killing spree, the documentary crew revolts and tries to stop Leslie before its too late. Bad idea.

There wont be an empty seat in that huge theater. This screening will be very exciting. Hope you can make it!

Nathan

Phew!
Hello everyone. I know its been a long time since the last post. There are great reasons as to why.

I finished the Invasion script I was laboring on (thank you Final Draft!) and handed it over to a producer. I was thrilled with the ideas I was working on when I started, and the execution of those ideas was going really well. I felt that the only way to write a script for a show that is already outside the box is to BE outside the box. I thought I could throw in some story lines that would turn the Invasion world on its head. I was so misguided. After reading the last three Invasion scripts there was at least one major idea I’d been working on in my script which was incorporated (in one form or another) in their story lines. Who am I to think I could out “oustide the box” Shaun Cassidy? When I handed my script over I told the producer, “Its all but obsolete, but its a damn good writing sample”.

My usual shooting schedule for Invasion is a few days here and there. Out of the blue I was given two monster episodes back to back with quite a lot of shooting days. Combined with that commitment I was planning to head out to Austin for the SXSW festival which fell smack dab in the middle of the shoot for the second episode. Fortunately the Invasion producers were gracious enough to compress all of my work for the second into just one loooooooooooooong day of shooting so that I could leave for Austin two days later. By the way, if you are a fan of the show and where its come, you’re going to be blown away by where its headed!

Behind The Mask proved to be a great success at SXSW and what looked like a longshot going into the festival is shaping up to be “coming to a theater near you”. An increadible review of the film can be seen on “aintitcool.com”. I’ll try to set it up as a link on the sidebar to make it easier to access.

I was hoping that there would be a handful of people in the audience who would have had a few drinks too many at the premier party just before the screening and that their enthusiasm would slowly spread like an infection throughout the theater. I figured if just twenty or thirty people “got” the film we’d be able to demonstrate its marketability.
What happened in reality was everyone seemed to get it. People responded to the most subtle horror references as well as the classic, genre-defining conventions which the film so cleverly examines. In the end we received a standing ovation as well as an impressive reception from film distribution representatives from just about all of the big indie labels.

What happens next is more promotion, negotiations, maybe a deal getting hammered out, possibly more time getting logged in at the editing or sound studios, or maybe the project getting scrapped altogether. But at least there’s a good chance that one of the thousands of great films made every year will find its audience and we’ll get a chance to ride that train all the way down the line while checking out the view from coach.

I hope you’re all well. I’ll be in touch…