FORMS / Documentary, Experimental, Narrative Fiction, Short

GENRES / Avant-garde, Surreal, Mockumentary, Satire

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SYNOPSIS
'Keeping Up With Jones', is about a homeless man who is approached by a filmmaker. As the filming begins the filmmaker and Jones argue over how to make a movie. Jones is troubled by the fact that they are filming things that he does not do in real life. He plays along up to a point, even attempting to suggest a better dramatic ending, explaining 'I go out to the movies alot, especially when it's cold and wet out'. To no avail, the filmmaker won't listen. Enter the young beautiful journalist who needs a project to finish her degree at Columbia University. Jones is easy to engage, especially since he hangs out begging from rich students at the main gate.

She upgrades her project into a book concept and seeks out the advise of her professor. The filmmaker is beside himself as he fears that she is stealing his ideas, stealing Jones. They argue over who has rights to Jones. Jones uses this unique position to extract more and more money from the two which he uses to support his 'jones' habit. The filmmaker and journalist decide to call a truce and perhaps work together as they are both experiencing difficulties dealing with Jones. They head out to dinner together while Jones hosts a beggars banquet for his cronies in the park at night. The filmmaker and journalist spend the night together but things go all wrong.

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DIRECTOR STATEMENT
"Keeping Up With Jones", came into being in a strange sort of way. I was walking around Harlem with a torn out section of the Times in my back pocket looking for the employment office, this was in 2000. I couldn't help notice Lloyd Griffin. He looked like a lost tourist. He was holding the same torn out section from the newspaper. Like many New Yorkers, I offered my assistance. Lloyd explained that he was a screen writer from Livermore, California recently arrived in the big apple. I told him I was a native and a Filmmaker. We headed off together looking for work. Before we parted ways, I asked if he wouldn't like to read the beginning of a script I had.

The next morning he called me to say that he couldn't get the characters out of his head and wanted to know if we could work together. I was delighted that he liked the story and wanted to get involved in the script. That was the beginning of our friendship. Lloyd came over to eat dinner with Renee and me several nights a week, eating chicken, drinking red wine (not Renee, she was pregnant with the twins). Lloyd used to joke that we only severed him chicken because he was black. We couldn't afford anything else. We read the script and talked all night. During this time, Lloyd drove a truck, I worked in construction, but we couldn't have been happier because we had our story.We rewrote the script at least twenty times before we felt we could show it to anyone, then we sent it to an agent in L.A.

After months of waiting the agent called to say it was too "New Yorkish". We were too stunned to say anything but we couldn't figure out what they had meant. It bothered us. We called back the next day for clarification and they said, "Well, it's too much like Woody Allen". We didn't think it was at all like Woody Allen but we didn't mind the comparison. It was around this time that a friend of mine asked if I wouldn't help her out. She writes for the Wall Street Journal and was doing a piece on the new Pro-sumer cameras. Cannon and Sony had loaned her models to try out. I ended up shooting "Keeping Up With Jones" using the Sony model as it is excellent in low light situations which was what we needed.

We shot the whole movie with practically no money, everyone was so nice to work with. Renee cooked dinner and the cast sat around the dinning room and ate up her delicious food. I have thirty years experience in the film business making training films, some with actors, a few important documentaries, and one or two features. I was the effects sound recordist getting Gorillas noises in the Varunga Mountains in Rwanda for "Gorillas In The Mist". The shooting went very smoothly.

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PRODUCTION NOTES
After we had shot our little movie, "Keeping Up With Jones", I had no idea how I was going to edit it. The filming had gone so well but suddenly the post seemed beyond my reach. Editors wanted two thousand dollars a week and Renee and I had three small children to feed. Then Mac computers came out with the G5. I didn't have the five thousand dollars plus needed. My mother was planning on moving in with us. I packed up all her belongings and negotiated a five percent commission with the broker as opposed to the standard six percent.My mother gave me the one percent difference and I bought the computer.

I had worked as an editor for one year in 1980 so I knew something about the process. I taught myself FCP and put the film together. I had shot using a DAT recorder so that all my sound was separate from the picture like in a real movie. I wanted good sound. I spent three months just syncing up the sound to the picture but I learned the program. I had a rough cut. Then I met Davorin Tomsic, the brilliant twenty something rock and roller genius editor. He agreed to edit the movie, half in NY and half in Zagreb. He's a genius editor. He's also a great guitarist and a drummer. That's his drumming on the sound track.