Diary of a Low-Budget Filmmaker
My name is Dan Sallitt. In the late nineties, I
shot a feature film. The movie, which is called Honeymoon,
is about a couple of long-time friends who marry suddenly without
having had a physical relationship, and who proceed to have a nightmare
honeymoon, with sexual incompatibilities and bitter conflict. No, the
film is
not a comedy. Shooting took place from June 28 to July 19, 1996. We
shot in New York City, where I live, and in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
The money to make the film was my own, saved during the years I
worked in the computer industry. The budget was somewhere in the
vicinity of $60,000. Making a feature film with this amount of money is
a task not to be undertaken lightly. It means begging for
collaborators, supplies, and locations; working with a skeleton crew
and limited technical resources; never knowing when one of the
loosely-bound elements of the production will drift away.
Fortunately, a few of my friends clustered around the project. One
of them--Bill
Gerstel, the co-producer--came up with the idea of keeping this diary
of
the production. Whether this is an effective publicity stunt is open to
question,
but the concept of an on-line diary does have a certain scope and
texture.
The most action-packed part of the diary starts around mid-May 1996
and proceeds through the end of shooting on July 19. Before and after
that period, the diary entries are sparser and less urgent, though
one hopes that the entire process is interesting in one way or another.
Click here to look at the most recent diary
entry. To look at any other entry, select one of the following
links.
- All April 1996 Diary Entries
- All May 1996 Diary Entries
- All June 1996 Diary Entries
- All July 1996 Diary Entries
- All August and September 1996 Diary
Entries
- All October, November, and December
1996 Diary Entries
- All January, February, and March 1997
Diary Entries
- All April, May, and June 1997 Diary
Entries
- All July, August, and September 1997
Diary Entries
- All October, November, and December
1997 Diary Entries
- All January, February, and March 1998
Diary Entries
- All April, May, and June 1998 Diary
Entries
- All July, August, and September 1998
Diary Entries
- All October, November, and December
1998 Diary Entries
- January 18, 1999: Retirement
- February 9: Buenos Aires, Spotting
List
- February 11: A Little Action
- February 28: On the Stands; The
Vast Silence of the Pampas
- March 9: Another Flaky Festival
- April 1: Don't Cry for Me
- April 22: Possible TV Sale
- April 28: Post-Mortem at
30,000 Feet
- May 13: M&E Crisis,
Self-Mutilation
- May 17: The Satisfaction
of a Job Well Done
- July 1: Mystery Call from Long
Island
- July 2: Lagniappe
- July 7: Croatia
- July 8: Another Quote Pours In
- July 14: Too Many Words
- July 20: The Missing Quote
- July 26: Huntington Program
- August 17: Huntington Web Site;
Old Maid
- August 21: In the Stix
- August 22: Huntington Screening
- August 5, 2002: And Now,
the Exciting Conclusion
- January 5, 2003: Brooklyn Screening
- December 28, 2004: Two Boots
Screening
- June 10, 2007: That's all for me,
Chance
- September 20, 2008: Kraków
Screening
- January 16, 2013: A Glimmer of Hope
Click here to see quotes from critics about Honeymoon.
Click here to see the Honeymoon press
kit.
Please send comments, suggestions, etc. to sallitt at post dot
harvard dot edu.