asheville the movie

If you’ve been to Asheville Pizza Company to watch a movie at any time in the past few months, you’ve seen the trailer for asheville the movie. If you haven’t, it’s worth $2 just to see the trailer, which is f’ing hilarious (AND Revenge of the Sith is playing this week).

Intrigued, I’ve checked the asheville the movie website a couple of times, but found little up-to-date information, despite their to-the-point disclaimer: “this site is for information only since we're making a film and not a goddamn website.”

So, I e-mailed writer, director, and reluctant website host, chusy (all words on the site are lower case, so I’m playing the game) and semi-guilted him into an update, some of which is excerpted here:

we flew to new york and met the executive producers of the second-highest-grossing documentary of all time (after farenheit 9/11), SUPER SIZE ME. after watching our material and our camera test they declared (and I quote loosely, paraphrasing here, aggrandizing there), “we see hundreds of proposals a month here, from bona fide writers, directors and producers. only your project sang out to us. it has a voice like none other. congratulations, we want your film to be our first narrative film.” so that's nice...as we've said on previous occasions it helps when someone other than your family, friends, and the perfectly obedient blow up doll that smiles incessantly at me from the sofa across from where i'm writing this thinks that our project is worth a look.

it took forever and it was like pulling teeth without medication, but thankfully now we have our money. our eternal and heartfelt thanks to those who stepped up to the plate, who saw the possibility and passion. for those of you who saw our material and passed, thanks anyway. we hope to prove you incredibly wrong.

we start production in october, god willing. we are in heavy-duty pre-production doing our casting, location scouting, etc. our crew is incredible. our 16-year-old art director is taking a semester off from high school to be with us. we are about as fortunate as you can imagine.

we are upgrading our production! we are shooting in the outrageous ultra-vivid, ultra high-resolution glory of HIGH DEFINITION ! this is the technology that george lucas, robert rodriguez and others use. we're not saying that we like their films or anything, but we're suddenly in the big leagues. it also means that our chances for distribution and for exposure at high-end film festivals increase exponentially. the novelty of heart-felt independent films shot on digital video is wearing off on folks in the biz. when one shoots hi-def, one becomes a player.

we are still looking for help. we need volunteer production assistants with cars. we also are interested in people with film experience who want to work on something unique. though we are shooting from october to december, a volunteer can work a week, for instance. sorry, but this is for no pay. our budget is lean and mean. our film is very ambitious.

we also need people who are handy. can you build a headboard? can you create a fake wall? that sort of thing. do-it-yourselfers would love this! this is a really cool assignment and fun as all heck. we have some pretty hysterical scenes we are using these props in. i know…don't end a sentence with a preposition.

we need housing for our out-of-town crew. they are all clean, well-behaved and have been tested for dementia and assorted communicable diseases. furthermore, we ran background checks on them. so far, no felons. the ideal scenario is a furnished house. we'd need the house from mid-september to mid-december. can you help us? do you know anyone that can help us? how about super-discounted rental homes? hows about some bed and breakfasts for some of our short term help. we're doing a crazy car stunt and have some nascar folk coming to help us. they'd need lodging for three nights, for example.

attention airbrush artists or portrait artists we need help creating a ceiling mural for one of the character's cars. could you help us? do you know anyone who could?

There’s more, but what seems most significant is: they’ve got a proposal that SINGS, some money, and they NEED volunteers and housing. You know who you are and you know if you can help. This is a remarkable opportunity to get involved with an ultra-cool project about this funky town that we all love so. If you can’t volunteer or aren’t interested in having camera crews bunking down in your home, at least buy a t-shirt or a bumper sticker: Asheville. Where Normal is Weird.