Trivia

• Amy is essentially a condensed version of the 90 page Cigarette Smoke script that I never finished writing... which could explain why it feels a little bit disjointed sometimes.
  
  
• Amy was originally planned to go for about 25-ish minutes to resemble a regular half-hour TV-show. But somehow it ended up going for about 32 minutes, and that's with about 5 scenes cut from the script. Fuck knows how long it would've been if it was edited in accordance with the script. Still, at this length, Amy's not a short-film, not yet a feature. 

• I have this thing where I include a character named Amy in just about everything I write, though they're always short for something different. In this video, the character's name is Amphetamine; in Jedi Slackers, her name was Amethyst; and in an upcoming video there's someone named Aimee.
  
  
• A number of scenes featuring Josh and D were shot but ultimately cut because I felt that there wasn't enough time to really establish Josh as a main character, so I had to downgrade him and thus cut out any scenes with him that don't involve Amy. Unfortunately this also meant I had to cut out a scene that had D throwing footballs at Josh from a 15 storey height. I really liked that scene, but damnit.
  
  
• Simon Cutting played the cameo role of Ray Simmons in that scene (a character I created for him that dates back to my very first screenplay), but since the scene was cut we never get to see his amazing performance as a subservient ball-boy. He does however make it into the blooper reel.
  
  
• The kitchen scene involved the Amy's friends trying to defrost frozen bottles of Corona over a stove-top fire, based on an experience Simon, Dave and I once had when we left the beer in the freezer for too long. I thought it was a pretty cool image to see people defrosting beer over a stove like boy-scouts cooking marshmallows over a campfire, and so I wrote it into the script. However, on the day of shooting, the Corona refused to freeze, and we had to fudge our way around it. End result was that I couldn't have any close-ups of the obviously UNFROZEN Corona, and my attempt to plug-in my favorite import beer was foiled.
  
  
• Originally, there was a running gag where almost every scene was started with the line "So what'd you do last night, anyway?", to play up to a scene where Howie comments on it and calls it "deja-vu", and Amy suggests that it might be "a glitch in the Matrix". At that point Howie's clothes were meant to change for no reason. But since the running gag didn't work, and I thought the Matrix reference might not work, this bit was never shot...
  
  
• HOWEVER... After shooting the kitchen scene I realized that I had put on a jacket during a break between takes, and that break in continuity required an explanation. So the Matrix joke made its way back into the production after all, as I put in the very same shot of Megan's cat walking past the gang TWICE... you know, deja-vu. Problem being, the test audience (ie. my uni class) got so preoccupied with the double-shot of the cat that they never noticed the appearing jacket at all. Oh well.

• A gag that I've ALWAYS wanted to include was a little bit where characters would be sitting around and someone would walk by, and then the following conversation would take place:
  
  "Who's that?"
  "Her name's Luka. She lives on the second floor. She lives upstairs from me."
  "Yes, I think I've seen her before."
  
  This reference to the Suzanne Vega song was first written in Just Another Triangle (yet another movie based on my relationship with Mel... hmmm), and was supposed to appear in Bad Karma, and now it was finally SHOT in Amy. But it wasn't shot really well and it feels too strained in the scene, so I had to remove it (sob sob).
  
  
• Amy was originally meant to be played by Melissa Cervonaro, but she had to pull out of the project when she realized she didn't have the time to spare. We went into panic mode after that trying to find a replacement Amy, and luckily Sali agreed to take over as Amy. It might've been weird if Amy was played by a person with the same first name as the girl that I was pining over when I wrote the script. 

• The seashell was a gift from Mel, and so it gets quite a bit of screen-time. 
  
  
• Megan and Bridie play a couple called Samantha and Maxine, which is a reference to the Lucasarts game Sam & Max hit the road. And no, Megan and Bridie are not gay. 
  
  

  There's a location that I tried shooting at a few times (that I call"the Green Roof next to Nate's rail")... but I think it's cursed because every time we shoot there something happens that fucks us over. The camera will either be out of focus, be under-exposed or the dialogue will be recorded badly. Either that, or some guy will be drilling shit with an electric drill, or kids will be running around making too much noise. One time someone threw an uncooked sausage at us! Bunch of savages in that area.

• In the Blooper Reel there are a few shots of us punching each other. This was because the three of us were playing some childish game where if you can get someone else to look at your hand while you're making a circle with your thumb and index finger, you get to punch them. A lot of productivity was lost to this activity.
  
  
• In the scene where Howie and Amy discuss signs and clichés, Howie goes into a "I love him for the man he wants to be" babble, which coupled with Bruce Springsteen's Secret Garden is an obvious reference to Renee Zellweger's famous speech in Jerry Maguire. In the same scene, Amy mimes "I want to grow old with you", which is Adam Sandler's song from The Wedding Singer. A Sleepless in Seattle reference was included in a scene that was cut because it was shot at the cursed Green Roof and suffered technical difficulties. Damn you, Green Roof!
  
  
• The scenes in Amy's room and kitchen were shot at Megan's place. I thought I'd just add that Megan's room kicks ass... the camera angles in Amy don't really do it justice, but if you ever visit, you'll see that there's a whole lotta cool stuff there.

• The yoyo that Howie is always seen flinging around is the same yoyo that rolls across the screen in Psychotic Mood Swings. If you look closely (which is impossible from the angles in the video), you'll see that one of the stickers on it depicts "Amy" from the Sonic the Hedgehog games.

• A new toy makes their appearance in this video. In the opening scene, the soft toy that Amy wakes up next to is none other than Newt the Dolphin! I thought it'd be weird and quirky to wake up next to a dolphin.

• Almost six hours of footage was shot to make this video. Ouch. 

• In the poster, the cartoon of Josh is depicted wearing a pair of Rodney Mullen Globes shoes. Josh's last name comes from the same guy, who's not only my favorite skater but also the God-Father of street-skating. Oh it's true, he is that damn good!

• Cartoon Josh is also depicted wearing a T-shirt with one of Bridie's inkblot designs on it (which I've named the Casper Blot). I love that inkblot.

• At some point in the video, almost every character is seen wearing a Big Evil Corporation T-shirt. Big Evil Corp shirts are of course, designed and printed by Frankie Pan. Here they are (with the exception of the 3 Sperms design, which although not worn in the video, does appear not so subtly in Josh's bedroom and is also worn by Amy in the poster):