Ah so you've decided to join us.

This is the book Katerina sends him to get him back on his feet. Dr. Dana Lemonwater is a therapist from a different movie I was writing at the time.

This is a little cotton wallet that holds a bunch of polaroids that have significance to the character. This thing comes up constantly in earlier scripts, but it was mostly abandoned. I can't remember why he's at a church in that photo.

This is the article, from a book by John Jeremiah Sullivan. I wanted the idea at the bottom to be pivotal in transitioning the character from "goofy weirdo" to "dangerous lunatic seeing patterns where there are none". A tender border separates those states in my experience.

Costume test for the lizard man. (I guess I hadn't bought the pink slippers yet so I photoshopped some in.)

The wristbands and headbands are from the Harlem Globetrotters. I saw them when I was young and they invited me onto the court at halftime and one of them tried to spin basketballs on my hands and feet (4 at the same time) and then they let me sit on the bench for the 2nd half. They all kept pulling off their sweatbands and giving them to me, so the 2 wristbands and the sweatband are all from different players. One of them is from Sweet Lou Dunbar, but he's the only one I remember. It was really cool. The 3D glasses are from the movie scene. I was actually at the Anthony Weiner documentary during that scene (for practical reasons) which thankfully isn't in 3D. Shooting that scene sucked. It was the only shot scheduled, and I was scared we were gonna get busted and waste the whole day.

This shot passes really quickly but I'm the sandwich master.

This is a storefront location I wanted to use, but never did. It's a good sign, no? I'm googling the rainbow bridge in the background, which we did use.

Here's the rainbow bridge shot. The character takes photos of hallways around the city, which are dismal when he's unhappy, then after his revelation in the film, they're brightly coloured. I cut the dismal ones, but left the colourful ones.

Lobster bib. I cut out the lobster part and Megan sewed it to the bib. It's never explained whether he carries this with him, or it was just a super bougie restaurant that provides cotton bibs. Man is that how you spell bougie?

This is Zuzu. The other dog was called Mouse. They were both very good dogs. I wanted them to look more different so when he says "I see this guy who looks just like you" twice, the viewer starts to question his mental fitness, but I guess they looked different enough. The golden retriever was just a dog we saw tied up on Queen street one day. I told Megan to set up real quickly and I'd figure it out later. Not a great way to make a movie, really. I actually pictured/wished there'd be more of that kind of thing, but it's tough to be that spontaneous.

The morning we were gonna shoot the wall-ball scene I realized I didn't have a ball, so I went to a school nearby and just started looking for one. I found this one, which had a tear in it. A broken ball is actually a funny thing for him to play with, I think. Anyway if you watched the movie and wondered what kind of production I run here's your answer.

This is a cap gun w/ammo. It was for scaring the pigeons to fly up in my face. It didn't work at all. The first time it happens in the movie they fly up because I've popped a plastic bag of air with my heel.

The second time I just ran at some pigeons to scare them. Then I composited them into a scene of me pretending to be enveloped by pigeons. This shit took so long to do. It was a huge mistake.

Principal photography sucked because I had to go all around Toronto in the stupidest outfit in the world. It was embarrassing.

Here I am running over that bridge. Sometimes you get lucky and people pay no attention to what you're doing.

I didn't keep all the shot lists, because there were probably a hundred of them. They varied in quality and quantity.

Biking in the winter sucks.

This was the other colourful hallway. I had to take a different route to work one morning because of construction and I ended up seeing this.

Sometimes at your favourite location in the whole city a trio of shirtless joggers turns a corner right behind you.

Green screen days were good 'cuz you get to work from home.

A take we didn't use.

This lady yelled at us. The only other bad thing that happened was we got kicked out of Vesta Lunch, which is the most picturesque diner in the entire city. The waitress was a jerk about it.

Ripley's aquarium was stressful, until we got there and realized there's absolutely no security at all. We just had to wait for people to clear out of our shot, then pray the jellyfish were co-operating, and that the changing light they shoot on them was a good colour. After the phone and gimbal, this was the biggest expense (2x 50 bucks for tickets.)

These are all the folders from shoot days. The first day is dated August 2015, the last is September 2018. But we didn't shoot at all in 2017, and the 2018 stuff was minimal, so it only looks like 4 years of photography. lolcrycrycry

My original idea to have Tony Rodriguez do this would not have been remotely doable. I am ridiculous. I have a serious problem both understanding and budgeting time.

This is Eduardo. We worked at the same restaurant together. (I met him half way through shooting.) The original direction I gave him is just way too gruesome for what's basically supposed to be a comedy. When I got the shirt printed the woman told me it would be cheaper if I got 100 instead of just 1. She might be the most confident sales person in the universe.

This is Lidia. She's the nicest person in the world so I made her an angel.

This is Tyler. We went to University together. He got hungry halfway through shooting so I asked if he'd be okay eating on camera. I thought it would be funny if this home-ridden lunatic yelled at the main character so long he got hungry. I ruin this take laughing because he pauses his rage to blow gently on his hot noodles. I thought that was so funny. Still do baby.

This is Rohain. He was a paid actor. His contract said he was playing "Lizard Man" and he showed up in a really expensive car with big muscles. I was terrified he'd bail. Everything was cool though. Nice guy.

This is Masa. I don't remember at what point I told him he'd be playing a cow that gets a hose stuck up its butt, but when I did, he didn't give a fuck. Masa is straight up nuts. He moved away which is sad.

I used confetti cannons and fireworks for my brain exploding here. Doesn't look so good in gif form, needs the audio. Practical effects are always best.

These are storyboards for animated transitions. I don't know how to draw but you actually don't need to know how to draw to make storyboards. Even awful ones are extremely useful.

This is the Archimedes sequence.

Here it is again, I don't know why. Looks like it has some other idea in it. Oh I know, the iceberg was in the bathtub with him originally. Don't know why that changed.

This is the first beach party. Originally there were clouds above, which would part to reveal the first dog he meets. Later the dog just becomes a party guest. The original way was a more satisfying transition but I couldn't make it work because I'm not an animator and also not that smart.

This was the car transition. The car was gonna tear the previous scene, then a new car would tear that scene, but that idea didn't work like AT ALL. So I made something else up and it worked better actually. Also you can see an orange jellyfish through the paper. It's a test jellyfish drawn by Megan. She was learning animation stuff then and was going to do some jellyfish sequences, but I figured out a way to do it that was way less work for everyone.

Looks like my eyes were bigger than my stomach.

This is the jellyfish/Alaska/Peru sequence. I didn't get very far with this. I ended up just doing experiments right in After Effects. Initially I wanted giant hands to crack a cell that had 2 chambers which contained the 2 separate groups of jellyfish, like it was in the first stage of mitosis. I thought cell division imagery would illustrate evolution the best, but I ain't really have the chops to execute, nahmean. (At one point giant hands sprinkled the 2 groups of jellyfish onto earth out of salt shakers. That idea was stupid. I really shouldn't tell people about that one.)

I knew exactly how I wanted this shot to happen. It went straight from my brain to After Effects.

Dunno man. Looks like I needed paprika at some point.

I wanted all the animated global warming scenes to be as patronizing as possible. I have boundless contempt for duplicitous policy makers and talking heads equipping dullards with their culture war counterpoints as well as the dullards themselves for buying their bullshit thus BDA's educational passages use the imagery one would use if one were attempting to teach a child. (I am angry alllll the time!)

I was happy with how this shot turned out. I rotoscoped the bird from a sequence in Who Framed Roger Rabbit then copied it twice. Worked good.

I used confetti cannons and fireworks for my brain exploding here. Doesn't look so good in gif form, needs the audio. Practical effects are always best.

This is all the After Effects files for the VFX work. I did a lot of masking, 'cuz I couldn't exactly take a green screen on the subway.

This is what I listened to while masking and animating.

Little Dragon - I also used to listen to this at an old serving job. We had prix fixe on Sunday nights and it was so loud patrons couldn't hear that we were playing the same record over and over 20x

Kid Cudi - I listen to this for every project that requires a lot of solitary work. Kid Cudi loves space more than I love anything.

Arif Mirbaghi - This is only 3 songs which sucks. It's called Durneshan and you can buy it on bandcamp. I used to work at a Persian restaurant and the music we played was way worse than this. They owe me $1000.

Chillin Island - Before this was an excruciatingly slow-paced HBO show it was a really good podcast/radio show.

I also listened to Toronto Blue Jays spring training games but I can't do that anymore because they remind me of tracing pigeon wings now.

These are the rendered files of all that VFX work.

This is the last voice over session, December 2021.

I sent it out to 3 people in like May of 2021, before final VO revisions and general tinkering. They seemed to be not too confused by it.

Then, when it was all set to go, in February of 2022, I sent it to some more people. I don't really know why, because I wasn't gonna change anything else after this point, but whatever. I guess I just wanted to hear some friendly shit.

I also should probably acknowledge the influence and/or help of The Simpsons, David Rakoff, Dr. Strangelove, Craig Stecyk, Day For Night, Richard Williams, Agnes Varda, mini-movies with Coop, Michel Gondry, Bugs Bunny, Mark Mothersbaugh, Sabrina, Laurel Nakadate, that one hat store owner from that scene that got cut, the fluid camerawork in Boogie Nights and like 9 Scorsese movies, Chicken Little, a ton of youtubers who helped me figure out how to do things, Jamie Margolin, Varshini Prakash, the last vignette in Paris Je T'aime with Margo Martindale, Sesame Street, Soda Jerk, Buster Keaton, Tina Fey, Die Antwoord, The Harlem Globetrotters, John Jeremiah Sullivan, the woman from Triple F for the butterfly paper and for always being cool, Monsieur Hulot, and Tony Rodriguez & Christophe Chinas for acting as temporary and unwitting muses. Also Voltaire's Candide and Pangloss on their tour of horrors ironically exclaiming "all for the best, the best of all worlds!" is in their somewhere too. And Tommy Boy for the title.

I feel generally okay about making a comedic film about a guy's mental health which is exacerbated by real world events he has no control over. I think that's fine. In my life, my mental and emotional problems are preposterous to me, so I don't really have any compunctions about making light of it. I am paranoid, and I have anxiety, and delusions of grandeur/persecution precipitated by some garden variety egotism (I think), and when I look at them they're funny to me, so whatever. I didn't include anything in me you could describe as depression, because that isn't really so funny. Yeah the character does run into the ocean to commit suicide but honestly I don't really think death is unfunny. I think life is ludicrous so its conclusion is too. Also cleansing acts of violence are always funny to me, which in this case the suicide is (ie. an act of cleansing violence against himself.) Probably about the only unfunny thing is the guy's relationship with his dog--or his relationship with an entity that asks nothing of him, and whose unconditionality qualifies itself as the only safe place for the guy to confide his terror.

That shit isn't funny at all.