Our readers would like to know what do you think about the DVD format? Do you collect them? What do you like about them?

DVD is a godsend to the indie world. It really allows for top quality archival. I look around my office at the various films I've done over the years and see: 35mm, 16mm, 3/4" tapes, VHS tapes, Beta SP's, Digi-Betas, D1's and one format I don't even recognize anymore (pixel-vision maybe?). Most of which would degrade or require constant transfers to the latest formats to remain usable. Now with DVD and home burners you can constantly keep your portfolio of work up to date and watchable.

Another great aspect is of course all the extras. Commentary, deleted scenes, alt takes, documentaries and set notes. It really allows for the entire saga of a production to be documented and preserved. Film shoots are epics onto themselves for those involved. Lots of great memories and friendships.

I have a pretty good collection. A bit eclectic ranging from Paths of Glory to Office Space. Lawrence of Arabia to any 80's teen movie -- Yes I admit it I own not only Heathers but the Breakfast Club and Say Anything as well.

Some directors make a movie with a DVD release already planned. They do documentaries and extras scenes just for the DVD. Did you work this way for R.S.V.P. or will you take the opportunity to do it on a future project?

We did chose to create a behind the scenes doc that made it to the final DVD. But we didn't try to script it. Which anyone who sees the footage will immediately notice. Instead we just wanted to give a camera to the cast and crew and turn them lose. No Hollywood infomercial designed to play on the E! Channel with all the properly scripted plugs and phony BS about how much everyone loves each other. We just shot the men and women of production doing their thing on an average day. In the end the crew was just as engaging (shameless jokesters) as the cast. Unfortunately Jay Mewes left the camera on the dash of his rental car -- we were in Vegas -- and the tapes got fried. Still the raw quality is pretty cool.

As for deleted scenes, my next film is a political comedy along the lines of Network called Human Resources. It is about a disgruntled temp-worker who snaps and takes over his office on the same day that a class of high school students is visiting for career day. During the course of the film the main character, Delmar Lewis, delivers a number of rants against the corporate world and death of the American Dream. My partner/brother noted that we'd probably have to chop a few of them up or cut some all together for the sake of time and pace. I countered that we would just shoot them all as is and anything that hit the floor would be a DVD extra. Shoot if NETWORK had more Howard Beale rants I'd probably watch them before the film itself!

As for Extra Scenes that is something that budget permitting I might sneak into Human Resources. Or maybe I'll just hijack a camera on our day off. Just don't tell the line producer or AC okay?

What kind of special features do you like on a DVD? Commentaries? Documentaries? Cut scenes? Photo galleries?

I like deleted scenes the best. It really lets one see a full picture of what was original scripted -- for good or bad. I was watching the Lethal Weapon DVD the other day -- research for a Cop Buddy Film I'm writing in New Orleans -- and watched the deleted scenes. Whew! They dodged a bullet with those stinkers. The editor saved a franchise. As a filmmaker it is good to see that even big budget Hollywood films go through the same agonies in the editing room. But 9 out of 10 times the old mantra "When in doubt - Throw it out" remains true. Many an indie has been undone by keeping weak footage in a final cut.

Extend scenes are cool too. Often it is just a matter of pacing that drops the ax on some fantastic acting and/or camera work. But with the current trend in Hollywood story telling -- rigorously plot-driven and focused on the lead name actor -- there is often little room for secondary characters to have real sub-plots or even personalities for that matter.

As for commentaries I'm not too big on em. I usually get bored as they drone on about camera angles, lens, dolly moves and such. And I'm a film geek who loves to talk about camera angles, lens and dolly moves! But I prefer to do it over a cold beer. The best ones I've seen are when the commentators tell stories about the shoot or each other in a casual manner. The Conan the Barbarian V.O. track is hysterical. Arnie sounds like he's never seen the film! 'Oooh, Oooh, look at the panther!' I highly recommend a listen.

As people will soon hear if they listen to the R.S.V.P. commentary, myself, Daniel Joseph (Skyles) and Reno Wilson (Garrett) didn't do the commentary in traditional film geek fashion. It didn't hurt either that when we arrived at the sound studio we found out it had an open bar. So in keeping with the spirit of our Party film, we got smashed and shot the shit.

The deleted scenes commentary I did myself and put on my serious director's hat. Hope no one falls asleep... Seriously though there are some nice Glenn Quinn scenes here that got cut for time. A missing murder as well...

Photo galleries and set notes are cool too. Most of ours are on our website, but we didn't get them on the DVD in the end. Maybe next time. I think we just ran out of manpower as my company is pretty much a one-man show.

Your DVD of Trash from Ventura Distribution is kind of light on extras. Do you plan to revisit it someday to make a commentary track, add some photos you may have took on location?

Arrrrgh! I'm so disappointed with that DVD. Not even wide-screen! No interface! Horrible trailers you can't even skip! I've been hassling the producer Todd Feldman day and night to turn over the keys to the vault and let me get the behind the scenes footage and deleted scenes.

I love that film to death. The performances, the locations, the camera work. And that is only half the story of TRASH. The other story was the production itself. We were like a family for 2 months in the swamps of no where Florida. Both Cast and Crew like one. Many have said - and I agree - it was the best shoot they were ever a part of.

In addition a lot of the subplot between Anthony (Eric Michael Cole) and CJ (Jaime Pressly) hit the floor for time sake. Same with Jonathan Banks and Jaime's father daughter subplot. Oh yeah and little Nicky Alteri had a scene or two with Jaime that didn't' make it for time sake. There is so much heart in that film.

As my buddy Tom Huckabee said after seeing the 120 minute director's cut. "Mark Anthony you got a great film and if you were Oliver Stone people would be willing to sit through 120 minutes because they trust you. But until you gain that trust they'll only give ya 90 minutes." Sad but true...

On the upside, I get all the rights back in February and I'm gonna nag Lions Gate til they agree to re-release it with all the goodies! Any fans out there thinking the same send em an email on our behalf.

Tell us more about R.S.V.P. background. Where did the idea came from?

(I got lazy here and just pasted this from the set notes....)

R.S.V.P. started out as nothing more than a conversation in a bar between the Director (M.A.Galluzzo) and some colleagues about the proliferation of morbid occurrences seeping into main stream pop culture. With Marilyn Manson on the cover of Rolling Stone and a mass murderer on the cover of the times, the conversation soon skewed into the realm of Fame vs. Infamy and the unsettling way the two have converged in U.S. society, with Infamy quickly becoming much easier to obtain. Eventually the discussion turned to the effect this bombardment of mixed notoriety could have on a talented (albeit raw) young mind such as a promising college student. Thus the main character of R.S.V.P., Nick Collier, was born.

With this foundation of Fame vs. Infamy especially in a society which places so much value on standing out from the crowd and the concept of raw knowledge corrupting young minds, the mental association with a couple of infamous youths, who also found their intellect an Achilles heel, was quickly seized upon the original thriller killers: Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. Two young men who on May 21st, 1924 decided that their staggering intellects (IQ¹s of 210 and 160 respectively) entitled them, as superior human beings, to take the life of the weak, especially if they were so smart that they could get away with it.

During the pre-production rewrites yet another key tenant to the film emerged. That of an ambitious student, Collier, out to one up his mentor, criminal psychology Prof. Hal Evans (Glenn Quinn ) who specializes in serial killings and mass murder. Despising his teacher for being all talk and no action, Nick sets out to slay his master literally. Furthermore who better to pin the crime on than the macabre Academic, whose morbid choice of expertise provides the perfect motive to complete Nick¹s masterful frame-up.

Galluzzo specifically selected Quinn, an Irishman best know for his work on Angle and Roseanne, for who better to objectively study this almost uniquely American phenomena (We are the world leader with over 60 active serial killers on the loose at any given time) than an outsider from another country.

Thus their framework securely in place, Galluzzo and the Filmworks team were determined to create an insightful - yet playful - dissection of these concepts and could think of no better place to set the project than OESin City itself Las Vegas, Nevada. For only this desert den of excess and depravity could produce a mind as twisted as Nicky¹s.

Did you encountered some problems during filming?

Where, oh where to begin. We lost our location 4 weeks before shooting. We were supposed to shoot in a high roller room for a month but the Casino must have got a high roller in town as they promptly kicked us to the curb. This forced us to build a set or cancel production (which on one of my films wouldn't happen. I'd rather shoot the film anyway using star wars figures and a fisher price camera rather than throw in the towel). In the end it worked out in our favor, though, as I already had blue prints I designed to maximize the one room location and play up the bullfight motif. The down side was it shot our budget all to hell.

After that we lost our lead actor 2 days before shooting. Little model/actor/prick Ian Somerhalder asked for a day off from rehearsal to fly back to LA for an audition. Well he got the part and gave us the finger. Needless to say, if I spot him in a bar -- he better run. Fast.

Other than that we had a minor mob shake down on construction, but we 'did the right thing' if you know what I mean. We were in Vegas after all.

The only other major issues were the one location began to get claustrophobic. Even though it was 6800 square feet! Everyone got stir crazy toward the end of the fourth week. Not only that but finding new angles became a bit of a chore after shooting the same big room for 24 days. Still most people comment that the set never got stale so I guess we did our job. That is when they even realize it was a set.

Finally I suppose Vegas itself was a problem. Especially with a cast of young beautiful and wealthy 20-somethings. If we couldn't find an actor at his or her hotel we'd just page the Hard Rock Casino for them.

How much participation do you put in post-production activities (editing , sound mixing, ...)?

I'm a post junkie. I think I'm one of the few filmmakers that still pulls his own opticals and marks them up with a grease pen. I do the neg cut lists. The cue sheets. Color timing. Music Recording. Sound F/X editing. Foley! I love Foley! Xavier Sol and I did the Foley for Trash by ourselves during the mix. Good thing I was wearing the main character's cowboy boots that day.

You name it. I've done it. I've spent so much time in dark rooms staring at computer screens that I usually will have a jailhouse pallor by the end of post.

Don't get me wrong here though. When I say I've done it all, it has been simply to assist the men and women I've hired. Adam Scott cut both of my pictures, Xavier Sol over at Turbo Sound is my sound guru, and Mick Muhlfriedel my composer.

I sit in on every session and take the wheel when necessary. It speeds things up and builds a connection between your post people and the film itself. Kind of a side track but most people in the post world are a bit detached from the excitement that is typical during principal photography. So it is easy for them to look at your film as just another job to mix or fill up with footsteps and gunshots. But if you are there telling them what you were thinking and maybe a funny story of what went on that day at set, you really bring them on board as a member of the team and they will go that extra mile (hour/day/week...err, month?) to get a scene right.

What do you think of the digital future of movie making (digital film, 5.1 audio mix, ...)?

I'm a film guy at heart, so I think I'll keep shooting celluloid for at least another picture or three. But I'm definitely glad I don't have to still cut on a flat bed! Granted Steinbeck's and celluloid teach discipline, which is very good when you are starting out, but it's great not to have to crawl around on your hands and knees looking for 3 frames you trimmed off a week ago.

I'm really interested in this digital intermediate process. Whereby you shoot on film and transfer to digital for color correction, neg cut, opticals, titles, you name it. Now that sounds like it would save a lot of money and time without effecting the nature of the image itself. Once you've got it finalized you spit it back out to film for projection.

As for Audio it seems to keep getting better and better. 5.1 is a lot of fun to play with. Unfortunately in the budgets I've been working with lately all we've had time to do is play. Maybe next time we can really utilize the format to create some effects that will augment the picture/story directly.

Finally I think that digital projection is inevitable. I've been to a lot of festivals where both 35mm and digibetas were played and often the latest generation digital projector's image was superior to the film projector. Granted sometimes the 35mm projectors at fests are old and the bulbs may be on their last legs. Still 5 2000' reels of 35mm film are just plain heavy and a pain in the arse to lug on planes. Also they wear out pretty quick which means bye bye $1600.00US. Throw in your average $8 an hour projectionist who's forgotten to tape up the take up reel and your print will be filler in a month or two. I should know I used to be a very bad projectionist who indeed forgot to tape the film to the take up reel and ended up with 1200 feet of some poor saps film on the floor. Sorry....

Thank you for you time! It was very interesting

You too! Sorry for any typo's or poor grammar!

M.A.Galluzzo
director@rsvpthemovie.com