08/15/2025
In 2010 or thereabouts I backed a Kickstarter for an independent film titled Coup de Cinema. Written and directed by Austin Hillebrecht and Sean Parker and shot in and around Portland, it’s a lighthearted movie about a film crew that hijacks their production to improve the film behind its director’s back. I found my way to it through the pimping of David Loftus, a performer friend who was in the cast and who throws his all behind the projects in which he participates. David pitched it well, the Kickstarter pitched it equally well, and what the hell? I’m happy when readers point others towards me to buy one of my books, so I Kickstarted. Karma and all that.
As part of the Kickstarter rewards, those among the supporters who were also amateur filmmakers/videographers/dabblers were welcomed to submit a self-created short video clip from a fictitious bad movie, to be used in a montage segment in the film. I gave it about as much thought as SOUTH PARK’s Eric Cartman dressed up as the story-generating robot Awesome-o, came up with the stupidest, low-budget, low-concept idea I could on short notice, and threw Friend Of The Devil against my creative wall. To my horror, it stuck.
The story (according to a rough sketch committed to paper in July 2010) was:
I know you’re probably thinking “Roger Corman wept!” Yeah. Probably. But you should always have a story in mind, so when actors want to know their motivation, you can tell them so they can eye-roll more authentically. Anyway, I wrote up a short scriptment of the ending, in which Lucifer and Larry have their Hallmark Movie Friendship Moment, called Bernie to see if he’d play Lucifer, and on his agreement set up the shoot. If you’re morbidly curious, here are images of the very short scene we filmed (click to enlarge).
We knocked it out at the gazebo at Al Lorenz Park in Mount Morris, NY on August 7 in about an hour, Bernie festively dressed in red and black and sporting clay horns as Lucifer, and me in a button-down shirt and tie looking schlubby as Larry. Three camera set-ups were done: individual angles on each of us, then a wide set-up with both of us. Roughly 20 minutes of raw footage was filmed for what amounted to about four minutes of finished video. I don’t know this offhand; the raw footage is actually still on my laptop as I type this. We ran through the script twice, the first playing it straight and the second hamming it up. Both versions were cut and provided for potential use in Coup de Cinema, and they smartly went with the hammy one.
The script was ambitious in terms of special effects description, but no great pains were taken to provide Lucifer with flames or to tint him; I seem to recall being under a time constraint, and to be fair, I’m not sure it needed bad effects. It LOOKS like it was shot for the cost of tape and a package of clay. Dialogue changed a little here and there. There was one additive in post-production: the sound of a distant explosion (accompanied in the hammy version by the Wilhelm scream) when Lucifer snaps his fingers.
Post production took about seven minutes and I’d post the finished hammy version if that was still on the drive. It’s at least on a drive somewhere around here. Lo and behold, when the film arrived Bernie and I both had a line from Friend Of The Devil in the finished montage, and we were duly credited for our blink-and-you’ll-miss-it performances.
It’s nice to have been a small sliver of a part of a successfully completed independent film, and if I’m being honest? Having a solitary acting credit recorded in the Internet Movie Database wasn’t necessarily on my bucket list, but it makes me smile, even though there are apparently dozens of Doug Lanes with their fingerprints all over Hollywood films. Whatever. I’m Doug Lane (III) as actors go. Today, anyway. And if you’re still curious, check out the trailer for Coup de Cinema onYouTube, or drop some nickels in its creators’ pockets with a rental over on Amazon.
That’s one distraught devil…
Lucifer, in Hell, is in a funk. He's been viewing a lot of human television. Over the last fifty years, he's watched as mankind has grown more and more critical of him. He wants to understand how his reputation got so out of control, why he's so reviled. He feels he's just misunderstood. So he decides to go up to earth and figure out why they hate him so much. What he discovers is that he's had centuries of bad press, so he hires a slick ad agency guy to help him develop a positive image campaign. The ad agency guy comes up with a promotion: Friend of the Devil. Some lucky winner will get to be friends with the devil for 30 days. Most everyone who applies wants to do so because the devil has powers. Enter a hapless looser named Larry, who really only wants one thing: to win the heart of Jezebel, his beloved. But Jezebel has recently struck it big as a model. Ad agency guy sees this as an opportunity, so he rigs the contest so Larry winds up friends with the devil, all of which is going to be filmed for a reality television show. Ad guy's plan: he gets Jezebel to work a huge (and somewhat sleezy) account for him; but to maneuver, he's going to create a love triangle between Larry, Jezzie and Lu, and then swoop in when it all goes awry.
To make a long story short: Larry teaches the devil about friendship – the devil hasn't had a friend since he left Heaven – and how friends don't let women come between them; the devil teaches Larry about standing up for himself, even if it means losing everything; the ad guy learns nothing; Jezebel is merely a plot point, and Larry learns to do without her anyway.
Even the fist-bumps were lame.