“Tricks of a Woman” will be having its North American Premiere at the Boston International Film Festival this upcoming Wednesday, April 22nd.

This is a film I directed and co-wrote last year. The film stars Vincent Pastore, (”The Sopranos”) Natasha Lyonne, (”American Pie” ) Scott Elrod, (”Men in Trees”) and Carlos Leon. (”Oz”) The film won “Best Feature Film” at the Monaco Film Festival as well as three acting awards.

It also features my good friends Dennis Lemoine and William Decoff, both of who I have worked with on a number of projects in the past.

http://www.bifilmfestival.com/0009session24.html

Making movies sometimes affords you some special opportunities you wouldn’t normally find. One of my favorite was in pre-production of “Tricks of a Woman.” We were doing location scouting at the Southwick Zoo. Being that we were a week or so away from shooting, we were juggling many plates, and so we arrived late.

We pulled into the zoo parking lot around closing time. We met with the Zoo’s owner and explained in detail the scenes we were scouting for. In my typical wild and impracticable ambition, I had written a scene where the male lead jumps into a Rhino pit to take a photo of the rhinos. The rhino sees him and in turns fiercely charges at him.

Of course within a minute of pitching the story that idea was laughed down. I soon learned how ferocious and dangerous these Rhinos were. She suggested we walk through the zoo and find perhaps another animal for him to take pictures of in the scene.

And so that’s what we did. The four of us were led on a private tour of the zoo. We strolled by camels, giraffe, and deer. It’s was a perfect, quiet mid-summer evening at sunset, and was blissfully relaxing. We tested out the light on various animal areas. We even went to visit one of the rhinos, who was sleeping. We went inside his den, which not many people get to do, and then were allowed to pet his skin, which felt what I imagined a pet dinosaur to feel like, if cloning technology ever creates such a thing.

I thought to myself how lucky we were to be able to do this, and realized that these experiences are what making movies is all about.

Realizing how perfect a location it was, we ended up changing a number of scenes to be shot right at the zoo. We added “walk and talks” through the zoo woods and the deer preserve.

And what animal did we decide to film, after visiting with the whole of the animal kingdom?

Why the rhinos, of course.

But the part of the scene with the angry rhino attack?

Yeah, that had to be cut.

It’s moments like these that make me love filmmaking.