The movie has no car chases, strangulations or gaping axe wounds to the head of some poor unsuspecting victim. It does have a unique story line by today’s standards and is the main reason many Oscar recipients and Oscar nominated production people worked at 25% of their regular salaries just to be part of this unusual low budget art film.

The story has many scene’s that seem contradictory but when its all put together it has just the right mix of dreamy sequences that almost anyone will recognize from their own dreams or night mares.

A young boy, movie age about 12 years, actual age 15, and new to the movies and a young girl who is actually 12 years old and acted in quite a few movies, plus the boys grandfather played Armand Muellar-Stahl are the main figures of the movie. The boys’ lapses into a coma after a head injury after falling off a bridge. The story is about what happens in his brain while in a coma. Like a dream state or coma many unusual things happen, some seem to have no relationship to one another until some studying into the dream itself. Many times if you write down a dream and think back you can remember incidences that may have caused your brain to store part of the scene and then later in your dreams resurface in a totally unrelated way. That of course makes us wonder “where in the world did that come from.” Other times pure imagination takes over and nothing you have ever experienced happens in your dreams, many times so life like it terrifies you. Psychiatrists believe that those dreams are actually created by your fears or sometimes wishes. What ever the causes of dreams they remain a part of most everyone’s life, some remembered, many forgotten.

When the casting agent for The Dust Factory called to hire Remos Reynosa, of Satin & Latin Dance Studios as a choreographer for danced scenes in the movie, it seemed a very interesting concept, something he thought he could really get his teeth into. Since most artists tend to live a good portion of their life in a creative dream state he decided to accept the challenge that’s were he lives mostly anyway. Upon questioning her as to what dances they want choreographed and finding out they had a Waltz and a Tango scene comprising of 14 couples in mind and the couples would be comprised of movie extra from an extra agency with a shoot day was less that a week away. Teaching 28 people to dance a Waltz and Tango who had no dance background made the task seem a little impossible.

Then the light bulb went on. Hey, what if we use real dancers. The director thought that would be great idea his only questions was “Do you think you can pull if off, where are you going to find that many people that already know how to dance and want to be in a movies? After two phone calls and putting the word out in his studio he had all of the dancers he needed and then some. Then he went to a meeting with the director to check out the music they had chosen for the movie. When they played the music it was a Viennese Waltz and the Tango was a very dramatic Argentine Tango. Both of the dances were not a regular Waltz or Tango as any savvy dancer can tell you, but since he had already told them he had real dancers for the scenes he couldn’t back down then. Of course, none of the directors knew the difference between a regular Waltz and a Viennese Waltz or a regular Tango and an Argentine Tango.

When he interviewed the dancers he had just ask them if they knew how dance a Waltz and Tango, nothing was mentioned about a Viennese Waltz and Argentine Tango. So the practicing began. All of the actors and background extra had to do a few steps at the “Ball” also. All together the main characters, minor actors and background actors where taught a little Viennese Waltz and a little Argentine Tango. After a few practices we had accomplished getting everyone around the room and we were ready for shooting.

After changing the “shoot” day for the dancers once and many other smaller changes, the scene was finally shot. The day was a 14 hour day for all of the dancers 11 hours on their feet dancing for take after take. It was a lot of work and a lot of fun. We got to be movie stars for a day.

We now understand why they say making movies is a lot of work. We got to experience wardrobe fittings, hair and makeup, we got to experience the energy of the movie production crew, the director yelling “cut”. The scene marker yelling “quite on the set, dance scene, take #34” and clicking the little black and white, scene marker board. We also had lunch with 200 starving actors, background people, production people and all of the dancers we had been practicing with for a week. You can’t believe how hungry you get after 8 hours of that kind of high energy action. You throw down your lunch and rush back to the set and everything starts all over again. After 11 hours on your feet in a ball gown or a tux, your praying for the director to yell “It’s a wrap” and when that happens it’s a time of celebration for everyone. No matter how your dragging you want to celebrate, its funny how much energy “It’s a wrap” creates. I guess you would have to be there to understand.

Dancers from Portland that were in the movie were Rene Nunez, Teresa Alonso, Michael Ewe, Erika Christensen, Penny Towne, Alex Pozyadin, Carlos Rojas, Habib Talebi, Hossein Talebi, Remos & Sharon Reynosa, Norma Miller, Mary Garvey, Steven Halvorson, Linda Halvorson, Mark Nishi, Amy Shum, Elizabeth Davidson, Bill Milmoe, Carolyn Obrien, Dam Duong, An Ton That, Roy Aveling, Eduardo Nilo, Marina Laurette, Jeff & Annette Kindt, Julia Chaing. After everything we went through from practicing, the actual day on the set and the great party the casting director for all of us we all become great friends. Invitations to visit movie people and stay at their house when we come to Catalina next time sounded like fun to us. Of course they probably won’t remember that crazy bunch of dancers from Portland for more than a week but it was a nice gesture.

The movie will not be released until 2003 so it will be a while before we find out how well the dance scene turns out in the movie. Let’s hope the whole dance scene doesn’t end up on the cutting room floor or you can see more than our arm in one of the scenes.

The movie photographer sent a media kit on the movie to the Sundance Film Festival last week so now all we can do is wait.

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