A film by Randy “Scooter” Lammey 

WHERE ARE YOU FROM? Loag’s Corner, Pennsylvania, about 50 miles west of Philly. My high school, Twin Valley, borders a farm with cow pastures.  YouTube founder Chad Hurley and August 2008 Playboy Playmate Kayla Collins also attended Twin Valley.   

WHAT’S YOUR PREVIOUS FILM EXPERIENCE? After college (Virginia Tech, communications degree), I worked on some films and TV shows as a grip/Dolly grip, pre-production, production and locations assistant, with some camera work. I worked on the CBS-TV show Hack, which was shot entirely in and around Philly. Plus some other low budget shoots for trailers, promos and other stuff that nobody would ever want to watch.  Then I made a live music video that won a YouTube Underground contest and was featured on Good Morning America (Pawnshop Roses – Live at Grape Street).  Kicking the Dog is the first film I have written, directed and edited.   

DID YOU USE ANY SCRIPT ASSISTANCE? No. What does this mean?  Much of what takes place in the film happened to me. I peed out of a 13th story window in a girl’s dorm at Penn State, looking over my shoulder and afraid the girl would come back into the room and find me dribbling on her desk.  The “husky daughter” scene is based on a time I went to a girl’s house for a date, and I forgot the girl’s name.  I said to her dad, “I’m here to see your daughter” and he replied, “Which one?” So I didn’t know her name, and I didn’t know she had a sister.   

HOW DID YOU CAST IT? I cast all the actors in New York City, after posting an ad in Backstage. I received about 1,500 headshots. I drove to Trenton and took the train from there to NYC, where I held readings for 40-50 actors in a rented studio. Usually I took my sister Dawn and my buddy Ike with me to work the door, sign in the actors, provide them with info, and run the camera, so that it seemed professional. I also had an actor friend with me, to read with the auditioning actors.  I made about six trips to NYC to assemble the cast.  I videotaped the auditions, made copies and sent them to my buddy Malachi McGlone, who also went to Twin Valley High School and was working in Los Angeles on TV shows, trying to become a producer, and we would discuss who we liked. Then I asked the ones I liked best to read in groups, to see how they interacted.  I knew Elizabeth Schmidt (Julie) was perfect the first time she read.  Laura Bach (Trish) suggested Carl T. Evans (Matt) when I was having trouble casting that role. Scott Laska (Josh) got his role when the person I originally cast backed out to pursue a horror flick role – so I held more auditions and found Scott, who was perfect.  By the way, it’s amazing how many fat or ugly girls look cute or even hot in their headshots. Then you ask them to audition for a “girl next door” part, and when they show up you can’t even recognize them because they are dressed all trashy and wearing too much makeup.  They just waste yours and their own time. I wanted to tell them that they’d be perfect if I was casting the chubby friend, or a whore, but I’d never end up calling them for those roles because their head shots are too misleading!   

WHERE DID YOU SHOOT THE FILM? Kicking the Dog was shot entirely at my parent’s house in Chester County, Pennsylvania. My mom repainted the whole house before the shoot to create better backdrops for lighting and filming.  Then she had to re-paint after we wrapped, to hide the damage. We shot Wednesday through Sunday for a month – so my parents only came home to sleep, and I have no idea what they ate.  We covered all the windows with black plastic to simulate night, and it stayed like that for a month.  My parents live in the country, and it’s fairly remote, so I knew that I could get good, clean sound – which was important, because the film has a lot of conversation.  I also wanted to be able to leave the equipment on set, to avoid delays.    

HOW WERE FAMILY MEMBERS INVOLVED IN THE FILM? My sisters Dawn and Hope both have lines as people arriving at the party late in the film; they have to respond to Ronald and the Chubby Kid who demand “five dollars or your panties” in exchange for a beer cup.  My sisters made the 90-minute drive to and from the Trenton train station several times a week to pick up or drop off actors during the shoot.  They also picked up the beer and pizza that Victory Beer in Downingtown, Pennsylvania donated for the film. I wanted to use real beer since people are drinking in almost every scene, and they also provided pizzas for the cast and crew on weekends. I am in the porn shop scene.    My parents never read the script or knew the content of the movie. They never saw a trailer or anything for the movie until its premiere, where, in front of 200 people, including their family and closest friends, they witnessed a foot job in their bed, a guy peeing out of their window, and a strap-on and crotchless panties appear from their dresser drawer – not to mention the boob poking, strip poker and condom sharing scenes.  My parents are just about the nicest people you will ever meet.  My dad’s a dumptruck driver and my mom’s a first grade teacher.  My dad’s garage is kind of the local hangout, and I grew up welding and working on cars and hanging out there.     

WHERE DID YOU FIND THE ORIGINAL MUSIC IN THE FILM? There are nine bands on the soundtrack, all from the Philly area.  The band Pawnshop Roses has five songs on it.  I was living in my cousin’s apartment in Philly, near South Street, when I first saw them play and was hooked.  When I was editing my movie, I remembered them and asked them for a CD.  That CD had five songs on it, and I used all five.  I would have used ten, if they had that many.    

HOW MUCH DID IT COST TO MAKE? About $72,000.  I never told distributors I made it on such a low budget or that I shot it almost entirely in one location because I didn’t want them to think it was low budget indie crap.   

YOU SHOT THE FILM IN SUPER 16mm. HOW DID YOU EDIT IT? I never planned on editing the movie. Daniel Watchulonis (Dir. of Photography) convinced me to do it.  So I bought a Mac and the Final Cut software and Daniel came over to my apartment one night and showed me the basics (because that’s all he knew, which he failed to tell me).  I basically had to teach myself as I went along. When I completed a version, I would send it to Malachi in LA and Daniel in New Jersey, and they offered suggestions.  They watched a LOT of versions.   

HOW DID YOU FIND A DISTRIBUTOR? I turned down a few distribution offers because most deals are garbage and they’ll never get the movie in any stores.  David Shoshan from Imageworks was the first person who seemed to be truly interested in the movie, had some ideas to improve it, and got me the deal with MTI Home Video.   

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE FINISHED FILM? I didn’t set out to write the best movie I could write – I set out to write the best movie I could make for the money I had.  I wrote a movie I felt I could make, and make well, provided I did a good job casting and hiring a crew. That said, the writing and acting is still better than most Hollywood movies, especially comedies. The problem with most indie films is that the writer/director writes a “real” movie and tries to make it on no budget, which often makes scenes look amateur-ish. I believe that no matter how low the budget, professionalism can and should be the highest goal. I’m not some artsy-fartsy filmmaker trying to change the world or save the rainforests – I just want to make people laugh.   

BY THE WAY, WHAT’S WITH THE FILM’S TITLE? The name of the movie stems from my days at Virginia Tech.  I was at a party with some friends and they were having the type of discussion people shouldn't have when drunk - because everything was very opinionated – and they were talking about loving animals and someone who wasn't treating their girlfriend nice, etc.  They asked me my opinion, and I said, completely sarcastically, "I would never lay a hand on my girlfriend, but a wife, I think she's actually considered a man's property in this state.  Keeping the wife in line is just like kicking the dog," thus offending them on two levels, because the dog lovers were probably more offended. It became somewhat of saying with my friends after that.  I kinda thought it related to the relationship between the two lead characters - people who  love each other often treat the other like shit when they have a bad day, because they know they'll still love them tomorrow.  Later, when I got a distribution deal, they wanted to change the title - which I had contemplated doing but could never think of anything else I really liked.  They had a few bad ideas, which would have made it sound like one of those 1980s sexploitation, bikini-shop movies.  I had a few bad ideas, too. Then they asked me what it meant, and I made up a story that it was a term used by college kids about having doggy style sex, and that "kicking" meant "doing it" and "dog" meant "doggy style," so that “doing it doggy style” had become “kicking the dog.”  I thought they'd like it.  But the distributor came back to me a month later and said that I needed to find a new title because it meant to have doggy style sex, and also that animal lovers may be offended.  I told him I thought it was memorable, if not good, and we never found another title.    When I was advertising for auditions, I got e-mails from a few animal rights groups that said I could never sell a movie with such an offensive title and that I should be ashamed of myself.  I would write a return e-mail asking "If the title was 'spanking the monkey' or 'choking the  chicken,' would you still be offended?"  I'd never hear back from them.  I always wanted the movie to appear to be vulgar, but then have people realize it's not. Many teen movies rely on shock value to make people laugh - I never wanted to do that. To me, the title is exactly like the movie - on the surface it appears to be offensive, but like the movie itself, you realize it's deeper, and actually not as offensive at it appears.