from Everything Moon Magazine interview.

 

Kill Me, Deadly is a film noir comedy that is just about to be released onto the world. It could be many months or another year perhaps, but moon people tend to be the patient sort. Once we heard they planned on being the first film to shoot on the moon we had to find out more.

 

Interview By Chalky Venderson

 

Chalky

Darrett, please jump right in and explain this shooting on the moon idea.

 

Darrett

Of course. When we originally did the stage play there was a desire to do it in black and white make-up so the audience would see everything in black and white just like the old films. However we were concerned with the mess of wearing all that body make-up. When we knew we would make the film we thought "Great, now we can actually do it all in black and white".  The problem being that this is not the 1940's anymore.

 

Chalky

Right. Everything is in color now.

 

Darrett

Exactly. Strictly black and white environments don't exist on earth like they used to. They have to be artificially constructed. And then I thought, "WAIT!!! The moon"."We will shoot it on the moon. It is all black and white up there. As far as the eye can see".

 

Chalky

Except?

 

Darrett

Exactly. Duh? I spent 3 days at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena looking at all the archival moon photos and footage and realized the astronauts were in color and the capsule rocket thingy is also in color. Back to the drawing board.

 

Chalky

That must have been a big let down.

 

Darrett

It was. But then I realized what a cool marketing idea this could be. Forget the color problem and focus on the exclusivity of being the first film to be shot on the moon. Feature film, that is. I know NASA did some short films on the moon in the late 80's but they were not features. And the synthesized scores were hideous.

 

Chalky.

So true. Those 80's scores could be dreadful.

 

Darrett

So we went to work on that and we talked with a Senator about getting us a meeting with some of the space big whigs. But no one would talk with us. I did some cost analysis of the whole thing and it was pretty outrageous.

 

Chalky

Please share.

 

Darrett

The initial cost of getting all the actors up there was doable. Expensive, but not out of this world. The real increase in cost came with the daily food deliveries and bathroom facilities. I mean you gotta have some where to store the waste. And garbage. I'm not one to litter and it seemed impossible to bring all that trash back with us.

 

Chalky

What about burning it?

 

Darrett

I'm not sure. What happens when you have to make a fire on the moon?

 

Chalky

Did you forget about the gravity issue?  How would the actors keep from bouncing everywhere.

 

Darrett

Our costume designer, Kimberly Freed, built these amazing period looking moon boots that you would swear were right from the 40's. We never got a chance to try them out, but I bet they would have worked.

 

Chalky

You would have had to build a lot of sets. That would have taken many rocket loads of lumber.

 

Darrett

Exactly. The whole great idea came falling down around us. Someone like Michael Bay could probably pull it off, but not us.

 

Chalky

And then you realized you could just shoot in black and white?

 

Darrett

Yes. I thought we had to make everything black and white and then shoot it. I was so naive.

 

Chalky

Aren't we all?