In 2006, Northwest Film Forum received a grant from 4Culture to commission four short films from Northwest artists. The artists invited to the "Signature Shorts" program included Britta Johnson, Stefan Gruber, Matt McCormick, and myself.

With generous support from partners like Alpha Cine Labs, the program will produce 35mm prints of all four films. In this way, the films can be screened before features at Northwest Film Forum and other independently owned cinemas across the region. This will help achieve Northwest Film Forum's goals of bringing local artists' work to a wider audience and reviving the movie theater tradition of screening short films before features. I was quite honored to be selected as one of the artists to participate in this program, especially since they keep referring to us as "artists."

the crew

The first thing to do was line up producers, and I was very glad to have Elayne Wylie and Kristine Wong come on board. Elayne had already produced Virginia Bogert's Fly Film for Seattle International Film Festival, and Kristine was eager to extend her background in documentary filmmaking to narrative work. Both proved invaluable during the entire process of making the film.

Jordan Parhad and I have known each other for a few years, and he brought to the project his sharp eye, his keen interest in figuring out the technical aspects of our production, and his connections to the Seattle production community. The ace camera and grip personnel Jordan brought to our project magnified his contribution many times over.

the cast

I'd had the pleasure of meeting Yuji Okumoto on a couple of occasions. Although he has often been cast as a heavy, I fondly remembered some of his lesser-known comic performances (BETTER OFF DEAD, NEMESIS) and had come up with an idea for a comic short film which would feature Yuji in a starring role. However, the logistics of producing that idea proved to be unwieldy, and so that concept was scrapped in favor of an "easier" idea. I approached Yuji with this new idea and was very gratified when he agreed to participate.

Travis Myers is a very funny stage actor, and he also acted in my short film WHY IT'S A GOOD THING (2002). Indeed, it was with great reluctance that I had to cut a good deal of his funny business from that film to keep the running time down. I was glad to have the chance to work with him again in this project, and I think he makes a fine-looking milkman.

Julia James played a small part in a karaoke video I produced, and it was working with her for that project that helped inspire the story of COOKIES FOR SALE. She is a natural talent and will probably stop taking calls from the likes of me before too long.

Kyle Weber--who along with Julia, shares a homeroom teacher with my older son--was cast without an audition. As it happens, he possesses a remarkable knack and even some fondness for falling off his bicycle in a dramatic manner.

the shoot

We shot the film over four days in December 2006. The last day coincided with a freak winter storm that knocked out power to much of the Eastside, including the entire neighborhood where we were filming. Amazingly, we were able to complete the shoot despite the lack of power for our equipment or heat in the location home.

post-production

The project then sat in post-production limbo for much too long (my fault entirely), but once the edit was complete, Modern Digital stepped in with visual effects and color correction that resulted in something that far exceeded my expectations.

To all the cast and crew, and to everyone else who helped us along the way, thank you again for a wonderful experience. I hope you'll all be as pleased with the end result as I am.

--Wes Kim, Writer/director
September 2007