Filmmaker blog by writer / producer Georgia Menides

4/27/08 - Who Was This Mysterious Man?

At the end of the day, we did have a legitimate plan. Rigging 100 ft wide black drop cloths from our beach house all the way to the edge of the water would enable us to shoot our night beach scenes and still shield all lights from the baby sea turtles, allowing them to hatch and scramble toward the water to their endangered hearts' content.

This plan was good enough for the Collier County Fish and Wildlife Federation and the FL Environmental Protection Agency. And even in Lee County, although yes, most houses diligently pulled their shutters down post 9pm, the lights from the clubs illuminated late night revelers all along the coastline of Fort Myers, the wild party town directly north of Bonita Springs. So clearly, Turtle Time was willing to work with the community and sometimes bend their rules to allow man and turtle to exist symbiotically from May to October. These facts made us think our problem with Turtle Time Inc was not strictly environmental, it was also personal.

Why Turtle Time Inc would make it their personal mission to fuck with us was still unclear, but there was no doubt they were on this mission. We had already agreed in writing that if a turtle nest was found on our property, we wouldn't shoot at night. They patrolled with flashlights every night anyway, and a few neighbors had alerted us that Turtle Time had asked them to call if they noticed any night time shooting on our property, so shooting behind their backs wouldn't have been possible, even it we'd wanted to.

But reps from Turtle Time called my cell every morning to "check in" each time reminding us of the fines and imprisonment we could face if we were to try to light the beach behind their backs. Every morning, we'd take deep breaths and cross our fingers as they patrolled the beach, checking for turtle nests. At no point was one ever found in front of our property. But every morning, someone from Turtle Time would stop by the house and harass us about something, anything that might deem our property not "turtle friendly." A particularly memorable time involved a lecture about the heavy wooden beach chair on our lawn. Turtle Czar # 1 told us they would have to fine us for having the beach chair on the property because it was hazardous to the sea turtles. It was challenging to keep a straight face as she explained that a baby sea turtle could, on its way to the water, accidentally crawl under the chair, get stuck under it, drag the chair on its back into the ocean, and then drown under the weight. How a baby sea turtle the size of a cell phone at best could somehow inadvertently get stuck under a huge heavy metal chair and drag it all the way into the ocean was beyond all of us, but it illustrated the point that Turtle Time Inc did not want Still Green shooting in Bonita Springs, and was going to make this as hard for us as humanly possible.

One day the Czar drove by on her golf cart with a few baby sea turtles in a bucket. They were totally cute. We all ran out to take a look at these adorable creatures. She yanked the bucket away and gave us a look as if we were personally responsible for the near extinction of the species.

Clearly, some sort of politics were in play here, and the moment Andrea landed in Florida, she decided to take them on immediately. Meanwhile I began looking into other places we could film these scenes in the event we couldn't win the political battle.   

Fortunately, Andrea can charm almost anyone she comes in contact with. I'd seen her work her charm during our last movie, summoning all kinds of perks and exemptions we never should have had. If anyone could talk someone with more power than Turtle Time into letting us film at night, it was Andrea. She immediately made an appointment with the Collier County Film Commissioner, the Mayor of Bonita Springs, and the board who ran city hall.

I decided to swing by this "de-alligatored" lake that Mary from Fish and Wildlife suggested could possibly pass for the gulf.

My hopes were not high. There were all kinds of concerns, my biggest one being this whole "de-alligatored" situation. As beautiful as the lakes are in Florida, you aren't supposed to swim in them…ever. There are alligators in every lake in Florida. Florida, in general, is teeming with alligators.

Although we were originally more worried about sharks, talking to the locals we quickly realized that most of our shark paranoia was more hype than reality. The sharks in the gulf coast already have plenty to eat in those lush waters. For the most part, unless you do something stupid like fishing out beyond a sandbar with piles of chum in your pocket (like the first shark attack we heard about on the news) or swimming at dusk farther out in the ocean than you should ever be in the first place (like the second shark attack on the news), the sharks are not going to hurt you. Most of the locals didn't even think about sharks when they went swimming. Alligators were a different story. Even the locals feared the alligators. No one went into the lakes.

Except, apparently, this one.

So this lake was "checked for alligators." What did that even mean? Unless they were draining the lake on an hourly basis, yanking out any alligators they found lurking at the bottom, and pumping the water back in, I was not comfortable sending our actors into the lake to splash around for hours in the middle of the night, although clearly, the rest of Collier Country seemed to be comfortable, as when we arrived, people were swimming, children were playing, and summer spirits were high.

At any rate, when we arrived at the lake, a bigger problem immediately presented itself. Between the tree line which can't be disguised surrounding the entire lake, the huge stadium, the streetlights, the picnic tables, and the power lines, not to mention that the lake water was …well...still…the way lake water is, there was no way even the most naive of film watcher would believe that this lake was the Gulf of Mexico.

This was the first week of August. Fortunately we had until mid September to figure this all out. Unfortunately we had a million other things to figure out too, and could not be devoting every bit of our time to our turtle problem. But we treaded on.

As Andrea prepped for her meeting with the mayor, I started googling recreational parks. I found a place a few hours north of Bonita Springs that, at first glance, seemed like it might be the answer to this entire mess. The Coral Springs Yacht Club was a public park with a beach area right on the gulf. But the shores were full of pebbles, not sand, so turtles didn't nest there. This meant the park was exempt from all turtle laws. I called Michael, the manager of the Yacht Club and explained our situation.

For about 20 minutes, elation permeated through the Leley Island Estates. Michael was thrilled at the prospect of having a film with a few recognizable teen actors shoot at the yacht club (for a pricey fee of course; but at this point, who cared). I simply had to submit a basic proposal for him to run by the Coral Springs town hall, who was meeting the following week. But he assured me they would be as thrilled as he was.

20 minutes later, Michael called me back. He'd forgotten to ask, but he just wanted to make sure this was a PG teen film, as the town hall committee of Coral Springs were (surprise, surprise) extremely conservative.

"I mean you aren't going to film a bunch of teenagers drinking or having sex or anything like that I assume," he said, laughing at the absurdity. My spirits immediately sank.

This is a realistic teen film, not an after school special. So yes, of course the teenagers in Still Green are drinking, smoking pot, and having sex. There is nudity, and unfortunately, both scenes we needed to film did involve some t & a. One was a sex scene, the other was a skinny dipping scene; all our actors would be getting naked.

I thought about lying for a minute. But it seemed like telling the truth and potentially losing the location would be better than lying and getting caught. The last thing we needed was another reason for anyone Lee County to give us even more of a hassle.

I tried my best to explain to Michael that although Still Green would most likely be rated R, and that yes, the two scenes we were looking to film in his club did involve nudity, it was not gratuitous or in the least bit raunchy. I tried to explain that both scenes had a deeper spiritual meaning about the connection between man and animal, the connection between man and the ocean. I tried to explain the beauty of a non traditional funeral and the way people find comfort in a loss. According to Steve, the "making of" guy who was filming this conversation, I was spitting out some inspirational rhetoric.  Unfortunately, Michael most likely stopped listening after the word "nudity" because the moment it left my lips he immediately started backpedaling. He said that I could still submit my proposal and the scenes themselves to him before the next committee meeting, but he admitted that given the nudity element it was unlikely that the committee could support this idea.

I submitted a proposal, crossed my fingers, and hoped for the best.

I'd also found a hotel in Sanibel, right on the beach, that had gotten an exemption from Turtle Time because the hotel was under serious renovations. This grand hotel was a huge money maker for the town and needed to be finished before season started up again so the crews were allowed to work at night. And yes, to do this, they lit the beach.  Doug was quick to point out the hypocrisy running here. If the Sanibel Resort could get an exemption from Turtle Time, we should be able to as well. I called the initially enthusiastic resort manager and submitted a proposal. But a few days later she called back and said that all night activity involving lights had to be submitted to Turtle Time before they could get approval. She offered to submit the proposal to them herself. I told her not to bother. To be honest, one of the three shark attacks in the news had taken place in Sanibel, so I can't say I was heartbroken about this plan not panning out.

We had a good friend in Collier County who knew everyone in town. He told us he had a friend who owned a house far out into the Key Waden Island chain, about 5 hours by boat from the mainland. His friend lived in Michigan during off season, and the house was boarded up all summer. Perhaps he could boat us all out to his friend's island-home and we could film out there? He started making some phone calls to investigate this possibility. In the event his friend wasn't cool with this, he offered to boat us out to any of the deserted Key Waden islands and find one that was turtle nest -free. Maybe we could just set up and do it in the middle of nowhere on an island, perhaps camping out on the island if need be? But besides being illegal, that involved major power issues, to be without any electrical source, as well as plenty of other logistical problems. I did start pricing out generators, but this plan was dubious at best.

We thought about renting another beach house for two days, somewhere up or  down the coast, safely outside of Lee and Collier Counties and shooting the scenes where no one would be stalking our property looking for lights. In the event we did get caught, we could play dumb, pretend to be NYU students making some school project and claim we'd never heard of the sea turtle laws. I made a few calls in this direction but problems with this plan included the costs of renting a new place, the costs and hassle of moving the production, and the extreme waste of money and time (of which we had neither) it would be to go though this, only to get there and find a turtle nest on the property or to get caught and have to stop filming.

Meanwhile, Andrea had her meetings. The film commissioner agreed to do what she could to work with the environmental protection agency of Collier County, to see if we couldn't get onto one of the public beaches in Naples proper for a few nights, assuming there were no turtles.

The mayor was charmed by Andrea's passion and sincerity, but he delivered some interesting and unexpected news. He admitted to Andrea that there had been pressure from Turtle Time Inc throughout their city council to shut our production down because of the turtle issue. He told Andrea that considering the amount of money, career opportunities, and media attention we'd brought into the community, he had no intention of doing this, but that everyone answered directly to Turtle Time when it came to sea turtle protection, and that he had no power to override them.

Andrea asked why Turtle Time would have such bad blood with us when we'd been nothing but compliant and in negotiation mode since the moment we'd arrived in town? We found out something totally weird.

Apparently, a man, and he wouldn't reveal who, had called Turtle Time upon our arrival in town. He claimed that he had originally been a part of our film crew, but had quit the production when he realized how "self centered" and "Hollywood" we were in our lack of care for the environment. He claimed that our plan was to just shoot at night unbeknownst to Turtle Time, whether there were turtle nests on our property or not. He claimed he'd overheard us saying things such as "To hell with these turtles, we have a movie to shoot" He called Turtle Time and basically said everything he could have possibly said to make Still Green their worst enemy.

?????????????? Who was this mysterious man?  More importantly, what the hell were we supposed to do about the turtles, Turtle Time Inc, and these two crucial scenes?

As a footnote, Steve Petty, the “making of” guy isn’t someone from our crew simply shooting behind the scenes footage for us. His company, Real Life Media, is making a documentary about indie filmmakers and about what really goes on behind the scenes. You can check out www.MakingStillGreen.com to see some samples of his upcoming documentary.

He also recently edited together a mini webisode called “survival of the fittest” dedicated entirely to our turtle problem which you can watch at www.facebook.com/pages/Making-Still-Green/10119894454?ref=share