My In Dreams Anecdote. aka, the movie my brother was in...ish

BLOT: (09 Mar 2012 - 09:37:05 AM)

My In Dreams Anecdote. aka, the movie my brother was in...ish

I have only watched Neil Jordan's 1998 In Dreams once. Opening night (or so), in the theater, back when Huntsville's Hollywood 18 was Hollywood 16, down on Memorial Parkway. I think it was '16. Anyhow, I was not super impressed, but I thought it was ok. Being generous, I might slap it a 3 out of 5, which sounds like a bad review and I guess it kind of is but more bad in that the movie struck me as mediocre in a way where it can succumb to its mediocrity than rise above it. I really do not remember much about it except scant impressions of apples and flooded towns. The latter being why I am bringing it up.

Back in the 90s, my brother Danny was working for a company whose primary function was to build simple but strong [and cheapish] wooden bridges down backroads over various oversized creeks and such. Which meant they were good at making efficient wooden structures in a fairly short period of time without a whole lot of excess overheard (entire bridges built with 3-4 workers). Somehow, this channelled into them getting a bit part in the production of the movie. Maybe they were up North Carolina way and someone noticed or maybe some old friend called in a favor. Do not know.

What they actually did was build a [fake] top bit of a steeple out in the water that appears to be the top bit of a steeple that showed up earlier during some underwater scenes. Movie magic. Et cetera. The underwater scenes of any note were filmed elsewhere, so they were likely on some kind of second or third unit mostly got this bit set up for the scene in which it was important to have, the actors showed up and then did their bit briefly, and it was all taken down. The only other scene he talked about being filmed there, at least in part, was where, avoiding spoilers as best as possible, a young girl's body is found in the flooded town lake and is being drug up.

At the time of filming, there was some consideration that my brother and his coworker might be in the shot, because they were helping to act the winch that was bringing the fake body up, maybe the kind of thing where you see some workers' hands reach over and bring it on board and such because they did actually get the thing and bring it on board (he had some stills of shots with them handling the body and the cage/rack it is in). That got cut, maybe was never intended as a full shot and it was just more of a what vignettes Neil Jordan could use. If you watch the movie, you'll see what I mean.

Except there is a scene near the very beginning, some workers on some sort of utility boat/barge, and I have no idea if that's North Carolina or wherever, but if you have it high enough in definition, and on a big enough screen, one of them seems to be wearing a jacket and a pair of shorts, and if that is so, that almost has to be him, because during the 90s my brother wore a lot of shorts in a lot of climes and mostly just tossed a jacket or a sweatshirt or a wife beater or whatever on top as befitting the temperature. I inherited that characteristics a bit, and have been known to jacket-and-shorts (say, during difficult hikes) but never quite to the degree he embraced it as a lifestyle choice. And I can't imagine many others considered it legitimate.

At any rate, no fame for brother. What work he did was buried under a supervisor's name, and I think even under a supervisor that oversaw his supervisor sort of name. Ah, well. Most of us barely use our fifteen-minutes, Danny's just happened to being edited out and left on a cutting room floor.

It is up on Netflix, by the way, at least for now. Skip to near the end to see the steeple, and right at the beginning (I'm not even sure if credits have finished) is the work boat.

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