Bloody Sisters

Okay, folks. Here’s one. I was working on a TV show called Switched at Birth. The storyline for Switched at Birth is, two mothers have babies that are switched at birth, and they raise these kids as their own. And then, when the kids are teenagers, they realize they were switched at birth. Leah Thompson was one of the mothers, and there was a scene where let me go back a little bit. Oh yeah, there’s a scene.

Let me tell you about Leah Thompson. Leah Thompson’s character’s name is Catherine, and her daughter that was switched at birth, is Daphne. And Daphne, who is a deaf actress, she could hear a little bit, but she was deaf, was into horror movies. She loved horror movies, and Catherine, in one scene, wanted to bond with Daphne. So she goes and rents a horror film. She rents Bloody Sisters in 3D, and they’re going to sit home, watch popcorn and watch this film.

At the production meeting, we’re doing the script breakdown, and I’m with the prop master at the time, Scott Buchwald, who’s a really good friend of mine. We’re doing the script breakdown, and we started talking about Bloody Sisters, and I’m excited because I love horror movies and I love the fact that we’re going to make, I’m thinking, what, they’re going to shoot some horror film for the footage for them to be watching. And Scott asks, he goes, are we going to shoot actual horror footage for Bloody Sisters? And they go, no, we’re just going to do some kind of public domain thing. You know, it’s not about the show they’re watching, it’s about their reaction. In fact, in the script, Daphne doesn’t show up, and she ends up watching it with her husband, and Scott goes, “Oh, okay. Because you know, Mark and I, I think it was a year ago, wasn’t it Mark?”

And I was like, “Yeah.” We shot something with our kids. I shot it with my son, and Mark brought his daughters in, and we shot something that would work for that. And they go, “Really? Well, bring it in next week, if we like it, we’ll edit it into the show.” We continue with the production, the whole time I’m going, what the hell is he talking about? Production meeting’s over. I’m looking over at him, and we’re walking to our prop truck, and finally, I go, “Scott, we shot a movie a year ago?” And he goes, “Yeah, we’re going to shoot it this weekend.” So, I got my daughters, who are amazing actresses, and he got his son, who’s a brilliant actor. I mean, you know, this is how good his son is, and my daughters are, we put them in this kind of position all the time, and they do it, and they are brilliant.

I know I’m a proud father, but people are always blown away by just how talented these girls are. So we shoot it, and we bring it in, and they’re like, “Well, this is perfect. It’s like it was shot for these scenes.” And we said, “Okay, great.” And it makes it into the TV show. The only thing I thought was weak about it was they put some type of filter to give it a 3D effect. Then whoever did it had no clue how to do a 3D effect. And it took away from the actual footage of the girls because it really was some good stuff.

A cool side note, episodes later, Emmett, who was one of the love interests in the show, who was a completely deaf actor who was brilliant in the show. He makes his own, he makes a deaf movie and later on I’ll talk about Deafenstein, which is a movie. It’s got a tragic story to it, but for ABC family. So, but he makes Donna the deaf, and we actually see him making the film. And so it was a very cute movie done with sign, all completely done with sign language and stuff like that. But how he makes the movie or, I don’t know if he does this before or after. He’s reading a horror magazine, and he sees an ad at a film festival for horror films. I think that’s pretty much how he came up with Deafenstein. I mean, Donna the deaf, not Deafenstein. That’s another story.

But what’s cool and where I’m going with this is, the magazine that he’s reading is a Mad Monster magazine that Evan had made up for me with the Bloody Sisters on the cover. So it’s like a, oh no, it was Bloody Sisters 3 on the cover. So they had made a couple of them. Also, yeah, there’s some really great ads in the magazine too. I gave everyone the magazine.

The synopsis for Bloody Sisters was kids walking home by the creepy old house. He’s got a mitt and a ball, and he’s tossing up in the air. He misses the ball, and it rolls under a fence under a hedge, and he goes to get it. And he sees these three little girls tossing a pumpkin over a dead nun, and he’s kind of taken back and like, Oh my God. And he’s looking down for his ball, and he goes to get his ball, and the pumpkin rolls up to him, and he realizes they see him. So he grabs his ball, and he runs home, and he locks his doors, and he goes up in his room, and he falls asleep. And when he falls asleep, he thinks he is dreaming, and he comes out.

And one of the things I did that I liked, I made this, another voodoo doll. My youngest daughter has this voodoo doll, and she comes up to him and shoves it in his face. And when he, you see, the voodoo doll didn’t have a head, it had a locket, and there was a picture of the boy that is scared to death, but it’s the same exact expression that he has when she shoves the voodoo doll up to him.

He freaks out. But he wakes up, and it was just a dream, and he’s laying there going, you know, Oh my God kind of thing. And looking up at the roof of his bedroom and all of a sudden, the pumpkin starts being tossed over him. That was what I wrote; what you saw is just him with the girls there. No, him with a flashlight. And as he walks away to go upstairs, my middle daughter, Brittany, has been completely around because she’s that way, and it is revealed that she’s been standing like that the whole time behind him. And when he goes up, the three girls are there, and there’s wind and chaos, and my youngest daughter shoves the voodoo dolls to him, and that’s all we shot. But we did shoot footage of them tossing the pumpkin over the dead nun, who was my wife, Angela playing the nun. So those are what you’re going to see pictures of the nun. I just wanted to give you. I thought it’d be cool to tell you the story of, because I always write a story for these little things, but that was the beginning, middle and end. All right, thanks.