Hunting Lessons started out as a dirty joke.

I was told the joke while working on another movie. The film�s gaffer, Lawrence Smith, and I had a good laugh and at almost the same time said, �you know, this joke would make a great short film.�

I kept the idea in the back of my mind about taking a joke to the screen. About a year later I thought about it again and decided to sit down at the computer one cold winter night and flesh out a script. Hunting Lessons was born.

The one thing that I didn�t want was for the film to be as lewd as the joke. I had to find a way to tell the joke, have the audience get the joke, and still keep it relatively benign. I also wanted to make the audience think about the characters in the film.

Hunting Lessons is my first film. I decided to shoot on 16mm because it is the only medium that I really understand. I am one of those hopeless romantics who still has a darkroom. I wanted Hunting Lessons to have a timelessness that I still believe can only be captured on film.

This foray into directing became an experiment in rule breaking on many fronts. The first thing I did was hire actors with absolutely no experience. I was worried about that at first, but hiring professionals was out of the question due to budget constraints. I also didn�t want a bunch of super experienced actors rewriting my scenes and basically telling me how to make my movie. I have seen that too many times on bigger film sets. Also, this was a bit of an experiment for me. I was a first time director and the question for me was: could I get a performance out of regular people? The answer for me in the end was �yes�.

You will also notice that the time period is not established. Is it the 1920s, the 30s, the 40s? I wanted to break this rule and let the audience decide what the period was.

The last rule that I completely ignored was the fact that Hunting Lessons was shot almost completely with available light. We were very lucky. Most of the film was shot exterior and the weather over the four shooting days was the same, overcast, so thankfully everything matched. We used one 250 watt tungsten lamp in Carl�s tea making scene and that was basically it. We broke the rules.

I cast Quinten and Justin White and Steven Doiron to play the parts of the young boy at different ages. I was lucky to find Steven. He contacted me and wanted to shoot a behind the scenes video. I declined at first for fear that a roving camera would make my cast nervous. Since I had not cast my oldest boy yet I asked Steven to send me his mug shot. When I saw his picture I was blown away. Once again I was given the character I had envisioned for the film. I called Steven and told him that he was going to shoot video and act in the film as well.

Once the script was written and the preliminary casting had started, my first job was to find my old man character. I was explaining to a friend that I wanted to cast a man with lots of miles on his face, someone kind of frail, to play the know-it-all-recluse.

My friend in turn showed me a picture of his girlfriend�s grand father and there he was, the person I was looking for, Carl Brooks. He reminded me of Lee Van Cleef from the Sergio Leone�s spaghetti westerns. Carl, originally from Maine, was wintering in Florida when I sent him the script. We had a couple conversations on the phone and he agreed to play the part.

At first, to me, this movie was about the evolution from a boy to a man. This was the case in the script. But as the clich� goes, there�s �the movie you write, the movie you shoot, and the movie you edit.� In the end I also saw that this was a film about conquering loneliness as was the case with Carl�s character.

We had lots of fun making this film and that includes doing the soundtrack. The title song gives some clues into Carl�s character. If you listen to the lyrics it tells a little bit about Carl�s story.

�I�m so broke, I can�t pay attention� was written in about ten minutes in my kitchen one day. I wanted this film to be about the music as well as the visuals since the piece is not dialogue intensive. The title song was one of those things that just jumped on to the page. Most of my film ideas revolve around the soundtrack. Music has always been a big part of my life. The soundtrack (except for the song used during the closing credits, which is �This Is It,� by The Blasters) is all original. The film score was recorded by me in my bathroom with a beat up slide guitar that came to me from Yazoo, Mississippi via E bay and a 1964 Silvertone tube amp (for all you gear heads out there). The title track was recorded at Fluid Audio Group in Saint John by the Butterdonkey�s which is comprised of myself and a great group of local musicians including Glenn Ingersoll, Al Gallant, Dean Roberts, Scott McRae, Lenny Higgins, and Norman Calp. We wanted the song to have a real hillbilly sound so we recorded it live in the studio with seven of us playing and singing blue grass style into two condenser microphones. The chemistry was magical.

Unfortunately Carl Brooks was very ill during the filming of Hunting Lessons. We almost lost him once before shooting was completed but he returned and we finished. Once I realized how ill Carl had become, Hunting Lessons became very personal for me and the whole crew. I knew that Carl wanted to get this in the can so that he could leave behind a memory for his family.

Carl passed away shortly after we finished shooting. I took him the rushes, but he did not get a chance to see the completed film. This film is dedicated to him.

In closing, I would like to say many thanks to my amazing crew for their talents and vision in making this film a reality.