December 7, 2009
“Harvey the Monster Racist” premiered on Saturday, December 5, 2009 at the Regency South Coast Village Theater as part of the Orange County Screenwriters Association event featuring actor Kevin Sorbo.
The cooperative production between OCSWA and Lennex Productions had many instant fans as the appreciative audience gave it thumbs way up for its fun tone and clever writing. The eight minute short had people laughing from the opening images to the closing credits and afterward the gathered filmmakers took a much deserved bow talking a bit about the making of the short.
How hard is it to make a movie? “Monstrously” difficult would be the correct answer
here. Just in talking to the people surrounding the making of this very funny short film made it clear that the journey is long, hard and fraught with enough setbacks to make one want to do anything but make a movie - but more on that later.
The basis of this sharp satire penned by comedian Brandon Tyra (with additional material by Eric Hensman of Lennexe and Mark Sevi of OCSWA) is that the old Universal Studios monsters: Frankenstein (Jeff Michaels), Werewolf ( Victor Phan), Mummy, Bride of Frankenstein
, Vampira (Anna Huang) and Dracula (David Mendez) can no longer get work in Hollywood because all the old archetypes are changing.
Vampires aren’t from Transylvania these days - they’re from Portland; the Mummy isn’t bandaged, he’s a CGI skeleton who grows muscular flesh as he completes his evil plans. The Wolfman is a hunky 17-yr-old who fights for the affections of a pretty high school student against glittering, brooding vamps. So, these traditional monsters, unable to get work, are being mainstreamed into the offices of corporate America - sort of like a halfway house for recovering acting hams.
Harvey (Rob Kent,) Mr. Anyman, struggles with the wacky things that monsters necessarily do - like scratching fleas and howling in the office (Wolfman), stealing all the toilet paper to fix up his look (Mummy), shorting out the entire office to get her 3:00pm energy jolt (Bride of Frankenstein), and asking for charitable blood donations when all he really did was forget his lunch (Dracula.) Frankenstein (Jeff Michaels) has no clue what a copier does and is frightened when the copy lamps come on (“Fire, bad!”) Site gags and clever, sly moments fill this movie.
Harvey’s epiphany comes when he’s fired by Mr. Klein (the elastic-faced Larry Porricelli) for monster racism - unacceptable in today’s PC workplace. He ends up drinking with a bum (Al Medina) in an alley. There the bum tells him about being saved by a werewolf in Vietnam. Harvey now understands that Monsters are just like us and he gets his old job back when he apologizes to Werewolf. The fun-loving monsters and Harvey go arm-in-arm back to work.
Afterschool Specials have nothing on this film.
I really expected Harvey and Werewolf to pop up after the credits and talk about “teachable moments.” Maybe that part should be added to the “director’s cut.”
This production, from what I was able to gather, had its ups and down including last minute fall outs by actors, equipment problems, and the loss of the location for the shoot the night before principal photography was to start. It’s a tribute to the skill and professionalism of director/producer Hensman that he was not only able to recover and complete the shoot but make it one of the lighter and funnier shorts I’ve seen recently.
The filmmakers asked me to include a special nod to producer Itai Levin who secured the location for the shoot at the last minute from Dean Tanji at Abracadba Presentation Graphics who made his facility available at the last moment. Also to all the volunteers who made Harvey the joy it is, a big thanks from all the producers.
The makeup, camera work and setups were especially amazing considering the lack of budget and tight shooting schedule.
Harvey was a cooperative production between the Orange County 
Screenwriters Association and Lennexe Production through the Make It Reel Script to Screen contest.
“Harvey The Monster Racist” will be coming to a video site near you soon - see it.
