Special Ingredients
A few weeks ago, I was going through beta tapes (remember those?) containing all my old celebrity interviews and entertainment reports on them and I came across a three-quarter-inch tape that had my very first short film, Special Ingredients on it. After I had that old tape transferred to an external hard drive, I watched this comedy, and it brought me back to a wonderful place in time – the Nineties. It was cool to see how different my writing was back then and the hilarious mistakes caught on film – a few of the actors actually reading their scripts during the scenes, the dialogue itself, and the several continuity errors made in general.
The year was 1995 and I was 29 years old. I was working in Creative Services at KALB-TV, an NBC affiliate in Alexandria, Louisiana. It was my first job and my co-workers quickly became family. One of these much-loved family members is Kent Arceneaux who shot, directed, and edited Special Ingredients. Today, Kent has his own production company (Arceneaux Productions) and together, we created the award-winning short films Brunch before Baptism and A Stand for Damaged Fame.
Special Ingredients is about five very different people planning their class reunion. Those of you who are from Central Louisiana will remember many of the cast because they were local news personalities at the time. It’s been several years since I’ve watched this precious project of mine, and it took me back to a time before cell phones when people could smoke in restaurants, MTV was still playing music videos, and Blockbuster Video was booming.
You can see Special Ingredients by clicking here - and don’t forget to subscribe to the channel!
Enjoy your journey back to the Nineties!
David
