Tthe End of the World Party was shot on September 11, 2001. The day before we had an earthquake and had to evacuate the set, an old house we were shooting at in Korea Town in Los Angeles. The next day when I arrived on set, the second tower fell. Neither the insurance company, the studio, or the union would call it a force majeure, and because our budget was so limited we couldn't afford to lose the day. I had to keep shooting. I made an appeal to our crew who took a union vote and decided to continue work, which is a testament to their incredible professionalism and how close we had all become. However, I was in a very existential mood because of the events of the day, so I altered the ending of the film as a result, having Sean Bateman walk away from it all -- altering his destiny.
The exterior scenes were shot at the University of Redlands, just near Palm Springs, in the middle of a Summer heatwave. The crew was wearing shorts and T-shirts during shooting because it was so hot. For the snow we used a combination of white "snow blankets", foam, cornstarch snowflakes, and snow generated from chipping large slabs of ice that we trucked in.
The final shot, the POV of Sean's motorcycle was shot during editing. I assembled a small crew and we went up to Lake Arrowhead, a few hours outside of Los Angeles. We mounted the camera onto the front of a specially-modified Humvee, waited for the snow, and began shooting. The snow literally began a second before shooting, and stopped a second after we cut. It was a charmed production.
Note: I am the director of The Rules of Attraction (2002) and this clip is fair use under U.S. copyright law because it is (1) non-commercial, (2) transformative in nature, (3) uses no more of the original work than necessary for the video's purpose, and (4) does not compete with the original work and could have no negative affect on it's market.
