By Paul Boerger
Mt. Shasta Herald
Jun 27, 2007
“Dreams Awake” writer, producer and director Jerry Alden Deal said the title of the film he will be shooting on and around Mt. Shasta comes from a quote by Henry David Thoreau, “Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”
“Part of the theme for the film is the lead character finding inner courage. She is not awake in her life,” Deal said of the mother played by Erin Gray of Buck Rogers, Baywatch and Silver Spoons fame. “In the film, she is on a journey of self discovery and she wakes up in the dream of her life.”
Deal is no stranger to the Mount Shasta area as he spent time here since the 1970s and owns a second home in south Weed, near Hammond Ranch, where he spends several months a year off and on from his primary residence in Ventura.
“Dreams Awake” is the 55 year old Deal’s directorial debut for a feature length film, having made film shorts and written numerous screenplays. He said the time had come for him to “take control of my destiny.”
“I was sitting on my deck one day and realized I wasn’t getting any younger. Hollywood is youth oriented and a writer has no power,” Deal said. “I decided to be the producer of my own film.”
The film’s plot revolves around a dysfunctional family – mother, father, brother and sister – that comes to Mount Shasta and has an awakening.
“The family lives in a frantic high tech disconnected world. They live separate lives and are thrown together,” Deal said. “They make a transition to a more natural world.”
Deal said the mountain plays a large part in the story.
“I set the story with the mountain as a character. There are all kinds of stories about the mountain,” Deal said. “I use them as a tapestry for the story that happens to the family.”
Deal said as he wrote the screenplay, the mother evolved as the lead character.
“In the writing process, characters start to write their own parts,” Deal said. “The mother became the lead character. It turns out the mother has a connection to the mountain she didn’t know she had.”
Deal has had a long journey to filming “Dreams Awake’ from his first work on the set of the Coen Brother’s “Blood Simple” as a young man out of college to writing 17 screenplays.
“Blood Simple was the Coen Brothers’ first film. I started as an extra and then worked as a production assistant,” Deal said. “It was really cool being on that film set for my first film. I was in the middle of writing my first screenplay and I could tell Blood Simple was a good script. It inspired me. I thought, ‘oh my God, I have a ways to go.’ The lights really came on after writing five or six scripts.”
Deal said of his 17 screenplays, “half were for hire that never got made. Others were about things I really cared about. Some were optioned and never got made.”
Deal said the film’s budget is “under a million” and was financed through networking with potential investors.
“Films are investments and there are strict laws governing the process,” he said.
In addition to the name-actors signed on for the lead roles, Deal said recent auditions in Mount Shasta and Ashland, Ore. will see several local residents secure roles.
“We’re considering a half a dozen people from the Mount Shasta area,” Deal said. “There are three of four scenes where we will need extras. We’ll be putting a notice in the paper with a contact number.”
Deal said although the exact locations haven’t been set, scenes will be shot from July 26 to August 18 on Mt. Shasta, in downtown Mount Shasta and at Deal’s 15 acre property in south Weed.
Deal invites the public to come to the shooting scenes and watch, but to be quiet.
“A big issue is sound,” he said.
Deal said Dreams Awake is intended to be the first of three films called the “Awaken Trilogy.”
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