ST. PAUL PD THINKS I'M DEAD

the story starts at 9:30pm on sunday night, the 28th of august. there was a stern knock at my door; one that bespeaks authority. as i approach the door a hard voice says, "st. paul police department, will you please put away your dog." so i put the dog in the closet and go to open the door, expecting the officer to tell me to vacate my home as they execute yet another warrant on the home next door. instead the officer asks me whose car is parked behind my home. i tell him that it is mine. he looks at me as if i don't know which vehicle he is speaking about and asks me again. "the red contour?" i say, "yeah, that's mine." after checking my id to confirm that i am indeed lance, the owner of the vehicle, he asks me to explain the vehicle's condition. i explain that the car was used for a film that we were shooting, Summer School, and that we used the vehicle for one of our deaths scenes in which one of our characters is shot in the head. "oh, we thought something happened to you." explained the officer. after commenting on how real the brain matter and blood splatter on the inside of the car looked he asked what we used. i explained the rather elaborate setup we had with a cantaloupe and some blood and teh 16 gauge shotgun with which we shot it. at this point the officer's partner cautiously creeps around the corner to see what's up. the first officer says, "THIS is lance," he turn's to me and asks me to explain the situation to his partner. they both tell me that they thought they were holding a homicide scene and that their sergent is on her way down to see what the situation is. the officer's let me go back inside and they return to the vehicle to wait for their sergent. a few minutes later the officer returns to my door and asks me to accompany him to the vehicle. i say sure, throw on some shoes, and walk on back. as we near the car i see that there are five squad cars in the alley behind my home and about eight or nine cops. i explain the whole story to the other officers agian and then the sergent starts to ask me where did we shoot the film and do we have proof of that. do we have paperwork that proves we are filmmakers and could i open the trunk? i do my best to comply with all the officers and answer all their questions. one officer was trying really hard to find the slug from the shotgun and couldn't understand why, at that range with that gaige, the slug didn't just pass through both windows. "i know," i told him, "that's what we were hoping would happen when we shot the footage, we're actually kinda mad that it didn't." another officer wanted me to explain why what was in the car was there for. his rationale was that if it is for a movie everything in the car is there for a purpose. i said that is true if we were shooting interiors of the car, which we weren't, so everything in the car is my personal property. then they wanted to know where our film equipment was. i told them the camera was in the house and the rest of the equipment we rented from MCAD and cinequipt. they asked to see the camera so i went inside and asked ben to bring it out. ben had the good sense to also grab the footage of the effect to show the officers. after viewing the footage all the officers seemed to relax a little bit. one officer asked if i was familier with my neighbors and could i see why they were a little concerned about a gore filled car in this neighborhood. i told him yes i understood. the poolice sergent informed me that they had been looking for a body that morning in the area that didn't turn up so when my neighbors started calling the police about a bloody car they became very concerned. she said that they needed to take pictures of the car before they left and i said alright. after all was said and done the sergent then informed me that it was illegal to have a vehicle parked in the alley without plates, being that i transferred the old plated to my new car, and that i needed to put plates on it. i asked if i still needed plates if i salvaged the title and she said that i would have to ask the dmv. i said all right, i'd look into it. a few minutes later, as the other officers were leaving, the sergent approached me again to tell me to put plates on the vehicle, only this time she gives me an ultimadum. she tells me to either move the vehicle up onto my property or clean it up and put plates on it. i tell that i will be able to move the car in the morning when i have more hands then my own and ben's. she says, "i hate to be a hardass put you need to do it now or else i'll have to tow it." i tell her the car doesn't run so she says to put it in neutral and push. i said we've tried that before and it's too heavy for ben and i to push it alone so unless you can give me a hand we can't move it now. she says that she can't help us but maybe the other officers will give us a hand. so i look at her like, well what am i supposed to do then. i say that my brother should be home at some point that night and then we can use his truck to move the car. she says "alright, but if i get any more calls about the vehicle i will have to tow it." now i understand that this is the position that she's in, but is towing a car that doesn't run and is covered in gore really that much of a threat. i mean if they take the car from me that means i don't have to worry about how i'm going to get rid of it. as it turned out my brother came home and we moved the car up onto the bakc patio, where it sits today. so there's the whole story of the incident, the follow-up is the phone call i got on tues. from the pioneer press in st. paul and the resulting article, which you should all have heard about by now. the upside to all this? a tremendous amount of free press for the first feature film from RandomCreatureFace Films. HA!! check ya.