Vacation

Status: Preproduction

Production company: Recorded Picture Company

Cast: Bruce Campbell (Bryce, attached)

Crew: Richard Stanley (screenwriter, attached as director), Maggie Moor (screenwriter), Michael Riley (producer), Alexandra Stone (producer), Simon Duric (storyboard artist)

Premise: A Jewish banker and his lapdancer girlfriend are stranded in a remote island paradise, when a nuclear exchange wipes out most of the outside world. Soon, the local Muslim population turns on them...

Coverage: What is known about the project at this hour is that it is likely going to be shot on Digital Video, with a budget of $1,000,000. Like the desert scenes in Hardware, some of the filming is planned take place in Morocco. Another location which has been looked upon are the Canary Islands. In July 2005, Stanley was said to be scouting locations and finishing the script, after which he was to return to the UK to resume preproduction locally.

"Maggie Moor wrote the story/dialogue/and music for an original dramatic stage play entitled My Girl, which was staged and read at Stella Adler Theatre in 2005. It is the story of a young couple struggling to survive the jungle of New York City and the madness that provokes them. It is currently in rewrites and prep for theatrical production next year.

Based on My Girl lead character Carlotta, Maggie Moor wrote feature film Vacation with co-writer Richard Stanley (Director Hardware, Dust Devil). An unhappy, materially driven American couple who go on holiday to a North African Moslem island, only to find themselves trapped due to apocalyptic storms, and left to fend for themselves as the world they once knew collapses, and they are forced alone together as the last survivors on a barren Earth."

[From the official website of Maggie Moor.]

"'Vacation' is a low budget sci-fi horror penned by myself and Miss Moor. Bruce Campbell (of Evil Dead and Bubba Hotep fame) fell in love with the script and passionately wants to play the lead man, Bryce, an aging banker who still fancies himself as a surfer and ends up trapped with his lap dancer girlfriend in a shabby, middle eastern beach resort after an apocalyptic solar storm destroys the west, forcing the luckless Americans to come to terms with a medieval, year zero environment and a hostile culture that holds them responsible for the world's pain. Sort of Lord of the Flies with credit cards. Oh, and Muslims. Them too. Which was probably a step too far for the Film Council but a necessary one. Of course it might go easier on me if I stayed clear of hot issues but think of how we react now to period German film-makers who pretended to ignore the holocaust?"

Budgeted at one million dollars Vacation is the simplest, cheapest and meanest thing we could think of whilst simultaniously being able to guarentee a return on the investment. Half that figure, 500 000 sterling, has been in the war chest since January thanks to a patron in Monaco".

[A MySpace blog entry by Richard Stanley, April 4th, 2007.]

"A new backer has emerged for 'Vacation', adding a further 250 grand to the pot, bringing the total to three quarters of a million dollars, three quarters of the figure we need to actually shoot the beast. For the first time the odds seem to be stacked in my favour and although I hate to count my chickens it looks very much like we'll be rolling camera come October, Inshallah. Still a million miles of rough road ahead but with three quarters in the kitty and Bruce Campbell in the wings the project is finally gathering steam."

[A MySpace blog entry by Richard Stanley, April 5th, 2007.]