WELCOME
TRAILER
STILLS
KEY ART
ONE
SHEET
MUSIC
PRESS:
PRESS RELEASE
SHORT SYNOPSIS
THE MAKING OF PEEPS
BEHIND-THE-SCENES PHOTOS
CAST & CREW
ADVENTURE WITH A FRIEND...
DISTRIBUTION:
SALES SHEET
TIP SHEET
SYNOPSIS
DEMAR ENTERTAINMENT
COMPLETE CREDITS
STREET TALK
CONTACT:
310.288.3659 contact@thaPeeps.com
I'm Tom DeMar, the writer and director of Peeps.
Peeps was written for a friend who asked me to write for a college theater group something new to express students' frustrations for the inability to communicate with their teachers. I never expected to turn it into a short film, that just kind of fell into place.
For Peeps I wanted characters who speak for people who would be the most affected by the present conditions. I hung out with teens in Venice Beach, the Valley, Hollywood, South Central LA, San Francisco, and New York. What do they feel? A lot. They're overwhelmed. Instead of society addressing the situation, they are fed more bubble gum culture, to band-aid the situation. How can young people be tomorrow's truly independently critical thinkers whose actions match their intent? It's up for us to teach, enable, and empower them, and to set an example.
I wrote Peeps one morning at Abbot's Habit café in Venice Beach, infusing some elements of socioeconomic political views pertinent to the times, a few months before the national elections. I desperately wanted to produce it before the November 2004 national elections. I put my heart and time into not just writing and producing it, but also hanging out with kids, picking up the energy, the language, listening to the magical expressions, the growth hormones raging, the only-for-right-now magic. Hip hop music is #1 in America and emulated by not just African-American, but Asian, Latin and White youth. The culture of Hip Hop and rap music at its best is an undercurrent of critical perspective I call streetology. Streetology exists in quiet suburban master-planned communities with tall fences. I call that driveway rap. Peeps is an interesting peek into streetology, the talk, the double-meanings, the rhymes, the rhythms, the movement and dancing.
Shortly after I finished writing Peeps, I started looking for a theater to produce it. I met an actor while working on a music video for Lindsay Lohan who told me about a new space on theater row in Hollywood. The African-American venue was the perfect location and Peeps and it was produced there last December in a one-act festival entitled "A Walk on the Dark Side," along with plays about rape and incest.
I cast 7 actors who could sing and dance hip hop. I've worked with actors in downtown New York City basement plays, but actors in Los Angeles are quite different. There were constant changes and actors kept leaving for prior commitments. I even ended up playing the role of "Olsen" due to this constant problem.
My final cast consisted of new faces that brought a refreshing feel to the set. I met Mel (who plays el cholo "Pedro") at the theater and he brought Antwaine ("Truth") and Muluken ("King"), 19-year-old students he teaches at LA Job Corps. They read their lines like the back of a cereal box. Antwaine was really shy, so I had him do "Little John" yells as a warm-up.
Jessica, the hip hop choreographer, and 16-year-old rap dub artists Zino and DeShtolz I found from craigslist.com. For the music we recorded hand claps, human beat box, whistles, and snaps in Zino's bedroom studio.
I asked Dave McLellan (editor) to come out and film our last weekend performances. We took the actors out into the alleys near the theater and shot Peeps in two afternoons before our last evening performances. After 6 weeks cooped up in a theater, the cast came alive in the real street environment.
After our last performance at the theater we were asked to do the show in its entirely on KXLU FM radio at Loyola University. All 12 Peeps cast members squeezed into a small control booth with 3 mics, a handheld drum, and guitar. Even with the lack of space the energy and performance was just as refreshing as it was when we were filming.
A week later, Dave called me to say that he was going to have to charge five times his "editing" quote for the footage (archives) that we shot in the alleys because what we had was a short film. Since our actors were well-rehearsed we were able to get everything in two takes during the time of filming. We did a few pickup shots soon after we realized that there was a film involved.
Everything came together quickly and we finished post by the end of March 2005.
Peeps is an original. It captures an event, like in the old days when films started as plays. Being accepted to premiere at Dances With Films at the Laemmle made us wonder if this is "the little film that could." Watching the other films at the festival, I see heart and an experience an audience can't get at a mainstream video store or megaplex.
