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The idea for Perfect Sense came from writer/director Chris McInroy having an interest in all things psychedelic including the history of mind-altering chemicals. In the summer of 2002 McInroy realized that there had not been a movie about the invention of LSD. After reading about it in several different books through out his life he decided it was time to turn it into a visual story. Not wanting to make the story exactly the way it went down McInroy made it his own by fictionalizing it. Not knowing Albert Hofmann at all as a person he created his own character using the name Dr. Hofmann and gave him an assistant, Maxwell.
Pre production began in October 2002. With all cast and crew secure it was time to make sure the production team could make present day Las Vegas look like 1943 anywhere. They secured the lab location thanks to the UNLV Chemistry department. When they arrived at the lab it occurred to them how perfect it was, yes it was already painted like that, only minor adjustments had to be made. Anything that was post 1943 had to be removed or covered up. Going into such detail as folding over the elements on the table of elements that were discovered after 1943. Finding the house location was another task set before the team. “ The real story takes place in Switzerland, I didn’t want to specify where the movie was taking place but I wanted a feel for old times. The house was truly hard to find since everything in Vegas looks the same. Stucco,” says McInroy. After much searching and at one point considering shooting in an antique shop they came across The Clark County Heritage Museum. There is a street at the museum that has been created from uplifting real houses from Boulder City that were built in the 1940’s. The team secured a house on that location but they could only have it from 9 am until 4:30 pm on Sunday. Now the task was, find antiques to fill the scenes with.
Having one of the main actors (John T Woods) and the cinematographer (JT Gurzi) being from Los Angeles the plan was to shoot the film in one weekend. Plus they only had the grip truck with all the equipment for one weekend. Not to mention they only had the locations for that weekend. And McInroy’s dad flew in from Iowa for the weekend to be in the film. So the team had to be prepared to work hard and fast.
The first day of production was on Friday November 8th 2002. It was a short day, shooting the opening shots in the lab and basically setting things up for the next day. They put together all the lab test equipment, wrote the diagrams on the chalkboard and set up Maxwell’s desk area. The day went smooth with not many problems at all.
The second day of production, November 9th, didn’t start out that well. “ We all got to the lab location at 8 in the morning and we were supposed to meet our lab consultant there to let us in the door. He didn’t show up,” remembers McInroy. Finally an hour later another man showed up to let the crew in. That day was scheduled to shoot everything that took place in the lab. That meant a lot of setups and a lot of time. At one point in the day Sean Boyd (Dr. Hofmann) had to leave for a few hours for an audition. During this time they picked up all insert shots that didn’t require any actors and got Mr. Woods into makeup.
The production crew had bought two goldfish (Goldie and Moleculo) for the movie in case anything happened to one they’d still have the other. Luckily nothing happened to either. “Goldie and Moleculo were like the mascots of the production,” states producer Rebecca Moermond. Whenever the bowl water got too dirty the whole production froze until there was fresh clean water in the fish bowl. “Once they were worried about the water temperature being too cold so someone put the bowl with the water on one of those bunson burners to warm it up,” remembers Moermond. Along with Goldie and Moleculo the team made their second day without any casualties, ending at 10 pm.
The third and last day of production, November 10th, was scheduled for the house scene. Call time 9 am. On this day everyone was exhausted and it didn’t help when only 2 people showed up to help crew besides the director, DP, producer and actors. About halfway through the day the rest of the crew showed up. They were playing catch up the rest of the day. Tensions were high in that house but everyone pulled together and finished the scene an hour late of the time they were supposed to be out of there. From there it was back to outside the lab location for the walking home scene. The day and film were wrapped by 10:00 that night.
Perfect Sense was finally finished in June of 2003. It took a while to find animators who would work on it for no money. The production had no money to spend. They also needed to find a composer to make the score with no money. But the thing that actually took the longest was rerecording every piece of dialogue in the movie. The production sound was flawed, there were pops, hisses, and everything seemed to be at different volumes. And instead of just fixing some of the problem they had to record everything so it all would sound the same. But everything got finished and Perfect sense is done. It’s gone on to play at festivals and has had a good life.
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