Weekday Service is a comedy about a man (Diego Kontarovsky) whose seasonal bus stop grind is complicated by the appearance of an infuriating series of posters on a wall. The way this thing came together is that one day James pitched me the beginning of the story (first the winter scene, then the summer scene), and used myself and Padra as the cast to help me visualize it. But he had no ending. So, for months, I would occasionally shoot him some ideas for how to end it. My favorite pitch involed the man going to his office and seeing a desktop of the girl at the beach, so he quits his job. Then he goes to the beach and sees a picture of her in heaven, so he kills himself. Then he gets to heaven and sees a picture of her in hell. So he slaps around St. Peter or something and goes to hell. Then he sees a picture of her doing something else (I forget what), but it doesn't matter because he's in hell for eternity, and that's how it ends. I think they didn't like that because it was too long and they might also have claimed that they'd already done hell in Bottom Floor. Although I argue that this would have been a visually different hell, with fire and brimstone. Finally, one day I pitched James the idea of the third scene the way it plays out in the final cut. He inexplicably loved it and we had a go picture. The most interesting thing about this is that if James hadn't initially put me in the cast, I might never have bothered to come up with any ideas, and this short would have probably never happened.

This movie is awesome. Sometimes people see it and don't share that sentiment, but I think it's a great thing that James and Robert took the time to tell this story [that nobody else would have]. I'm not especially proud of my performance. I think my faces suck, especially in the beginning, but I also think I get progressively better, and my physical movements toward the end are thankfully close to what I had in mind. The timing really works too, again, especially toward the end.

I think the Behind the Scenes is fantastic, too. Lots of great moments, and James and Robert even get to do their talking head bits in front of a bunch of Christmas shit, which made it extra special. This is probably my favorite Behind the Scenes (as of this writing), second only to the King of Behind the Scenes; The Black Iris Behind the Scenes.

Here is what the Dastolis have to say about Weekday Service:

ROBERT:

"Weekday Service was when "Gagn-o-vision" was termed, in which we took every shot basically from two slightly different camera setups and combined them to achieve more resolution. It's the only movie we did this for every shot (as it had been done before for individual shots in Under the Gun and I think some others for various reasons) because it came at a time when we were going to get the Canon XL-2 but were still shooting on the Canon GL-1 and we just refused to accept the lower resolution."

JAMES:

"When the concept for Weekday Service came to me, it was less linear. It's like I felt the Winter and the Summer scenes happening in the same thought. Onscreen, it plays differently than that concept because it has to unfold in real time."

Occasionally, when my brother and I want to celebrate something with James and Robert, like the completion of a film or a birthday, we will go to one of the miniature golf courses at Walt Disney World. One of them is called Winter Summerland. Is this in any way related to the conception of this project? That is a mystery for the ages.