D.B. Sweeney: Beyond ‘Toe Pick’

29 Jul, 2010 By: Chris Tribbey

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Quick: You’re a first-time director, producing your own film, the budget is super tight, and you need 1,000 unpaid extras for scenes inside Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. What do you do?

Easy: Have hockey legend Wayne Gretzky recruit fans getting out of their cars, offering Coors Lights and a free T-shirts. Works every time.

That was the scenario a few years back when actor D.B. Sweeney was filming his road-trip buddy movie Two Tickets to Paradise. The film, starring Sweeney, John C. McGinley (“Scrubs”), Ed Harris (Gone Baby Gone) and Moira Kelly (“One Tree Hill”), sees three friends stuck in a middle-aged rut until one of them wins tickets to the college football national championship. But getting to Florida from Philadelphia is harder than it sounds.

Paramount Home Entertainment gives the film a DVD re-release Sept. 14 (preorder Aug. 3). List price is $14.99, and the DVD includes a commentary, outtakes and deleted scenes. First Look released it first in 2008.

Perhaps best known for his roles as Shoeless Joe Jackson in Eight Men Out and the abducted lumberjack from Fire in the Sky (though he says to this day he can’t walk into an airport without hearing a few The Cutting Edge “Toe Pick” taunts), Sweeney found his first time directing to be just a bit challenging.

“It was the greatest experience in the world, but difficult,” he said. “The hardest part of directing is that I was also producing, so you want to do [reshoots] but then you look at the costs. I would love to direct again with a really strong producer with more money to work with.”

To help get the film done, Sweeney called in every favor he could: McGinley and Sweeney have been friends dating back to film school, Kelly co-starred with Sweeney in The Cutting Edge, Sweeney’s brother-in-law donated 1,000 T-shirts, Coors donated beer, and Sweeney’s friends Gretzky and hockey star Chris Chelios (godfather to Sweeney’s son) could be found on the set daily.

Having friends working on the movie with him helped Sweeney to “share in the success or cushion the failure,” he said.

Sweeney went to a half-dozen major universities to ask them if their football team would be willing to “lose” at the end of the film to the Texas Longhorns. The University of Southern California, the University of Miami and others all passed on account their school would be on the losing side. “I finally gave up with the top ten, and went to Marshall,” Sweeney said.

Producing, directing and acting left little time to focus on everything else that came with the film, including finding an alligator trainer who wasn’t going to put Sweeney’s and other cast members’ lives in danger. Filming a scene with two gators in North Carolina — when the gators were held back only by a rope tied to their hind legs — proved to be funny in hindsight, Sweeney said.

“I didn’t take much time to think about how I was going to get scenes with these two gators without getting attacked,” he said. “Some people lose their house when they do an independent movie. I was the first who was going to lose his legs.”

That scene made for good outtakes fodder, which is the first bonus feature Sweeney wants fans to check out. However, he didn’t have too much faith in his own commentary.

“I don’t really listen to them very often, so when I was doing my own commentary, they said I needed to say more, because I wasn’t talking enough,” he said.

Sweeney is especially proud of the soundtrack for the film, which features songs by Styx, Bruce Springsteen, Dire Straits and Stevie Ray Vaughn.

“To have them look at the movie and say ‘This reflects the values of our audience,’ that was really flattering,” he said.

Sweeney, who’s still racking up acting credits like they’re going out of style, would love another crack at directing, especially now that he’s gotten one film under his belt.

“My advice to first-time directors is to have a smaller crew, and don’t have all new people,” he said. “You should really have an experienced [staff]. They’re your safety net to your inexperience.”

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