By Garth Meyer
It was a 12-day film shoot in the summer of 2023, but it originated in the summer of 1980, when a young man from the Philadelphia suburbs went to Ft. Lauderdale after two years of college.
Working in a T-shirt shop, one day he peaked through the newspaper-covered windows of an old motel where he parked his bike, and saw two guys.
“I got the sense they were New Yorkers and they were hiding. They never left the hotel. One day, they were gone,” said Thom Mills, now living in Redondo Beach.
The incident was the spark of what became the screenplay for his film, “Luderdale” — released Oct. 21 on North American digital HD internet, DVD, cable and satellite platforms.
His first feature, his company, Trispect Films, based in Redondo, financed most of the $250,000 budget.
“Been putting my money away, been putting my money away,” Mills said. “I really needed an 18-day shoot, but couldn’t afford it.”
He found an old motel to use in Sun Valley, Calif., after scouting the stretch of Ft. Lauderdale where the original incident took place.
“It all looks like Miami Beach now,” Mills said.
His crew built a motel rooftop set at Loyal Studios in Burbank, for the actors to play against a green screen — Mills later adding footage he shot in Florida for the backgrounds. Other area sets used were at NVisionate Studios, also in Burbank; a motel lobby, hospital room, restaurant, etc. (The studio rents stock sets, available for each filmmaker to modify).
“Luderdale” starts in New York, for which Mills used parts of downtown L.A. as a double. A veteran actor, he appeared on “Seinfeld” and “NYPD Blue” after moving to Los Angeles in 1994 and acting until 2005.
“I came out here to direct,” he said.
With a background in journalism from Southern Illinois University, Mills worked at Backstage West – writing a column called “Thombudsman” – and took classes at UCLA Extension in cinematography, editing, writing and directing.
He and his wife first lived in L.A. at Pico & Fairfax – arriving in town two days before the Northridge earthquake.
“Is this what they’re talking about?” Mills said.
As an actor, it was “10% work and 90% (auditioning and) trying to get the work,” he said.
In Ft. Lauderdale, that summer of 1980, young Mills found a place to stay three miles from the beach. When he encountered the two men at the closed motel, he asked if it was open, if rooms were available, Mills was looking to live closer to the water. One guy was completely unfriendly but the other guy was nice; he said maybe.
They ultimately rented a room to Mills and he lived there for three and a half months. Other empty rooms were used as storage for businesses open on the motel’s bottom floor.
When the two men abruptly left, a few days adterward a lady who ran a high-end bikini shop in the building knocked on Mills’ door; the property owner, asking what he was doing there. She apparently was unaware anyone was living at the site.
“I was always a fan of early Martin Scorsese films,” Mills said, of his eventual screenplay, which he first began writing five years ago.
“I wrote and re-wrote it. It’s all about the re-writing, then I had to be re-writing while I was making (the movie),” he said.
The shooting schedule was 9-12 pages per day.
“This was a feature film in 12 days,” he said. “I don’t recommend it.”
Finally, after editing was complete and he aimed to finish the film, Mills held a cast and crew screening in Playa Vista in the summer of 2024. From the gathered reactions, he re-did special effects, the credits, sound, re-imagined a fight scene and re-cut it.
Mills then hired a film sales agent, who introduced him to four distributors, and he signed an agreement with Freestyle Media, owned by Byron Allen.
Mills now submits the movie to film festivals; it has already been chosen for the closing night at Tampa Bay Underground Film Festival.
“The goal is to get our budget back, and I get another job as a director,” he said.
“Luderdale” refers to a common drug at the dawn of the ‘80s, quaaludes.
“I hope the film moves the audience in some way, and they say, ‘I’ve seen something unique and different,” Mills said. “It feels totally like a gamble. I hope an educated gamble.” ER
