We needed a dead dog for the movie. But we didn’t think we could get away with actually using a dead dog, or a really well-trained one. So we wandered into a local taxidermist and bang, our dreams came true – he had a coyote that was falling apart and was willing to sacrifice it to the film gods.

After the shoot was done, there was the question of what to do with the thing. It was all covered in fake blood and sticky, and the make-up ladies all refused to take it home, claiming they would simply not have any use for it. Shocker.

So it wound up going home with the me. And sitting in my closet. For nearly 6 months. Until one day I was entertaining a female friend of mine and I went to get something from the closet and saw the bag, and without thinking I blurted out “Hey, wanna see a dead coyote?” She asked if I was serious and I said “no.” But she knows me better than that and questioned why I would have a dead coyote in my closet. I replied that it was in a bag, at least. That didn’t help. She didn’t want to see it, I wasn’t gonna force it. I decided not to mention it was covered in blood.

Apparently keeping a coyote covered in blood in a garbage bag in your closet isn’t a turn on.

I got rid of it the next day.

The first time we shot the final scene, the location just didn’t work so we decided to reshoot. Because of everybody’s work schedules we couldn’t do it until 2 months later – at the end of November. Autumn weather is always dicey and leaning towards wet in the Pacific Northwest, and we weren’t disappointed.

After slogging all the equipment down a mud trail to the isolated barn, the shoot was going well and at a relaxed pace until we started noticing snowflakes drifting down from the steadily darkening sky above. With the relaxed pace abandoned, the cast and crew hammered through the last scenes as the flurries became a full-fledged blizzard and ended the day trudging back out of the woods muddy, wet and cold.The

Luckily, the scene still plays without a hint of the winter scene outside.