It was basically one shot. He'd always focus on Forrest and follow him,
whatever Forrest did, wherever he went. When Forrest sees something,
the audience sees it too."
After Forrest Gump, Tignini went on to work on Terminal Velocity, Nine
Months, Mulholland Falls, Phenomenon, and Desperate Measures. In 1997, he
worked on City of Angels. "We created traffic jams in Los Angeles which
was, in and of itself, fun. We were shooting things from an angel's per-
spective, which means we would shoot way up high atop billboards and
on top of skyscrapers. We'd shoot over and down from them onto the
city. It took a lot of planning and preparation, but at the end of the day, it
was really fun. It takes the audience somewhere they haven't seen."
Work on features such as The In Crowd and America's Sweethearts fol-
lowed, along with offers to serve as first AD beginning with the television
series Tenacious D. Between jobs, with partners David Elton and Thomas
Johnston, Tignini wrote, produced, and directed Jerome.
"That's my passion. I make
my money working on big
Hollywood productions, but
my passion lies in smaller
independent film with per-
sonal stories." More than ten
years in the making, the film
was released in 1999. That
success came after writing
four screenplays that were all
rejected. Tired of trying to
guess what Hollywood execu-
tives were looking for, the part-
ners wrote the type of movie
they would want to see. "To
our surprise, it was the screen-
play that people responded to.
People tapped into the story,
and we were able to raise
financing for it. It was very
low budget."
Written during short
stretches between working on
features, Jerome was shot under
the same time constraints.
"We'd take three months off
to shoot, go back to work, then
"Wear comfort-
able shoes. You will be
on your feet all day
long. I remember my
first day on the job was
an unusually short day. It was 12 hours.
After standing on my feet for 12 hours, I
remember saying, `Gosh, that was a long
day.' A guy turns to me and says, `Long?
That was a short day! Wait until you see
tomorrow.'"--Eric Tignini
"The thing you learn really quickly is
just what a small community the film indus-
try is. I think any of us could walk onto
another film, and nine times out of ten they
would know somebody working on the
picture. It's a very, very small community of
people who are out there working, which is
why word-of-mouth and recommendations go
a long way. People know very quickly who's
working on what. Or if something bad
happens, you know right away; it spreads
quickly."--Eric Tignini
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