Behind the Scenes

New Age Enema is one of those projects that refused to die. The script came from J. Phillip Wilkins in the same 2019 deal that brought in Tipsy. A quick, nasty little two-hander. Originally set on a San Francisco cable car, two actresses clawing at each other over career delusions and a suspiciously convenient crystal that promises stardom.

It was simple. Mean. Funny. A bad genie story dressed up as industry satire. At the time, Daryl saw it as a vehicle for Sasha Boggs and Caitlin Reilly, something to shoot in New York. A city he’d always wanted to drag Dollars & Donuts through. There was momentum for a second. Then life did what life does. Caitlin blew up on TikTok. Friendships shifted and the project slipped back into the drawer.

It came up again a few times over the next couple years, but there was always hesitation. The material hit a little too close to home. Actors playing actors trying to make it. Funny on paper, less fun when you’re living it. Daryl had the same instinct, but the core idea was strong enough to keep around.

In 2023, Becker Von Felsburg was in Austin for an Ash Holes screening. As usual, that turned into an excuse to shoot something. New Age Enema came back up, this time with a small but important change. One of the roles was rewritten as male and Becker stepped in. That adjustment was enough to give the material some distance and make the dynamic work again.

Lea'h Sampson took the other role. The chemistry was there, and the script finally had the right setup to move forward. The setting changed as well. The cable car version was dropped in favor of the South Congress Bridge in Austin. Same basic structure: two people in motion, one bad decision, and a fall that settles the argument.

The fall was handled with a digital double. Becker was scanned using Polycam and a simple CG version of him was animated going over the bridge. It’s quick, but it sells the moment and does exactly what it needs to do.

The film also doubled as a test for the DJI Ronin 4D. The goal was simple. Keep the camera moving cleanly and see what the system could actually do in a real shoot. It worked. The setup was fast, the movement was controlled, and it let the performances carry the scene without getting in the way.

The DNA of Wilkins’ original script remains intact. Two characters, one conversation, one object with entirely too much power for how casually it’s treated. A wish is made, a body is lost, and somewhere out in the void, a new star flickers into existence where there wasn’t one before. Along the way, a few details were adjusted to tie it into the larger universe. The fortune teller is now Madame Mimi Umbridge, played by Daryl’s Aunt Vicky in The Tattoo, connecting the story back to that film. The amulet itself was borrowed from Becker’s friend Casson Kaufman, which worked out well.

And just like that, a throwaway two-page script from 2019 becomes a Texas-shot, VFX-driven, character-pairing experiment that folds neatly into the wider mythology and ends up screening at the same festival that sparked it back to life in the first place.

Of course it does. That’s how these things work.