Every film is hard to make no matter how much money you do or do not have. Any undertaking with a diverse group of people all attempting to focus on the same elusive goal is naturally difficult. The cliché holds true, it is like war, except that a real war has the added disadvantage of someone trying to kill you.

Shot in Los Angeles and fabulous Greater Bakersfield, "The Zeros," would have to be called a skirmish more than a war, and without the resources for prolonged battle, the film was shot quickly in 19 days on Super 16 film. And although no one was wounded, the (heavily insured) grip truck did manage to take out the entire front of a hotel and make the local news in Kern County.

It's unusual for a cross country road picture to never leave California, but Writer/Director/Location Manager John Ryman spent several months scouting locations to double for Arizona, Texas, New Orleans and Florida. Bleak landscapes represent an energy starved future where oil derricks and power lines are omnipresent. Inspired in part by the look of Antonioni's "Red Desert," the goal was to make a futuristic looking film that was not limited by the low budget.

Working with Director of Photography Michael Price, Production Designer John Hartman and Costume Designer Jennifer McManus, Ryman created a world that would convincingly portray a familiar kind of future. Not the future of "Blade Runner," but a future that is almost here. A world closer to what we know, but with small, strange twists. A world in which the main character, Joe (Mackenzie Astin) finds himself alone, surrounded by absurdities, and unable to really connect with most everyone he meets. It's an intimate story about a dying young man searching for his lost first love, and the usual kind of effects you'd expect in a "futuristic" movie would be out of place.

Given the limited financing, it was necessary for everyone on the film to do double and triple duties. In fact, there was talk of people actually getting all the credits they earned and deserved, but unless you could make them as interesting and funny as Monty Python's famous 'Moose' credits in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" what, really, was the point.

Besides, we suspect there are certain rules about not giving actors grip credit.