There are moments in my life where I have really good ideas.

I've sat for days now trying to figure out where to begin on this series of postings, and trust me it's going to be a series of long posts so have a snack and beverage handy, because you have no idea of the total insanity known as my life. Let me give you a disclaimer right now--this is not work of fiction. All the events that you are about to hear are truthful and factual. As much as you are going to sit there and think I'm smoking crack because their is no way in hell what you are reading is true, it is. Only the names have been changed to protect the identity of the stupid motherfuckers that thought they could fly to California and make a movie with their heads stuck up their asses...

Whew...I apologize for that outburst but damn I feel so much better now. Shall we begin?

San Francisco. That's all I have to say. If you've been there then you understand what I'm saying. If you haven't been there then you are truly missing out on probably one of THE most amazing cities in the Unites States, if not the world. There's just something about that city that makes you feel like a kid walking into the living room Christmas morning finding all the presents under the tree that Santa Claus brought you. Just thinking about it is getting me over-clempt...talk amongst yourselves for a minute...

Anyways, there are moments in my life where I have really good ideas. There are also moments that I have really really bad ideas. Okay, most of the time I have bad ideas like the moment last night when I was trying to get the piece of toast stuck in the toaster out by sticking a metal knife into the toaster. I actually stopped and asked myself, "really Adam--your standing here shoving a metal knife in a toaster?" Bad idea I realize that now. But when I get a good idea watch out!

So I got this great idea rather than sit in a cramped car or truck and drive the six hours to San Fran, I would just fly. I booked the 6 a.m. flight out of LAX and was in San Fran at 7 a.m. and had the whole day to explore before anybody else arrived. My plan was to take the train from the airport to the hotel and then go into the city and get into some trouble.

Now there's one thing that you have to learn when it comes to making movies, unless you are working on the next Brad Pitt, no wait Channing Tatum movie, producers are going to give you the bare minimum that they are required to give you. That's just the way it is. Now imagine having a producer that is from India and doesn't know what the bare minimum required is.

Now I'll give them some credit...from first glance the hotel wasn't that bad I mean come on, the car sitting in the parking lot on blocks will one day have tires and be cruising the streets...right?

Anyways, the main reason we were in the bay area was to film in San Francisco...but the producers thought it was more cost effective to put everybody in a hotel outside the city in a town called Hayward. Heard of it? Probably not and there's good reason for that. If you are ever travelling the bay area and you see signs for Hayward either turn around or hit the gas and don't look back. I think the French would say shit hole...

I was the first to arrive to the hotel. Everybody else driving up would meet later in the day. Upon entering my hotel room I realize that okay this place maybe isn't so bad; I mean the brown stains on the carpet I'm sure are just brown stains and not the aftermath of a crime scene, right? Just be positive and enjoy the moment. So I walked into my room, made a few phone calls and then I was off to San Francisco.

Ah San Francisco. That's all I have to say. If you've been there then you understand what I'm saying... Shit I've already said that...Anyways, I take the 40 minute subway into San Fran. I have to say its a pretty surreal experience travelling into the city because you never see the city while you are travelling on the subway. Something about the subway being underground, I don't know, so when you actually get off the subway and walk up to street level, this amazing city slaps you in the face. With my flip flops on and my camera in hand it was time for me to conquer the city on the bay!

Six hours later and about 1,000 pictures taken, I was sitting on a bench on Market street with band aids all over my feet because my feet were covered in blisters. Mental note--when conquering a city wear shoes. As comfortable as flip flops are, there is a point when your arches will give out and several layers of skin will rub off your feet, both making you walk down the street moaning with every step like your eighty years old. But instead of letting my feet have a break, my ADHD told me to keep going...so off I went.

While walking I passed a place that advertised that it sold Absinthe so of course I had to stop in. If you're ever in San Fran you have to go to a place called Swirl wine bar. It's a great little wine shop that has a wine tasting in the back of the store. I proceeded to spend the next thirty minutes talking to the guy that works there about Absinthe. His name was Stanley. He's a really nice guy and knows his stuff when it comes to alcohol. He's also a really good salesman. After having talked me into buying a seventy dollar bottle of Absinthe I realized that it was only a few hours until I was to meet the other crew members in the city, so I asked Stanley where was a good place to stop and kill some time. He suggested a bar down the street and told me to tell the bartender that Stanley sent me. I thanked Stanley and was on my way. Realizing that time was running out I decided to keep walking and try to get a few more pictures prior to meeting up everybody...twenty minutes later I was sitting in the bar Stanley had suggested.

It was a cool little dive bar that wasn't crowded with tons of people; In fact there was like ten people in it. I walked in limping from my blisters, my big camera dangling from my neck, and a seventy dollar bottle of Absinthe in a brown paper bag under my arm. Can you say train wreck? I walked up to the bar and sat down. I'm sure the bartender (named John) thought I was mentally handicapped or had a severe case of hemorrhoids because I think I moaned quite loud when I sat down. John the bartender walked over and glanced at me, my camera, and the crumpled brown paper bag of absinthe and asked what I wanted to drink. I remembered what Stanley had told me so I figured why not give the name drop a shot. I mean what could it hurt? I told him that Stanley sent me. I guess dropping Stanley's name was the magic word because John the bartender said any friend of Stanleys is a friend of his and before I knew it I had four empty shot glasses and four pint glasses sitting in front of me with instructions that I can have any shots or drinks in those eight glasses I wanted for free.

Now my intentions were to stop in a local dive bar and have a beer. Did you hear that...A beer. But dammit, how could you not take advantage of the kindness of a stranger? I mean it would be an insult to not drink those drinks, right?

**SIDE NOTE**Mother don't worry--I gave some of the drinks away because I didn't feel like puking on the floor in front of strangers or embarrassing the family name is any way.

Via texting the crew members I was waiting to meet in the city, I sat at that bar and enjoyed my free beverages. Damn that traffic which caused everybody to arrive in the bay area later and later into the evening. So there I sat with my new friends, who now considered me a local I might add, and waited and waited. I'll be damned if the next thing I knew it was almost nine o'clock and having not spent a dime, was as the Irish say, piss drunk.

Now in San Francisco because the city is so hilly, cell phone reception is horrible and your phone spends most of the time searching for a signal. That in return causes your battery in your phone to drain...extremely quickly. As the text finally comes that everybody is on the subway heading into the city, my phone gives me a nice little reminder that I have less than 20% battery life left. Not a good feeling; Actually it's enough to make anybody sober up when you realize that your phone is about to die and you've got to meet a group of people in the city somewhere. So I send what I realized was one of my last texts of the evening, "phone dead. Meet at Powell station. Drunk."

Limping from my blisters, lugging a camera around my neck that feels like it weights fifty pounds now, carrying my damn bottle of Absinthe under my arm and seeing double, I head to the subway. I grab my subway pass and stick it into the gate machine and nothing happened. I tried several times. Nothing. Now pissed off that my card didn't work I stumble over and get another damn card for the damn subway. I get my ticket and finally get down to the platform. Now what I found out a few minutes later is that there are two subway systems in San Francisco. There's the BART system and the MUNI system. The reason that my card didn't work is that I was on the WRONG subway system. Luckily, once on the train I was fortunate enough to sit next to a crazy black man that smelled of weed and scotch, who was so kind to tell me that I was a stupid motherfucker and got on the wrong train.

Well no shit captain obvious...

So, after almost having to use my seventy dollar bottle of Absinthe as a weapon again the pot-smoking drunk guy, and a series of train transfers, I arrived at the Powell station still managing to get there before the other crew members. Don't ask me how. To kill some time and help me not fall asleep on the floor of the station, I pulled out my Ipod to listen to some tunes. Now yes it could have been the alcohol, or the second hand smoke from the pot smoking drunk guy, or maybe my bottle of Absinthe had a small leak in it and I had absorbed some of it through my armpit where the bottle had resided for like the last four hours, but I had one of those moments that I'll remember for the rest of my life. You ever have those moments when you're listening to a song and you're in just the right situation where the song and life are flowing harmoniously together? No? Well anyways, I did and I would suggest anybody go try this. When in San Francisco go down into the Powell subway station by yourself and stand next to the gates you pass through for the BART system. Play the song by Simon and Garfunkel, "The only living boy in New York" and just watch around you. I promise you I'm not crazy, contrary to popular belief, but it's like when you play Pink Floyd on the third roar of the lion at the beginning of the Wizard of Oz and the music and movie play in perfect sync. It's awesome!!

I might suggest having a few drinks before you go...it might help the experience.

Finally at almost ten o'clock everybody showed up ready to go conquer the big city by the bay. I can only imagine how bad I must have looked standing there covered in band aids holding my damn bottle of Absinthe like a homeless person. Luckily for me though the last train out of the city was at midnight so their conquest was a little shorter than mine.

You know it sucks when you're sitting with friends having just had a day you'll remember for the rest of your life, and you realize that you have to be at work the next morning at 6 a.m...

Yes my friends, the party was over and as we all sat silently on that train heading back to the armpit of the bay area known as Hayward, we all knew what was coming. It was the calm before the storm. We knew that that next morning our lives were going to change when hurricane "Kali Ma" hit the Bay area. Most importantly, we knew no one was safe and there was no way to prepare for what was to come...

We're off to see the Wizard.

Week three is over. I can't tell you how thankful every American on this movie is that week three is over. We spent the week shooting in the Mojave desert. Yes the desert in July...where things die from lack of water and the heat. Even more ironic is the town that we were shooting in was called El Mirage, which is even MORE ironic in itself as there wasn't a town there at all...

So we're out in the middle of the desert with no civilization, in a town that doesn't exist, and in the middle of July...can't get any better than that now can it? Now out in El Mirage is an airplane junkyard, kind of a place where commuter and military airplanes go rest peacefully after they finish their life of flying high in the skies. It's a pretty cool place that goes on for acres and acres of nothing but airplanes and junk. One would think that by us all travelling hours out into the desert that this would be a pretty big/climatic scene we were about to shoot, something that would have Indian audience members sitting on the edges of their seats gripping their curry fries tightly with one hand and covering their oppressed wives eyes with the other...oh the excitement when I found out that the scene we were shooting was...

Rather than give away the big climatic scene of the movie let's focus more on life last week know as hell. Yes, we all say that hell is probably hot, hotter than a witches titty, which I've yet to ever really understand. Are witches titties hot? Anyways, it was hot. How hot you might ask? Try 105 degrees at 8 a.m. reaching 125 degrees at 2p.m.. Now you folks in Texas might be saying that ain't that hot and I'm going to tell you to go suck an egg. When a truck is parked on the side of the road and one of it's tires suddenly explodes for no reason and the explanation given by a local is, "yep when your tires start to explode from the heat it's gonna be a hot one today", you know your in trouble.

True story by the way. Happened Wednesday.

Now we've established that the heat sucked. So we as the smart Americans that we are came prepared for the worst. We had our coolers of Gatorade and water. We should have been sponsored by Hawaiian tropic for the amount of sunscreen we had with us. But what we hadn't plan for is nature. Now when you're in the middle of the desert and there's nothing around you for miles and miles insects, particularly bees, have a sixth sense about finding you. Mental note for you all-Gatorade has sugar in it and bees like sugar. So what's wrong with a lonely little bee that just wants to collect some sugar to take back to her little children? Well there's nothing wrong with that but this little bee bitch got on her cell phone and called every fucking bee in her phone book! I'm talking HUNDREDS of bees taking over everything.

Que the flight of the bumblebee music.

Now imagine watching life before your eyes to the tune of the flight of the bumblebee. Would be pretty funny huh ? Now imagine watching life before your eyes to the tune of flight of the bumblebee while watching people run around being chased by hundreds of bees. Better huh? For example--the naive little craft services girl who thought it a nice gesture to cut up a watermelon to serve to the crew as they sweat their butts of in the desert. Nice fresh pieces of juicy watermelon on a cute little tray that she carried around serving people with. Her only problem is that the tray is so full of watermelon she has to use both hands, which doesn't allow her any ability to protect herself from the bees who are attracted to the nice, sweet, juicy watermelon. Think of someone having turrets syndrome but also having a seizure at the same time, all the while trying not to spill her tray of watermelon. But it wasn't just her...it was everybody. It was like were were shooting a movie titled "Attack of the Killer Bees". I'm telling you--you haven't lived until you've watched an Indian guy try to tell a bee to leave him alone. It's like a five minute conversation and QUITE amusing!

Now animals, including insects, have sort of a sixth sense in that they know when something is about to happen. You know the stories about when the horses start to run around and whine that somethings about to happen. Well now looking back I realize that when all the bees just sort of disappeared one day...we were in for something. See we were really thankful when we saw clouds forming on the horizon because that meant that we could have a potential break from the sun. What one doesn't think about is that usually when clouds form in the desert it doesn't mean shade, it means your fucked!

So the clouds roll in and we are all enjoying how it's now only like 110 degrees. What took us all a minute to realize is that we are in the middle of the desert surrounded by nothing but metal airplanes and metal attracts lighting. And then it began to thunder. That's when people started to run. It was like Godzilla was coming. Everybody pointed into the distance, yelled and then ran. About a mile from us is a dust storm blowing that looked like nothing but a wall of sand. Then it starts to rain. Then the winds begin to pick up. This is called a Monsoon...it goes from zero to you're screwed in .5 seconds.

I swear at one point I saw Aunt Em run out onto her front porch and yell for Dorothy!
Everybody took shelter as the winds picked up to crazy speeds, there was so much dust in the air it hurt to breathe. The road became a river in less than five minutes. We thought we were off to see the wizard.

But there in the middle of the monsoon we saw the naive craft service girl, drenched in rain and covered in mud, run by with a huge smile on her face yelling, "the bees are gone! The bees are gone!"...

...and that made everybody happy.

We are currently gearing up by putting flowers in our hair as we leave Thursday for a week in San Francisco to start the dance portion of the movie. Pray for us...

So here we go!

Now I have to be honest up front--I try to do these blog things all the time and they always fall by the wayside. It's like the kid who gets a new toy at Christmas and by New Year's he wants something newer and better. But I promise as long as I'm working, the stories will flow!
So let's get started with blog entry number one shall we?

The art of filmmaking is universal. No matter what variables exist, the basic principles of filmmaking are the same. This has been my philosophy for years...but all that went out the window here in the past few weeks like spitting that used piece of gum out the car window.

I'm currently going into week three of my current feature. It's a Bollywood feature over here from India. Now as exciting as that sounds, I have to tell you that it's really a mess. Okay I shouldn't say a mess because that's saying that there's still a glimmer of hope that it may be somthing of substance. It's a fucking nightmare! Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a racist fellow and all the crew from India are really nice people, but I'm starting to think that curry can cause brain damage.

Now the problem begins above the line on this one. The director/actor/funder of the movie is named Puneet. Do you remember the movie Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? There was a character named Mola Ram and he was the head god of the temple of doom. Well I kid you not that this is what Puneet looks like. In the Temple of Doom, Mola Ram's most poinenet moment in the movie is he shoves his hand into a guys chest, pulls out his beating heart and yells "Kali ma"!

We think this is going to happen any day now...

Puneet treats everyone as if they are inferior. He at times will tell you to your face that you don't know what your talking about and he does. After all we are just "dumb Americans". Little does Puneet know that the jokes on him. I can only sum it up in one example. There's one girl on the crew from India. She's a very nice girl and really the only one that can speak good English. When we first started this film we asked her about Puneet. She thought for a minute and said, "Um...I think you call him shitbag in your country no?" That's all we needed to know.

The past two weeks have been disaster after disaster all the while Indians and Americans running around keeping their chests out of Puneets reach. There is a good chance that if you were to visit the set one day, you would actually hear the words kali ma echo through. That's usually us Americans though because when you get so frusturated at everything it's pointless to cuss at these people becasue they just smile and bob their heads back at forth at you. We usually just shake are sunburned sore arms at the sky and scream "Kali Ma!" hoping that something would happen. Sorry to report that it hasn't worked yet.

Yesterday we wrapped week two. We all were excited that the week was coming to an end and yesterday was supposed to be an easy day. We soon learned that "easy" is a word that is used lightly in the Indain culture. Infact it's very possible that if you pointed to a tree and asked them what it was they would reply "It's easy." We were shooting in a public park in Beverly Hills which is always a big no-no. Tourists. Tourists suck with a passion; Their like mosquitos with cameras.

As we all arrive to the location we are sitting waiting for our equipment trucks to show up. It's the usual chaos of nobody really knowing what's happeneing today or what we are going to shoot. Infact Mola Ram...I mean Puneet tends to write the script as we go along.

I won't even get started on that soapbox.

Anyways, we see the trucks coming up the street so we are happy at least knowing that our equipment made it today. Now Beverly Hills streets are perfectly manicured with beautiful trees that line the streets. Beautiful low-clearence trees I might add. So as we sit there we watch as one of our trucks runs into one of these beautiful trees. So much so that the truck stops dead in it's tracks. That's when you know that it's not going to be a good day. I guess one branch was sticking a little further into the street than the driver thought and it caught the top of the truck. Again cause for the label "dumb American". Now the fireworks began when our boss showed up. He's a hot-tempered guy that really can't control his mouth when he gets angry. Some might call this Bipolarism but in our world we call it a normal day at work. Now when the truck hit the tree, most of the Indian crew was right there watching it happen. As our boss began to explode at the driver, the Indians simply stood there and bobbed their heads watching. When our boss realized that they were all starring at him probably the greatest line out of his mouth to date pierced the airwaves. Religious people cover your ears! As he walked by them he stopped and perred his eyes at the Indians and with his blood red face he yells,

" what the fuck are you Indians looking at? If you don't stop starring at me I'm going to pull your little Indian heads off and shit down your throats all of you!"

Then he walked away. The Indians looked at each other and bobbed their heads out of confusion.
We on the other hand watched each others jaws drop to the pavement. Did he really just say that? We all looked at each other and knew that there was really only one thing to say after that...Kali Ma!