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...
Monday, July 20, 2009
Friday, July 10, 2009
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!
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!
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