Monday, July 31, 2006

Sweat, sweat and tears.

Getting onto a major film is always a hoot, especially after doing five weeks of basic cable tv. When it's a Don Cheadle movie, so much the better. (The Washington Post talks a bit about the film, and our locations)

It's a mad, mad day: Five setups in one day, two units shooting pretty much simultaneously, as the producers scurry to bang out all the DC shots in a 24-hour period, and then get back to nice, cool, (cheap) Canada to finish the film. Still. "Talk to Me" looks like it has potential.

But oh but it's hot. I'm sweating buckets at 7AM. Our first setup is in Southwest DC, in front of a church and then in a public housing block. We're making everything look like 1968. Take a loot at your backyard, and think about how many items you have that weren't around back then. Multiply the task if you have kids -- toys are completely different now. So we have to move ALL of the stuff from the back yards, and dress in period material. Fortunately these public housing units have clotheslines out back, which we dress with period clothes. Not so easy are the satellite dishes pointing to the southern sky. One comes down (it was disconnected), the rest are covered in burlap. The set looks good, the director is happy. The locals are just great -- friendly, cooperative, all very interested in what we're doing. I don't think a lot of films have shot here.

Then it's a mad dash to the other sets, one up on H Street, two others on the mall. Then back the SW to wrap the townhouse... except as we turn the corner, there are, and I counted them, 12 police cars, plus an ambulance and a pumper truck. "Oh no," I think, worried about the locations guy we've left to watch our set dressing. I hop out of the box truck and walk over; fortunately our guy is safe, but has quite a tale to tell, in which a dozen police officers chased a suspect THROUGH OUR SET and corralled him in the intersection. Eventually we get the truck there, and start loading. Just as one of the residents comes home, and starts screaming bloody murder that we didn't have the right to shoot in her yard (you're eight hours late, lady!). We slam the doors of the truck and get the hell out of there.

Long day. Call time was 6AM, I wrapped at 11:15PM. I think I drank nine bottles of water, and never peed once.

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Do what I say, not what I do...

So I'm driving south on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, plodding along in the slow lane as those of us driving Honda Element's are wont to do. I hear the "woop-woop-WOOP" of a police siren, and notice a Park Police car in the left lane. He doesn't have his lights going. The driver in front of him quickly pulls over to the right lane, but the cop stays in the left. Speeds up. Gets right behind another driver, who of course has slowed down to the ridiculous 45mph that is posted there. "Woop-woop-WOOP." Again, a driver moves right, and the cop speeds by. "Hmm," I think. "No lights. No siren. Is he responding to a call?" I shrug, and return my attention to the Book on tape playing from the iPod.

A few miles down the road, I see the same police car -- I noted the cruiser number earlier -- now sitting on the median, behind some bushes, radar unit at the ready.

So, let me see if I have this straight: He was in a hurry to get to his ticket-writing perch, and didn't feel like waiting behind other drivers who were going the speed limit... so he could hurry up and start writing tickets for people who exceed the speed limit.

Am I missing something?

Monday, July 24, 2006

Those whacky Germans

So I have this new gig at a production house that is owned by Germans. They gave me an email account, and a lot of the company-wide messages are indecipherable to me, as I speak no more German than is required to find a bathroom, order a beer, find the subway, or perform a kidney transplant. Still, some kinds of humor transcend the boundaries of language, such as this ditty that recently made the rounds:

So haben es die Deutschen gesehen (As the Germans saw it)




So haben es die Franzosen gesehen (As the French saw it):




So haben es die Italiener gesehen (As the Italians saw it):




So haben es die Amerikaner gesehen (As the Americans saw it) :

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Am I just not blockbuster material?

Last summer I was profoundly disappointed by "War of the Worlds," feeling that it was perhaps the worst use of a film budget ever.

This summer, I'm finding myself saying the same thing about "Pirates 2."

Perhaps if the film had been, oh, an hour shorter, it would have been a bit more palatable. Perhaps if it wasn't 150 minute excuse for special effects, it would have been more enjoyable. Johnny Depp is gifted, but even he can't save a film this endlessly long.

The sequel is lacking so much of the wit and charm of the first one. Nuggets of it appear here and there, and eventually we get around to buckling some swash, but in between we're stuck with the depressing tale of Will and his doomed Dad, and a squid-faced Micky Dolenz, er, Davey Jones, oozing just enough slime and grossness to appeal to the eight-year-old boys in the audience.

Wait for the DVD on this one, folks. Trust me. Perhaps the third installment will recapture the magic; the second Indiana Jones film was a disaster as well, yet the third one, with Sean Connery stealing the show, was a gem. We shall see.

Trailers that looked interesting include the Marky Mark Philadelphia Eagles flick ("Invincible") and the Richard Gere 1970's Howard Hughes story, "The Hoax." And no, I'm not interested in the latter just because I worked on it...