Now I remember why I love filmmaking. What other pursuit allows you to experience despair and jubilation all in one day, and twice over? Jason picks me up in his trusty Datsun and we head for the lofts on Wilshire where the production office is. The air-conditioning there is broke and with all the guys staying there with no openable windows it’s getting pretty funky. Because the big car crash scene has been changed to a location in Topanga Canyon to be shot on Sunday night, we have the opportunity to shoot another full day of Francois in various locations in LA both dressed as a homeless person and as an alien zombie. Sometimes disaster can turn into advantage.
We did have an awesome, experienced First A.D. in place, but he dropped out about a week before shooting when he got a paying gig. A lot of the people who have volunteered to work on this project for little or no money are dropping off like flies because they just can’t afford to turn down other work if it becomes available. I suppose it has something to do with the economy. I guess the economic disaster also explains why there are so many more homeless people than I’ve ever seen in LA.
Anyway, without a real First A.D., the shoot is pretty chaotic today. Laszlo and I are basically doing it ourselves, which is a little distracting. A least we have walkie-talkies and GTS, which makes transportation and finding locations a lot easier. So we head out this morning with our little convey communicating with ten-four good buddies and copy thats.
The first location has sexy homeless Francois gleaning along a chain link fence down on a street that overlooks downtown. I was inspired to play up the homeless aspect of the character by watching Agnes Varda’s “The Gleaners and I” for the first time recently, a meditation on those who pick up waste and garbage and basically pick clean the bones of society. Actually my last film, Otto; or, Up with Dead People, was also about a homeless zombie, partly inspired by Varda’s movie “Vagabond”. So I guess I’m pretty much stuck on one idea, except this time it’s going to be a full on porno. How do you like them apples?
The next location is down at the LA River. We’re shooting guerilla style, sans permit, because it’s too expensive, but when we try to go down a tunnel on Sante Fe Ave. at 6th Street under the bridge to East LA, there are two cops sitting on bicycles at the entrance to the river. Laszlo and Robert and I go down to assess the situation, but when we pass the cops and say hello, they just warn us to be careful of the drug addicts around there! I don’t have the heart to tell them that we’re more concerned about them than of the junkies. We just tell them that we have permits to do a shoot in a few days and we’re just doing test shots. So the cops leave and we bring the whole crew down to shoot LA wandering aimlessly down by the lazy concrete river. We even have Francois with his pants down washing in the river, which looks amazing – kind of like one of those videos Farrah Fawcett (RIP) used to do for Playboy.
We head back to HQ for lunch, where Joe Castro will now apply the alien zombie make-up for the rest of the day’s shoot. We order Chinese as we only have the caterer for a late meal today, but the food takes two hours to arrive. It must have come from the mainland. Francois eats his chow mein in full zombie make-up, and we head for our next location, the backyard of my good friend and fellow Torontonian and fellow Capricorn the artist Karen Lofgren. She’s just bought a cute little place in Cypress Park with a back yard, which we need to string a clothesline across for Francois to steal some clothes off of. We are in and out so fast it’s almost frightening.
Then we head back to the same location at the LA River to shoot the same shots over again of Francois but this time in his alien zombie look. We’re racing against the setting sun for the second day in a row, but we get the shots. Next is the shot of Francois in the back of the truck going through the two tunnels that lead to downtown LA, including the pretty silver one that is featured in so many movies, Less Than Zero being the most memorable. We get the lights rigged and Laszlo and his grip take-off to get the shot (it’s Laszlo’s idea) while the rest of us drive over to our last location of the day, a place called Ms. Donut on Glendale Blvd in Echo Park, to see if it’s still open. It’s one of those great LA locations that looks like it has already been thoroughly art directed. Three different people on the crew tell me not to bother because they say when the drove by it last night at this time it was already closed, but I have a feeling we should check it out anyway. And sure enough, it’s just about to close but the Open sign is still on and the owner’s son says we can shoot as long as we want for two hundred bucks cash. On the way we had passed the pretty silver tunnel and some 40 million dollar film production had it blocked off entirely and there was a huge blimp light hanging over the entrance bigger than our cube truck. How dare they! We were going to shoot there tonight. So I just get Laszlo to shoot in the green tunnel, which looks amazing, and Laszlo and I vow to come back for the silver tunnel shot later in the week even if it kills us.
Meanwhile, back at Ms. Donut, a crazy lady is talking to herself and feeling old all alone in the store. She’s scribbling in her journals and putting her glasses and sunglasses, both pushed back on her head, on and off. Luis who is making the making-of video turns on his camera and has a long chat with her, and it’s clear that she is homeless and schizophrenic, as in fact a large percentage of homeless people are. We try to get her to sign a release, but it’s not registering and she won’t do it. But we certainly get a lot of great audio! She has many delusions, including that she lost her hand in a shark attack (she clearly still has both hands) and that she’s from Mongolia (she’s white). Ms. Donut’s son, behind the register, is taking everything in stride like the seasoned LA donut store employee that he is. Ms. Donut is clearly a freak magnet, which is why I was attracted to it in the first place. Laszlo is getting his lighting on seriously now, ordering around the grip who came with the truck just to prove who’s boss. Before you know it he has the whole location lit up and we shoot Francois coming in as the zombie to buy a coffee. There’s no dialogue in this picture, and the Donut store improvises the line, “Coffee? Coffee?” I guess I can edit that part out later.
On the way back to the place where I’m staying Jason and I notice that the homeless guy Nas.a’s shopping carts have disappeared from where we did the shoot yesterday on Silverlake Blvd. Either he moved on or the city swept them away. I guess that’s why they’re called transients.
