As the shoot of the car crash aftermath was a bit of a Pyrrhic victory on Sunday night – we got the scene, but it almost killed us – we’ve decided to postpone the Monday magic hour shoot of Francois coming out of the ocean and start up again on Tuesday morning. The horrible feeling I experienced at Topanga Canyon that I know very well – that psychotic, disconnected, negative feeling you get when you’ve been shooting all night and the morning sun bares down on you like an angry giant – has dissipated, and I’m ready and raring to go again this morning.
It isn’t going to be easy, however. We’re shooting at the LA River location without permits this morning, and the tunnel entrance, as we experienced the other day, is like Grand Central Station. How we’re going to pull this off I will never know. But I’m a big believer in what Jimmy Stewart says to Kim Novak in Vertigo: “You see! There’s an answer for everything!” Of course she ended up dead and he a broken man, but at least they had answers!
As you can imagine, there are things, candid as I am, that I cannot talk about in this shooting diary. Things… you wouldn’t understand. Things… you couldn’t understand. Things… you shouldn’t understand! But as the picture develops, the details will become clearer. That’s all I’m going to say for now.
Our guest cameo today is being essayed by none other than Tim Kuzma (not his real name – he does have a career to pursue!), the great character actor whose face you would recognize from such movies as Fight Club and Halloween. He is playing a fugitive from the IAG bailout that is trying to abscond with a briefcase full of cash until Wolf Hudson, dressed in identical Wall Street attire, tries to stop him. The location, the tunnel to the LA River between 4th and 7th Streets at Santa Fe, seems to be an access to the mighty concrete waterway that everyone uses, and I do mean everyone. As it is a day shoot we are just using reflectors and filming under the shade of the Fourth Street Bridge, but we are still a very obvious crew of about a dozen people and two actors using the location without a permit.
As we begin to shoot the action in front of the tunnel, a variety of vehicles come through to interrupt us, everything from civilian joy riders to utilities workers to huge tractor-trailers moving heavy equipment. Every ten minutes or so someone on the crew yells “Car”, like in a street hockey match, and we have to clear the cameras, tripods, and equipment to let them pass. To add to the absurdity, next out of the tunnel emerges a group of about three dozen tourists on foot – many of them Japanese – led by a tour guide. What next, a marching band? A ticker-tape parade? We shoot at break-next speed and even do some modest special effects, accomplishing a pretty cute little scene. Francois arrives in full zombie and we get his reaction shots, plus we improvise a scene in which he drags the body of one of the AIG crooks into his homeless lair for his nefarious purposes. When we’re done I can’t believe we actually did pull it off.
The shoot in the evening is at another downtown location over the bridge in East LA. It’s a warehouse district, where apparently we have permission to shoot and some sort of permit, but the permit system here is so convoluted that it’s hard to figure out what we have access to and what we don’t. Here, in a little cubby-hole in the parking lot, in front of a big fat graffiti tag, we shoot our first full on zombie sex scene, replete with Viagra, big hard dicks, and glorious come shots. As we are working with two porn veterans, I shouldn’t be amazed at how well they can perform sex under such difficult and rushed circumstances. Milan, our cute Peruvian prop guy, has gleaned an old mattress from the vicinity for them to fuck on, and I must say Francois in full alien zombie manhood in front of the graffiti that matches the colour of his alien skin looks quite spectacular. We do both alien come shots (he comes black ink) and regular human ones. It feels really great to get a full on hot porn scene in the can. We’re also over the hump now – four days of shooting completed, three to go – so I feel much better. But many obstacles still lay ahead, as you will soon see.
I have to say how proud I am of Robert, our on-set producer, Jeremy, our production manager, and Laszlo, our intrepid D.P. (When Laszlo asks Wolf Hudson about the character of D.P.s – meaning Directors of Photography – in the porn world, Wolf thinks he’s talking about another kind of D.P. – double penetration! So on set from now on I am threatening to call Laszlo “Double Penetration.”) They’ve really stayed pretty calm and collected under extraordinarily difficult Labrucian circumstances, so kudos to them all.
In the warehouse this evening where we’ve set up our base, John, one of our dedicated P.A.s, discovers a black widow spider! They aren’t very big, but they’re deadly! I ask him not to kill it – she can’t help it if she’s venomous – so he puts her in am empty water bottle and frees her outside. That’s all we need, for one of the cast or crew to get a deadly spider bite. Luis, our making-of guy, already stepped on a nail that went through his shoe into his foot at the LA River this morning. Fortunately we have Deborah, our E.R. doctor P.A., on set, who administers to all our victims. Low-budget film locations often operate somewhat like triage anyway, so it’s no biggie.
Our last scene of the day is the one that Laszlo and I missed the other night because we got cock-blocked by a big budget Hollywood movie – our shot going through the silvery downtown tunnel. It’s the same rigging as before, so I just let Laszlo do it himself as second unit. Jason and I drop some cast, crew and equipment off at the production office, and then we head off to get some food. By chance we find ourselves in Hollywood near the Spotlight, one of the last remaining hustler bars in town, so we have to stop off for a well-deserved cocktail. Then we grab some Popeye’s – it’s 99-cent night, a breast and a drumstick for 99 cents! – and head home. Since shooting began I’ve really become hyperaware of the number of homeless people in LA, and here in Hollywood tonight I notice an alarming number of them again, usually with shopping carts or sleeping right on the sidewalk. I also saw a number of them out near our Topanga Canyon location on the west side. It almost seems like some kind of epidemic.
