Just when you thought you’d reached the bottom of the barrel of dead fish, another dreadful day rears its ugly, Medusan head. Today we are on location at Peres Projects, the LA-based art gallery that represents me as an artiste, so you would think that the contained set would simplify things a bit. Dream on! Jason, my faithful Kato, the gangly, angular lad that is my assistant, picks me up on time as usual and we head west, only getting lost once or twice here and there along the way.
At the gallery my art director Steve Hall (who, incidentally, does art direction for all the biggest fashion photogs and designers, Christian Louboutin being the latest), has constructed a beautiful set inside the gallery: the absurdly huge interior of yesterday’s refrigerator box a la Snoopy’s doghouse. It looks like a great art installation all by itself. The hunky and talented artist Dan Attoe, also represented by Javier Peres, happens to be there with gallery assistant Wilson, moving some of his paintings, so it’s good to see some of the Peres family again. Steve is such a congenial and collegial presence on our schizzy set that whenever he leaves everything seems to start going south, morale-wise. The presence of his gorgeous assistants, Johnny and Milan, who, he proudly tells me, are generally hotter than the models on his fashion jobs, doesn’t hurt either.
As a certain key crewmember is late, as usual, I change the schedule and start shooting some other stuff. First I do a pick up of the scene from the previous evening, with Francois crawling out of the refrigerator box he had gone down the rabbit hole into, which we shoot in the Peres parking lot. Then we go right into the sex scene between Francois and the porn actor playing the dead junkie in Steve’s interior fridge box, whose name escapes me at the moment. I cast him because he’s an older model, in his forties, with grey hair and a weather-beaten look.
I’ve been asking Robert Felt of Dark Alley, our solid and steadfast (and cute) producer, to help direct the sex scenes, as he is more experienced at it than I, and as I said, I tend to lose interest. He does his best, but unfortunately we’re having some trouble in the wood department – if you know what I mean – on set today (not Francois – he’s always hard as a rock!), so we have to stop and start several times to try to “erectify” the situation, but to no avail. But that’s okay because Francois comes in a glorious Technicolor fountain, without special effects, and that’s good enough for me.
Now it’s time for our F/X man, who has just arrived on set, to do up Francois in his zombie look. We are racing with the clock again as we are supposed to be at the ocean at 5pm to shoot the very first scene of the movie: the alien zombie emerging from the Pacific. I must admit that going into this project I had no clue about the F/X process at all, and we definitely didn’t factor in enough time in the schedule for them. That’s why we are perpetually late and always hurrying to finish in time. There are also other issues with the F/X department that I can’t get into, but together it’s a kind of perfect storm of frustrations and delays. It doesn’t help that catering is also two hours late on set today, for god knows what reason. Maybe I should check my horrorscope!
I’ve started to chill a little on set in terms of not getting so anxious about things over which I have no control, so I just sit and tap away at my shooting diary and let the clouds roll by. Finally Francois is ready for his alien zombie close-up and we shoot him coming as the creature with his big, scorpion-tipped cock in the same positions as he fucked the homeless porn star before. I have no idea if the shots will match, and furthermore, I don’t care. As I’ve recently stated, in print, and for the record, continuity is bourgeois.
It’s already 6pm, so we’re frighteningly late for our next location: El Matador Beach, the exact same spot where we filmed the final scene of my movie Hustler White. In that scenario, my character, Jurgen Anger, thought that Mr. Ward was dead, so he was going to throw his body in the ocean, but Tony regains consciousness and we make out. In this scene, Francois Sagat as the alien zombie emerges from the ocean and sets off in search of dead bodies to fuck back to life. You see how it all connects.
A minimal crew of five – me, Laszlo, Robert, our assistant cameraman John, and Francois – drive in our rented truck from Century City all the way out to the location north of Malibu in rush hour traffic, arriving at precisely 7:06 pm. As it is dark by just after 8pm these days, we better get the lead out. We rush down the steep path to the beach with our equipment and set up as Francois puts in his fake teeth and I bloody them up. The water is freezing, but Francois gamely wades in and we shoot the scene as dolphins frolic by in the BG (unfortunately I don’t think we get them in the shot). We manage to get our coverage just in time, finishing as darkness falls at precisely 8:06pm.
It feels so strange to be back in the same place where Laszlo filmed Tony and I executing what probably remains the longest kiss – or at least gay kiss – in screen history fourteen years ago, but life’s funny that way. Despite all the hardships and pain and suffering we’ve all endured this past week, this moment somehow makes it seem all worthwhile. But there’s always tomorrow …
