PREVIOUSLY ON THE MAD ONES FILMS “EVERYTHING BUT A BLOG”…
“With filming wrapping just after midnight, and just before the heavens opened up and washed away all the day’s sins, a cheers and a toast danced in the weary cast & crew heads, all snug as bugs in rugs, asleep in their beds.”
AND NOW… THE CHAIN-SMOKING, PULSE-POUNDING, TACO-TASTING, BUM-SPANKING, SINFULLY STUNNING CONCLUSION TO THE LATEST “CHOOSE YOUR OWN” MAD ONES FILMS ADVENTURE!!!
And so lo and behold, upon our rousing from Saturday night’s slumber, we awoke to find it Sunday… the Lord’s Day, or in our spiritually savvy case, the Hot Pink Lord’s Day – and the longest, most laborious day of the entire shoot! For those of you lucky enough to bear witness to the revealing rapture of the 48 Hour Film Project version of HPJ, you know how the original story ends – with a big bang shootout! Now for the super-sized Trilogy version, take said big bang, multiply it exponentially, take it from the counter outside of Robert Rodriguez’s kitchen, place it lovingly inside Michael Bay’s Easybake Oven and let Tarantino lick off the icing, and that’s how tasty of a treat this violent video vittle is going to be! Now it was time to bring in the big guns, point them straight at your heart, blow you a kiss and pull the trigger! And this particular big gun walks softly, carries a big-ass medieval spiked club AND boom stick, and goes by the name of Keenan… Patrick Keenan, aka “Lou Angeline”!!!
After taking our precious coffee communion at Area 51 and with the rich, aromatic body of Christ flowing thru our virtue & vice veins, I led an excited exodus around the corner to our first shooting location at One-Eyed Willie’s joint. With a holy hustle and a fun-filled flow myself, Kato, Señor Chao, Mikey, Jesse, K2B2, Beth & Lando managed to transform our hypnotic boutique into the illegal limbo known as “The Green Couch,” right as our almighty actors filed in for their final costumed countdown. Patrick Keenan had the silver-tongued charm of a snake oil salesman (and the facial hair of a Victorian vagabond), while Christy had Faith looking hotter than Georgia asphalt. Todd (as Rudy Valentine) brought a brand new trailer trash sophistication to track suits and Gavin (as my dapper doppelgänger) was pretty as a picture…a big ass ese, gun-toting, taco-obsessed, cozy little job with the Mexican mob-having picture.
So there we were, knee-deep and tits-up in the middle of a triangular firepower-fueled Mexican stand-off…technically sans any Mexicans (sorry Cholo, you’re blanco buddy, deal with it), but still, one of the most beautifully shot very best pieces of violence yours truly has ever been privy to. Tempers were flaring and trigger fingers were itchy while Faith was incredulously staring and Valentine got all twitchy – all culminating in an explosive and deadly denouement.
The Special FX/Make-up mastery of one Mr. Joh Harp, illusionist of the incredible, maestro of the macabre, and all-around cool cat, is another boastful notch on our Hot Pink headboard because it is his visual voodoo that shines like a crazy blood diamond when the gun smoke clears. One of the sanguine side effects of mixing even more bullets in with our booze is that those bullets tend to leave people much holier when “CUT” is called as opposed to “ACTION”. However in just a short time Joh and his lovely assistant, Nathan “Boom Boom” Boyd, generated a gory goodness that would make even the big boys of Hollyweird all mean-green with envy!
So how do I repay Joh and Nathan for such astounding aesthetic application of artistry? By sticking them both in warm and wooly ski masks and making them flee down the sidewalk in the cool mid-May mid-dasy sun while Patrick chases them with Mr. Bang Bang, of course! Now being the brilliant multitasking basterds that we are, Kato and Jesse headed outside to finish filming scene 3 with Marco while Mikey and I stayed inside with Faith and shot the very first scene of the film drop dead last – movie-making magic indeed!
Proof positive of the hot pink hive mind, both crews reunited (and it does feel so good) outside, called it a wrap and struck (not smote) the set. We hopped, skipped & jumped back over to Area 51 with just enough time to smoke ‘em, suck ‘em, and swallow – up their cigarettes, down their drinks, and “their food” of course… you dirty dirty monkeys, but I like where your minds went. That’s good because you’re going to need that kind of trailer park Byronic gypsy/tramp/thief streetsmarts, for the next stop on our magical mystery tour is the East Eden Trailer Park!
One of the monumental movie-making tall-building single-bound leaps we made going from Act I to Act III is an age-old universal adage… locations, locations, locations! Now, I’ve always been a fortunate son in the good graces of the film gods when it comes to finding damn near the perfect scene setting – or as close to perfect as filmmaking on an aglet of a shoestring of a budget will allow. But for Act III I needed something, somewhere truly spectacular… enter, stage left, one Ms. Beth Compton, lady luck location scout extraordinaire who led us out to Points on High where we filmed a very vital scene in the trailer park of my lawn dart heart dreams!
So there we were a mere hour or two later, deep in the tattooed heart of the “East Eden Trailer Park,” home (on wheels) to the big-dreaming grand-scheming Valentines. What followed was one of the most cinematically concupiscible shoots I have ever conducted, especially since I spent the first fraction of my formative years growing up in trailer parks. In fact, Todd and Lea’s powerhouse performance was so perfect, their chemistry so convincing on screen that for a shining second, I fully believed he was a former lawn dart champion and she a jaded jezebel slinging tacos in a titty bar!
Luckily for all souls involved, cherry red apocalypse or no, not a single land shark was spotted in the vicinity and the filming finished fantastically! So after a brief but frenzied field trip back to Greensboro to shoot a quick pick-up outside of The Hill, I dismissed the tired troops for as unfading and everlasting as they were, a 13-hour film set can exhaust even the most relentless of rogues in our gallery. And thus, the only ones for me caught some z’s with the sandman (or woman) of their choice, as visions of the following day’s tasty treats danced in their bed heads.
TUNE IN TOMORROW TRUE BELIEVERS FOR PART IV OF THE HPJ III PRODUCTION BLOG… now filmed live in front of a studio audience.
Holy Hells & Hallelujah!
x6x6x6,
Jaysen
www.madonesfilms.com
www.hotpinkjesus.com
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