{"id":1087,"date":"2006-08-25T18:00:16","date_gmt":"2006-08-26T02:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/25\/day-3-paparazzi-in-the-pressure-cooker\/"},"modified":"2006-08-25T18:00:16","modified_gmt":"2006-08-26T02:00:16","slug":"day-3-paparazzi-in-the-pressure-cooker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/day-3-paparazzi-in-the-pressure-cooker\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 3 – Paparazzi in the Pressure Cooker"},"content":{"rendered":"

The third day of shooting dawned
\nwith me already running behind. I was supposed to be using a borrowed Range
\nRover for the picture car. That had fallen through at the last moment. So at <\/p>\n

10 p.m.<\/p>\n

<\/st1:time> the night before, I was calling around
\nto rental car agencies, trying to nail down a place that would rent me a
\nbig-ass SUV. I managed to find Budget
\nRent-a-Car in <\/p>\n

Beverly Hills<\/p>\n

<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which
\nwas a real blast\"The_sclade\"<\/a>
\nfrom the past for me, since back in the tabloid days, I had
\nrented a Ferrari Mondiale from them and driven it to the Hotel del Coronado for
\na stakeout of Donald Trump. It was a
\nblast going down, and then the weather changed \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to the point where, when the
\nphotog and I were staking out the private airstrip that The Donald was using to
\nferry hoochies in and out, it actually started sleeting. Not exactly the weather for cruising up the
\nPCH with the top down. <\/p>\n

Anyway. I awoke scrambling, with acid already in the
\npit of my stomach. I drove with Janine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cousin to the Budget to pick up the
\ncar, and got my first nasty surprise of the day. Apparently, that Budget also rents the big
\nU-Haul like trucks and Saturday is the day that everybody chooses to do their
\nmoving on. So the line was already out the door. It was a \u00c2\u00bd hour wait to get to the counter,
\nat which time the guy behind the counter had apparently had a car accident
\nrecently and gone through the windshield. He was not motivated in any real,
\nappreciable way,
\nand \"Chris_is_scary_1\"<\/a>
\nseemed to have problems focusing on anything other than
\nthe cleavage of the sweaty girl one station over. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the lighting fixtures
\nin the ceiling were falling out unpredictably \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the electrician had just been
\nthere and had \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fixed\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the lights, whilst being staggering drunk. <\/p>\n

It would not have been out of
\nplace for me if at this point, Death Himself had shown up with a scythe and
\nskeleton-raven on his shoulder, laughing at me. I was drumming my fingers on the counter like Keith Moon at his most
\nderanged, when someone finally recognized that I was about 10 minutes from
\ndecapitating everyone on the premises and taking off with whatever cars I could
\nget. They tried to pass off some shoddy
\nmini-Lexus SUV on me. I held out for the Escalade. I knew that I was going to
\nneed as much space as I could. It cost
\nme about 4 times as much as I had budgeted for this prop, but at last I got in
\nthe car and sped off. <\/p>\n

A side note here. If you ever get
\nthe chance to cruise through Beverly Hills on a Saturday morning behind the wheel
\n\"Broiling_in_the_sun\"<\/a>of a big black Escalade, pumping out heavy bass tunes \u00e2\u20ac\u201c do it. You will feel like the star of your very own
\nhip-hop video. I laughed because every
\ndamn station on the radio was tuned in to badass hip-hop music. I think I saw the glitter of an expended 9mm
\nshell on the floor mats; or maybe that was a chip off some fool\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s grill after
\none of Suge Knight\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s boys had dribbled his face against the dashboard like
\nSteve Francis pounding the ball on his crossover dribble. <\/p>\n

I got back to my house, which
\ndoubled as the set, and pulled the SUV into the alley. The crew was already there. Chris was late,
\nbecause he had been out until <\/p>\n

4 a.m.<\/p>\n

<\/st1:time>
\nwith a bunch of Vivid Video girls. Or so he would have us believe. <\/p>\n

Jon looked up at the bright
\novercast sky and said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153As far as I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m concerned, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re lit!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I guess the lighting conditions were actually
\nrather fortuitous. I had been \"Chris_and_jay_make_out\"<\/a>afraid that it was too dim \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that I was going to
\nhave a problem matching the footage because it was dim and then would clear
\nlater \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but that turned out to be a problem that only materialized the next
\nday. <\/p>\n

Shooting outdoors proved to have
\nits own challenges. Not the least of
\nwhich was the sound \u00e2\u20ac\u201c throughout the morning, helicopters kept passing overhead
\nright when I was getting good performances out of Chris and Jay.\n<\/p>\n

Now for the complimentary
\nstuff. I knew that I had made a right
\nmove when I cast two good improve stand-up comedians for these roles. I knew that I would need them to go off script
\na lot to make these roles come to life. And that turned out to be one of the better decisions I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve made. They
\nimprov\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d well, you could see that they actually liked each other and got along,
\nand they made my movie funnier than it would have otherwise been. <\/p>\n

So we shot them clowning and
\nemoting in the alley next to my house, and by noon, my mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s words about
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153getting the worst sunburns on overcast days\u00e2\u20ac\u009d turned out to be, like most of
\nthe wisdom that my mom attempted to impart to me in my life, absolutely true
\nand necessary. I had spent most of my
\ntime leaning over to \"Tired_and_scorched\"<\/a>
\npeer at the monitor stuffed into the back of the truck and
\nthus the sun had baked the shit out of the back of my neck. Yes, I was, as I
\nhave been so many other times in my hick-goes-to-the-big-City-life, a genuine
\nwalking redneck. Yee-haw! <\/p>\n

When it came time for my actors to
\nstart driving around in the SUV, I gulped and said a quick prayer. I had tried
\nand tried to get insurance through the Filmmaker\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s <\/p>\n

Alliance<\/p>\n

<\/st1:place><\/st1:city>
\nprogram, only to find my calls and emails falling on deaf ears (eyes? Internal organs?). So I was flying naked. In the picture that you see of my running
\naway down the alley in front of the car, I half wanted to just lie down in front
\nof it and let it run me over. One wrong
\nturn, one little old lady with a shopping cart or the car being backed up too
\nfar, too fast, and I turn into a guy with a bad moustache at the border
\ncrossing at TJ, lining up to work as an English teacher at the college of the
\nAmericas under the alias of Sven Nater. <\/p>\n

It was hot and sweaty out,
\nalthough not as hot as it had been the previous weekend, when we had set
\nall-time records for heat in <\/p>\n

California<\/p>\n

<\/st1:place><\/st1:state>. If I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been trying to film in that heat, we
\nwould all have been either dead, or very very dizzy. I had bought a giant
\ncanvas carport from Pep Boys two days before, and I expected that we were going
\nto have to put it up and then use it as a sunshade and diffuser\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 but like I
\nsaid, it was overcast and I got lucky. <\/p>\n

The most challenging shots both
\nphysically and acting-wise were the s\"Jay_as_photog\"<\/a>
\nhots where Jay had to drive the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcSclade
\ndown <\/p>\n

Venice Blvd.<\/p>\n

<\/st1:address><\/st1:street> at 50 mph
\nand have a gradual, tearful breakdown. We had to cut for the lights, weave around slowpokes and give money to
\nthe withered crackhead stationed at the left-turn lane at La Brea and Venice
\n(Jay gave her money and asked for a joke. She had none.) But still, Jay managed to break down
\nrepeatedly. He drove and just started
\ncrying \u00e2\u20ac\u201c he changed the mood in the car. That was good stuff. We had six people
\ncrammed in there \u00e2\u20ac\u201c my two actors, me, Jon the cameraman, Adam and the Brian laconic
\nsound dude. Thank God and Sunny Jesus I went for the big SUV. The mini-Lexus
\nwould have been a disaster. <\/p>\n

Oh yeah \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and all this took place
\non my birthday. <\/p>\n

So happy birthday to me. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the
\nmost expensive present I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever given myself. I still don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know whether it will ever turn into anything other than a
\ntestament to my own vanity or hubris or silly nostalgia. But I freakin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 shot
\nthis! <\/p>\n

Next up: the most difficult day was saved for last. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The third day of shooting dawned with me already running behind. I was supposed to be using a borrowed Range Rover for the picture car. That had fallen through at the last moment. So at 10 p.m. the night before, I was calling around to rental car agencies, trying to nail down a place that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,24],"tags":[374,847,352,857,387,370],"class_list":["post-1087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","category-television","tag-film","tag-journalism","tag-online-multimedia","tag-television","tag-true-enough-tv-pilot","tag-webtech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}