'Paroxysms of Caesars' the movie

Hotter than hell in Williamsburg, Brooklyn but we went on with the filming anyway. There were some amazing abandoned warehouses and buildings under construction that made for great backdrops. Starting at noon we filmed Betty ('Carrie') walking on her way to school, then we had a fight scene between Joe, Andrew and Justin (playing the hero) and a few scenes of running thru the streets. We went thru twenty bucks worth of bottled water, but it was fun and we got the job done. Everybody did a phenomenal job and the footage we got was amazing. More filming on Thursday and next Sunday. Keep your eyes here for more footage.

photos by John Gebhart.

Up and Down on the 6 Train

I've been locked in the office for about 10-13 hours almost every day for the past two months working on 'Belle' and generally running things at First Line, yet I still managed to put something together for 'Paroxysms of Caesars' auditions. I rented a studio in Midtown from noon to two and was expecting a dozen guys to show up and read with Betty for the part. No such luck. Far less than the dozen guys who said they'd be there showed, but we got our guy, so it's all good. After seid auditions Christina, Justin and I walked over to the east side carrying armloads of gear in the sun and nearly died from heat exhaustion. Christina and I bid farewell to Justin in Grand Central then continued on to Hunter College to finish shooting her film, 'Do Over'.

After a lot of complications with air mattresses (them not having air pumps to blow them up, or having pumps but no batteries) and me riding the 6 train up and down from 68th street down to the Sports Authority on 3rd Ave and 53rd street we finally got the situation under control. Why did we need an air mattress you ask? Because our scene was supposed to be taking place in an insane asylum- even though we were filming in a classroom at the college- and we needed somewhere for our actress to sleep. So, I rode the train back and forth 5 times, buying a mattress, returning it, buying a new one, returning that one and finally getting one that was usable, before we were able to finally commence with the actual filming part around 7 hours into our day. Aizzah is an amazing actress- able to play insane as hell one minute, then cry on cue the next, and we got some amazing footie. After we finished filming the six of us ate some slices of pizza and hung out for a while, which is always fun. Then Christina, Yuritzel and I took a nice moonlit walk thru Central Park to Barnes and Noble for some coffee. We sat at a table in the cafe and discussed our next project till Christina had to bolt. We walked her out to the train and then Yuritzel and I finished our coffees on a park bench in Columbus Circle under a light rain in the quiet, peaceful Manhattan night. It was a great way to cap a long, intense, productive and fun 12-hour day of work in the city.

Right now though, I'm in the middle of editing 5 tapes (nearly five hours of footage) down to fifteen minutes for Christina's film, as well as working on pre-production for 'Paroxysms' which is set to begin filming next weekend, writing 'Belle', and putting together my first book of poetry/short fiction/photographs as well as working on my own feature length scripts. All in a days work kids.