Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Hollywood Nights II: The Reckoner's Gambit
Greetings from the sunclobbered state of California, where Tumble and myself have joined our fair friend Chestnut and cloistered ourselves in Chesnut's sister Diane's Los Feliz apartment.

Our stay has been a dizzying one, from visiting the Watts Towers to chickening out at the entrance to Jumbo's Clown Room. Last night was designated a "stay-in" night by the three of us (Chestnut's sister didn't count because, when you're on a steady diet of Vicodin, every night is a "stay-in" night). Chestnut proposed renting a dvd which wove itself into an hourlong debate of veto-wielding disaster. A compromise was finally reached and a movie chosen, one that Chestnut had seen but neither Tumble nor I had, embarassingly enough: the 1983 film Scarface. We piled into Chestnut's rental car and headed out to the local video store.

Thanks to a horrid mixture of poor inventory management and seven-night rentals, our quest came up empty.

Angry and unwilling to endure another attempt at consensus, Tumble and I decided to make our own version of Scarface and set to work.

The apartment became a busy micro-studio buzzing with preproduction.

It was decided I would play the hero Scarface and shoot A camera.

Tumble would play Silas Midnight, the man who gave Scarface the scar on his face, and would also direct.

Chestnut was cast as Scarface's girlfriend who dies in the end.

I'll post some behind-the-scenes footage soon!

-F

posted @ 03:52 PM est [link]

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Hollywood Nights
In an orgy of impulsiveness and boredom, Tumble and I pooled our resources and purchased two round-trip tickets to Los Angeles, California to visit Chestnut and his recuperating kin. Tumble ingurgitated a steady diet of Dramamine-and-Dewer's on our five-hour journey against the gulf stream while I kept myself occupied with a pocket novel in between screenings of Johnson Family Vacation.

We dumped our things in a motel and set out to scratch our tourist itch. Tumble's itinerary for day one: find Bob Seger's star.

On our way, we tipped a nearby street performer to point out local landmarks.

Here we are in front of the Hollyood Taft building, named in honor of George "Hollywood" Taft, former middleweight boxer and inventor of the Tesla coil. We had to ransom our camera back from our tour guide by holding his boombox hostage.

After that, it was getting late and without much luck finding Bob Seger, we settled for Jonathan Winters and headed back to the motel.