Airplane Bloggin’: Big Easy Style

I am most certainly on an airplane on the way to New Orleans. I feel somewhat less nervous on this airplane than I usually do (ever since 9/11, I am a pretty shitty flight passenger, particularly for take-offs), and I haven’t the foggiest idea why. But why look a gift horse in the mouth, right?

Sinners and Saints, the movie I am producing with Mark Clark, started shooting Monday down in Lousiana. Its my first action movie, and I wanted to get down there for the first day, but had to stay behind to tie up some unfinished paperwork in L.A. before making the move. Grabbed the flight out of LAX at 10:30 this AM, which annoyingly necessitated getting up at 7:15 (at least in my head). Of course, when we shoot days on the show, I will likely be up quite a bit earlier than that.

What is Sinners and Saints, you say? OK, well, you would say, if you were reading this as I wrote it. Its an cop-thriller action movie, very solid script, from writer/director Will Kaufman, who I think could be a very big action movie director in the future. Sinners is his second movie, the first being The Prodigy, which he made for pocket change with no name actors and is in distribution everywhere from Pago Pago to Walla Walla, Washington. Its amazing what he did with scant resources on The Prodigy, and I am excited to see what he’ll do with modest (several steps up from scant) resources on Sinners.

The shoot goes two weeks in December, before a break for two weeks, which I’ll be spending at my family’s Miami apartment with my parents and my good buddy Dave, who is in some hot water for leaving his girl behind for Xmas and New Years. On the fourth of January or so, it’ll be back to New Orleans for the final three weeks of the show, and then back to LA. Based on that schedule, I think there isn’t going to be any Sundance for me this year, or Slamdance, but that’s not a sure thing atm. I may still, pending how things go, head out to Park City, but it does seem that (1) few of my friends are going, (2) the economy may be bad enough to kill it for the most part, particularly the second weekend which is usually more dead anyway (many folks just go for opening weekend, when most of the big premieres happen) and (3) we aren’t announcing yet on the next Slamdance Horror screenplay winner until the middle of next year. So going isn’t such a priority in any event and on a logistical level, I don’t even have any cold weather clothing with me, if I was going to go straight from New Orleans to Park City. That’s kind of an interesting issue just today, as it actually snowed yesterday in New Orleans, not the best timing for a lower budget movie on a tight schedule (i.e. Sinners).

Anyway, I probably will be blogging quite a bit more for the time being, as I tend to have more to write about from set and when I am waiting around on set (in between handling whatever need be handled) I have time to write it down too. Has been a slowish year for the movie business, and for me personally, as I only made the short 10:31 this year up until now. I am definitely looking forward to being on set and to having some beach time in Miami to recharge the batteries.

Grumps.