The Home Stretch

Some tidbits from the shoot in New Orleans…

Filming has gone well and we’re entering our final week of filming (seven days straight because of some actor-related schedule snafus) here in New Orleans. We started filming in the French Quarter today, with a call time at 1AM, meaning hotel pick-up at 12:15. Brutal was not the word, by the time it was nine or ten AM. We wrapped by around 11:30, and despite absolute exhaustion, since we were at St. Peter and Bourbon, I had two Newcastle drafts with Mark (another producer) and Will (the director) before heading back to the hotel for around five hours of sleep.

We’ll be heading down to the worst neighborhood in New Orleans, perhaps one of the worst in the country, tomorrow, down to the lower Ninth Ward. It’s the area most ravaged by Katrina, and we’ll be shooting there over the next four days. We’re doing lots of shootouts, and its my understanding that gunfire is not an unknown sound in this neighborhood. Its definitely going to be interesting.

In finding that location, I headed down to the lower Ninth with Leon, one of the exec producers. Among my duties in New Orleans outside of general producing was to focus on locations. I took Leon with me around to a number of location candidates because he had his car here and because he, well, he is strapped. With a permit of course. I knew what this neighborhood was so having a partner with an HK 45 caliber in his pocket was a bonus, an indispensable one.

When we got out to the house that is ultimately serving as our location, it had been boarded up tight. After checking with our location contact, a rep for a government contractor who knocks down these blighted houses, we got the go-ahead and Leon kicked in the back door. He wouldn’t walk through the house though, so I walked through this flooded-out blighted former rowhouse and kicked out the front door, knocking off the padlock. How many lawyers do that? We had some company, some unfriendly company across the street. My guess is that they thought we were cops, given that we were both, well, white, and kicking in doors, and videotaping the premises. They weren’t too happy to see us, and I hope they wont be around for the filming, but I imagine with our machine gun fire and exploding house, we’ll be attracting a fair amount of attention.

We’ve been splitting rooms in production here at the hotel, and I’ve been with actors until the past few days, and now a firearms specialist, a very nice guy who was a former KGB and Russian Special Forces soldier. His knowledge base when it comes to weapons and gunshots and that kind of stuff is broad and real and maybea little scary. But he’s a good roommate. Even though he’s toying with a gravity knife as I am writing. Yeah, seriously. You should see his home movies. Yeah, seriously again.

That’s kind of it for now. I haven’t been home since early December and I am looking forward to getting back to LA and my room and the gym and friends and warm weather.

Grumps.