August 24th, 1999

Special effects by Half-Ass, Inc.
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Okay, full disclosure here. I never mentioned this when I posted it before, but there was some awkwardness when shooting Ganz's naked scene. You see, the night before this shot we had found out that our Director of Photography was gay.

And then Rick remembers he has to drop trow and get his ass shot by said homosexual D.P.

Now he's self-conscious. What if Gil's looking at his ass with lust? Oh, the horror.

So when we get to the naked scene Ganz comes out of the bathroom in a towel. We set up for the shot and Ganz drops the towel--and he's got an athletic cup duct-taped over his junk.

It's the funniest thing I've ever seen. I try not to laugh too much.

Weird thing is that Gil acts as strange as Ganz does. Acts like he doesn't want to shoot it. So I take the camera and shoot it myself, and for once he doesn't seem to care if I touch the camera.

Strange night. But I remember it all fondly now. The warped looking-glass of time...

August 24th

Last day of shooting. Feels pretty surreal, like it's not really the last day.

The first bit of shooting called for some shots in downtown Baltimore. Rick arrived and he followed me into Baltimore. Gil hung out the window and got some landmarks. Then I pulled over and Gil and I got into Rick's car to get the other shots. I let Mun drive my parents' van.

It went easy at first. Traffic wasn't too bad, but it was getting worse. We got into a lane and Rick asked, "Is this a turn lane?" because we wanted to go left. It wasn't a turn lane, but we did anyway. A minute or so down the road and Rick asked, "Where's Mun?"

My parents' van was nowhere to be seen behind us. "He was right there," Rick insisted. They dropped me off at the street and said they were going to circle back around. I started jogging down the road toward where I see a police car's lights flashing.

Sure enough, a cop has pulled Mun over. I tried to talk to the cop, but he didn't seem to care.

Mun didn't even have his license on him, so the cop was trying to check it. We waited, and after about 15 minutes--and the cop smoking two cigarettes in his car--he came back to the window and said that Arizona wasn't cooperating with info. He suggested I drive out of Baltimore.
We lucked out there. Mun would have been screwed if he got a ticket here.

We high-tailed it back to my girlfriend's parents' house, where the rest of the shooting would take place. Unfortunately, they were home.

We displaced them to the downstairs and began shooting. Things weren't going well. The special effects where Rick cuts himself with a knife weren't working for squat, Gil was getting into one of his "let's-get-it-over-with" moods, and my girlfriend was coming upstairs to ask how much longer because her mom had to come up and go to bed.

We rushed through some scenes. I improvised some of the scenes--none to the better, I might add--but we finished all but the last scene we had to shoot. It's the one where Rick stands naked in the middle of the living room.

Surprisingly, we had no problem. It seemed that once Rick got naked, he kind of enjoyed it. Of course, he had an athletic cup taped over his crotch(a really funny sight), but you couldn't see it from our angle.

And just like that, we had the Martini(the final shot of a production). We broke down all the equipment and went through it so no one had anyone else's stuff. We even had almost an entire reel of film left.

I had Mun wrap 100 foot onto a spool so I could shoot some stuff with my Bolex.
I took the boys to the motel and went to pick up comics for my store. No sleep for me. I feel like I should be used to it.

Rick, when hearing he has to present his ass to a gay guy