Day 7 of production was supposed to start on Friday, but that didn't happen for a variety of reasons. The lethargy of the oast week (or should I say month) had caught up with me, but I still struggled on,trying to plan everything, thinking to myself, "goddamn, I need a producer".
I decided to go out for a cup of coffee when I suddenly realized something: it's a weekday. All the shots I'd planned for Friday were outdoors in places where there usually wouldn't be anyone on weekends but on a Friday, these places were super-packed. Fuck. I called up Tony (who was covering camera duties on the days Ariff couldn't make it) and cancelled.
By some twisted coincidence, Eddy was off on the same day. I picked the Edstar up and we hung out at Devi's in Hartamas whilst I got my car washed, then did something I haven't done for almost a year: lepak (laze about) and play video games.
You see, for the past year everytime I've met up with a friend there was an agenda/objective to the meeting. But not on Friday. I had no reason to hang out with Eddy other than the pleasure of his company and we went over to his place to play Soul Caliber 2, Tony Hawk 3 and SSX Tricky till the sun went down.
God, I needed that. After the hustle and bustle that has been my life it felt so good to know that I wasn't at Eddy's place because there were things that needed to be done and it was even better to know that I didn't have to rush off to somewhere else after that to get something else done. It was just relaxing times, listening to Steppenwolf and playing video games. Kick. Fucking. Ass.
Then, later that night, I hit up the Loft for some Twilight Action Girl after what has been maybe two months of no booze. Naren joined me together with Tony and the boys of Voxel (Jordan, Rauf, etc) and we got crunked up. This was, thankfully, one of the nights where they played a whole bunch of tracks I knew and loved. Never thought I'd get to rock out to both Beastie Boys' "Root Down" and the Public Enemy/Anthrax combo version of "Bring tha noize".
Day 7 (for real, this time) - Woke up hungover and feeling very tender. I had a scene to shoot with the folks from Ben's Bitches, who will be playing the DVD pirates in my movie, and the rest of the day would be the scenes I planned to shoot on Friday of me in various carparks (my movie has a lot of scenes in carparks).
I was sat in the mamak at Pusat Bandar Damansara, waiting for Ben and CK and Tony, when I get a call: Ben can make it, CK can't. Shit. Nevermind, I'll schedule it for another day. Still feeling like shit, I was having a bad feeling about the production in general. Whilst I had a great time on Friday, I was still thinking about how troublesome this production has been. This, in turn, got me to thinking that if I wasn't making this movie I could have more days like Friday. This thought depressed me.
Then it rained.
That was all I needed. Add to that the fact that I was broke and I was seriously considering shutting everything down. Fuck it, I figured. I ain't cut out for this shit.
Then Tony arrived. The night before he had just finished reading the entire script and the dude was still raving about it. I told him how I was feeling. He put things in perspective and gave me enough of an ego boost to persevere and keep on trucking. He also bought me coffee and a sandwich, which was nice.
Thank God.
The rain stopped and was replaced with a bright, blue sky and the car eventually dried up around 2pm. One of the carpark locations I had in mind (which I never really scouted) came out even better than I thought when I found it was no longer in use, just an empty barren wasteland which suited the scene perfectly (there was also a set of eerie yellow stairs leading to nowhere in the woods nearby. Possible future location). We shot some scenes straight and for fun, tried out some funky ass camera techniques which came out looking quite cool.
We then went to our other location, the carpark at the Pusat Sains and shot some of the other scenes there which came out great and most importantly, played hillariously. I decided to ad-lib what was in the script no more than "Jo loses it". I doubt you'll find a Malaysian production with the lines "sea monkeys in the penis" anywhere else. Hell, that should be our Unique Selling Point.
I was so glad Tony convinced me to keep going.
Day 8 - At around 1.30pm Diana, Ariff and I made our way to Hassan Peter Brown's house to pick him up. We were going to shoot his scenes at Jordan's house, a huge and richly decorated location with a very nice backgarden patio/pool thingey. Peter and I had discussed previously about wardrobe and he had gone out to buy a tight white sleeveless shirt ("to make my character look more bisexual" I think was his reasoning). I had, on my side, an outfit I had bought in Egypt: a light, khaki coloured Egyiptian cotton two piece of trousers (tied by a string) and short sleeve shirt. when Peter put it on, we both agreed this was the look, giving hi a very colonial feel as if the Brits never left.
I had planned to shoot all his scenes on that day but that was wishful thinking. There are three scenes that need to be shot at this location. I managed to get one.
But it looked kick-ass. Peter takes this acting lark a bit more seriously than most of us, ever the trooper, and put in a great fucking performance. He delivered the lines just as I imagined them (well, not exactly how I imagined them: I originally wrote the character like Noel Coward, he turned him into Hannibal Lecter) with a ton of menace.
Then we shot the big beating up scene. This is where my character gets beat to a pulp by Peter's characters' "goons". Amir and Dique agreed to help out (I wanted to get the guys from Voxel since they'll always be at location). I blocked out the scene for the main shot at a low angle. I wanted to shoot it as a series of cuts, but thought I'd tell the cast what was happening so that they could block the scene as per. I called out action and they went through the entire scene without stopping. And surprisingly, it looked best. In a nutshell, Peter hits me repeatedly with an iron bar, then his goons come and drag me across before proceeding to beat me up. And they really hit me. Whilst they pulled their punches, all their kicks connected, and connected hard enough that I don't have to dub in any sound effects.
Kick ass.
As the sun came down it was time to get my ass to make-up. Diana's friend, Aishah, worked production at RTM with her boyfriend and knew how to do movie make-up. We made our way to the Taman Tun house and as we settled down, Aishah and her boyfriend noticed one DVD in particular.
"Whoah! Army of Darkness! Best giler cerita ni!" ("This movie rules!")
So, whilst getting 'made up', we slotted Army in.
The purpose of the make-up was to make me look like I'd been beaten to a pulp, so Aishah proceed to bruise my eye and the right side of my lip. I was hesitant at first. I didn't want it to look like stage make-up, I wanted to look like I got my ass kicked. But they knew exactly what they were doing and when I finally looked at the mirror I was stunned.
We then went to meet up with Nazneen and Ariff for the night scene. Ariff was held up so we started late. They were both at a mamak stall so I walked in, in character, much to the shock of the patrons, especially Ariff, who couldn't stop staring. It took him about 5 minutes before he realized I was in make-up.
The night scene was something I wrote after re-looking at the script and noticing there were no positive characters. No actual nice people, which kinda bugged me. I also wanted Nazneen in my movie but her portrayal as the annoying girlfriend didn't really work out. She was too nice... hang on. Nazneen's nice, I need a nice person somewhere... BINGO!
So we shot what I like to call the 'Deus Ex Machina' scene in front of a shoplot at Plaza Damansara and it played wonderfully (except for the annoyance of cars driving past making unwanted noise).
We wrapped up for the day at 12.30am and on my way home realized I left the bag with all the tapes and my charger at the location. I rushed back and thankfully it was still there.
I also noticed that for some reason since Saturday I had a bad runny nose and had been sweating a lot. Maybe I was coming down with something... fuck it. The show must go on.
Day 9 - I made my way back to Jordan's house again with Peter and also Tony this time, as Ariff couldn't make it. We shot the rest of Peter's scenes (the really tough ones with the reams of dialogue) and it came out quite cool. Peter should host National Geographic documentaries, he'd be perfect.
I also needed some pick ups of my two goons, Amir and Dique. Peter asked whether I could give them names since he needs to get the attention of the Amir goon. After much thought,
"Call him 'Canterro'."
Or something along these lines. Some Spanish name. Nobody could pull of the scene, they kept cracking up. I decided to have a bit more fun with it.
"Ok, Amir, here's your line. When I click my fingers you and Dique both turn around as if Peter just said the line. Then Amir, I want you to turn to Dique and say with a straight face, 'Come, Poncho. Let's make whoopee', then rush out to chase me."
Hillarity ensued.
I then changed it to "Come Poncho. It's crab season" and as much as they couldn't keep a straight face before, they really couldn't act tough now.
I also wanted their cat in the movie. A particularly horny little bugger, when you repeatedly tap the top of her butt she raises it higher and higher. the guys joked that the cat could come in useful if there was a flat tyre and someone needed to raise the car.
After that, we rushed off to Saiful's parents' house to re-shoot a scene with Saiful and his sister. I had storyboarded the whole thing, thank God, because it started to rain. When Saiful arrived we noticed he had a cap on. Immediately I started thinking of the serial killer from 'Haute Tension' and told him to keep it on. We got all the exterior shots done quickly and ran back into the house to shoot the rest of the scenes.
One of the problems I had with when we first shot one of the scenes here was that in the scene where Farah's character is supposed to pop up from between my legs as if she's been going down on me, (a) it didn't look realistic and (b) I was worried about censors. Even though we don't show it, enough is suggested that you'd know what's going on. So I decided to improvise:
"Ok, set up the camera at an angle, medium shot of the bed. Make sure you can't see my legs, I gotta pop into shot from the bed. Now, first off I'll pop into shot and say 'Oh my God, it's your brother, isn't it?'. Then, Farah: I want you to pop up from next to me holding the straightening iron with a dissapointed look on your face and say the line 'aww... I never get to play'. Ready?"
"What were our characters doing with the straightening iron?"
"If you have to ask, you'll never know. Action!"
I decided to put in quite a number of silly lines in, including a little homage to P. Ramlee where I got Saiful to yell out my favourite Malay insult:
"Kecik-kecik tak nak mampus! Besar-besar menyusahkan orang!"
(roughly translated: "if you had died at birth you wouldn't be such a damn burden!").
And that was a wrap. In total, combined with the other days footage, we've got about 60% of the movie in the can. I've got a couple more scenes to go plus the animation and other effects shots and I'll be done. Hopefully we'll be done by December.
Noonch.
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