26/07/10
Yesterday I was invited for the pre-opening show of SALT, the new Angelina Jolie's movie. I am not a big fan of Jolie's movies, neither care for the 'God bless Maya or let's hang the actor in front of a green screen' films, but the show was supposed to be inaugurated by Jolie herself, so the herd instinct made me go for the 'celebrity watching'.
So the day was nice, a nice company and a promissing evening ahead... Wait a sec, let's rewind!
A week ago I was killing time on youtube and came across the short-films-submission call, for the Ridley Scott's global project - Life in a day, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGYACultjCY
I totally forgot about it, when on Friday on the way home it occured to me - a fluffy short story... All I needed was an assistant. So I called a friend of mine, who...how should I put it in a nice way...is 'on my hook', in other words will jump off the bridge, if I ask. Well, I know, it's rough and insensitive...but in these moments,you...well, if people don't mind you using them, why you should not?
Some time later another friend of mine called me and invited for the pre-openning show of Salt. I saw no reason not to go and decided to combine it with shooting (the shooting had to be done on that weekend only). So I made up a plan and on Sunday early morning left home loaded...hmmm...no, not 'loaded'...just with a bagpack packed with equipment and spare clothes - a dress and heals for the premiere.
I met my friends in the city and we went for the location shooting. When we were half way through, we went for a iced-tea break in a cafe with AC. Our spot boy turned to be too sensitive to our insensitive jokes and left us. After the break the other member of our crew had to leave for work, me and my 'heroine' were going to finish the shooting on our own.
So getting back to the cold-coffee break....
My friend parked the car in front of some coffee shop and we (three of us) were chilling inside. I was thinking of how I'll shoot Angelina with my handycam and how cool it will be to make it into a movie.
In some time, our heroine-cum-driver-cum-dialogue writer went to bring the cam's batteries from the car… few moments later she came back… she resembled of…it was one of those faces, some people call ‘fuck face’…no offence. It’s a mixture of pain, misery and disgust. Her car was taken away by the traffic police, coz she parked it in a wrong place. So her car, as well as my cam’s batteries and my opportunity of a lifetime were gone.
She had to go to the police station. The other crew member had to be off for work, so I was left with two invitations, and the handy cam with no batteries. It was already too late to invite someone else, and I felt a way too crappy to be a nice with people anyways. So I was to give away the ticket to the first by-passer who would look nicer…or less ugly then others. It was a difficult task, coz nice people tend to disappear once you start looking for them. So I stack to another criterion – I picked up a guy with a good camera (who could take quality pictures of Jolie for me). Unfortunately it turned to be Canon(( so the pics weren’t that great. Well, just for the record…not only Canon sucks, but the guy turned to be some office-jerk with a fancy camera. (hate those fuckers).
As for the movie, it was fun! Not like it meant to be…I mean, the writer and director couldn’t be bother to make it a comedy (the first (out of two) written joke appears at 1:20-ish), but c’mon Jolie as Katya Chenkova, a daughter of chess-player and judo fighter from Grozny, is fun!
By the way, the fur caps with ‘ears’ seem to be back. (it’s the second B-movie (after Splice) that insists on ‘em).
