Capture Features

THE CUT

2009-09-18T09:57:00.000-07:00

We have been in the studio since 6am cutting voice over. Morgan is dropping it in now. The first pass at a rough cut will be delivered this afternoon, just like we said it would. MORG AND JOE DOIN WORK.

SIR MISTER DOCTOR TO YOU

2009-09-12T17:33:00.000-07:00

SHOTGUN LOVIN IN MAH POCKET
We are going to run this song on a loop for the entire documentary. Apparently it's only available on a 12 inch vinyl from the UK. Well anyways, it's in the mail.

Cool and Classy

2009-08-28T16:15:00.000-07:00

It's been hitting 105 in LA this week. Tough to sleep in weather like that. The windows in the apartment are big and broad and slide on a horizontal axis. Not immediately conducive to window-mounted AC units. But really all you have to do is hang the thing out there, cantilever it to your box spring with some sturdy strapping, and frame out the rest of the window the classy way, with cardboard.

Slept pretty good last night. Actually had to pull out the bathrobe this morning because I caught a chill in LA, in August. That'll be fine.

Sometimes I wish the thing would fall out the window, just so I can hear what kind of noise a 60 pound AC unit makes when it hits the pavement from 20 feet. Probably nothing like it in the world.

Camisea, 7 June 1981

2009-08-26T13:26:00.000-07:00

"In the face of the obscene, explicit malice of the jungle, which lacks only dinosaurs as punctuation, I feel like a half-finished, poorly expressed sentence in a cheap novel. While hauling away a mud-smeared, uncooperative steel cable, one of the Indians farted from the effort with such force and duration that it sounded amid the roaring vulgarity of nature like the first indication of a human will to impose order. In my imagination my wishes carry me away to a place where people fly over church towers, church towers over farmland, ships over mountains, and continents over oceans."

-Werner Herzog
Conquest of the Useless
Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo

Up on Redcliff Street

2009-08-19T00:53:00.000-07:00

It's a twisty drive up to Redcliff. You just take Berkeley off Silverlake and you're right there. Fred the landlord has a few properties here on this lot and he doesn't mind about most things as long as the rent checks come through on time. Fred listens to old timey music you can hear through the screen door and has a small and alert white dog that sometimes sits on the picinic table and watches people and things go by.

Today I worked from home. Mostly on account of my producer and my editor are both in New England at the moment, where I've heard they're getting some weather. I'm only doing research now, and I can do that here. I'm reading two books. One about how to tell stories and the other is the diary of Werner Herzog that he wrote during the filming of Fitzcaraldo back in 1980. It's Stephenson's book but I have no idea where Stephenson is right now.

The weather is fine. It's always warm and breezy and dusty and filthy. They got the Silver Lake all fenced off with barbed wire and security shacks. I guess water's something of a hot commodity out here and they use the Silver Lake to pump it around to faucets and toilets. But there's a nice dirt running track that loops around the lake that's pretty popular between the hours of 4:30 and 9pm. I walked around it tonight at about 8 and passed probably 100 people. If you make your own hours I'd say get out there around 2pm and you got the thing to yourself.

I been getting out doing some running and the architechture is strange and modern and the trees seem strange and ancient. There's all these new buildings around here but in your gut you can feel that California is an ancient, natural place and there is only a fragile and uneasy truce between mankind and nature here. Sometimes out by the Silver lake in mid-afternoon you'll be elevated into a trance-like state for a few moments that reminds you of a dream. Not a good dream or a bad dream. Just a strange dream. The dead can still feel the California breeze.

I am learning my way around town and some things are happing as I'd hoped and other things aren't panning out too great but mostly everything is going according to plan. Sometimes I feel like a paratrooper that's been dropped behind enemy lines and caught a bad gust of wind and ended up alone in the woods. But then the Scottish blood in me takes over and mechanically starts digging trenches. I just finished reading 'The Art of War' and learned that the 5th form of war is Siege Warfare. It is the lowest form of war but is sometimes necessary.

The submission date for Tribeca is December 14 and we're going for it.

Well, here we are at the Battle of Los Angeles.

We are in Los Angeles now.

2009-08-19T00:31:00.000-07:00

Los Angeles

Home Office.

Erin took us on a golf cart tour of a horrific plane crash. Luckily, everyone survived.

Filmmakers.

Hollywood.

Goodbye Maine old friend

2009-07-20T12:48:00.001-07:00

The work in Maine is done. All the binders and tapes are packed. I hear tell a man can find an honest job of work out West. Pointing the moving truck toward LA in 17 hours.

max cherry

2009-05-12T13:32:00.000-07:00

Production stills.

INSTAMATIC

2009-04-06T15:51:00.000-07:00

Reed always travels with a point-and-shoot disposable camera. He went through about 10 of them in Asia. Instamatics, he calls them. Instamatic Cameras. He scanned and digitized all his photos. Below is the curated collection.

PUT THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN TO BED

2009-04-03T15:42:00.000-07:00

Today's blog entry will be concerning the topic of brass balls technology. The new editing suite arrived today. It's an Apple tower that cost 1 trillion USD. It comes with a diesel generator, an artificial intelligence entity named Cindy, and a blackhawk helicopter equipped with dual Gatling guns. Morgan also had a server put in it. I don't exactly know what that means but I think it has something to do with the raw power to manipulate world financial markets and predict global weather patterns twenty years in advance. As you see in the top photo, Morgan is tittering with unharnassed glee. He pooped his jumper soon after this photo was taken. I'm also getting familiar with my HDV editing device, which is necessary, but lacks the outrageous sensationalism of seeing Morgan's 28 inches of glass and aluminum come glowing to life.

What's that Cindy? Ok be right there. Gotta go guys. Peace out. yo yo yo.

old ones

2009-04-03T11:46:00.000-07:00

Olde Tyme Storyboard

2009-04-01T22:35:00.000-07:00

They probably have software to make storyboards but I don't know anything about that. I don't really know anything about storyboards other than we need one for our movie. So here it is, looking pretty sharp on the wall. That's half our movie you're looking at there. It's 2 in the morning in Portland and raining. I suppose I'll rearrange the other half of this thing tomorrow.

Here's Reed

2009-03-08T17:58:00.000-07:00

The first new trailer is complete. Morgan is rendering it now and we'll be burning and shipping DVDs to the shortlist on Tuesday. If you're not on the short list and you want to be, give me 20 dollars for my cool movie. The trailer is five minutes long and it looks pretty good. The story has come a long way and so have we.

There's one more critical production phase left. We're planning on going out to Minnesota in early May to document Reed as he steps on a plane back to Thailand and onto Burapha U, where he'll commence his doctoral studies. There are also a few very important interviews we still need to get out there, including a couple of his children we've yet to interview. So I'll be passing the hat around one last time in the next 6 weeks. We have enough material for a very good feature length documentary right now, but I cannot in good conscience finish this beast without proper interviews from Reed's two eldest sons Joe and John.

I need to raise about $2500 by April 15. Not entirely sure how this is going to happen, but that's how these things go. If you can spare $50 or $100, that'd go a long way in getting us over the final hurdle in this thing. I'm a little uncomfortable with panhandling and busking for a film budget, but I'm more uncomfortable with not getting this movie made. So there it is. In the name of Final Destination 2, Hollow Man, Ben Affleck, Bloodrayne, and Daddy Day Camp, please donate to the film. We're trying to do something good here.

Holler at me if you want me to ship you a copy of the new DVD.

Story time

2009-02-26T17:28:00.000-08:00

The log is done and the storyboard is done. I taped it to the walls in the editing suite last night and we've been shuffling it around and organizing the trailer.

The log is pretty cramped in a 2 inch notebook. I'd say there's a couple hundred pages of notes in there anyways. Lot of typing going on up here in Maine. I could really use another intern.

The last month has been very tedious but things should move along quickly now.

I saw a craigslist posting for a lobster truck driver and I'm going after it hard. Driving trucks isn't a bad way to pay bills when you're working on a movie.

All you netflixers out there might want to queue up an Ingmar Bergman film called Cries And Whispers. I saw it two weeks ago and it hasn't left me yet. It's basically a cross between Saw IV and Deep Impact.

Morgan has imported almost all the footage we need and it's exciting to finally go about the business of putting this thing together. It's all there. Patience everyone. The new trailer should be out by St. Patrick's Day. In the meantime just remain calm. EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL IN VACATIONLAND.

Producer's Summit

2009-02-19T09:36:00.000-08:00

Executive Producer Stephenson Brown passed through for a few days of intensive meetings and no less than a half dozen strat seshes. Also, Bob brought over a funny wig and some people tried it on and posed in different ways and others took photographs and still others went ho ho ho. We spent the evening in the kitchen because that's where the beers were. And you could smoke a cigarette in there at your leisure, as long as the ceiling vent was spinning. After awhile we all brought in some chairs and settled in for a time. It was cozy but everyone's needs were seen to.

Then things died down a bit and and Stephenson went down to the 7-11 for a rack of beers and some lemon fruit pies. I took over his chair for a few hands of online poker and managed to hemorrhage about 60 dollars in the time it takes to walk down to the associate for fruit pies. Not that long. Well, he battled back all the same. I never was a gambling man in any way that involves cards or green felt.

The tape log is nearly finished. I'm down to the last 5 of 66 tapes from principle production and should easily have it wrapped by Sunday. Morgan bought a terabyte drive, and is busy uploading our tapes. Come to find out, a MiniDV tape is only 16GB of information, so that works out to over 60 tapes we can digitize onto a hard drive. This will be very good for us. It's the difference between listening to music on an old Sony cassette Walkman, as opposed to an iPod. Not it terms of quality, but just in the massive latitude of random access available.

I'm anxious to get to work on editing the next piece. We're going to pump out a quick and dirty 3 minute trailer to boost morale, then dig in for the slightly more involved work of a thoughtful, 12 minute spec trailer, which we'll then start flashing around in the face of money and influence and see what happens.

The intern calls long distance

2009-02-03T18:52:00.000-08:00

The intern called long distance the other day. It was 5pm Superbowl Sunday. 5am Monday, Thailand time. Aut had spent a fine night with a bottle of rum in the garden that runs behind his parents house. His folks live a couple hours northeast of Bangkok and he's up there doing some consulting for them on a new house they're building.

He said he did some rigorous research and thinking and decided to spend a fat chunk of his No Apologies paycheck on a brand new Nikon D90. It's a heavy artillery 12.3 megapixel SLR that also shoots HD video.

He emailed me a photo he took (below) and I think you'll agree that this is some of the finest sports photography you'll ever see.

Morgan does the clean and jerk

2009-02-03T18:41:00.000-08:00

Here at the Pine Street Editing Day Spa-Gymnasium, we emphasize a rigorous regimen of stretching, clean and jerking, flossing, and editing.

The tapes are many, dark and deep

2009-01-25T20:07:00.000-08:00

It's Sunday and the days labor began at 9:36am on the dot. We generally shoot for a 9am start but the french press can only handle about 5 ounces of liquid at a time so it's hell trying to come up with 2 cups of coffee in any reasonable period of time.

We set in order the editing gymnasium and began on construction of the cork strips which will serve as our wall-mounted storyboard. Some of you thought I was going to say something else, but no. Storyboard. The idea is to log all the tapes, take screen shots of all the important scenes, then tack the whole movie up on the wall before we commit to editing anything in the computer.

We've got about 104 tapes that cover the last year and 63 from our most recent excursion. I devised a template for both interview transcriptions and general footage logging. We've logged about 25 hours of tape so far, including 5 interviews, which are the real beasts. We are crushing the Minnesota tapes now, which are dense with interviews that must be transcribed word for word. It's an interesting exercise in writing real dialogue. All you failed writers out there know too well that dialogue is one of the true horrors of the page to produce in any credible manner, never mind something truly interesting. So I've been spending a few hours a day work on my dialogue muscle memory.

We've made it through 3 of the 63 DV tapes from Aisa. It's slow going but you do it once and do it correctly and things will be much smoother down the line.

We're working very hard here and everything is going according to plan. Maine is a fine enough place. My money's all gone and my feet are cold and if anybody wants to by a guy a hero sandwich go ahead and float 3 dollars at the site. The Triscuits are gone.

Vacationland

2009-01-19T20:49:00.000-08:00

The day after Christmas I pulled a job for a guy I knew down in DC. He got a gig clerking for a federal judge up in Burlington. Asked me if I could fly down and push a 16 footer full of trousers and couches up the coast. Sure, I said. It was a Budget rental. GMC. Sturdy as hell even after 90 thousand and the thing would roar like Fred Durst when you stood on it. We got a couple Motorola two-ways and convoyed up. He took the lead with a radio handle of Tiny Dancer, ostensibly on account of the late model 3 series he was pushing that could do the stomp with anything else on the road. I was Good King Wenceslas on the radio, mostly on account of the snow laying round about; deep and crisp and even.

It was a solid truck and you could take it down the left lane without holding anybody up. There was the gas and the brake and an 11 foot clearance and the rest was up to you. See? Easy.

Well anyways, I pulled another move to Maine today in a Uhaul. It was an anemic Ford F-something-50. I loaded Mean Dean the Vespa in there and strapped a mattress to the wall and threw in a few sacks of slacks and hacky sacks and said goodbye to mom and dad and thanks for everything. Uhaul might have a bigger marketing budget than Budget, and they spend it on flashy graphics on the side of the trucks and decals all over the inside.

On the side of my 14 footer was some strange aircraft carrier made of ice blocks and wood pulp and if I went to the website, I could learn more about it. Sometimes you'll see one with some nice scenery that says 'Utah'. Or with a skier that says 'Colorado'. Real whimsical stuff that has nothing to do with the dirty and loathsome business of an interstate move.

Inside on the sun flap there was a dissertation on how to drive a truck. They installed a Uhaul-brand fuel usage gauge on the A-pillar so you can track your gas mileage in real time. The needle never got too far out of the red on the mountain roads between western and eastern New England. There were other little decals about seatbelts and airbags. Some twisted hack wired the e-brake to a screeching air raid siren. It was a mess. I never had any problem with the graphic on the side but all that other noise made it nearly impossible for an otherwise capable man to drive a truck in a straight line.

I had lunch with an old friend on the way out of town and drifted out east over the Woodford mountain. I made good time across New Hampshire. Traffic was light. At the I-95 toll booth a rotund old outlaw with a long and wild gray beard and dark sunglasses did a quick axle count on my rig and told me in his best Robert De Niro that I owed him 2 dollars.

Then came the big blue state line sign that said Maine. The way life should be. I was cruising in the middle lane and a Chevy truck towing a Uhaul trailer passed me at a clip. I looked at the graphic on the side. It was a cartoonish guy behind an olde timey movie camera. Underneath it said,

Hollywood.

TO DO

2009-01-13T14:40:00.000-08:00

Got a Uhaul lined up for next week. A 10 footer. Enough space for a Vespa, a mattress, a space heater and a few sacks of clothes. No need to dig into Portland any deeper than it'll take to get this project off the ground. Then it's off to LA. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Here's the rough post-production schedule:

Joe to Portland- 1/20/09

Post-production (tape logging) starts- 1/22/09

Finish logging- 2/16/09

Storyboard template finished-2/17/09

Spec 10 minute trailer- 3/1/09

Revised film budget and proposal- 3/1/09

Aggressive marketing push begins- 3/2/09

Storyboard finished- 4/1/09

Editing begins- 4/6/09

90 minute rough cut- 6/5/09

This is all we can possibly do before involving a lawyer or an agent. Once the proposal and new spec trailer are finished, then we gotta get on the phone with New York or Hollywood and see who calls back. With a little luck and some long hours, we'll have some Real Money behind this thing by early summer.

Eggnog in Vermont

2008-12-23T15:39:00.000-08:00

Production is over and everyone is home safe. I met Morgan in Keene, New Hampshire at the McCafe. I missed breakfast by 11 minutes so I had to settle for a 10:41 chicken sandwich. Morgan was laughing and looked like he'd just seen a unicorn run a red light. I think we're all in a state of euphoric shock and disbelief that we actually made it to the other side of a successful production push.

We talked for awhile and got a rough plan in line. I'll be moving out to Maine by the middle of January. Then we'll log tapes for 3 weeks and buy a couple books on how to put together a documentary film so we can learn how to make the film while logging tapes. Then we'll do some heavy writing and thinking and begin the editing around February 15. Right now Independence Day is our goal to have a rough Director's Cut finished.

The Vanderbilt Investment Group will be offering us heavy artillery support.

I told Morgan that I'd like to believe that now the most stressful and difficult phase of the project is behind us, but that probably isn't true.

But never mind that. Christmas is in two days and we've all earned a little break. I just poured an eggnog and in a little while I'm going to wander down to the saloon and see who shows up. If you'd care to join me that would be fine.

A fine meal

2008-12-12T09:45:00.000-08:00

Anne picked us up from the airport in Phuket. She and Stephenson used to work together in Manhattan but then she moved back home to Thailand awhile ago. She drove us to her house and her mom cooked us a fine dinner. Then we took motorbikes down to the festival. The temples have festivals to raise money. You can get beer in towers and little children horse around in inflatable plastic balls floating on shallow ponds for 10 Baht. It seems like there's a finite amount of breathable oxygen in those bubbles but what do I know I'm a film maker not a doctor. You get two little guys in there and I bet you got a solid 20 minutes before brain function begins to slacken. And by then they're dun tuckered out.

The scooters are manual shift with no clutch. You just let off the gas and stomp into the next gear. It's not the smoothest method of gathering speed but it will get you down the road. There are many potholes and cracks in the road but you just keep an eye on where you want to go. If you gawk at the potholes you're going right over the handlebars and straight to hell.

Last Days

2008-12-12T05:56:00.000-08:00

Stephenson and Anne have gone snorkeling and camping on an island that is an hour from here by boat. We're a couple hours north of Phuket. Not sure where really. It doesn't matter. I decided to hang around in this hotel room instead of joining them in snorkeling. I don't want any more boat rides or van rides or old Scandinavian tourists in spandex, bloated and hairy and grotesque.

Gary is far away in Bangkok and maybe I'll start answering his phone calls tomorrow.

This morning the intern pulled a guitar from nowhere and started strumming. Where did you get that, I asked. It came from the sky, he said. I laid in my bed until 1:30pm and did nothing and wanted to do nothing.

There was stale bread and Nutella and I stared at the ceiling and wondered about the numbness that came down like a fog.

Blending In

2008-12-11T21:12:00.001-08:00

By combining moves remembered from his Billy Blanks Tae Bo tapes with a deep passion for high end still photography, Stephenson seamlessly integrates into the fabric of Southeast Asian Culture.

Yankee-3-Pistol on Patrol

2008-12-11T21:04:00.001-08:00

We humped through an angry jungle thick with undergrowth and children.

Headed South to Da Nang

2008-12-11T20:45:00.000-08:00

We took an overnight train from Hanoi to Da Nang. The Old Earth breathed terror and beauty and a man sat on top of the train with a fist raised in Defiance.

We arranged a van and a driver through the travel agent in Hanoi. He welcomed us warmly to Da Nang.

Production Summary

2008-12-11T05:19:00.000-08:00

TRAIN TO LAOS

2008-12-09T07:21:00.000-08:00

BACK ON THE GRID

2008-12-08T22:05:00.000-08:00

Back in Bangkok. There isn't much in the way of high speed wi-fi between Hanoi and Saigon and we moved at such a blistering pace that I didn't get a chance to hop on the intraweb and stab away at the keyboard for all y'all. So everybody relax, we're all safe and alive and out of lame communsim with minds and spirits intact.

Morgan switched his flight on account of the strange situation at the Bangkok airport. He flew home from Saigon and made it safely with the tapes. The footage is safely back in America. Everybody breathe. All things accounted for, he was probably lugging about $50,000 worth of investment in that tinny little briefcase. Morgan's going to start casting around for grants, which we shouldn't have any problem getting at this point. We made it through the most difficult and often crippling stages of production without any institutional help whatever and now people with their hands on the big money will finally understand that this thing is getting made whether they believe in it or not. And some of them will believe.

Vietnam was a rugged and beautiful country. We took an overnight train from Hanoi to Da Nang and then hooked up with a driver who took us the rest of the way down the coast and inland to Saigon. We made it from the top to the bottom of Vietnam in about 10 days time. Lots of long van rides over bomb crater roads. We pushed up into the central highlands and saw waterfalls coming from fog in the sky and distant valleys laid with shag carpet growth that was new shades of green.

We sat down with a formet Viet Cong soldier and he said there is no room for hate in the heart.

The wi-fi at the A-One Inn isn't working too good right now and they're going to have to sort that out before I can get some pictures up.

SALE TODAY ONLY

2008-11-27T23:56:00.000-08:00

TODAY ONLY 2-4-1 SALE ON PULL THE PIN SHIRTS.

BLACK FRIDAY SPECIAL EVERYONE.

MAKES GREAT CHRISTMAS PRESENTS

YOU WON'T FIND A BETTER DEAL ANYWHERE ON NO APOLOGIES T-SHIRTS. STOCK UP. BUY 10 AND WE MAY BE ABLE TO FEED OURSELVES WHEN WE GET TO SAIGON.

LOOKS GREAT ON WOMEN AND CHILDREN AND MEN. OLD PEOPLE LOVE GRENADES.

PULL THE PIN ON THIS NOW PLEASE. RICE IS CHEAP BUT IT'S NOT FREE. GARY'S KNEES ARE BAD SO THAT REALLY LIMITS US ON PETTY SMASH AND GRAB OPERATIONS. NOT THE SMASH AND GRAB PART BUT THE RUNNING AWAY PART.

Good Travel Information

2008-11-27T23:15:00.000-08:00

We checked out of the Prince Hotel at noon on Black Friday with 12 hours to kill before the train south. Stephenson disappeared and reappeared across the street on a second floor balcony. The Culi Cafe. We went up for lunch.

Turns out it's an Australian owned joint. Good food and a little travel booth inside too. Gar made friends with the owner Travis, who also owns a travel agency. He gave us plenty of sound advice, including how not to get all our gear and tapes yanked during our Family Sightseeing Tour In Vietnam. I ordered some pasta and a long black. Travis advised us on a few ways to steamline and simplify our journey through the central highlands. The next and most critical leg of the journey is arranged and planned. The jungles of Vietnam are not a joke. The jungles of Vietnam are no longer a film synopsis. Tonight we head into The Shit. If anything is going to go Seriously Wrong, it will probably happen in the next week. Everybody kiss your Jesus piece and send one up. Time to pull this thing out of the furnace.

Travis got his buddy on the phone who is a New York Times photographer stationed in Hanoi. Stephenson and Morgan passed the phone off and got some advice on how to dance though backwoods communism with half a billion in equipment.

Culi Cafe. Nice place to stop on your way through Hanoi if you're trying to keep a movie on the rails. Come for the long blacks. Stay for the Good Travel Information.

A Very Special Thanksgiving from Hanoi

2008-11-27T09:46:00.000-08:00

Just Like Riding a Bike Into a Bus

2008-11-27T08:10:00.000-08:00

Hanoi. Oriental city of energy kinetic. 90% of the people are screaming around on motorbikes. On the way in from the airport one dude screamed right into a bus. There was a horrific crunch of plastic and metal and the guy rubbed his hand. He stood up confused, walked in a circle and sat back down. He's fine.

There's never any traffic jams in Hanoi only violent and sudden death. They swarm through like killer bees on 50cc's. Sometimes a family of seven on a bike. 7 cc's a head. There are few traffic lights. The streets are narrow and twisted and covered with a constant tsunami of honking, surging steel and bones.

Green Vespa got my heart

Happy Thanksgiving from North Vietnam

2008-11-27T07:05:00.000-08:00

We pulled a couple tables together in the room and threw a bed sheet over them. The chairs in the room are old and heavy and dark and wood. The doors are tall and broad and there's a nice balcony with French doors that open wide.

Every morning at 7am, the Thought Police come on the loudspeaker right outside the window with a broadcast of The News For Today And The Plan For Tomorrow. It's loud enough to cut through the cacophony of motorbike horns and there is no escaping it. Communism is dumb as hell. Morg and I laid awake in our beds trying to ignore the racket. Are they serious? Morg asked. It's hard work trying to keep minds in cages my man, I replied. You really have to mind the store.

Stephenson and Aut went down a few blocks and picked up 700,000 Dong worth of KFC. Gar bought a fifth of Wall Street brand spirit. It is a rotgut combination of blended whiskey and rotten piss apples. I took a sip of Wall Street on the stairs as I waited for Gar to come up. It was filthy and loathsome and there was no irony lost on me then.

We sat around the table and held hands and Gar said grace. The meal was awkward and chaotic, as these things can sometimes be. The mashed potatoes were delicious and I was glad to be in Hanoi on Thanksgiving with this strange and unlikely band of dreamers and freaks.

Happy Thanksgiving from room 101, Prince Hotel, Hanoi.

Bombing Sortie on Hanoi

2008-11-27T05:59:00.000-08:00

Reed Receives a Text

2008-11-27T05:38:00.000-08:00

The Team Takes A Boat Ride

2008-11-27T04:49:00.000-08:00

Gar had some big ideas for us to head up to Loung Probong, Laos, and the Plain of Jars. These places are a few hundred miles north and east of Vientiene and way way way out of the way of our intended course. He wagged his finger on a map that would bring us straight down the mountainous dog leg of Laos. The only problem is, there are no roads there. And if there were, we'd be looking at a series of 30 hour meat locker bus rides. It's only 3 inches out of the way, Gar bellowed. Well, sort of.

We calmed him down and came up with a compromise that involved a trip 3 hours north to a massive reservior he wanted to show us. It was sort of a first date site with Song a year ago. The five of us plus Song piled in the van. We went downtown to buy our plane tickets to Vietnam. After a series of planning sessions, we decided that the most efficient route would be to fly into Hanoi and take an overnight train down the coast. You can't really get from Vientiene to Central Vietnam in any direct manner. Gar and Morgan and Song waited at the van while we went to get the tickets. When we got back it was Gar, Morgan, Song and Song's friend. There was plenty of room in the van for everyone still. We got underway at about 2:30 in the afternoon. A little late for a 3 hour day trip, but Gar was set and there was no use arguing.

We left the town and made a series of increasingly specific turns onto dirt roads. The van stopped and two more girls hopped in. Who are these people, I thought. Song called a couple other friends. White people in Laos are kind of like a night down at Foxwoods for the locals. If you're a young woman, or a woman of any age really, and you get wind of a van load of Ferongs from a galpal, you all stick together. No pressure, just hop along for the ride. Spin the roulette wheel, take down a few free drinks. Maybe win big. Maybe win a white husband. Get yourself a trip to America. If not, hey we sang and laughed and the boat ride was pleasant at sunset.

They like 'em clean cut over here and I was thankful that Morg let me off the hook. The was much hen cackle over his short hair and broad shoulders. This freed me up to work the still camera and enjoy the sun setting behind the mountains.

There are many islands in this reservoir. White people aren't suppose to walk on the islands Because God Said but our driver took us out far enough so it didnt really matter. The boat moved long and loud and slow like a wounded sea monster. We caught the light just in time and cameras were rolling and snapping in the golden light.

Song walked in the water and Gar threw rocks and skipped stones and limped around.

We cruised back to shore in the dark. Dinner was fine. We sat overlooking the dark water under fluorescent tubes. Small gekkos scampered along the ceiling and Gar ordered plates and plates of 'ruuts and trees and dogs and fleas' and we all ate well. There were more stinkrot noodles but Stephenson and I knew better this time. The women feel a burden to keep an eye on you as you eat and make sure your beer is iced and full and you have enough leaves and rice to eat. Touching at first but then, what the hell let me eat. I don't want any more rice.

Crawling and Sprawling throuh French Indochina

2008-11-26T23:42:00.000-08:00

Stephenson fell in with some British thru-hikers on the overnight train and got into a bad whiskey drunk. His journey through French Indo got of to a brutal and unforgiving start.

It took 90 minutes to get past customs. The sun in Laos shines like a science bomb. Pure white light. Make you feel like you got a vapor hangover when you're sober as God on day six. I didn't see any movie theatres in Laos and I know why too. You walk out of a matinee at 2pm in downton Laos and you're immediately blind and probably dead too.

A truck picked us up from customs and drove us to a flophouse 20 minutes outside Vientiene. We all stood in the bed of the truck. The wind was hot and dirty on my face. Red dust was everywhere and I ate a Vietnamese sandwich, exhausted but strong. There were strange brown lint balls on the sandwich that would not be chewed. I swallowed some and picked some off. Everything moves slow in communist Laos. Everything barely runs. People move slow. Taxis move slow. The roads are so bad you have to move slow. It's hot and the money is worthless and nobody knows how to dance. If anyone in Laos is reading this, my advice would be to start the Revolution sooner rather than later.

Reed knows the management at the Mounty House and they put up with his beastly ways so he stays there and gets ripped off and sleeps on sandbag mattresses. Stephenson was badly hung over under a sun too close and vomited immediately after stepping off the truck. He apologized profusely and dumped buckets of water on the puke and over his head.

We went to Mr Thanvas house where Gary could finally unload his 2 rolling suitcases full of punching balls, Marti Gras beads, sweatpants and Double Bubble. The women prepared food for us. It was a bowl of congealed pig blood and a plate of noodles. The noodles looked safe. I took a chopstick full. It tasted bad and rotten in my mouth but I got down a few bites down. Stephenson took 3 noodles. He's a master of subtlety and when I saw his eye twitch and his adam's apple jump I knew something had gone seriously wrong. He sat sweating for a time and then rose with forced calm and walked into the bomb crater dirt intersection and puked his mind out. Later we talked about the noodles and he described them as TART AND RANK which may have been the truest food review I've ever heard. A few days later we were served the same dish again a couple hours north. APOCALYPTIC might be a better word, Stephenson said. We sat down wind of the noodles and I agreed that in the End of Days when the sky is on fire and the world is ruled by cockroaches and stray dogs with rent flesh the place will probably smell something like those noodles.

Dinner was fried pork and sticky rice and an entire fish on a plate that was delicious. The women keep your beer full and iced and we danced in traditional fashion for many hours.

We got into talking about Fear and Loathing and I asked Stephenson to find the two words that best sum up this trip. He said crawling and sprawling. Crawling and Sprawling through French Indochina.

Stephenson Brown.

Reed makes a tough call.

The bird nests in Laos are of elaborate construction.

Reed brings candy corn to Mr. Thanva's house.

Reed was here.

Reed holding forth.

There were plenty of jelly beans for all the children.

OK USA.

Laos is so hot you have to ice the beer.

That's Song in the middle, Gary's girlfriend. They dance with open hands.

Reed rips the mic.

A quick shot with the kids and the intern.

Advent: Brown

2008-11-21T23:11:00.000-08:00

Producer Stephenson Brown touched down at 1am local time two days ago lugging approximately $80,000 worth of still photo equipment. He knocked over B&H Photo on the way out of New York City. The intern got a bottle of Johnny Walker Green Label at a price and we slaughtered it in a mad celebration. I became disoriented and unfamiliar with time. We left the hotel at 4:30am to go find a beer. There's not many options for a cold beer at 4:30 on a Wednesday morning but the intern knew a couple mafia joints that stay open til whenever. We sat down and had a couple beers. The drink went directly to Stephenson's spine on account of not being acclimated to the weight of the local atmosphere, which is crushing. Later on he fell into the produce cooler at 7-11 then muttered 'I'll be outside' and quickly saw himself out.

We got a bag of hot dogs and a few different colors of curry and had breakfast on the sidewalk at 8am. Stephenson borrowed a guitar from a new friend and sang and shot his Canon from the hip. When you're as good as Stephenson Brown behind the camera you don't need to use your eyes. It's more of a feeling. It's all jazz and cigarettes when you know what the hell you're doing.

The team is now assembled and everyone's coming together for their part. We leave for Laos on an overnight train in 4 hours and then we'll be crossing into Vietnam sometime around Thanksgiving.

We spend many evenings in the hotel speaking madly and truly about the direction of the film. Everyone is here and everyone cares and this film will be unsettling in the force of its impact. It occurs to me often that this whole project is a terribly, terribly bizarre way to go about the business of telling the truth.

The War

2008-11-20T23:16:00.000-08:00

We will take the overnight train from Bangkok to Laos tomorrow evening. After finding Song, we will return to the jungles of Vietnam for the first time since Reed was a soldier there 40 years ago.

Dear Mom. Happy Thanksgiving from Da Nang. The war's going great. They put me in with a radio operator named Gary Meyer. He's batshit insane but other than that he seems like an ok guy. It's very humid here and the food is strange. I miss all my friends back home but I came here so they wouldn't have to. Somebody had to do it.

The curious case of the two-tone pants

2008-11-18T23:40:00.000-08:00

One thing you won't find in New York City is a $100 tailored 3 piece corduroy suit. Maybe you'll find a one hundred dollar suit, but it won't hang well on a six and a half foot yeti. I wanted to see how far a hundred dollar bill would go in the way of a tailored suit here in Bangkok. The intern and I went to a few different tailor shops. After the third they were all looking about the same. A room with fabric walls of all colors and patterns. Indian dudes with calculators looking to make a suit of highest quality for 130 dollars. Ok ok ok for you sir 115 dollars. They took measurements and we left.

Well it turns out the only difference between a one hundred dollar suit and a one hundred dollar tailored suit is the tailored one fits better.

It's almost unwearable on account of the bizarre two-tone pants and raw elbow patches. I came out of the dressing room and asked the tailor if he used two different colors on the pants. "NO THIS IS THE SAME COLOR," he said with a certain finality. The intern was sitting on a pink plastic stool. It does not look the same, he said.

Corduroy is a terrible beast to break. You have to match up the grain. Corduroy is an exotic fabric that is harvested from the northern seas in its finished form, much like kelp. It has to be sun-dried for at least a full 12 hours before it can be used in clothing. The length of drying time determines the shade of brown. Many tailors that also have carpentry experience say it's more akin to working with African hardwood than anything from the world of fabric. Knowing this, I let the two-tone pants slide. He'd have to tear them to hell to fix it and this whole thing was primarily an experiment on the relative price of suits. And remember what you learned in biology class: there's no such thing as a failed experiment, you only prove or disprove your hypothesis.

The shop was full of Muslim women with challenging figures getting fitted with conservative jackets to wear to the Mosque. This was no place for a thing so bizarre as a 3-piece corduroy suit. When Stephenson gets here I'll give it another shot at another tailor who is more in tune with the mystic and the unseen.

The pants are cut in a semi-bag fashion popular in the early 90s. Precisely what I specified.

The shoulder pads are supple and robust.

Here's a shot of me wearing the suit. Thanks Morg.

In the Orient, suits with raw edges are known as 'suitshi'.

I asked God to fix my suit. He Cannot.

I smiled and said thanks I love it and the man bagged it up and asked if he could interest me in some formal wear and I said no I have no formal balls to attend.

Duck Soup

2008-11-18T20:43:00.000-08:00

On the way back up from Koh Samed we pulled off into a grocery store in a massive tin warehouse. There was Saturday morning cartoon house beat club stomp music blasting from massive speakers everywhere. No one was around. It was too loud to talk in the grocery store. I was hungry and confused. There were strange stands selling bales of hay for lunch. Others had stainless steel buckets full of things that made no sense. Slimy buckets of flesh that reeked of violence and terror. This was not a tourist spot. There was a candy coated duck hanging by its twisted neck. The light was good on it and it looked to be the best thing going. Morg and I ordered a couple of bowls. I wandered off to look for a cold coke in a glass bottle. 28 cents will get you the coldest and best Coke you ever drank here, hand to God.

I came back and sat down in front of my soup. There was some noodles in there, some marsh vegetation, some chocolate tofu and some duck spine chunks. And if you really got a good stir in some back fat shavings would swirl up to the top. Basically, have you ever stumbled across a three day old homicide in an estuary at low tide? Right, exactly.

I asked the intern why they put chocolate tofu in duck soup but he said it was actually congealed duck blood, which I guess made more sense. In absolute terms there's really no argument why eating congealed blood is any stranger than eating back fat. I asked the intern if it was good and he said, "It tastes like blood."

I popped a severed duck vertebra in my mouth and thought it over. Blood and duck spine soup. Hell of a thing. The back fat was fine but I never did get into the tofu that much.

An hour later up the road Gar took us to McDonalds. Best Big Mac old Ronald Sahwahdeka ever cooked up in that banged up old grease furnace. And the fries. Oh god in heaven the fries.

Coalition of The Willing

2008-11-18T20:11:00.000-08:00

The French and Germans.

The Thais.

The Interns.

The Casualties.

The Russians.

The True Heros.

The Germans.

The Danes.

The Russians.

The Cambodians.

The British.

The Irish.

The Americans.

What happened here?

2008-11-16T03:07:00.000-08:00

Graduation

2008-11-16T02:56:00.000-08:00

The Art of Understatement

2008-11-15T22:08:00.000-08:00

Gar decided to get a temporary tattoo on the beach. Dudes walk around with binders full of designs. You could get a clever and mystic swirl on you lower back that might mean 'power' or 'fertility' to some tribe on the interior of Africa. Or you could get a topless and well endowed smirking lady on your shoulder to signify how hard and reckless you are. Gar opted for our 'Pull the Pin' graphic designed by Toast. The man drew it up and put the outline on Gar's left upper back and drew it with a practiced steady hand.

Meanwhile, Morgan worked diligently about 30 feet away on the construction of a city made of sand. It was a walled city built on the edge of a small river that ran in and out of a tide pool as the waves came in and went back out. It was a well-thought out and well-constructed city that was to be the pillar of all civilization. Morgan found an old rusty hoe and began to deepen the riverbed that ran by his New Town. A true model of urban planning.

As a reward for an industrious afternoon, Morgan decided to treat himself to a hoe pedicure. But he forgot the old saying that you can't hug with nuclear arms. Following that strain of logic, you also can't pedicure with with a hoe. You'll take the whole nail off. And so he did, cleanly hewn with the expert stroke of a master swordsman.

"UH GUYS.....WE GOT A SITUATION HERE," said Morgan with forced restraint, as he pressed his severed toenail back down onto his hemorrhaging toe and skittered along the fuzzy edge of consciousness. Morg Myer, hard at work at the art of understatement.

I'm fine you're fine everything's fine.

2008-11-15T21:46:00.000-08:00

Evening came, and we were prepared.

Gar and I lit hot air balloons and sent them into the sky. Gar sprung for both balloons and told me to keep the change. We ate noodles and french fries and watched our balloons drift up up up. They became very small in the night sky and Gar asked, where do they go? How long do they go on for? But there is no way of knowing. The balloons are a simple and beautiful way to create something unknown. That puts your mind in touch for a moment with other unknowns, like the edge of the universe and the bottom of the ocean and the ghosts that drift across the sea.

Reed gets a temporary tattoo while morgan contracts Hoetoe

2008-11-15T21:30:00.000-08:00

"I would like to get a temporary tattoo," thought Reed.

The intern conducts a final check on the graphic
for accuracy and mad sweetness.

The pin is pulled.

Gar waits patiently as the artist inks a tattoo.

All tattoos are temporary but some moreso than others.

Morg came down with a bad case of the Hoe Toe

Reed the Curious finds a starfish

2008-11-13T19:55:00.000-08:00

A boat trip around the island

2008-11-12T18:54:00.000-08:00

We went on a snorkeling tour around the Ko Samed. Everybody threw in 400 baht and we climbed into the speedboat with big, white, unsteady falong steps. Falong, that's what they call foreigners here. Our crew was a couple fresh-faced Thai kids, couldn't have been more than 20. The boat was beaten and weathered but well-maintained. They knew it well and operated with relaxed, practiced motions. The far side of the island is mostly coral and rugged, naked rock running out of the ocean at a steep angle. Sometimes we'd pull into a cove with an uninhabited sandy beach, save for a couple European falong thru-hikers looking exposed and supremely pissed that The Goddamned Americans had discovered their secret paradise and ruined it for everybody, forever. Gary brought along his small tape player and an old Allman Brothers tape. He pushed play and lit a cigarette and my crew and I went snorkeling. Gary stayed on the boat with his new girlfriend, Gen, and made unsteady sweeps with his camcorder.

The snorkeling was fine. The flippers crushed my massive falong feet and I took them off after a few minutes and threw them on the boat. I was pleased that some elements of my SCUBA diving training came back to service after a long hibernation. Little things, like how to best put on and take off a snorkel mask. How to clear the thing of water when you're underwater. How to explore aquatic marvels lying close to rock cliffs when the waves are coming in so as not to rend your pale torso flesh on the jagged and unforgiving rock and coral. Just don't get cocky down there. Dying's easier than breathing for The Casual Underwater Male.

After throwing an anchor, our crew cut up a watermelon and arranged it on a silver platter. As we slipped off the boat into the water, one sent text messages on his phone he pulled from a small phone bag with a drawstring. The other reclined with a knee propped up on the wheel and flipped through a Thai graphic novel.

The water was cloudy with nutrients, as it has been on most of my underwater excursions. I don't know where they take the photos for the snorkeling brochures but I want to go there. I'm guessing either Hawaii or Sandals Jamaica. I saw some indifferent fish of various sizes, and the intern pointed out a wildly psychedelic coral formation of pure white, black, and deep, luminescent turquoise. This was about 5:00pm and the sun hung too low in the sky to penetrate the water in the direct way required for a transformative snorkeling experience. Morgan had artificially inflated hopes of seeing a school of dolphins and swimming a full lap around the island with them. The dolphin is his birth-animal and he was in a strange funk for the rest of the boat ride after this missed encounter.

We ate the watermelon hungrily and sped through a world of cool salty wind and golden light.

On the next beach, there was a wedding going on off to the right. Jack Johnson echoed off the palm trees and the waves. Morgan and the intern messed around with a frisby and Gary found a starfish in the surf and showed it to everyone on the beach. Gar ordered 4 beers and a coke and had them brought down to the beach. We all drank and checked in on the sun as it turned pale pink and then disappeared.

Grenades made of Sand

2008-11-11T20:48:00.000-08:00

Old Man And The Sea

2008-11-11T20:04:00.000-08:00

Koh Samed Island

2008-11-11T05:22:00.000-08:00

Prudent Morgan laid down to sleep after most of the whiskey was gone but the intern and I resolved to see this thing through to what end may come. We drifted down to the beach. There was a thin and high cloud cover but the light was good enough to see where the sky met the sea and the sea, the land. We stood in the surf and the intern rolled a hog leg cigarette. He's got a very technologically advanced cigarette holder that filters tar and actually turns the cigarette into a substantial health benefit.

The water washed warm around our ankles. Behind us, lanterns hung in trees and strings of white lights ran along roof lines and down poles. Music drifted up the beach with the wind. A polluted blend of house thump, Jack Johnson and Elvis Costello. In front of us in the distance; a boat. The intern is stoic in English but becomes quite animated with laughter and inflection when answering a phone call in his native tongue. We worked on the whiskey and I spoke with deep regard for the ocean and her cold indifference for life and death and her constant supply of both. The intern muttered solemnly in agreement and tilted his head back back back until he was face to face with the sky.

The whiskey being gone, we decided on a constitutional toward the lights. A soup counter was open late so we sat down and ordered 2 bowls. I finished up a bag of cheese and onion chips. A stray dog with festering, gaping sores stood by like a ghost. His dead eyes bled and watched us with no emotion. This poor beast was ambivalent to even his own hunger. Should we give him some chips, I asked the intern. He took them and scattered the last few chip shards on the cobblestone. Everything has a right to eat here in Thailand, Aut said. The soup was hot and fine.

This morning the Intern and Morgan went for some light nature walking aerobics through the jungle, in search of a ping pong table. It was always a game ill-suited to my god-like stature and I elected to stay behind. Besides my hands and arms had become painfully distended with vampire mosquito venom and I decided the morning would be best spent in the pursuit of some type of antibiotics or a doctor competent enough to perform a double amputation. I met Gar and his girlfriend out on the deck. We had two Heinekins and I tried not to look at a group of British thru-hikers as they tried not to look at us. We hopped a truck taxi to the center of town which is about a mile down a bombed out donkey path from tranquil Samed Villas. Morgan called and told Gary they were lost in the mountains in the central part of the island. I sat down in the dim clinic. On the other side of the desk a pleasant man nodded at me. I showed him the massive welt on my forearm and he nodded and said in heavily accented English that I had a tropical disease, and laughed. I was not familiar with this type of humor. The fever kicked in a little by now and I saw the rash was spreading as he examined it with a flashlight. I had no patience for the language barrier and had resigned myself to whatever he slid over the desk. Then, from nowhere, a voice over my right shoulder. Aut the Intern had descended from the jungle with all speed to oversee this transaction. After a brief exchange we walked out with two bags of pills and a tube of arm toothpaste.

At night you can sit on mats on the beach and have plates of food brought to you. In the throes of my recent ailment, I've taken to wearing pants and long-sleeved shirts dipped in a bucket of bug spray, and ordering things like chicken fingers and french fries. When you're sick in a foreign country, familiar food becomes instinctual and essential. While you eat, people walk around with big tissue paper cylinders. They have a delicate wire frame and they're open on the bottom. For 200 Baht, you can buy one and write a message on it. The Intern said it's common to write the name of a dead friend or relative on there and send it up into the sky, express mail. The guy lights a wax torch and the whole thing is illuminated quite beautifully. It flickers and drifts up over the ocean and you can see it fade for some time. Then with a final twinkle, it's gone. I'll see you again in another life old friend, when we are both cats.

Thailand 2

2008-11-11T03:42:00.000-08:00

Aut the intern got to sand sculpting in the afternoon on Ko Samed. Photo by Joe Callander
Buddhism is the prevailing religion. The head of a 40' giant concrete statue. Photo by Joe Callander
Korean food is different. Photo by Joe Callander

One of many streets infested with sex tourists. Photo by Pisanu Mhokprakhon

East of Bangkok

2008-11-11T03:39:00.001-08:00

Strictly speaking, Phataya is the most sordid city I have ever visited. The Mexican border town Tijauana is polluted and filthy, scarred with young Americans looking to get bombed and bare witness to some freaky sex shows. But Phataya is trying to be an honest place. After all, this is a city entirely constructed on the dubious foundation of sex tourism. Every condo, hotel, restaurant and beach-side stand is functioning on the economics of 'farangs,' as the locals call them. Western sex tourists mar the streets here. And often the rationale behind such unprincipled behavior is a 1) desire to feel 'loved,' 2) a desire to fulfill sexual desires, 3) and a debased 'if-it's-not-me-it'll-be-some-other-guy' mantra. This idea that these men are filling a vacuum in a supply and demand market that trades human capital is perpetuating a growing problem here. And for me, it is a true descent into a hellish unknown.
We've arrived on Ko Samed island. It is truly an island paradise and a welcome break from the past intensive 3-week production schedule. We jumped in the back of a taxi, a truck with two rail benches over on each side of the bed, and went into town via a bumpy dirt road. One street defines the village, with 2 internet cafes, some boutiques for buying bananas and magic wallets, and bars. We walked down a small street to view the local Buddhist temple. Like any island with Western resorts, the poverty is conveniently tucked away from most of the tourists. Dogs scour for food, some nearly scratched their eyes out from infestations of mange and flees. And the people who bring the food to the resorts, taxi people around and deliver my Pina Colda to me on the beach live here in squalor. The temple, though, brings beauty and peace to everyone.
Aut, the intern, and I walked around the island. We found an old weathered Ping-Pong table at a through-hikers resort, order two Singha beers, and played beach side. The table sagged in the middle and one half of the table was 3-inches higher than the other. I won 2 out of 17 games. I blamed my poor performance on the sea breeze which had an undesirable effect on the spin of the ball. I bought the beer.
On our walk back we intercepted with a school. The children were on break and playing a game of Ta Kraw. I had never heard of such a game before. 3 players on each side of a volleyball net attempt to win points by kicking a small, hollow plastic ball into the opposition's court. Aut tells me the rules are much like volleyball as well, except you can't use your hands. I give it a whirl. I sucked. A point man tosses the ball out from a corner box to a teammate who then kicks it into play. 'Can you get your leg up to your head?' they question me in broken English. Well, no I can't. Some of these kids can bicycle kick the ball over the net. And we're not playing on grass or sand but nice, compacted concrete. I kindly bowed out after a couple ill attempts.
The water is warm and the sand is white and nothing makes a day better than an early swim off the coast of Thailand.

Thailand 1

2008-11-05T03:00:00.000-08:00

Joe and Reed pose with traditional Thai floating candles at the Asian Human Resource and Development Conference. Photo by Morgan Myer
Markets teem with consumer 'goods.' Photo by Joe Callander
Reed Meyer at AHRD. Photo by Joe Callander
The crew in Bangkok. Photo by Unkown

Asian Human Resource and Development Conference

Views of Bangkok

2008-11-05T02:50:00.000-08:00

After 25 hours of travel, we arrived at the Reno Hotel in Bangkok. A curious little place with two desk clerks with somewhat annoyed dispositions, giving us the business about our prolonged two week stay. The room is adequate, all the same, with A/C, in-room potable water, a cheap Taiwanese TV set, and two beds seemingly recycled from a Thai minimum security prison. But the pool - oh, the pool - makes the morning transition so easy.
We hoof around town for quite some time. The city sprawls with no end in sight. New buildings are being erected at every corner. Laborers, hundreds of the them moving about the job sites, some wading with no footwear whatsoever in ankle-deep clay and mud slurry, work feverishly. I'm not sure there are unions or OSHA here in Thailand.
On the city streets, mopeds scurry by at fantastic speeds, often traveling perpendicular to traffic. Most don face masks. To say pollution is a problem is most likely an understatement. Food is sold everywhere. Dried squid, grilled flat fish, skewered pork and all other protein imaginable cooks, smoke wafting into the streets from sunup to 1AM. Fruit, juice and coffee stands share the real-estate of the streets. Papaya, watermelon and pineapple artistically carved and placed on neat beds of ice, the colors so vibrant that upon seeing you salivate. The vendor quickly chops the pieces of fruit, slides it from a handmade funnel fashioned from galvanized steel into a plastic bag, and skews it so that you might enjoy your little snack on a mini harpoon.
Canals, subways, monorails, cars, mopeds and Tuk Tuks deliver some estimated 13 million people to their destinations everyday. Tuks Tuks are a strange apparatus. One front tire, two rear tires attached to a small, loud 4 cycle engine, these makeshift carts on wheels wind up quickly and typically get you through town relatively quickly. But on a number of occasions, with temps in the 80's and humidity the same, 3 grown men packed into the back of a Tuk Tuk, caught in gridlock traffic, is an unnerving experience. The air at ground level is saturated with exhaust. For the necessity of health, we get out and walk the rest of the way.
Waterways split the city into many quadrants. Some long, flat-bottom boats meander, selling all types of food and goods. Other boats, fixed with 350-horse Chevy big block engines, roar down the canals, the prop attached to a 30 foot drive-shaft and directly and skillfully manipulated by the boatman. Much poverty exists along these waterways. The water is the color of cement but this is the city's fresh water supply. Children swim, adults wash, and the city pumps its waste.
The markets are a sight to see. Our intern says they are hectares large. I tried to recall - is a hectare 20 acres or 100? It doesn't matter - there is no possible way we could see all merchants in one night. Endless shopping with tables teeming with consumer goods. Linen and Thai Silk, Zippos and keychains, wooden crafts and all types of textiles, etc., etc., etc. Thank God for the intern. Aut saved me 120 Baht on a Che Guvera magic wallet. A necessity at $1.80.
The Land of Smiles is an amazing place. And with a newly minted Democrat President back in the states, its easy to see why the masses here are also cheering for Obama. After all, these are the people that produce many of our goods; millions of people working for a few dollars a day and many functioning in a society of shared ownership. Each happy to greet us with a smile and a laugh, except for perhaps the hotel staff at the Reno Hotel.

If you don't know, now you know

2008-11-05T02:45:00.000-08:00

The 7th annual Asian Human Resource Development conference is underway. Reed wore his Sunday best to the opening ceremony. Blue jeans, both sagging and stiff with a broken zipper. His dead fly sagged open, concealed only by an untucked but crisp white shirt. A University of Minnesota football montage tie hung in an unnatural way. A black porkpie covered Reed's silver to strawberry blond shag for most of the evening. The evidence of this glaring social misstep became obvious when the organizer of the conference asked Reed, "What is that on your head?"
I wore a white pinstriped suit with a light paisly shirt. An outsized Japanese scarf of delicate fabric served as some kind of demented ascot. I wrapped it around my necked and tucked the thing into my shirt. It looked bizarre, ridiculous, and somehow, entirely appropriate.
The spread was fine. Drinks for American prices. People warmed up to the cameras just fine. I got a couple Heinekins for me and Reed. Morgan kept the tape rolling and the intern kept the sound bouncing on the level.

This morning I made Reed borrow a pair of my pants for the conference against his loud and sustained whining. I also got a tie around his neck and had him leave the hat at home. We arrived 10 minutes early and Reed began to bloviate immediately. The group photo went fine. You'll see me and Reed in the back center. The photo will eventually be posted on this website.

The Vietnam Visas came off OK. The Embassy is a low slung compound with a tiny and ominous looking side door next to a massive gate that Never Opens. You push your way through and step over the ledge into a covered area made of tile that floods in the rain. Usually there are a couple large cockroaches flipped on their backs doing the Charleston on the far end, down by the bathroom. Sometimes the parking cops wander in there to take a piss, as it's close and nobody seems to mind too much. You push through some tinted glass doors and there's another tile waiting room. There's a lot of tile in Bangkok, maybe on account of the humidity. Don't even run to catch the skytrain after it has just rained. You'll slip on the tile and crack your neck and miss your train and probably just lie there bleeding for awhile until arrangements are made. You may even miss another train while you're lying there.

There's a couple maps of Vietnam on the walls of the embassy waiting room and a wire basket with a 2 inch stack of papers marked VISA APPLICATION. We filled one out in uppercase block lettering and gave the irritated woman behind the glass 1800 Baht and our passports and our applications.
Reed expedited his application for 2500 baht. He can't afford to be without his passport for more than a few days on account of needing thousands of bahts a day to support his various leisure inclinations. Forty years after the war, Vietnam said ok sure stop by.

Reed has stayed at the Reno before. He knows it and he likes it. Everyone knows him. Everyone knows us now too. There's the Italian guy Geo that owns the pizza place next door. He's from Milan and he looks like he could benchpress 495 with a bad hangover, and maybe he does. The pizza is good and sometimes we stop by and sit at the table outside and kill the humidity with big cold bottles of Heinekin. The manager there is also Italian and doesn't speak much english but sometimes in the morning I pass by and see him sitting in the shadows and he waves and I say hello.

Wayne is from Canada and retired down the coast a little here in Thailand. He's staying here at the Reno while his family visits. The kids swim in the pool and everyone relaxes and Wayne and Reed sit by the pool. Wayne mostly listens and smokes. Most people just listen when Reed is around. He bloviates feloniously like an indestructable broken record the devil forged in the hottest furnaces of hell to test the will of men.

There was a Vietnamese-born kid Reed met by the pool. Soon they were sitting and talking. Morgan and I got out of the pool after awhile and joined them. He was a 20 year old on holiday. He moved to Sweeden in 92 and spoke english well with a Sweedish accent. He had an outline of a tattoo of bunch of fish that covered his entire arm. I met him on the street a couple of days later and said he was on his way to get it filled in. I wished him the best of all good luck and we parted ways. At the pool, he told us his father fought in the war for the North Vietnamese. He said his father never spoke much about the war. His aunt got her shoulder shot up back in the war and they had to hack it off. Now she's only got one arm.

These are the people in Reed's neighborhood. They all know me and I know them and we say hello on the street and down at the 7-11. Sometimes we'll sit by the pool and talk things over. The world is one big neighborhood for Reed Meyer and you know where he's at; down on the block. Mr. Meyer's neighborhood runs through the sacred halls of acadamia to the twisted and depraved back alley dives. From the tundras of Minnesota to the jungles of Laos, call the crib same number same hood, it's all good.

Life with Reed. Photo essay 1

2008-11-01T19:24:00.000-07:00

Day 1 in the can

2008-10-29T16:21:00.000-07:00

Wednesday was the first proper day of filming. The dossier is proving to be indispensible and is filling up quickly with notes and phone numbers. Aut the Intern was supposed to show up at 10am but after a courtesy text, he strolled into the lobby around 10:30. We went on a raging tear the night before and if it wasn't for the jetlag, 10am would've seemed entirely absurd anyway. The night before Aut bought us some Thai brandy called Regency. We cut it with water and slammed it. Mostly it was me and Aut, Morgan had tapped out after the highballs we had at the hotel just prior. We split the flask about halfway down the middle which is notable only because I outweight Aut by 100 pounds or so. We ordered frog legs and squid but they must've been out of frog legs at the time so they just brought us a plate of deep fried rodent bones instead. Delicious all the same.
We humped through the Bangkok humidity for a few hours with Morgan keeping the red light vigil with his Sony DV. We got some great footage which will help add some texture to this thing. There are about 10 distended bug bites on my legs that itch ferociously.
We applied for visas at the Vietnam embassy. You have to leave your passport there which naturally grates the instincts, but I guess this is how these things are managed. That may pose something of a problem, as I just found out today that I need my passport to rent the wireless lav mics. The date we need the mics and the date I get my passport are fairly close together but for the time being I will remain optimistic. We need them by November 4, which is the first day of the Asian Human Resource Development Conference, which Gary will be attending. The passports are also scheduled to be ready on the 4th. I'll keep you posted.
After the embassy Aut took us up to the National Palace via boat ride. Morgan hung the unit out over the side of the rig. It took some minor storm surge, which was promptly wiped off. Hopefully it won't cause any problems.
We wandered over to Kohsan Road, the notorious big tent freak show of through hikers, whores, lepers, scammers, lovers and saints. We sat and ordered a pitcher of Singha and watched the evening fade to night. The beer tastes good when you earn it. When you earn it in Thailand making movies, just how any honest man should. It was a nice place to sit and watch the people pass and that's what we did.
Then Aut led us to a thai restaurant that was cheap and good. I got some type of penut pork hot plate. Best goddam Thai food I ever had. Hell, best food I ever had. I thought a hooka might be a nice thing then, so we wandered over to a back alley mafia hooka joint that Aut knew. It was down a long hall lit with naked flouresent bulbs and up 3 flights of stairs. The place opened up to a huge rooftop bar, open to the sky around the edges. We sat in the corner and ordered an apple hooka and 3 gins for the table. It was 8pm on a Wednesday so the place was quiet. A couple white guys were setting up to play a set later in the evening. In the meantime, odd music pumped through the bar and into the humid night. Mostly American music from the last 15 years. Stuff like Maroon 5 and Sixpence None The Richer. Everything was alright and we had an ok time. A few sex tourists wandered in with their hires. Pasty looking white dudes from Australia or Europe. One ordered a blended drink, deep tourquoise in color. Maybe that doesn't tell his life story but it probably comes pretty close.

The sweet smokey apple shisha burned and drifted like a friendly ghost. The lights were colored and the gin was cold. The breeze cut the Bangkok humidity and we all sang along with deep passion and true belief as the band played Hallelujah.

Breakfast in Bangkok

2008-10-27T17:33:00.000-07:00

To Chicago it was 90 minutes. Took about 13 hours to get to Tokyo. Then an easy five hour saunter to Bangkok. All in all it was a wonderful 30 hours of constant low-grade stress and discomfort, with regular intervals of terrible food served hot as hell. Luckily our agent Peter Mills secured us exit row seating on both of the long flights. I guess I could've been crushed between two American type II's for 13 hours. I guess that could've been a scenario. Or I could've been forced to sit next to Gary for a plane ride of any duration. The only comfort there is, at 38,000 feet, maybe it's easy to feel closer to God.
The continental breakfast is included with the 1280 baht a night rate here at the Reno. The breakfast was simple and good. Morgan had a fried egg and a sausage that was a shade of bright pink I had never before encountered. Astonishing. There are a grip of French nationals swaggering around and saying bonjour to the locals and the chairs and the walls. Anything that will listen, really.
Morgan just came bouncing down the stairs to the lobby and declared that he just took a massive dump in the utter pitch black of the bathroom in room 340. I think he's in the throes of a jetlag-induced dimensia that is not to be dismissed lightly. He just spent the last 40 minutes studiously transcribing simple Thai phrases onto a napkin. I'll have to keep an eye on him and hope this thing doesn't turn seriously weird.
Now we're off to the gear shop to secure a rental on a couple microphones and see about a few other things besides. Interviews with the interns will be happening in the next couple days. Cross your fingers. It's humid as a pistol here in Bangkok proper, and you can cut the heat with a bayonet.

Strawberry Pancakes with Ang

2008-10-22T16:33:00.000-07:00

Production: Day 2. Through a combination of Capture Features business cards on 80 pound stock, Morgan's guerrilla sweet talk, and my second-hand teal necktie tucked into my shirt, we managed to secure an entire section of The International House of Pancakes for a key interview. It was across the street from what looked to be the main entrance of THE MALL OF AMERICA, where Angella Meyer punches in for one of her three jobs. Ang called and said she would be showing up at 10:30, a half hour later than planned. This worked out beautifully, as Morgan and I debated heatedly in the middle of IHOP for 20 minutes on the merits of versatility vs. gorgeous depth of field in the shot. The latter involves an artillery cannon of a lens on the end, which made me uncomfortable. Ultimately I convinced Morgan that this war would be won with boots on the ground.
Ang showed up and ordered strawberry pancakes. I had a quick breakfast of eggs and a couple strips of bacon and some hash. Deborah was our waitress. She was entirely accommodating and used to be something of a rock star in another life. She said our story was every story, from the brief clippings of conversation she gathered in coffee refills and more orange juice. I smiled and thanked her and we left a $37 tip.
Ang was quite talkative and thoughtful, which made my job much easier. The Family Meyer has entrusted us with their pain and their joy and it's quite humbling. Just keep your tie tucked in and your hair greased and hang on.
New content on the website. Don't forget to stock up on Absinthe Decanters for Halloween, which is right around the corner. $80,000 may seem like a lot to spend on decanters, but depending on the size of your neighborhood, I don't really see what other options you have. If you run out and shut your lights off at 9:30, you'll be cleaning rotten eggs off your Saturn all Saturday morning.

Peter the grip-warrior

2008-10-20T04:46:00.000-07:00

We're really getting into it now. The call sheet is done. I sent it to Morgan but he's having rotten luck opening the file. He's been terribly busy with chopping firewood and elaborate ritualistic mid-morning egg breakfasts lately. Plus this unseasonable cold snap we're having took him off guard and killed all the newborn calves and he's gone to pieces over that. He said he can't even look at veal parmigiana anymore.
Gary has a handwritten itinerary ready to spring on us in Minneapolis. We're going to the University, the zoo, and possibly even a liquor store. There will be bonfires and cookouts. I

rented a car and got me and Morg a room at the renowned Minneapolis Raddison-Mall of America/Airport. It received an average rating of two stars. One for me and one for Morgan. At any rate, it will hopefully afford us a little more control over the production process. Last time we stayed in Gary's room. Morgan had to sleep on a suspect mattress in a dark enclave and I crashed on Gary's queen size. Luckily Gary sleeps like a cadaver. You just roll yourself against the wall and pray for daylight. See? Easy.
I've been making a few preparatory calls out there to the midwest and we may have to run a bit of a shadow operation to get all the interviews we need. Sometimes separating truth from legend can be a delicate surgical process. Other times you just get in there and kick a few walls down.
Speaking of legend, I'm flying in renowned olde world chandelier repairman Peter Mills for the Minneapolis phase of production. He will be working for us as an audio consultant, regional location coordinator and B&B manager. He will also do some agenting and deal-making while in town.
Mean Dean the Vespa is packed away in the back of the garage. Lar will fire it up once a week and let her idle for 15 minutes to keep the pipes greased and the battery juiced.
I must go to the bank today for $1000 dollars in traveler's cheques and 200 in cash.
I woke up this morning and everything was frozen and dead. Time to be gettin on to more accommodating climes.
Lar is driving me to Albany tomorrow at 3:45am.

Fine by me.

2008-10-15T20:02:00.000-07:00

Name me one other country on the globe where you can find a rhinestone encrusted hand grenade for sale for the bargain basement price of $300USD. you cant do it. Doesnt exist. America? Sure we're in a rough patch. American Dream? Well that's just fine by me. 20 dollars worth of stones and a bottle of superglue and I was smiling too bob. Get in the car we're going to Wendy's.

Reed Places a Telephone Call to New England

2008-10-13T18:03:00.000-07:00

I got the grenade done. There must be 400 rhinestones on that thing. All superglued on. One just fell off when I picked it up but that was an isolated incident I'm sure. Now available for purchase at Reed's Haberdashery.
One week out. There must be things to do to get ready for a trip like this but you get close enough to the journey and it's like staring through a dirty curtain at a roomful of angry demons. The terror grips you and your brain goes cold and numb. Everything turns blurry and all you can hear is the air conditioner and that's all you want to hear. I made a list with a bunch of check boxes next to things like ''vote' and 'traveler's cheques'. And wash the sheets. There's super glue on the sheets. The next two months will be illuminated with very important questions that must be asked and must be answered.

Morgan sent me a few shirts to pass around to people. I got two left, I figure I'll give them to the VP and the Business Development guy down at the mill. It was an honest job and sometimes all a guy needs is a chance. You could let a beard grow there and wear any color socks you wanted and there wasn't any hassles.

Reed called last night and held forth for 40 minutes in the proud tradition of the felonious bloviator that he practically invented.

Autoclave monthly

2008-10-09T07:15:00.000-07:00

I got Morgan a subscription to Autoclave Monthly. He was very grateful. I figure we could both do for some light reading on the 12 hour plane ride from Minnesota to Tokyo . It’s a strange thing to have been on a plane for seven hours and check your flight progress on the monitor to see there’s still five hours of flight time. It’s impossible to understand on any meaningful level. Time becomes unhinged in a blur of hard sun and black desolation and those depraved smut films so ubiquitous in international air travel. Survival is reduced to the delicate dance with the single serving Jack Daniels bottle. An instant of hesitation will leave you in a seizure of blood clots, vertigo and diabetes. Keep the blood thin and the wheels greased. This bird could drop an engine at any second.

Morgan bought a microphone for his iPod yesterday. Now we’ve got an iPod that grabs audio for when a camera isn’t practical, like when the Vietnamese border police confiscate all our gear and throw us in a leech pit. Not because we bombed the hell out of them 40 years ago, but because we ostensibly trashed their economy last week. The domino effect is back and now the bones are falling the other way after these greedhead money whores on Wall Street turned the global economy into the grandest Ponzi scheme ever conceived. Make $300,000 a week working from home. I got six-hundred dollars for my scrap gold.

Saw Hearts and Minds last night. The marionettes are new but the lies are still the same. We have to show them that America is still Good.

Little Peter Needs to Fly

2008-10-06T19:51:00.000-07:00

I bought Peter's plane ticket today. Pete's freecard is maxed out but we needed him in Minneapolis to be the first assistant grip. You always feel rotten buying plane tickets. Thousands of dollars to languish in a cramped child-king's throne made of cheap Styrofoam and cheesecloth, sucking down filth and disease from tainted blower units that should've been replaced back before things got bad. Buying other people's plane tickets is even worse. Never mind that noise though; Stephenson paid for most of my ticket to Bangkok, and Morgan's ticket too. And Stephenson hasn't even met Morgan. Not yet anyways. Imagine buying a plane ticket to Bangkok for a guy you never met. Nightmare.

Also, Peter's old man has a spare Saturn out in the barn that sweet Pete can drive us around in for the week. Save us the hassle of getting a rental car. And with any luck, kind Mrs. Mills will fix us up a hot plate of that Beef Stroganoff I've heard so much about.

I wrote a letter to the upstanding Senator from Virgina, Jim Webb. Hell of a guy. A writer before anything. After you're done here how bout you do yourself a favor and click your way on over to amazon and drop a couple Webb books in your shopping cart. Anyways, I'd like to sit down with him and Reed for 20 minutes. There's a lot of common ground there. So I mailed Senator Webb the letter and a copy of the DVD. My buddy in corporate law down in DC said don't even bother, it takes six months for Senators to get mail on account of the Anthrax screening and by that point we'll all be dead anyways. $2.09 in postage doesn't seem an obscene price for this quixotic request and besides I saved the receipt. Morgan expense me buddy.