New Sorrow Hill Trailer!

I haven't had a chance to talk about Sorrow Hill, which I wrapped on a week and a half ago because I've been so busy with America 20XX (only three more performances! Go see it! Go see it!). I plan on doing a big write-up of the experience eventually but, until then, I'll just point you to the Grindhouse Pictures website, where Ron has posted a brand new trailer!
There's a great shot of me in there but, since I know that that's not getting anyone to click any links, I will also say that there are quite a few shots of our female lead (former Hijinks member, Nicole) in her underwear!

Enjoy!

ps. Holy shit, this is my 100th post on this blog! Yay me!

Sorrow Hill Filming Diary #1

Be a film actor, kids! It's glamorous!

Well, that's me in make-up for my first day of filming on Grindhouse Pictures' horror film Sorrow Hill. And here, as promised, is a little write-up of how the day went:

Anyone who's been following the film on its official production blog knows that filming on this thing has been pushed back more times than Joan Rivers' face. Ron (the director) and his crew have been hit by so many ridiculous little problems that you'd think God Himself didn't want this movie to get made (maybe he read the original script and saw the now-deleted masturbation/prayer scene). The financing was shaky for awhile, the set got vandalized, and the lead actress had to leave due to scheduling problems. The fact that we finally got to start this thing last week is a miracle and it's not one that any one's taking lightly.

Ron set up an aggressive shooting schedule to catch up on lost time and that's why I was up at 5:45 am and heading down to Atlantic City to try to get 75% of my scenes shot in one day.

I'm not a morning person. I never have been. Hell, I'd rather work from 7 at night till 7 in the morning rather than the other way around. So it's not surprising that I was a bit grumpy the night before the day of filming as I tried to get to bed hours earlier than usual. Fortunately I was going to do something I was really excited about or else I would have been downright unbearable (I'm assuming of course that I wasn't. Only the girlfriend knows for sure).

I arrived on set at around 8:20 am. It was 20 minutes after I was supposed to get there since I had mistakenly assumed that there wouldn't be much traffic at 6:30 in the morning. Everything was alright however since I had to wait anyway to get my make-up done.

Now that I've brought up the make-up, I can't say enough about how amazing it all is. Unfortunately I only have pictures of myself, but some of the stuff these two girls, Nicki and Miranda, did is so incredible. The most amazing stuff right now is what they did with John Delrosso (yes, Nicole's dad, for anyone wondering). He plays Lazarus, the main villain, and the dude is uber-creepy in the role. The only problem is that Lazarus is supposed to be 40 years older than he is. However, the girls do this amazing job on him that includes make-up, latex, and hair extensions that has to be seen to be believed.

Speaking of hair, we had the final discussion about mine. To recap, when I was cast I had a giant afro. I then buzzed it off, totally forgetting that I needed it for the movie. Ron had been flip-flopping on whether he wanted me to keep my hair short as it now was, or buzz it down again. In the end he decided just to wax it flat to my head as if my character hadn't showered in a decade and had been sleeping in a vat of rotten gelatin the entire time.

That wax (which was some ultra nasty concoction beyond that of any normal hair product) was only one part of the junk they put on me. They put make-up around my eyes to give me that special crazy look. They also covered me in this fake dirt stuff they had which went all over my costume, body, face, and even in my hair. If any of my housemates are wondering who ruined the shower, it was me, during my hour long rinsing that night.

The worst part of the make-up for me was that gunk on my teeth. It was this black wax crap (think wax lips) that I had to rub on my teeth and needed to be touched up every few takes. It's horrible stuff that made it so I had to eat my lunch like some kind of boa constrictor/horse hybrid, dropping rolled up slices of turkey meat into the back of my throat to be chewed by my wisdom teeth alone.

If you listen to the most recent episode of Ron's radio show, he and Rick (who plays my also-crazy brother) talk about how much fun the set is and how great everyone is. It really is true. Everyone is incredibly nice and fun to chill with. This includes people new to the set.

Like I said, the lead actress needed to be replaced. Nicole ended up getting bumped up to the role which was great since it meant that I got to do my big fight scene with someone I've known and worked with for a few years. However, it meant that the creepy scene I had to do would be done with an actress I'd never met before and wouldn't meet until half an hour before we filmed it.

When I got to the set, Ron introduced her to me by saying, "Leah, this is Jon. He's the one who will be molesting you." This was awkward, especially since it's the same introduction I've received before every blind date I've been on.

Fortunately Leah turned out to be as cool as everyone else and the scene wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as it could have been.

It was my first scene in the movie (both to be shot and in the actual film itself) and we started filming around 11ish.

The scene is this: Jessica (one of the unfortunate victims in the film) is strapped down to a gurney and is told by a crazy woman, Mama Jean, that she is to be the asylum's new "breeder". Mama Jean (who's played by this great actress named Michelle) then opens up a near by cage to release her two sons (Rick and myself) whom she hopes Jessica will "choose" to be her mate. This leads to a lot of creepiness involving us feeling up her legs and threatening her with a knife.

A while back, I was talking to Greg about watching the video of the first movie he was in. He talked about how he couldn't watch his death scene since it was just plain weird watching himself die. I thought at the time that that was something I wouldn't have a problem with and would actually find pretty funny to watch. However, while I wouldn't mind watching myself die in a movie, I am pretty sure that I never want to watch this scene of me molesting a girl strapped to a gurney. That's just too strange. And from the excited way Ron talks about it on the radio show, it sounds like the footage turned out pretty creepy. This is great for the movie, obviously, but I think I'm gonna be hitting the fast forward button when this thing gets finished.

One scene that I'm really excited to watch is the fight scene between myself and Nicole.

It was the last thing we shot in the day so we were all exhausted. I kept telling Sarah (one of the leads in the movie who was pulling double duty and acting as script supervisor) to either play my part for a scene or switch the script around so my character got to take a nap on the gurney instead of Leah's. However, I knew I wanted to make the scene good since it's probably my best scene in the script so I did my best to snap out of it and Nicole and I rocked the thing out. I hope it went well. It sure felt like it did. In the scene, Nicole swings a pipe at me, I throw her to the ground, she bites my nose, and then she stabs me in the foot with a sharp wooden stake. Also, this is the scene where I get to say my big "I'm gonna make you scream!" line.

Damn, it was fun to do! It's stuff like this that makes me actually want to try to be an actor when I'm out of school as well. It's the stuff like money and food that make me not want to do that.

Here's a picture of my impaled foot in the middle of make-up. Nicki busted this thing out so fast, it's incredible.

Well, it was a long, long day. I was at the set for 13 hours total and that doesn't include the hour and 45 minute rides there and back. When I got home, I pretty much passed out on Sam. I would have stayed that way had she not pointed out that I was still covered in make-up. However, the movie's shaping up great and should be a hell of a lot of fun when it's finished.

I don't have any filming this week, but when I do, I'll make sure to post about it here.

My Incredibly Auspicious Radio Debut!

Hey all,

For those of you that don't know (you motherfucking should by now) you can find all the information about Sorrow Hill, the horror movie I'm making with Grindhouse Pictures this summer, over at the director, Ron DiPrimio's blog. What I may have forgotten to mention, is that he and comedien and fellow SH actor, Rick Cahall do a weekly radio show on Cruisin' 92.1 in South Jersey (people like me can listen to is here). It's on every Friday at midnight after Rick's own show at 11.

Some of you may be thinking, "oh well, fuck, I just missed it." Well, worry not! You can head over to the site and check it out in podcast form. And you should totally check out last night (June 13th)'s show because, hey, I call in!

Mike P. was in the studio and he told me to so at about 40 minutes into the procedings I pop up.

At first, Ron (who has the hidden motivation of trying to make the people involved in his movie sound both professional and impressive) starts claiming I'm a talented actor. As anyone who's caught my stand-up act knows, I prefer to work under low expectations so I quickly change the discussion to focussing on something I'm more comfortable with: how ugly and lame I am.

It's a fun time with highpoints like me being described as "a thin Jonah Hill". Check it out and check the show out every week for more Sorrow Hill news!

ps. I'm gonna start calling myself "a thin Jonah Hill for now on".

pps. A bunch of other crazy shit happened in the past few days so expect some fun blog posts coming up.

Yay for Lupus! (and other internship fun)

I've mentioned my job a few times in recent blogs, so I suppose it's about time that I actually write about what it is. I mean, I guess I could just leave it vague allowing all my readers who haven't spoken to me recently to just imagine what it is I could be doing. Or hell, I could lie and pretend that my position as intern actually involves fighting crime. But...meh. I don't feel like having to come up with new theater-themed supervillains every week. I mean, God, this isn't some offshoot of Getting Super.

Anywho, I am an intern in the marketing department at McCarter Theatre in Princeton. I originally applied to intern in the artistic department but I fucked up my interview. How did I do this? Well, they asked me what I had been working on recently and I attempted to describe the plot of the musical I had co-written. For those of you that don't know, that musical was entitled Zipperface!!?!: the Hobo Musical and is absolutely impossible to describe without sounding like you've just dropped a couple tabs. Here's a paraphrase of the conversation:

Woman: So what's it about?
Me: Well, it's actually based on this really bad horror movie called Zipperface about a serial killer in a leather gimp costume who kills hookers with a machete.
Woman: Uh huh...
Me: But you see, it's a parody of all these musicals based on movies because we decided to make a musical based on a movie no one's seen.
Woman: Right...
Me: So really it's about these hobos that find the script for the musical and decide to perform it using technology that has been implanted in their brains by the Soviets. Which is something they discuss in the beginning of the musical.
Woman: Ok...so did you perform in it?
Me: Yeah. I played a robot.
Woman: ...

This conversation went on for about 10 minutes. I felt like George Lucas trying to tell movie executives that he wanted his sci-fi action film to open with 30 minute of two gay androids wandering a desert.

So, the people I had my interview with clearly thought I was crazy. I could tell as they led me out that they had no intention of ever hiring me. Fortunately, one of the heads of the marketing department (Who does, in fact, read this blog occasionally. Hi, John!) was an old friend of mine and offered me the internship there when his dropped out.

What do I do? Well, most of the time I just stuff envelopes. You see, McCarter gets tons of requests to donate tickets to charity auctions and it is my job to go through these and file and fill them. This would seem boring but I entertain myself by laughing at the people I'm mailing that have funny names. Or the organizations that do. My favorite was this one:


That's right, there is a charity event called the Fun Day for Lupus. It's organized by the New Jersey chapter of the Lupus Foundation of America and you can read about it on their website here.

I'm sorry, but does anyone else think "Fun Day for Lupus" sounds more like a children's book than a charity event for a terrible, terrible disease. Instead of thinking about "thick, red scaly patches on the skin" or "vaginal ulcers" that title makes me think of a happy dog named Lupus who goes to the carnival and, I dunno, learns about sharing. Probably something like this:


So, that's what I do for a large part of my day. Now you know. I do other stuff too, but those things don't lend itself as easily to snarky discussions of possibly fatal diseases.


PS. Hello to anyone who linked over here from the Grindhouse Blog. Once filming gets under way, you can come here to read a discussion from the point of view of one of the dudes in a muddy hospital gown chasing down pretty ladies as opposed to the director who gets to wear actual clothes the whole time.

PPS. Here's the entire new Sigur Ros album, streaming from their website. It's just as good as one would expect. I love this band.

Sorrow in Atlantic City (and on the way there)

Today was the official table read for Sorrow Hill, the horror movie I got a supporting role in (as an insane asylum patient who threatens to rape not one, but two of the female leads!). It was a whole lot of fun since everyone involved is great, I'm a horror junkie, and, while I don't have that many lines, all of them are fucking awesome! There's just something so much fun about put on a "crazy" voice and saying things like "You're the one that killed mama!" and "Is she gonna be the new breeder?"


God, I can't wait to start this movie.


There were a couple of problems however. First off, I got the third degree for cutting my hair. The script called specifically for my character to have "long, ratty hair" and that was something I completely forgot about when I shaved it all off. For some perspective, this is what I looked like at my audition:

And here's what I look like now:

Oops.
Fortunately the director, Ron, got over his intitial displeasure fairly quickly and we began discussing alternative plans (guess who's probably going wig shopping!)

Anyway, the other problem I had was during my treks to and from the read. It was held at the filming location which, if you've been reading this blog, you'll remember being the extremely creepy abandoned half of the Atlantic City Race Track. This is about an hour and 45 minute drive from my house in Hopewell and the best part is I get to drive through Main Street Hammonton!

Hammonton is some small town right by the entrance to the Expressway I needed and every year they hold this little awesome thing called "Cruisin' Main Street"! Now what this is is a day where the whole town pretends that they're the set of American Grafitti 2 and everyone with an old fashioned car drives up and down this mile long stretch called Main Street. Sound fun? Well, the real fun is had by the people who don't have old fashioned cars. They get to sit there and watch the people drive up and down this mile long stretch called Main Street. Whoopee!
To give you an idea, here are some super cool pictures from the Hammonton Cruisin' Classics Auto Club website of the 2006 celebration:

Anyway, this awesome, awesome event was being held today and when I was on my way to the table read (and running late of course) I got stuck for 10 minutes driving that one mile stretch because people were setting up. Then, on my way home, I stupidly drove back there and ended up right in the middle of things.
Here's how it went down: I was driving along, enjoying the new Frightened Rabbit CD, when, all of a sudden, I looked around and noticed that all the cars around me had slowed down. Not only had they slowed down, but they were all at least five decades old. That was weird enough, but when I looked outside, I saw that there were people lining the streets, staring at me. And some of them were wearing poodle skirts.
Man, I hope my 2001 Honda Accord really impressed them.
It's too bad I wasn't a few hours earlier, because the Hammonton News informs me that I missed a Hula Hoop contest and a "Dancexplosion performance," whatever the fuck that is.

And y'know, here I thought that sitting in a circle and threatening to cut a girl's tongue out in a southern accent would be the weirdest part of my day.

Anywho, as we break in the swing of the things with the Sorrow Hill shooting, I'll keep y'all informed of how it's going via this blog thing. Until then, enjoy this little nugget that Ron passed on to me today. The pair of eyes in the banner at the top of his Grindhouse Pictures site are actually mine from a still photograph we took during the trailer shoot.
How about that?

Sorrow Hill Trailer

Grindhouse Pictures has put the trailer for Sorrow Hill up on their website. Unfortunately, they didn't use the shot I wrote about with me grabbing the girl, but they did use the other one of me running down the hall (looking like a complete ass in my hospital gown).

All in all, it's pretty fucking slick looking and I'm excited to get to work on the real deal.

Check it out here.

Riding the Pantsless Bus

So, it's my second post-vacation blog entry so I'm going to do the most logical thing and write about events that took place a week before I even left.

Because I'm cool like that. And also because I hinted at them in an earlier post so I feel kind of obligated. Plus they're cool. Like me.

Anywho, about a month ago I spent basically an entire day wearing no pants. And no, I'm not talking about Hair (I promised no more Hair entries).

It started when I went down to South Jersey to film the teaser trailer for Sorrow Hill. For those of you that don't know (I mentioned it briefly in a post a long time ago) Sorrow Hill is an indie horror movie I have a supporting role in.

It's so great. If you know me well enough, you know that I have a small list of things that I need to do before I die and that "Appearing in a low-budget horror movie" is at the top of the list (other entries include learning French and playing Hugh Hefner in a bio-pic about his life). Back in high school, one of my favorite things to do would be to get some friends together, get a little messed up, and watch the trashiest slasher film we could find at the video store. And every time I saw some young actor get ripped up by some masked assailant, a little piece of me always wished I was the one covered in karo syrup.

Anyway, a few months ago, Mike asked me to join he and Nicole down to Vineland for an audition and I jumped at the chance once I heard it was a horror flick. Miraculously, we all got roles and I knew once I read the script and talked to the director that I was in bloody heaven. The premise is basically this: four female journalism students (including Nicole) and their gay cameraman (Mike. Ha!) travel to an abandoned insane asylum to film a documentary. Only...get this...the place isn't actually abandoned!

The best part is I get to play one of the killers, a raving lunatic named Charlie! Whoo. I was up for two roles and apparently the director and producers liked me so they just ended up combining them to give me more to do. So great.

We filmed the trailer a month ago (a lot of times in independent films, you film a trailer or a couple of scenes first to drum up more funding). We shot it at the Atlantic City Race Track which is soon to be demolished and so is half abandoned and run down. I can't begin to tell you how creepy that place is inside. No pictures can do it justice but maybe some from the production company's blog will help.

So why was I pantsless? Well, my character is a mental patient, so I spent all of my scenes in a dirty hospital gown covered in mud and fake blood (the lead stabs me in the leg with a glass shard during our big fight scene).

Here's a fuzzy picture Mike took on my phone:

It's a shitty picture, but you get the idea. Too bad it's too fuzzy to really see the fucked up make up I had. The make up girl was great. The girl behind me in that picture gets all her piercings ripped out in the movie and the fake rips they put in her ears were really fucking good looking. Gross, gross stuff.

Anyway, as you can imagine, I was having the time of my life. However, filming my first shot was a little awkward. In it I had to grab the girl playing the lead and pull her head up close and snarl the line "I'm gonna make you scream!" at her. That's all well and good (seriously, that's one of the most fun lines I've ever gotten to deliver) but I had literally met the actress 30 seconds earlier on the way up the stairs. A little bit uncomfortable at first, but she was very nice and didn't seem to mind when the director kept telling me to be more and more vicious.

I can't wait to see the trailer. It premieres this Saturday at the Garden State Film Festival. Of course, I'll be doing Zipperface that night so I won't be able to see it but I'm sure it'll be up on the Grindhouse Pictures website before long. Anyone interested should keep checking that site and the blog on it for upcoming news on the movie.

By the by, anyone curious as to what Zipperface is should look forward to my next blog entry some time in the next couple of days. If you can't wait that long, feel free to check out either of these sites for info.

Anyway, back to being pantsless.

A few blog posts (and three weeks) ago, I mentioned buying a whole bunch of loaves of Wonder Bread and said I'd explain why eventually. Well, after the filming, I headed back to New Brunswick and went to an Anything But Clothes Party at Jamie and Holly's house. For the uninitiated, an ABC party is one where everyone has to make their outfit out of things that aren't clothing. After much soul searching, I decided to make some pants out of Wonder Bread bags. It was a pretty rocking idea, although I decided it would be a little too cold to just wear what looked like a plastic diaper so I got out some garbage bags and set to work on something to wear over it.

Now, usually I'm a fairly humble guy (shut up, I am!) but I'll readily admit that my costume was awesome. I made an entire tuxedo out of garbage bags, complete with a napkin hankerchief coming out of a pocket I taped on. Half way through the party, I went out on the dance floor and said "It's really hot in here. I'm gonna make it hotter." and ripped off my pants, revealing my Wonder Underwear. I'm rarely very cool, but that a bad ass moment. I even snagged a girlfriend out of it.

It was a great night. Here are some pictures. I apologize for looking like a drunken asshole in them. I was a drunken asshole.

A Jumble of Thoughts

With a couple of days off from Hair, I feel like I'm swimming in free time. It's not true, but it feels like I am. That being the case and, having written mostly posts about other things recently, here's a random list of things going on with me:

At Cabaret Theatre, Word of Mouth is Our Best Advertisement and Use of Mouth is Our Best Entertainment: a Hair opening weekend round-up

• The shows went really well. The midnight show was actually the best, which is weird considering it was the performance we were the least sober at.
• Saturday afternoon I got a call asking if one of my housemates was a drummer. This is not something you want to hear a couple of hours before a musical. Fortunately, we got someone to fill in last minute for the one show we were missing a drummer and she was excellent.
• I spilled bong water on my lap onstage during the second performance. Very unfortunate.
• Text message from my brother during intermission opening night: "U made bershads everywhere proud in that nude scene" Touching.
• And my favorite story of the weekend: During the course of the play, there are two scenes where I get simulated blow jobs (a number I will spend the rest of my theatrical career attempting to surpass). The first one takes place during the song "Sodomy" and involves Danielle, an actress in the show, literally pushing me into the lap of an audience member in the first row and then pretending to go down on me. At the end of the song, the music reaches a climax and I, ahem, pretend to follow suit. To make this clearer (and basically to fuck with the audience even more) I usually grab someone in the first row's knee and squeeze. During the intermission of the first performance I asked Danielle if she saw whose knee I grabbed. She said yes. It was her boyfriend.

Things I'm Doing Post-Haircut
I agreed to take a small role in Zipperface??!?, the musical I wrote over winter break with Dave and Andy. Also I've got Hijinks right after that and once school ends I'm heading to South Jersey to film an independent horror movie called Sorrow Hill. All of these things things deserve their own blog entries, so basically I'm just writing this to remind myself that my current free time will be short lived even after Hair's over.

I'm Almost a Good Student
I had a very nice conversation with one of my professor's today after class where she asked about my future plans and told me I made large contributions to the class. You're all probably thinking that that's not very interesting, but it was really cool for me. The last time a teacher seemed genuinely pleases with my in-class performance was in first grade when I was the only student in Mrs. Powell's class who wrote a Season poem that rhymed.

Grown Up Food
Since I'm partly writing this blog to be read by a hypothetical future Me, I think it's important to note that I made big steps to becoming an adult type person today. I went to the grocery store (all by myself) and got some real meals for myself. Sure there was nothing that required anything more complicated than a microwave, however, any night without RU Grill or takeout Chinese is still a whole night without RU Grill or takeout Chinese.

Grown Up Food for Thought
Last week, during tech for Hair, I had next to no time to sleep. And when I did sleep, it was fitful and brief. During times like that, I tend to have really strange dreams (or perhaps I'm just able to remember them more). One night in particular, I had a whole string of absolute whoppers. It began with me being a mafia hit man and later developed into a look at some extremely dramatic Bizarro World cast party for Hair. However, the most interesting part of the dream (and the part I remember the clearest) came later.
It was incredibly vivid and took place at some kind of seaside resort town (think LBI). It was the future and I was sitting in a lawn chair, having a conversation with my parents. After a couple minutes, three young children ran up, one of whom was my son. He had bright blond hair, which I suppose he got from his mother's side (she didn't appear in the dream. He was really happy and asked me if he could go play with his two friends whom I remember quite clearly being a young Asian boy and a cute, little girl. I said yes and they all ran off. As they were leaving, I pointed to the little girl and joked to my parents that in a few more years, my son would start spending all his time trying to bang her.
Then we all laughed.
It was very odd.