Blood Ties

Troy becomes the 'one man crew', as well as the dolly, the crane, the ...

For some reason, in the 5 total trips I've been to Thailand, regardless of the time of day I've left Atlanta or which airline, I always arrive at 10 minutes till midnight. After nearly 27 hours in the air, I arrive pretty much schizto - both wiped out and wired. And of course now, even more so - I'm here to make a movie!

We pretty much hit the ground running. Troy and I came off the plane, found our luggage (praying it would arrive - more on that later), waited through Customs, pushed our way through the wall of humidity and the thick curtain of exhaust fumes, chose between the bombardment of public and 'private' taxi's, and headed for Chinatown.

A quick check into the hotel at 1 am - a basic 12 foot concrete box, but basically clean, and with ice cold air conditioning and a private bathroom, a miniature refrigerator and a 13 inch TV with 'cable' - 5 channels in Thai, about the same in Chinese, and one in Korean.

Perhaps the only negatives were the slow elevator, which doesn't sound like much of problem but since we were on the 11th floor and would have to come in and out to regroup or gather up different equipment or make wardobe changes, 5 and 10 minutes several times a day became annoying; and two, Troy managed to hit his head on something somewhere nearly every time I was with him! We of course shlepped up and down the stairs, but many times were physically exhausted from the nature of the movie, and Troy got used to the lumps on his head.

An hour walk down the main Chinatown street, Thanon Yaworat, and Troy was already snapping photos. We called it a night at 3 am (was it really night?), and I was up 2 and 1/2 hours later shooting my first shots for the movie with the sunrise.

Bangkok is alive nearly every minute of the day, and those shots from my first morning are prominent in the film. The morning taxi stands, the man pushing the cart of gorgeous flowers, the boxes and cases of food being pushed down the street were all cut with the scene of Rob tied up on the rooftop - again, our fortuitous location - the 15 story rooftop of our hotel.

The first days were a absolute joy - a dream coming true - in a beautiful, exotic country to direct my first film, but I was also feeling the pressure. I was here to make a movie! We had been here only 48 hours and had only shot traffic (these shots are also in the final film, including the overhead shots used in the tuk tuk chase). We needed to find and adapt lots of locations, find actors and stuntmen, search for a beautiful girl (part of the story I swear), and make sense of where we were and the possibilities being brought to us. And I had only given us 5 days to be up and running!

Chinatown has its' own look - the neon signs, the wide avenues strained with traffic of every form. Chinatown is also famous for its' fresh seafood, birds nest soup, and fresh shark fin, crowds and traffic jams. For me, and certainly this film, a nearly perfect place to make a movie.