WHERE THE HEART LIES ... Johnson, Hyten, Golden & Bullis

What is Cloverfield? A movie? I guess we don't get all those big Hollywood movies here in Cow Hampshire! :grin:

Mark, dude.... I love that picture of you sleeping! That's great!
 
Well, Mark and I spent the day doing "pickup" shots while Tim slaved away on the edit. They leave in the a.m. to do the Vienna Teng thing...Good luck, guys. Say hi to Norm and disjecta for me. :beer:
 
I gotta relate this little event from today. You see, as Blaine mentioned, we are flying to Seattle tomorrow to shoot the performance part of the Vienna Teng video on Whidbey Island under harsh conditions. We've been scrambling for two weeks trying to pull everything together for the shoot and one final item involved getting a suitably ancient looking book to be a main prop. I had located what looked like a good choice on ebay and was corresponding with the seller to buy it and have it shipped FedEx.

Well, this morning the deal fell through and so I started scouring the net for local sources here in Los Angeles. The prop houses I contacted didn't really have anything that looked good enough on closeups to be suitable. They have lots of old books, but mainly as background dressing. I would have had to physically search their shelves myself with no assurance I'd come up with anything close.

So, I located two references to sellers of old books. Blaine and I visited the first one, which turned out to be a hovel in Hollywood that smelled of cat urine and hot plate meals no doubt cooked by the strange little man operating the premises. When I described what I wanted he sort of went catatonic and it was pretty clear we were at a dead end. Blaine did find a stack of old Playboys on one shelf that amused us for a short while.

Our next choice was "Michael R. Thompson - Bookseller of Fine Antiquarian & Scholarly Books." Mr. Thompson's lair turned out to be replaced by a beauty shop and I thought the search had come to a sad end. I did have a phone number, though, and it turned out Mr. Thompson had merely relocated a block away.

When Blaine and I were escorted in by an aging, yet charming, librarian-ish woman we found ourselves in a virtual museum of rare books. Mr. Thompson and his partner were holding court in a small conference room. When I described my mission he told me that, unfortunately, they don't have any prop books -- everything they have is valuable.

Well, I could tell he was an interesting man and the damn place was just pretty cool so I decided to engage him in a conversation to figure out just what the rare book business was all about. Besides, he was sporting a Patriots sweatshirt that seemed so incongruous with the surroundings that the whole thing seemed surreal.

As I warmed to the conversation I went into full schmooze mode and explained how we were starving film makers ... how I moved to California from the Midwest ... how I loved books and words etc. etc. I thought he might know somebody who could help or that he might even have a distressed book somewhere in the attic.

As the conversation continued he eventually said, "Damn, I know just the book for what you describe." He pulls out the most incredible volume I've ever seen. It's all in Latin and Greek in parallel collumns. The outside of the thing looks like it came straight from Mordor or something. For the record, the title is "DIO CASSIO. Romanarum historiarum libri XXV." He says to me, "I can tell you're an honest man. Go ahead and use the book. Bring it back by next Wednesday."

The real scary thing is that the damn price tag on this thing is $2,500. I can see it now. Bullis goes to get a Starbucks and leaves it on the bench in the airport waiting lounge. ..... crap! Anyway, we're taking it to Washington where we'll use it as a "hero" prop and try to find something more destructible for long shots that we can substitute.

Here's a pic of the generous Mr. Thompson and his partner:

OLDBOOK.jpg
 
And 80 pages of quite good entertainment :) Even if your film sucks (I am quite sure it doesn't) you've got an amazingly good thread :D
 
we're on Whidbey Island with Disjecta scouting locations for tomorrow's shoot. Pretty cool place. I'm on my iPhone now. Will post some pix tonight.
 
Jeez, do you have ANY idea how much an upright grand piano weighs? Do you have any idea how ridiculous it is to try and wrestle said instrument over mud, sand and driftwood to a beach? ... Let me tell you, Bullis knows.
 
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