Happy Birthday, Paloma Darkness.
The Hillbillies:
These guys are a group of aging friends from high school that use the shooting location as a place to corral underage vixens from the local community college, with the promise of ‘partying in the real wild west’ (there’s an exterior set from a Western Town somewhere on the location – it’s a novel backdrop for the gang’s bonfires, and also provides a nice buffer zone to defend potential date-rape charges; although how many times can the local police file the same ‘I-woke-up-in-front-of-a-Pony-Express-Depot-on-a-street-that-doesn’t-exist-on-a-map’ claim before someone catches on? The answer: twelve and counting). Their leader is named Brecy, Jr. (pronounced ‘Bryce Junior’), who is the son of the Bryce Sr., the dyslexic property owner.
Also, Brecy Jr. and his gang moonlight as security on the show.
Night Shift:
Last spring, I worked the night shift as a production assistant on a reality show. For 12 hours between 6:30pm and 6:30am I was the only person awake on a television set, way out in the desert, where nobody lives . I’ve been writing about it lately, and didn’t think I had any photos from that time until found these on an old cell phone, mostly taken as dusk settled on the set, or at dawn, from a gas station.
The sun wakes up: 4:45am the ARCO on Sand Canyon Road.
Night Shift:
Night Shift Reality
Straight From The Horse’s Mouth
I walked up to the Hollywood sign today. Actually, I walked up a long, winding driveway - the work-road to Sunset Ranch, where movie horses live in stables. It sits directly below the mesa where the Hollywood sign is it’s most photogenic. I caught a tourist videotaping me as I texted from the overlook, and I almost said something to him when a horse whinnied from below me. “Nice one, Huckleberry!” a woman said.
Ben Smith, Ayana Hampton, Alexis Hudgins, Myself, shooting Universal City.
Last week, Alexis Hudgins and I took Shirley Tse’s class from CalArts to the set of a reality show called ‘How Do I Look?’. I don’t remember what’s going on in the foreground of this picture (I snapped it while we were waiting in the studio audience for the taping to start) but that large box with the photo of the woman on it spins around to applause as the contestant walks out of it, revealing to her family, friends, stylist and audience a transformed self.
