So these past couple of weeks have been great in terms of consistency given the relative difficulty in finding work in this business. But when every given workday is an average of 12 hours minimum, working everyday could be a little tiring..just a little. I'm getting exhausted and I'm only doing background work! So it's no wonder why most Hollywood marriages don't last. If you and your wife both have thriving careers, then there's no way you'd be able to see each other. You're on set for 12-16 hours a day, only to go home and sleep for 4 hours (if you're even lucky to be shooting near your home and not somewhere on location) and you never have the time to spend with your loved ones. Do that for several months of shooting prior to having to travel the world to promote the movie for several months after, that's a recipe for one broken marriage. Beautiful...For a medium that's so dependent on collaboration, this business is truly meant for the lone warrior.
But the journey is great nonetheless and I've digressed from the true purpose of this blog.
A couple of weeks ago I worked on a movie in production called Boogie Town. OMG! It's by the same director and writer of You Got Served and this will either be the most awesome movie ever or the worst movie ever to be put to film. It's Demolition Man meets You Got Served meets West Side Story. Yes, you read correctly..Go ahead and read that sentence over again..I'll wait...
The plot is as follows:
In the future (2015), there is no drugs, crime, and violence in New York City. However, dancing is outlawed. Yes...dancing...battle dancing to be specific. The NYPD have thus created a new faction called the "Boogie Police" who specialize in catching dancers. The law is that if you're a dancer, you'll be arrested on site.
Marques Houston plays Micha, leader of the black dancing gang called The Trojans, whose bitter rival is an asian dancing gang called The Warriors, whose leader is a guy named Jay. The Trojans and the Warriors are known as the two best crews and, of course, Micha and Jay were once best friends but now for some reason they hate each other.
To top it off, they both are so good at dancing that they both possess a special power, creatively labeled "the Energy", which allows them to dance with superhuman speed, strength, and agility (Kinda like Bruce Leroy in The Last Dragon). When used, the Boogie Police are able to track said "Energy" via dancing satellite to pinpoint the exact location of illegal underground battles thus raiding them, ridding the world of these meddlesome and society diminishing dancers.
Micha is the organizer of this underground dance arena "Boogie Town" where dance crews come to "battle it out to the end". The animosity spills out from the dance floor to the streets as Jay finds out that Micha has been dating his sister behind his back. Oohhhh snap! Things just got serious...
Jay decides that the only way to settle things is a winner take all/loser leave town battle in Boogie Town. Who will win? What will happen to Micha and Natalie's love? Why and how do Jay and Micha possess this "Energy"? Why are the Boogie Police really hunting Jay and Micha?
Don't miss this coming of age drama when it hits a theater near you in June 2009. Boogie Town! Woot woot!
This movie will be awfully amazing or amazingly awful. I kinda can't wait till it comes out cause I really wanna see how it turns out. It'll probably be a rental though. But this movie does seem to be the talk of the town though. Since I've worked on it, I've met so many people and have many conversations that begin with "OMG! Have you worked on Boogie Town?!"
The fact that this movie is being made really gives me hope for my own career. Although, I did hear that it's not being made through a studio and the writer/director is funding it through his own production company to try to sell later on. I do think that despite the incredible storyline, this movie is gonna make a pretty good profit. If not at the box office, then in DVD sells, cause I'm sure that the dancing will be great and the dancing community will eat this all up. And the budget is really low ($3 million) so it shouldn't be that difficult for a studio to pick it up (if it hasn't already) and make its money back. To give you an idea of how low $3 million is in movie money, keep in mind that a movie is considered "low budget" if it's under $15 million. Although it does differ dependent on the genre. ($20 million is modest for a comedy but low for an action movie)
So this was the set I was on two Mondays ago. My call time was 10am and I didn't we didn't get wrapped until 4am. I played a Boogie Police officer and ended up having a great time. There were a lot of fun people on set that I met and the food was delicious and superfluous.
Normally being wrapped at 4am isn't that bad and days that long are normal, but what sucked was that I was booked on a show called Lie To Me the next day and my call time was.....6:30am!!
So as soon as we were wrapped, I drove the 35min out of Hollywood to where I live in West Covina, showered, grabbed my clothes, and drove 35min back into Hollywood and went back to work where my second wind kicked and more hilarity ensued.