I’m currently resting a little. On Friday, we did exteriors, driving around in a ‘74 Chevy Caprice Classic, which was quite the appropriate pimp car. Also, Leo’s shirt has a Betty Page pinup on it. After that, we did a couple of takes of us carrying a guy outside and trying to kill him, but failing, since we’re basically idiots, and start arguing about who gets to kill him, and he runs off. We also did a quick take on the roof of a tall building by Avenida Revolución. It was simple, but not so much for me, since I’m deathly afraid of heights.

Saturday was my day off, I spent most of it sleeping, and the rest with my girlfriend.

On Sunday, we went to a junkyard near Ciudad Nezahualcoyotl, a rather bad part of town, and did most of the third act of the movie. I got to fight a bit with Tomas Goros, which was great fun. I worked with him on Comando Zorras too, and he’s a total professional, and a great guy. He does over-the-top bad guys wonderfully, complete with evil laugh. The junkyard was like some kind of horror movie set, including an old guy with no teeth who lived in a little hut in the back, and fed the “guard dog” slivers of unidentifiable, foul-smelling meat. The place was full of cute cats, though, although they were a bit too shy to dare get too close.

And today, we went to Metro Garibaldi to do an exterior shot, which was fairly easy, although it was hot as hell to stand around in a black leather trenchcoat in the sun. I couldn’t take it off, since I was carrying a prop gun in a holster, and there was a bunch of people and traffic. Tomorrow, I’m doing a single exterior scene in the morning, and then it’s all day interiors on Wednesday, some stuff on Thursday, and then I’m supposed to be done.

Photos in this post are courtesy of Leo, and are under a Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike license. You can see more photos from the production over on his Flickr account.

Second day of shooting, interiors, and a lot less physically demanding, but long. I left home at 6:45 this morning, and arrived back home at midnight. Luckily, tomorrow we can go directly to location, and we don’t have to be there until 10.

Dialog stuff today, and lots of “walk there, stand still, wait until the director yells cut”. Leo did a lot of scenes with Brenda, who we also worked with on Comando Zorras. She’s always fun to work with, and was very patient despite having gotten very little sleep the night before, and having to wait many hours. Oh, and her screams and moans of ecstasy were quite convincing.

Speaking of that, today I did the infamous sex scene, of course. It was with Keyla, whom I already knew, and who was an absolute lady and a professional, which helped a lot. But despite that, I can safely say that it was the most difficult movie-related thing I’ve ever done. I had expected it to be uncomfortable, but it’s awkward, and it’s hard work. Sex is also hard work, of course, but there’s a payoff. Simulated sex is all the sweat and physical activity with none of the fun. I think the scene turned out pretty well, though, after the first couple of takes, it got easier. All in all, much worse than I expected, and I’m glad to get it over with.

Before the actual sex scene, we did a shot of me dropping my pants, cut at right above the knee, and since Alex wanted the movements from that angle, I was basically dry humping a dish washing machine for 5 minutes while making grunting noises. It was less awkward than the sex scene itself, but a lot weirder. And the edge of the dishwasher chafed my testicles.

Later on, we basically got paid to play Mortal Kombat 3, which was a pretty good ending to the day. The script called for a scene where Øyvind and I are distracted by video games while our young thief escapes, so I brought my Xbox to the set and loaded up an emulator. Lots of people played while they were waiting, and the scene turned out well too.

Sleep now. I hurt all over.

First day of filming, from 8 in the morning to 5 in the evening, most of the time standing up or walking briskly, in a knee-length black leather coat, in the sun. I think I got mildly dehydrated at one point, I was nauseous and dizzy until someone got me some water.

On the bright side: We looked badass. Also, I got to walk into a guy at full clip and knock him down.

Later, we did a scene walking along a crowded street. Since we’re bad guys, we were supposed to knock a couple of people over, so one guy and one girl from the crew were strategically placed, and the camera was in a location where it was not too obvious. The takes looked great, but people’s reactions were pretty impressive. When I hit the girl with my shoulder at good speed, spinning her around and making her fall over, people rushed in to help her, and apparently one guy wanted to run after me and beat me up. Ah, realism.

Call at 7 AM tomorrow, we’re doing interiors, which should be quite a bit more relaxed. Also, I have a sex scene, which is described in the script as “fucking like animals”. I’ve never actually done a sex scene before, so that should be interesting. As George C. Scott reputedly said to his co-star before doing one: “I apologize if I get an erection, and I apologize if I don’t”.

I just finished the character studies and story outline for my mexploitation script. I needed fewer characters than I thought to make it all fit together, and pretty much everything fell into place. I even got the required comic relief in there (although it’s only in a subplot, it should be good enough). I’ll need to reread and polish tomorrow, then I’m going to do a 10-minute pitch to Øyvind and a couple of other people, to see how it’s received.

Looks like we’re not going to be filming tomorrow, at least I assume now, since noone’s told us anything yet. I read the final version of the script, and it’s not changed much. Much to my chagrin, the face-farting scene has not been changed, although there’s a chance it might be changed during filming, given that bits of the script have things like “dialogue here, it’s about: “. I admire Alex’ balls (Chinese or otherwise) for starting filming with this.

We got the final version of the script, finally. I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet, though, and I probably should try to do that this weekend.

In case I haven’t mentioned it, the movie’s called Bolas Chinas, and is about two criminals who are obsessed with “balls”, both of the sex toy variety, and the ones you twirl around in your hand that make a bell sound. One is a pimp, the other is a rapist, and when a naive young boy starts stealing the balls from the pimp and selling them to the rapist, without knowing who they are, he unwittingly starts a gang war. Øyvind and I play the pimp’s bodyguards/thugs.

Did I mention we have superpowers? This is going to be great, I promise.

I apparently own the term “mexploitation” on Google. The only other contender is a porn movie of the same name - “They did it all for the American cream!” - and some talk about a book called Mexploitation Cinema: A Critical History Of Mexican Vampire, Wrestler, Ape-man And Similar Films, 1957-1977, which actually looks pretty interesting, so I’ve added it to my list of books to get the next time I order.

The definition of mexploitation, of course, is exploitation cinema from Mexico (as opposed to many other -sploitation cinema genres, where the prefix names that which is exploited). So we’re talking Mexican B-movies here. The all-time king of the genre is of course El Santo, the silver-masked Mexican wrestler who became the star first of comic books, then of a long series of movies. Sometimes alone, sometimes teamed up with other wrestlers like Blue Demon, he generally fought monsters and evil masterminds. Even though he died in 1984, he’s still a folk hero in Mexico, and his son now wrestles under the Santo name (he was known as Son of Santo for a long time before that, a name that in itself is very B-movie like).

An interesting thing to note here is that the Santo movies, (and other Mexican monster movies, like The Robot versus the Aztec Mummy) are the only real examples of horror in Mexican cinema. Santo versus the Vampire Women, in particular, is an honest attempt at gothic horror, at least in parts. Disregarding the fact that the horror of the antagonists is somewhat diminished by it being possible to defeat them by body-slamming, it’s obvious that the intent of especially the opening sequence in the crypt was to horrify. But apart from these movies, and especially after them, there have been very few attempts at working within the horror genre in Mexican cinema. The only exception I can think of off the top of my head is the work of Guillermo Del Toro, but only Cronos is really a Mexican movie (and a quite good one, definitely worth watching). His other work has been in American or Spanish productions.

That’s curious to me, since Spain has produced a fair amount of horror movies, especially lately, by Guillermo Del Toro (The Devil’s Backbone), Jaume Balagueró (Darkness), Alejandro Amenábar (Tesis, The Others), Álex de la Iglesia (The Day of the Beast), etc., and it would seem that Mexico has the same potential, if not more, for telling good horror stories. In fact, with the exception of The Devil’s Backbone, not many of the Spanish horror movies are typically Spanish. Mexico, on the other hand, has a rich mythology and a grim history, which should be perfect as a foundation for horror stories. Mexico even has La Llorona, a folk tale that has elements that seem straight out of J-horror (the ghost of a woman who killer her children, dressed all in white, walking around weeping, those who see her are marked for death, her eyes are empty sockets). It’s a waste that noone’s done anything good with that story. I actually sketched out a simple story outline around it about a year ago; if there’s no good Llorona horror movie by the time I finish up other projects, I might well try to write it.

Of course, Mexico also has the Day of the Dead (not the movie), a whole holiday dedicated to dead people. That in turn has its roots in prehispanic festivals celebrating the dead. Of course, the history of the conquistadors, the war of independence, the revolution, and the more-or-less dictatorship of the 20th century is also steeped in blood. This whole country is flush with the macabre. But yet, not a single serious or semi-serious filmmaker has seen fit to make a horror movie in Mexico in the last 10-15 years.

I don’t know why that’s so, but if I get my way, I’m going to try to change it.

I was woken up by a call this morning, from a production person, who told me we had a call tomorrow at 19:30 for a sequence in a nightclub. I confirmed and went back to sleep. Later, I was woken again by a call telling me that the sequence was cancelled, and that it might not be filmed until mid-December. An email even later told me that she’d be in touch to keep me updated on call times for next week.

I was supposed to get the finished script on Monday, and I haven’t seen it yet. I’m worried about that, since I need time to mentally prepare, find my character’s center and motivation, and so on. They should be happy I’m not a method actor, or I’d have to spend two months like some idiot thug on the streets of Mexico City to “get into character”.

Writing’s going well, character studies are done, and I’m pretty happy with them, treatment is about 50% done, with all turning points and climax nailed down, mostly a matter of filling in the blanks, setting up a couple of auxiliary characters, etc. It should be done this week. My girlfriend’s going away for a few days on Friday morning, that should give me the time to finish up the treatment.

We got mail yesterday from the art/costume department (department, in this case, is one guy). There was a need for measurements, and so, Øyvind and I messed around for a while measuring our manly physiques. I think they’re probably going to have some difficulties in finding black suit jackets in our sizes here, but that’s not really our problem.

Actually, the sort of dressy, all-black look they want for us would make us look cool, if it wasn’t for the fact that our characters are bumbling fools who can’t tell the difference between a mannequin and a guy with a fake mustache and a wig. But, we have superpowers, at least. Øyvind can smell where someone is in all of Mexico City, and I, well, I’m very strong or something. And our eyes glow in the dark!

I spent a good weekend. I wrote 7 pages, the reading went well, I spent Sunday with my girlfriend, and I just got back from her house.

The taxi driver had a peculiar smell, like honey and spices. I know it was him, and not the car in general, because it got stronger when he moved. He was friendly during the small talk in the beginning, and then knew to shut up at the exact moment I wanted him to, and let me watch the city at night in silence while he drove. And he played CDs of Italian 60s pop. A prince among men.

Tomorrow, going to the gym, and more writing.

Well, the reading went well. We went to Alex’ house, and he cooked us lunch. We did a quick read-through of all our scenes, and made comments. It turns I wasn’t the only one who found the farting scene disgusting, so Alex might change it. He seemed to like it a lot himself, but, hey, kill your darlings.

We also watched location and casting footage, which was quite fun. The junkyard that’s going to be the setting for the climax looks suitably grim. In the casting footage, we were surprised to see Zamia, an old friend of ours, dancing sexily for the camera. After that, there was a girl who danced and was not afraid to take her clothes off, which was probably the reason why Alex had filmed her stripping not once, but twice. There must have been 20 minutes of footage just of her there.

In general, the casting looks good. Tomás, who played the bad guy in Comando Zorras, and is an experienced actor, both from telenovelas (Mexican soap operas) and direct to video productions, is playing the Mexican bad guy. I’m very happy about that, since he looks pretty evil, and loves to ham it up. His bad guys are always very entertaining to watch. Also, he’s a great guy to work with.

We’re supposed to get the call schedule and the shooting script on Monday. I think I need to go to the gym this coming week, so I’m not totally flabby and out of shape for this thing. It calls for a fair bit of physical action.