This is the first day of my production diary for “Rio de oro”. I’ll try to get these posted as often as I can, although internet access is spotty and slow. This is really from March 3rd.

Up dead early, not much sleep, off to the airport for the 6:30 flight to Hermosillo, Sonora. The flight was unevenful, and when I got there, my instructions were to take a taxi to an address in “Cananea”. Not knowing better, I thought this sounded like a 10-15 minute cab ride, but no such luck, Cananea is actually a completely different town, several hours away, so I found a taxi that’s willing to take me, and off I went.

The taxi driver’s named Abundio, and repeatedly asks if I have an iPod or something, because all that’s on the radio is banda and norteña music, which he hates, unlike everyone else in the state. Finally, he fishes out a CD case from the glove box, and we listen to reggaeton and Mexican hip-hop while we drive.

The road is straight and boring, cutting through a slightly hilly desert landscape devoid of anything of particular interest, except for the occasional field of cactus, and some oddly out of place signs. There’s a McDonald’s one, not an ad sign, but the sort of small logo sign you’d expect to see by the entrance to a drive-in McDonald’s. It’s worn and faded, and there’s nothing else around for several kilometers in each direction. The same thing happens again ten minutes later, with a restaurant sign on a high pole, in the middle of nowhere. I consider the possibility of there having been buildings there in the past, but if so, they’re so thoroughly razed that nothing remains, not even a different colored patch on the ground.

That everyone in Northern Mexico drives a pickup truck is something of a cliché, but it would seem it’s also true. I see more pickup trucks, mostly of the moderately large to ridiculously huge variety, on the road than any other kind of vehicle.

I nod off several times, and when we arrive in Cananea after some three and a half hours of driving, it too seems empty and worn out. I go into a supermarket looking for a bathroom, and the shelves are half empty, the produce department sparsely populated only with some dejected looking week-old cabbage. The upper floor of the building holds the office where I’m supposed to meet up with whoever’s taking me to location, and when I get there, the office, that of an accountant, turns out to be the only non-vacant one on that floor, the rest of it empty, just glass doors with old logo stickers on them. I’m later told Cananea is mostly a mining town, and it’s in the middle of a strike that’s lasted more than a year and half now.

I meet up with the driver, and we go off in a truck, first along bits of paved road that gradually becomes more dilapidated, then the asphalt stops, we go along a dirt road that several times dips down to cross dry riverbed. The signs along the road imply that the river flows over the road when it rains, but the landscape shows little sign of that happening lately.

Finally, we arrive at the ranch that’s the production’s home base. It’s actually very nice, something between a hotel and a ranch. I’m told the Reagans stayed here several times, something I chalk up to exaggeration or rumor until, in the living room, I notice a framed photo of Nancy Reagan sitting on the lap of a Mexican cowboy, the ranch in the background. Both are smiling widely. The photo has a cheap plastic label stuck on it, which says, in Spanish, “Sitting in her favorite chair”. I wonder if Ronnie knew.

We leave in the afternoon for a location shoot in the hills, taking off in a couple of pickup trucks and a jeep. The jeep promptly gets a flat tire, runs the tire off the rim, and has to be abandoned. We reorganize people into the remaining trucks and go on.

We’re going to a nature reserve, looking to film some deer. We have some guys out on horses moving them in the right direction, and we’re going to film them as they go by. This turns out to be somewhat more difficult than it sounds, with much moving about and driving trucks up ridges that frankly seem unfit as roads resulting. Finally, just as we’re starting to lose the light, it works, and we get a herd of deer galloping past us at no more than 20-30 meters distance, over the ridge we’re on, and down on the other side. The director is somewhat disappointed there were no male animals in the herd, but otherwise, it seems to have been a success. We set off back to the ranch, chewing on the dust of the truck in front of us all the way.

I enter a coma some time around 9 at night, having slept almost nothing, and having to get up at 5:30 the next morning.

This has been noted on several websites after the announcement of the Locarno win, but I didn’t know that Enrique Rivero, director of Parque vía, had an identical twin brother. Apparently he does, though, and they’re even in the same business.

While Enrique makes arthouse films, his twin brother Seth Rogen makes successful indie comedies like The 40-year Old Virgin and Superbad.

What few readers I have might have noticed that I’ve not been writing much here lately. I’d like to, but I’ve been insanely busy. I’ve hinted at this before, and not said why, since I’ve been trying to establish a few things. But well, here it is. I co-founded a postproduction company (preliminary website) with my good friend Øyvind Stiauren, another Norwegian living in Mexico. We’ve been at it for about 8 months now, and results are starting to show, specifically, the first movie we’ve worked on to show up in IMDB, Ana Laura Calderón’s “La Isla de la Juventud“, a documentary shot on Cuba. That’s not the first movie we’ve worked on, though, the first was a feature film that was shot mostly during April-May. They’re doing pickups now, and post starts in November. There’s also a couple of other documentaries we’re working on right now, as well as several large feature films coming at the end of the year/beginning of next. We’re doing very well, and I’m quite happy.

This also means my IMDB page got updated. There’ll be much more there very soon.

A young woman was killed by an umbrella tip to the eye in Rome’s subway Thursday. Paging Lucio Fulci, a sharp implement to the eye he hadn’t, as far as I know, thought of. If horror and slasher movies really did influence people to imitate them, this sort of thing should be commonplace in Italy… Along with people being pulled through window panes head first, then stabbed in the heart, then thrown through a skylight and hung, the shards of glass killing some other people who happened to be standing under the skylight. Not to mention the seeing-eye dog attacks.

I just took this through my bathroom window, with my cellphone camera. And they say pollution is a bad thing. Hah! Nature never knew colors like that!

(Bonus points if you know what movie that’s from.)

We were mugged today, in the car, when we stopped at a red light. A guy came up and stuck his head in the window, holding what at least was supposed to be a gun. I’m still unconvinced it was real. He told us to give him all our money. I was the one by the window he was coming in through, and I told him no. Aline, who was driving, was accosted by another man on her side, who was opening the car door. She gave him money, and they both left.

I’m struck by how undramatic it was, really. The guy was trying to be threatening, but really failed quite pathetically, and I’m convinced that if everyone in the car had just refused to give them any money, they’d have given up and left. The guy with the “gun” was waving it around and holding it very loosely, which made me sure he wasn’t actually planning on shooting anyone, if it indeed was real. I considered taking it from him, he was holding it just 20 centimeters from my face, but pointing it in another direction, but since it was so undramatic, and they left quickly, I never got around to trying it.

First time that’s happened to me in 8 years here. I’m underwhelmed. I was expecting an adrenaline rush or something, but no, nothing. Desperate people will do desperate things, there’s no surprise there.

Today, I went to Tepito. Tepito is a Mexico City neighbourhood, known for its enormous open-air market (it’s literally many kilometers of street turned into a market), and for being almost completely lawless. The police only enter when there’s nothing going on, and they don’t hassle the locals. Police raids happen, but more often than not, they end in the police being driven out, both by armed criminals, and by the average locals throwing stones and debris at them from the rooftops. It’s a small free state in the middle of the city, and although I’d heard a lot about it, I’d never been, until today.

We started out in the Lagunilla market, a similar open-air market in streets adjacent to the real Tepito neighbourhood. It’s considered less dangerous and more legit, and the focus is on clothes, with a few areas selling antiques and all sorts of used items. After an hour or so there, we went on to the real Tepito. It’s hard to tell exactly where it starts, since both the Lagunilla and Tepito markets are at their largest on Sundays, and they join together.

But you know when you get inside Tepito a bit, things change. It’s denser, the market stalls are larger, and there are more people. While Lagunilla mainly has clothes, when you start going into Tepito, you start getting into more contraband. Pirated DVDs and CDs at first, and an enormous amount of pornography, is what you’ll find out in the larger market streets. We got tired of that after a while, and ducked into a side street, then into another. A lot of people have told me that Tepito can be extremely dangerous, but I never felt like I was running any risk. I was betting on the sellers in the market stalls keeping things reasonably safe for their customers, and it seems I was right.

Down the third side street, we started getting into more unusual stuff. It wasn’t just porn now, but also all sorts of sex toys. The porn was in anonymous DVD covers labelled in marker, some of it advertising hidden camera recordings from hotels in the city, others claiming to be home videos. There was animal porn, and some things claiming to be kiddie porn, meticulously labelled: “13-14-15 years old”, “High school students”, “Kids: Boys with girls”, etc. I’m not sure if the DVDs contained what they claimed, but it’s not entirely impossible.

Another stall had a table full of drugs. Not illegal drugs, but packages of mostly Viagra and Levitra. I picked one up and studied it, and sure enough, they were labelled “Doctor’s sample – Not for resale”. I’m fairly sure it was the real thing, though, the pills were in still-sealed blister packs. There were aphrodisiacs, potency enhancers, and everything else you’ve probably gotten spam about, and something that was at least marketed as a date-rape drug: “Put it in a girl’s drink, she’ll get horny and crazy”.

Inbetween all this, watches and perfume, and rows upon rows of brand-name alcohol bottles. Then there was a stall that sold police and army effects, gun holsters, etc., along with gun replicas, air guns, and knives and daggers, including T-handle daggers, telescoping batons, stun guns, pepper spray, and so on. I’ve been told you can fairly easily get real weapons in Tepito, including automatic weapons, hand grenades, and the like, but that they’re not displayed, only available on request. I don’t doubt it.

There are plenty of electronics and cameras, too. I saw a decent looking IBM Thinkpad for 10000 pesos, not extremely cheap, but cheaper than you’d get anything similar in the store. LCD TVs and DVD players seemed to be the most popular wares, as well as digital compact cameras.

On our way back, in the part of the Lagunilla market selling antiques, I spotted a human skull on a blanket. There were lots of carved and ceramic human skulls around, but this one was old and worn, and one side of it was chipped and flaked in a way that looked very real. I asked, and the seller confirmed: It was real. He wanted a 1000 pesos for it. If I’d had the money, I might have bought it. Noticing my interest, he casually remarked “We’ve got the body too, it’s just in pieces at the moment”. I made a surprised face, and he pulled out a cardboard box, and opened it. Sure enough, there was a pile of yellowed, badly kept human bones in it. “1500 for the body and the head”. I told him I was sorry I didn’t have the money, and moved along. The whole thing looked like it might have come from a doctor’s office or the biology lab of some high school, but it had clearly not been very well kept. I vaguely want to go back and buy it, but what the hell would I do with it?

All in all, Tepito is very interesting. When you get in a bit, it’s very enclosed, you don’t hear the car traffic from the larger streets, and the plastic tarps strung across the booths and most of the streets makes it feel like you’re moving down into a weird labyrinth. It doesn’t feel hostile at all, even the guys selling kiddie porn were friendly and nice while promoting their wares, but it’s very different, insular, like you’re in a totally different place. I can understand why cops don’t often go in; I’m sure it can be very threatening if you give the people there a reason to dislike you.

Screamwriter tagged me for answering this set of questions about me and my tastes. It’s a good warm-up to writing my “what made me get into horror” post, which I haven’t gotten around to yet.

ONE (1) earliest film-related memory:
I remember watching Linnea Quigley’s infamous lipstick scene in Night of the Demons, which my mother perhaps irresponsably rented and let me watch. It scared the shit out of me, but was also exciting, both sexually and otherwise, and it probably warped my little mind for life.

TWO (2) favourite lines from movies:
I’m not big on lines, I’m more of a context guy, but probably a couple of those that run a chill down your spine, like:

THREE (3) jobs you’d do if you could not work in the “biz”

FOUR (4) jobs you actually have held outside of the industry

THREE (3) book authors I like

TWO (2) movies you’d like to remake or properties you’d like to adapt

ONE (1) screenwriter you think is underrated
David Cronenberg. In addition to being one of my favourite directors, he actually managed to make amazing adaptations of Naked Lunch and Crash, and great original material, like Dead Ringers.

THREE (3) people I’m tagging to answer this meme next
Sean T. Collins
I apologize for not knowing any more writers online.

Now that I’m rested and back in the game after finishing work on Bolas Chinas (actually, we are supposed to do a single scene on Wednesday, I think, but filming has officially wrapped), I’ve been thinking about what it is I like about being on set.

Even in small, low-budget, and not terribly organized productions like Bolas Chinas, there’s a strong sense of common purpose within the cast and crew. Everyone’s trying to get the damn thing done. It’s on the level of the best software development teams I’ve been on, and that’s part of what makes it so fun, I think. There’s also that smooth feeling of people doing their thing, efficiently and without fuss (of course, that’s not always, or even often, true, but it very often feels that way). And you develop a certain camraderie with everyone in the cast and crew. No matter what you think of their work as such (which can certainly vary), you have the same purpose, and you sympathize with each other. You eat, chat, sleep, and wait for hours together, and it’s pretty much impossible not to feel a little bit like a family.

Now that I think about it, that feeling of family has always been something I’ve looked for in the jobs I’ve had. I loved working at Helix Code/Ximian in the beginning, for instance, since we were just 30 people, and everyone talked and knew each other. Later, when the company got bigger and more corporate, it wasn’t that much fun any more.

I think management consultants and their ilk could learn a lot from looking at movie productions. But on the other hand, I think movie productions could also be modernized quite a bit. There’s a bunch of stuff that’s basically hold-overs from the old days, and is particularly obsolete on small, guerrilla productions.

Øyvind and I spent a lot of our waiting time talking about uses for computers in movie production. There could be a huge amount of stuff done there, for screenwriters, directors, DPs, production people, continuity/script assistants, and whatnot. What’s available today is pretty pathetic in terms of integration and user interface, and I say that as a registered Final Draft user. If free software wanted to completely take over a relatively small, but high profile niche market, that would be it. Open formats, free software, and heavy integration would be perfect for this stuff.

A good place to start would be a screenplay editor. It’s basically just a glorified text editor with some formatting macros, and could be written in a short time by a couple of decent programmers. It also has the advantage of beign very well-defined. Current screenwriting software is developing so little that there was no useful new features in Final Draft 7 as opposed to 6. So duplicate FD’s functionality, with a slightly better UI, an open XML-based file format, and a Final Draft import/export filter, and you’d be on your way. Add stuff like integration with a revision control server, version diffing, collaborative editing, and a few other things, and you’d own that market.

Update: I’ve written more detailed about screenwriting software requirements in a new post.

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.