I just got back from rehearsing the fight scene at Dean’s place. He and Dolly were being coached by Shirzi while Mindcrime and I sat on the sofa and made provided commentary. Seriously, though, it went even better than I expected, and I’m eager to see how good it can be on film. Unfortunately, the weather forcast is solid with rain for the next few days. We’re going to try and do it tomorrow night, but it doesn’t look promising. I sat down and storyboarded the final scene today, and we should be shooting that some time next week. After that, all we have are pickup shots, and then the whole editing/sound/special effects stage starts. This, of course, is a completely different challenge altogether, but I look forward to sculpting a film out of the mass of footage we’re presently accumulating. I also watched On Her Majesty’s Secret Service on DVD and was struck with the idea that Lazenby could have become a good Bond if he’d just given it a chance. That movie also has some of the very best musical themes, and the end scene, while painfully set up, was really quite devastating. All in all, a clumsy yet enthusiastic piece, teetering on the edge of Bondlessness.

I rode Gendoyun up to Tianmu this afternoon to sell off some excess bookage and buy some canned soup in case they decide to shut the island down for a week or two. In stark contrast to last weekend, a lot of people were out today; you’d think that the whole SARS thing was overwith by the look of things. It might have something to do with the resignation of the Minister of Health, a tactic that somehow seems guaranteed to assuage everyone’s concerns and fears. Blame assigned + responsibility taken=problem solved in most people’s eyes here.

Meanwhile, on the international stage, unbeknownst to the vast majority of local residents, Taiwan is being raked over the coals for its incompetence in mishandling the whole SARS things amidst reports of the disease’s spread. I wonder if anyone realized how quickly these revelations will prompt the international community to realize that Taiwan’s efforts at modernization and social advancement over the past few decades were all just for show, that no such progress has actually been made, the only effort has been put into fooling the globe into thinking Taiwan was completely different and far more advanced than China. Until now, when the SARS hits the fan, ironically, while everyone’s putting on masks, one big mask has fallen, that of the Taiwan government, whose incompetence and lack of managerial ability is now front-and-center for the whole world to see and compare to that of China. While Chinese culture may put the emphasis on procedure, the world demands results, and in this light Taiwan and China might as well be the same country.

I sound like I’m writing a letter to the editor. Hmmm…

The host of the BCC radio program must have thought my incoherent ravings went over well on the show, as I’ve been invited back to be a guest on another show of his, called “The Adam Club”, which talks about manly issues such as “How to look like you know where you’re going when you’re really, really lost” next Wednesday afternoon. Fortunately the studio is right near where I live, so I thought, what the hell, sounds like it could be fun.

Mindcrime has posted the latest stills on his site devoted to Lady X stuff. The weather is not cooperating for this weekend’s shoot, so we’re going to work on other things and hope we can shoot next weekend instead. The rain is really oily, too, for some reason. On the way back from Malibu, which I was checking out as a potential shot location, I saw a guy just start sliding for no apparent reason. He fell down, slid a bit, and then got back up and started riding. Later, as I was driving down the road behind Sogo, I started sliding as well, right into the scooter in front of me. Fortunately my rear-view mirror got caught on the back of his bike, which kept me from falling, but it does make me wonder if they’ve been trying to disinfect the streets with some slippery chemicals.

As I expected, the SARS situation is getting worse. The government shows no sign whatsoever of getting a clue, still holding meetings and being generally incompetent in a way that’s alarming the rest of the world. When will they wake up and realize that blaming China and each other is not going to solve the problem at hand, which is mainly fucktards who break quarantine? Probably not until it’s too late. It’s certainly already too late for the victims so far, and the way the government and certain individuals are handling this situation is simply criminal. The whole world is asking how any one government could be so irresponsible, while the administration just holds more meetings, never bothering to come up with a single concrete decision on how to handle the crisis. The only thing stopping Taiwan from scrapping the bottom of the barrel in the “most embarrassingly inept government” category thus far has been China, but even China’s getting their act together, at least in some places according to some reports. Any way you slice it, however, Taiwan seems to going all-out to completely and irrevocably fuck up it’s international reputation. Amazing. Simply amazing.

The area where I live was unbelievably crowded when I got back from work this afternoon. A line of people waiting to get into Sogo Department Store stretched all the way around the block. I asked one of the guys downstairs what was going on. “50%-off sale,” he told me. “On selected items.” Ah-ha. So Sogo’s decided to clear their SARS-scourged name with a sale, eh? It’s crazy, but damn, look at ’em go! Police were directing traffic, the parking lots were spilling over, and a couple of X-ray trucks had been set up, presumably to check lungs for SARS-like symptoms.

Shirzi has volunteered to help us choreograph a fight scene for the film this weekend. Dean reckons he can learn the moves in one evening and then shoot it right there, but I’d prefer to do a bit of practice before setting up the lights, getting everyone in costume, etc. The weather doesn’t look like it’s going to cooperate, but I hope we can somehow pull it off at the original location because it’s just so perfect. I would hate to have to do it indoors, and I honestly don’t know of any places we can do it indoors that look sufficiently outdoorsish and cool. Shirzi’s leaving at the end of the month, though, thanks to a parental-concern ticket home to California. He’ll be back after SARS leaves, when we’re picking up the pieces I guess.

In a few minutes I’m going to go do an interview at BCC Radio about the book. I wonder if it’s even still on shelves, since it was sold out at so many places a couple of weeks ago. The building is also where ICRT is located, and although Rick Monday told me they weren’t letting outsiders in, the BCC guy said he could get me inside, which sounds a bit dodgy. Hopefully it’s not a quarantine situation or anything like that. An interview with a mask on would just come out like one of those adult voices on a Charlie Brown cartoon: Woa-wo-woa-wwwwoa.

It’s become an internationally well-known fact: Taiwan is full of selfish idiots:

“In Taiwan, a guy who’s caught drunk driving will refuse the breath test and curse the policeman to the third generation,” said Loh I-cheng, a jovial former deputy ambassador to the United States. “Everyone in Taiwan thinks he’s special and smart, so why should he observe the rules? He knows the police won’t strike him or arrest him.”

Exactly. Even now, after being bombarded with non-stop media reports that are way over the top warning about SARS, we still have people fleeing from the quarantined housing complex. A dentist in Kaohsiung died of it, and nobody knows how he got it. I’ll tell you how: some jerk-off who was supposed to be in quarantine decided to get his or her teeth cleaned after a day of shopping and public transportation-riding. The government says these people face “hefty fines” like the student who decided passing his chemistry exam was more important than people’s lives.

The streets seemed deserted yesterday, with about the same amount of people out that you’d see out and about in a medium-sized US city. Mindrime, Dean and I went to see X2 in the afternoon. There were about a dozen other people in the Estrogen Mall theater, but they still managed to distract me from the movie by talking through their masks and making phone calls. I had to wave my hand in front of one phone guy’s face to get him to shut the hell up. Probably all quarantine-breaking idiots, the way they were acting. it’s that kind of disregard for other people, that lethal combination of selfishness and stupidity that has made this society such an easy target, Taiwan Strait or no. Vietnam, the US, Canada and Japan all dealt with it. Hong Kong and Singapore are getting it under control, and no doubt being former British colonies is a tremendous help. China’s in a bad way because they’re even more socially fucked up than Taiwan, and they’re not nearly as advanced technologically either. Taiwan really has no excuse except for bad government management, lack of measures enforcement and rampant individual disregard for one’s fellow man. It’s devastating to see the havoc a few assholes can wreak in such a situation. This experience is going to follow Taiwan for years to come; there’s no fixing a reputation like the one it’s earning right now.

Got back home around 11 p.m. after the shoot, returning the little blue truck as well as the rental car, with a lot less rubber on its tires and most of the blood cleaned off, etc. The shooting went ok, and we got a lot of good shots, but I’m not sure we got everything we needed. Everyone’s so tired after a whole day in the hot sun, however, I am loathe to call them back tomorrow. Mindcrime put up some production stills and commentary on his site here. So far so good I guess.

There were a lot more people out at the site than I had expected from my previous reconnoitering of the area. Tall Paul kept calling from his car and saying he was right there and where were we? It turned out he was on the wrong river. We did runs up and down the same street, with all three vehicles. Dean got the hang of riding my motorcycle well enough, but the lack of a steadicam will most likely create some interesting editing limitations for this scene. Our Big Stunt came off really well, better than I expected, so well in fact that I had to stop and clean the camera. Most of the shooting was a blur; with a lot of quick checking of the storyboards and script. Everyone was good about it, though. I think I got some really nice footage. Hopefully I will be able to cut a scene from it. My capture card is still insisting that my HDD speed is too slow and stops the capture every couple of minutes, which is most annoying.

They’re going to start fining people who don’t wear masks on the MRT. I suppose I’m just going to ride my motorcycle a lot more in the weeks to come. They quarantined a whole block over in Wanhua and closed Sogo down for a 3-day cleaning. I’m sure that the idiots in that block scattered once they heard about the quarantine. Probably end up cordoning off the whole city, resulting in a Chinese New-Year-like exodus right through whatever lackluster enforcement they will inevitably put up. It’s just pitiful that even a small, relatively undeveloped nation like Vietnam can deal with SARS, wipe it off their map in a matter of weeks, while here our society is so full of selfish, ignorant people, unmotivated by an ineffective government, that we can go from a good chance of eradicating this thing to practically an epidemic. All by ourselves.

That’s all the ranting for now; I need a shower and sleep.

Tomorrow’s The Big Shoot, Hollywood-style filmmaking minus the trailers, caterers, stuntmen or any kind of budget…ok, so it’s not Hollywood-style, it’s a bunch of people with a camera, a microphone and a rented car. I still need to find a little blue truck, something I didn’t think would be this difficult seeing as they’re everywhere here. They’re called “Fortune Trucks” for some reason. I guess they must be cheap and useful. In any case, I am going to have to venture out to Zhonghe tonight after work to see if I can find a place Dean’s former roomie Eoghain heard about that rents them. I dislike Zhonghe, but this has to be done.

Just getting to work is a chore these days. They’ve closed down one of the entrances to our building on Fuxing N. Road, leaving only one, and they’ve also taken the added precaution of shutting down the elevators to most floors, so that everyone is crammed together in the stairwell for 13 flights. All of that huffing and puffing cannot be a healthy environment, masks or no. Temperatures are taken everywhere, but I’ve consistantly been shown to have the same temperature as a leg of lamb in a refrigerator every time. Useless. The only useful thing I’ve seen anyone doing is the people at the Curry House when they spray customers’ hands with alcohol-based cleaner. Masks are useful, especially when you consider the odor of some MRT passengers, but I think the real culprit in a lot of infections is dirty hands. My Sword teacher gave me a bottle of Lysol on Wednesday night. At least I think it’s Lysol. It smells like Lysol and the Chinese name he told me sounds like Lysol. I suppose I could add some water and try to get drunk on it to make sure, but I think I’ll just take his word for it.

At least he didn’t mutter “Damn Dirty Monkey!” when he gave it to me.

明天要去二重拍賽車鏡, 就是難度最高, 最困難的鏡. 我們已經租了一台轎車, 還要租一台’發財車’ 當移動拍攝台. 還要準備吃的喝的有的沒有的東東. 應該滿好玩, 也希望可以避開SARS的威脅感與壓力感.

談到SARS…我們的政府真有

Mindcrime and I were walking to the MRT station yesterday afternoon when we noticed that several TV satellite vans were parked out in front of Sogo Department Store. Cameramen and reporters wandered around the front of the store. I asked one of the tech guys what was going on. “They might shut down the store,” he told me. They were waiting for the event like the media jackals they are. I’ll bet they hoped to catch scenes of people jumping from windows or the like. Mindcrime was actually thinking about going in the store with the hope that he would be quarantined for two weeks with all of the Sogo perfume ladies, the elevator ladies, a DVD store and some choice TV and stereo systems.

Turns out a couple of people with SARS had shopped at the store, or had been there, or something. I haven’t been in there in weeks in any case (too expensive). No closure order has been issued so far, though. I should add in light of my last rant that the government and lack of enforcement on their part is equally to blame for the disease’s spread, not just The Stupid, but all The Inept Government concerned only with politics. This is a real test of governmental efficiency and social education, and Taiwan, which was given a real good chance of avoiding this thing early on, is now proving how dismally it can perform in both areas by doing nearly everything wrong.

We had to go over the old part of the city, near the train station though, for lunch at the Curry House (where they sprayed our hands) and to buy a cable so I can transfer raw footage to Mindcrime’s Powerbook for safekeeping on a DVD or two. I emailed some stills from the stuff we’ve taken so far so that he can make a webpage for promotion. I’ll let you know when it’s up. For some reason, Final Cut Pro captures the footage with all the audio off by at least a second. Premiere doesn’t do this, thank god, and it’s easy enough to fix, but it remains a curious development.

I went up in the mountains behind Tianmu yesterday afternoon in search of a little platform truck to use for filming this weekend, but I didn’t find anything cheap enough to use, really. It was a nice ride, though, as the weather yesterday was brilliant and hot. I might have to take some time off work tomorrow to search around some more, or else we might end up using Tall Paul’s ride. I’d rather have a truck, but we’ll see what I can find. This weekend is by far the most challenging part of the shoot; just thinking about it makes my head hurt. It’s going into battle with Mr. Murphy, since so many things could go wrong. When I’m on the set I’m concentrating so much on just getting the shot I have very little time to think about actual directing, which is worrying when we’re pressed to time and everyone’s standing around waiting for me to pronounce a shot done or not. I’ll be very happy to have this shoot behind me and in the can.

I have to return to old town tonight to get another battery and exchange one faulty one for a new one. So many things to do, but it beats staying at home and worrying about SARS all day. It’s raining now, but as usual no clue what the weather will be like over the weekend.

Warning: If you don’t want to read me ranting about SARS, leave now.

Now then. As you are no doubt aware, SARS has been spreading fairly rapidly here compared to the first month or so of the virus’ time on our fair island. And it would have gone away eventually had everyone done their fair share and taken reasonable precautions to prevent its spread.

When it seemed we had prevented a major outbreak, I felt surprised but cautiously relieved. But No! I then recalled another meaning for the acronym: The Stupid are Always Ready to Strike. Even now, when it’s become blatantly obvious that this is a major health threat, we’ve got idiots ignoring quarantine. Probably over half of those quarantined have decided that their business meetings, classes, shopping and other trivial social engagements are much more important to cancel just because it might kill a few innocent people. We’re still letting people fly in from China via Hong Kong (hint: this is not just stupid, it’s dangerous.) If it were up to me those who knowingly violate their quarantine in such a flagrant manner, such as a cram-school student who took the freakin’ MRT to class every day, should be charged at the very least with manslaughter if their actions are proven to result in someone else’s death or injury. Just lock ’em up. Ever since martial law was lifted people here have been encouraged to do whatever they wanted. That’s perfectly natural, but the pendulum has swung way too far into the Selfish Bastich zone, and now it looks like we’re all going to pay the price. Assholes. At least we’re not in mainland China.

I’m not trying to be a scaremonger; it just pisses me off to no end when a few mouth breathers put an entire nation at risk just for their own trivial, momentary convenience. I heard that Random Gavin, after being coughed on by a guy on the bus who was obviously ill and yet choose public transportation to get wherever he had to go, promptly smacked the fellow up ‘side the head.

Makes me wonder how many people are out there who need non SARS-related medical attention who aren’t going to get it because of this thing. And we don’t even have a common-use Chinese word for SARS; how embarrassing is that?

If I weren’t in the middle of making a movie, didn’t need two jobs to pay off my debt and were independently wealthy, now might be a good time to hole up in a little mountain cabin or on a small island somewhere. Then again, in that case I’d probably do that anyway, SARS or no. To paraphrase Mindcrime, Sometimes people are just too stupid to be believed.

On the other hand, Indiana Jones is finally coming out on DVD. See? I’m not a total pessimist.

It’s been a busy weekend, and it ain’t over yet. We met on Friday night at the antique shop for shooting. I was the first one there, fortunately, so there weren’t strangers just wandering in and setting up. The old guy who runs the place was in his chair and seemed fine with everything, while his daughter and his caregiver were watching TV. Da Shan showed up with a whole range of professional lighting in a rented van, and we set up the lighting in the front of the shop while the family ate in the back. Dean and our shop owner actor arrived. The actor, a man in his 70’s, was very excited to be a part of this thing even though his last and only experience was on stage five decades ago. This, however, didn’t deter him from offering all kinds of advice on how to say lines, etc. During the first setup, while the family was eating behind the camera, Dean would come in and say his line, which was “Hey old man!” in Chinese, and every time he did this, unbeknownst to me, the old man at the table would turn around, thinking Dean was talking to him. Da Shan’s lighting was very nice, though, and really brought out the atmosphere of the place. I stayed behind after everyone else to get some close-ups.

The next day, Saturday, we met at Starbucks at 11 a.m., and then proceeded to the Yongjing Temple in Jinxi Street. The temple groundskeeper (I think that’s what he was) was very nice and offered us tea and food while we were shooting. I kind of wish I could include more of that place; it’s really quite striking, but I’m glad we could avail ourselves of the exterior and doors, anyway. Maurice and Dean went through their lines with no problem, Tall Paul aka Norman Szabo held the boom and helped with tracking, and we were done just after 1:00 pm.

After an extremely filling lunch at a Greek cafe, we went back to Dean’s place to prepare for the night market scene. I was a bit worried about this one since I didn’t know exactly which part of the market we would be using. It turned out ok, though, as we found a stretch near a Dou-hua stand that turned out to be relatively uncrowded. I walked backwards in front of Dean and Dolly, holding the camera, with Maurice behind me holding the boom mic over my head and watching for traffic. I couldn’t see, but apparently we came pretty close to hitting things a couple of times. It took several takes, and it might still take some looping, but I think we got it. I will have to go back with Dean some other time for the shots with just him, though. Dolly was excellent. She really is a good actor. All of my actors are good actors; I’m very lucky in this respect.

During the night market shoot, despite the fact that I was filming Dean in a tux and Dolly in a chipao exchanging what will hopefully pass as witty banter, many of the onlookers thought we were doing a SARS news piece. “Taiwan doesn’t have SARS!” they shouted as we passed. Amazing.

We retired to Dean’s pad to drink vodka mixers and watch an Austin Powers movie. I was exhausted, but I needed to come down a bit after shooting. Today I met with some potential actors for the car chase sequence, one of which, Vincent, is actually a producer. It turns out we have many mutual acquaintences in the business here. His girlfriend even works for Ogilvy (no, I don’t think she’s one of the Vampires). One of our problems for the car chase is that one of the days we’re shooting it is Mother’s Day, and all of our hoodlums want to spend the day in a very un-hoodlum-like fashion, i.e. with their mothers. So I suppose we’ll have to shoot their scenes on Saturday somehow.

Tonight we took a very nice car over to CKS hall to shoot there. Maurice’s scooter provided the lights, aided by Da Shan’s wax paper for a filter. All of my worrying about the mall security was for nothing, as they paid absolutely no attention to us, even though at one point we had two large lights set up and a whole crew there. I even went up to the top of the stairs to ask some guy practicing dancing to rap music to shut up so we could film. Now and then a police guy on a scooter would zoom through the square, but they didn’t even look at us. It was amazing. In New York you need a permit to catch a sneeze on film, but here it seems you can get away with filming anywhere. Maybe we should base part of the movie in the presidential office tower, just to see if we can.

Everything went so smoothly we were out of there by 10:30pm. I’m still a bit excited, though. Whenever things go that smoothly I think I must be doing something wrong, or not doing enough. I heard once a theory that procrastinators put everything off until the last minute because they feel they need a challenge. Eh. As long as if works on the big screen, or even the little one, it should be fine. So far the footage has turned out beautifully. If I can put it together correctly, it’s going to be a very nice piece. When I’m capturing footage, however, I keep getting a “Your disk is too slow” error messages. Anyone know what that’s all about? Is my hard drive too slow? Damn, I just need a Mac, I do.

I also need a weekend. Unfortunately, tomorrow’s Monday, back-to-work day, fill-your-stomach-with-your-day-job day. Can’t say I didn’t have a fun weekend, though.