Lone Star!

One of my filmmaker classmates, Director, Val Hakun's thesis film was selected to screen at the Hoboken Film Festival. I was a Producer on this film and one of my roommates, Pat was the creepy lead character. Val travelled from LA and Pat and I travelled from NYC to the historic Paramount Theatre in Middletown, NY. Val has an extremely quick wit and a fantastic dark sense of humour. So dark that, Val's glass is not just half full but it's fallen on the floor and smashed into a thousand pieces. So you can imagine his joy when his film was the only film to suffer technical difficulties during the screening. But it would' have been a day with Val unless something like that happened. But it was wonderful to catch up and reminisce a bit about film school days. You can watch his dark humour here with his short film, Key:  https://vimeo.com/37121881.

So, one of my favourite people in this world (and actress extraordinaire) contacted me earlier this year and informed me that she was headed to the USA from England for a wedding and would I like to join her in a road trip around Texas. My answer of course was, "Yes"!

Serendipitously her trip coincided with our mutual friend Patrick (who is also an actor) who lives in Texas and also had a wedding to attend back home. So with two actors and a road trip in Texas, there was no way I was not going to film something! So my mind started whirring and as we began to map out our travel plans I began to map out an idea for a mini web series that took advantage of the locations we would be visiting on our adventure. I assured my actor's that it was a vacation first and a shoot second. Bahahahahahahahaha!

So let me begin with the tales of the vacation and my first Texas experience. Pat's family lives on a farm in Sulphur Springs. Our first meal was an indulgence in country cooking with fried chicken. Pat's family were extremely accommodating and Pat and I spent the first day getting his Mustang covetable road ready. The biggest problem was actually the infestation of Mud Daubers. These things look like wasps and create their nests out of mud. Anyone who knows me, knows that my achilles heel is bees and wasps. But Pat's dog had a blast with the hose as we washed the car down. Luckily they are not aggressive and I was not stung. And a side note, the heat in Texas is serious, so we cooled off with a few snow cones, the hardest thing being to choose between the 100s of flavours of sugary syrup!

It was Patrick's Birthday the next day and we indulged in an epic day of Six Flags Over Texas, theme park and the water park, followed by a drive in movie! 

The next day I got to try something I have never done before. Fire a gun! We went clay pigeon shooting. I was terrible to start with but then I relaxed my aim was much better. I even got in a few double shots! Not sure I could ever shoot an animal but shooting clay was a lot of fun and the power of the gun was real, just look at the bruises on my arm to prove it!

I think I've said enough today, let me bore you with the tales of the road trip (vacation) / TexSIN (work) shoot next time!