When I got a pretty decent gig working SXSW Music I realized that I could afford to spend another week in Austin and check out the film festival.  To do that I would need to get a film badge.  I asked the Village Voice if they would hire me to shoot SXSW Film and Interactive for them and they agreed. Originally I thought I could just shoot a film party or two and just watch a bunch of movies, but then I got all these press junket invites and realized I could do a pretty cool portrait gallery for the Voice.  The odd thing is that the Voice still hasn’t run these portrait yet, although they tell me they are going to.  A lot of the people in the gallery you might not have any idea who are, and frankly I don’t want to explain it all, but I will link the Voice gallery when it’s up and it will have all the captions.  Also if you mouse over the photos below it will give credits for my favorite shots.

The highlight of course was shooting the Get Low junket.  I got there late due to the cabs in Austin being the worst things ever so I was worried I was going to miss my chance to shoot Bill Murray, Robert Duvall and Sissy Spacek.  Luckily they squeezed me in, unluckily I only had 2 minutes with them and they weren’t so excited about posing for me.  Bill Murray made fun of me, Robert Duvall was mostly trying to just eat lunch and Sissy Spacek was worried about me shooting with a wide angel.  But when I showed Sissy the photo on my camera and she loved it and later on the red carpet for her movie she came over and hugged me and told all the other photographers that I was amazing. Speaking of amazing, while I was waiting to shoot the cast of Get Low I got to shoot Sissys daughter Schuyler Fisk, who is a musician, actress and totally rad girl, not to mention absolutely stunning.

The other thing really worth mentioning was that I went down to shoot portraits at the Tiny Furniture premiere.  Tiny Furniture was directed, written and starred in by my friend Lena Dunham and my boy Teddy Blanks did the score. Their film won best narrative feature and I was so excited for them.  I am going to do a full review of it right before it screens in NYC so you will get to hear more about it, but it was amazing and I am so proud of those kids.

Anyway, I shot people from the movies Get Low, Tiny Furniture, MARS, Monsters, Helena At The Wedding, and fucking Lemmy from the movie Lemmy.  Amazing.  Click here to see all the portraits from SXSW Film 2010.

I cannot act.  I have no idea why I was asked to co star in a short film for The New Pop.  I guess it had something to do with the fact that I am an nightlife photographer and the character was a nightlife photographer.  I was flattered to be asked, and I have been trying to get my friends to put me in their movies for ages so I said yes despite my reservations about my poor acting and some questionable bits in the script. We rehearsed a few times and each time completely rewrote the script.  The director Trevz has shot music videos and has ten years of behind the camera experience but had never directed anything with scripted dialogue. I am not sure he was prepared for what he was getting himself into.  He thought we could finish the whole thing in a few hours, but we went all night.  It was the coldest day of the fall and have the shoot was outside and we were miserable.  No one really knew what we were doing and we kept missing parts.  I sort of took command of making sure we got everything while Trevz made sure he got amazing shots.  I think everyone was a bit annoyed at me when I kept making us redo things. Luckily we got everything shot, and if nothing else the footage looked incredible.  Trevz did a few edits that got better each time, but it never really came together the way he thought it would.  I just think we needed more time preparing, and it would have been nice to have shot on a warmer day, but you live and you learn.  Trevz clearly knows what he is doing behind the camera and has a vision, he just needs a little more practice.  I can’t wait to see his next attempt.

Anyway, the project was almost scrapped, but Trevz figure out away to keep some of it alive.  He cut it down from 7 minutes to just over two minutes and created a little snippet that is totally different from the original film.  It was a pretty great move to save it.  My favorite part was the end, which is completely gone now, but he told me that it might end up becoming the opening to his next film, so we will just wait and see. Read Trevz take on the whole thing here.

If nothing else, you get to see me looking really tired in a wife beater.  And while it is pretty clear I have no acting talents, I still want to be in all my friends movies, so please cast me already.  I need to start putting together a reel.  Oscar or bust motherfucker.

The Scene Episode 2 from trevz on Vimeo.

So I have managed to get on the press list for the WIRED store for whatever reason so I decided to check out another one of their parties.  I figured it would be good content for the Village Voice.  The event has something to do with global climate change, Kofi Annan and male models, but I am too tired to figure out how all that goes together.  Hopefully this link can explain some of it. I tend to be pretty interested in things without vowels.

Anyway, model Jamie Burke’s band Delilah played as did Theophilus London and Dan Black.  Mark Ronson supposedly DJ’d but apparently showing up two hours late for a 3 hour party was a mistake on my part.  I am actually pretty into Theo London after seeing him twice now (here’s pics from last time) and Delilah was not as bad as you would expect from a band fronted by a male model.

The publicists gave me a list of celebrities that RSVP’d several of which I know personally.  I made some inquires and found out they never actually RSVP’d but I guess convincing press to show up to your events is what publicists do. Not that I am killing myself to shoot celebs anyway, but it makes the Voice happy to get galleries like that. One celeb that did show up trumps pretty much everyone they had on their list. Abel fucking Ferrara.  If you don’t know anything about him, look him up.  He is pretty much the quintessential New Yorker and one of the least apologetic directors of all time. When he found out that the equally unapologetic Werner Herzog was remaking Bad Lieutenant he told him he could “Die in Hell”. Getting to meet him was an honor and makes taking photos reality show stars feel even more empty than it actually is.

I didn’t shoot a ton of pictures from the night because aside from showing up late I spent a lot of time watching Ease Da Man harass models, put Mishka stickers on everyone/everything and shove as many CK One samples into his pockets as humanly possible. I also spent as much time as possible flirting with a rad cocktail waitress who mildly resembled Sasha Grey (The picture of her holding olives does not do her justice, but it is really funny). All and all despite a severe lack of sleep and a mild lack of things to take photos of I had a pretty good time, and I am pretty sure everyone else did since the place was still packed at 1030 when they started kicking everyone out.

Anyway, if you want to check out the pictures from the WIRED Tck Tck Tck party click here.

So normally I wouldn’t just copy and paste a press release, but I am on vacation and this is important. I know most of the readers of this site aren’t from Philly, but one of my favorite establishments is facing some problems and they are staging a series of events to reopen. If you are a fan of film or music or culture you could think about donating, even if you might never get a chance to visit. If you live in Philly you should do everything in your power to make it out to one of these events. The show tonight seems completely insane. Click below to read the press release.

(Read the article)

The Yes Men are at it again, and all this week.  Their movie The Yes Men Fix The World opened at the Film Forum yesterday and they decided to make the screenings slightly longer than 87 minutes.  After each screening they are leading the viewers on actions around the city.  The have almost no advertising budget so hopefully these viral actions will help make change, but also promote their film.  After the screening last night they led the crowd to a random Chase bank to do a mini action to protest JP Morgan Chase’s funding of mountain top removal coal mining.  They handed out coal to everyone and had them let Chase know how they felt. I have no intention of getting into a discussion of the financial and environmental issues behind coal, but you should check out the Yes Men blog if you want to know more about the action.  They are doing this stuff all week, so make sure you check their film out soon! It is really good.

Check out my shots of the Chase protest here. It is clearly not my best work, but I had a lot of fun anyway.  I would never vandalize private property in anyway ever, but if I did, it might look something like this.

PS. Shout out to my friends Scott and Liz who I saw for the first time in ages last night. Their company Evil Twin handles the bookings for the Yes Men and other entertainers who “think and act”.

Let me start off by saying that I hate the reputation my site has for being pornographic. Yeah, I shoot naked people from time to time, but the vast majority of stuff on this site has nothing to do with sex or nudity. On top of that my photography, while trashy at times, tends to be pretty tame.  It’s mostly just topless girls.  That being said, I am about to review a porn film so I guess I am just going to have to deal with the haters. At least the nudity brings in a shit load of traffic.

When I was in LA in June, one of the things I did out there was to shoot a spec assignment for Vice that was to ultimately land on the Viceland blog.  Months has passed and my editor took forever to get back to me and he finally just disappeared, so I have no idea what happened to the story.  Hopefully the editor will return one day and at the very least I will get a rejection so I can post the article on here.

The article in question was a behind the scenes look at the filming of a porn feature LA Pink.  LA Pink is a parody of Kat Von D’s show LA Ink and is the most ambitious effort from Brooklyn based alt-porn company Burning Angel.  Director, star and friend Joanna Angel told me that I could hang out on set for a day and shoot photos.  It was pretty exhausting day and 95% of the time was spent shooting dilologue and nearly all of it made it into the film.

LA Pink finally came out last weekend and Joanna gave me a copy. The film is nearly three hours long and has 9 sex scenes in it.  That is crazy.  It is a double disk DVD and has a shit ton of bonus features, which although I haven’t watched yet, I know for a fact has some insane behind the scenes footage. And here is the craziest part… The movie is actually good.

Since I saw a lot of the sex scenes in person I just decided to mostly skip them when watching the movie.  I just watched the story, and it is pretty fucking funny.  The film is well shot despite some of the porn required terrible sets and bad continuity. The acting is surprisingly good with Joanna and boyfriend James Deen delivering solid performances.  James is the star of pretty much every porn parody film, so he has had a lot of practice.  The real star of the movie is porn veteran Sean Michaels who is maybe the greatest living actor.  While on set, he had my cracking up with the seriousness he delivered his ridiculous lines.  I have would give the best supporting actor role to my boy Brian Street Team who while having a minimal role delivered at least 50% of the laughs. He also gets a blow job from three insanely girls which I saw in person and is probably one of the hottest and funniest porn scenes I have watched.

Other sex scenes include Joanna solo, Joanna and Draven doing a lesbian scene, Joanna getting double penetrated by James and Sean, a crazy threesome involving Coco Velvet and Andy San Dimas that almost broke the table, and a lesbian orgy that turns into reverse gang bang involving every girl in the film and James Deen. It also features your standard boy girl sex scenes with Joanna & Sean and James & Misti Dawn, but they were shot at the same time and inter-spliced to form a Voltronesque super scene.

On top of all the laughs and crazy sex you also get to see my feature film debut an extra! I play a guy on a couch who is twittering while he is waiting for a tattoo.  I was actually twittering about playing a twitterer. How fucking meta.  Other interesting notes are the fact that the film was co-written by NYC nightlife icon and good friend DJ Jess. Joanna was actually on LA Ink and has a big Kat Von D tattoo. The film was edited by DBB friend Doug Sakmann and from what I can tell pretty much the only song on the sound track is a ShiraGirl song which features a former intern of mine on bass.  Fucking awesome.

So yeah, go to Burning Angel now and buy your copy.  You can watch the totally safe for work trailer below.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42NIJkdtjxA[/youtube]

 The New York Premiere of Zombieland was Thursday night and Columbia pictures hired Doug Sakmann and the New York Zombie Crawl team to paint and deliver several hundred zombies to Times Square for a free screening to anyone wearing Zombie makeup.  I think the amount of people was a bit underestimated because there were lines around the block waiting to get their makeup done by Doug and his team at The Mean Fiddler.  After two straight hours of doing zombie makeup they had given out 600 tickets to the undead and Doug led them on a crawl to  the Times Square AMC.  The crawl turned into a run as they realized things were running late and Doug started charging down the street.

I am not sure if you have ever seen well over 600 zombies running down Broadway a 8PM on a Thursday, but I can tell you this… the police hadn’t.  There is a police station in the middle of Times Square and there were cops everywhere.  They had no idea how to handle this.  They would arrive on the scene, pull out their batons, and then sort of put them back, looking confused.  The mob almost got out of hand when zombies started attacking cars and knocking over chairs and tables, but after several cop cars with sirens blazing started escorting the zombies down Broadway, things calmed down a bit.  That did not stop a limo driver from punching a zombie or stopping a 16 Wheeler from crashing into a Lexus outside the movie theater.  How does he explain a zombie attack to his insurance company?

Once we go to the theater it was sort of madness getting everyone inside.  Even with 600 tickets tons of zombies didn’t get any.  The movie theater played it on three screens and from what I could tell, they packed them. When I walked in all these press photographers were lined up behind a red rope ready to shoot Woody Harrelson standing in front of the Zombieland poster.  They were furious because zombies kept getting into their shot.  Luckily I had free reign and I grabbed Doug and got shots of him and Woody as well as getting a better shot of Woody and the poster than any of the pro guys did.  It was pretty funny.  They even let me in the movie with my camera even though most people had to check theirs.  It pays to know the undead.

The movie itself was way better than I thought it would be.  I was expecting some dumb horror comedy, but it turned out to be a really great dumb horror comedy. It was very violent, very funny and the romantic subplot was only slightly lame and cheesy.  I don’t really like the idea that zombies can run, but the amazing Bill Murray cameo made up for it.  I am not going to tell you anything about Bill Murray’s cameo because I don’t want to ruin it, but it might be the best of his career, and I have seen pretty much every film he has ever been in. That’s fact.

After the movie I had an entirely different adventure.  I rode the train home with a friend of a friend and he didn’t have a metro card on him.  I didn’t want to wait, so I convinced him to go in at the same time with me.  He didn’t want to but he did anyway and the cops stopped us.  I didn’t really know why but when they stopped us he started losing his shit. He didn’t have his ID on him so they took us to the Subway police station while they ran my ID and tried to find him in the system.  Turns out he had just been arrested for having a knife on him.  When they searched his bag they found crack, heroin and a fucking crossbow.  So this time, while he had no Medieval weapons on him, he did have two bags of dope and was on probation.  When they weren’t looking he pulled them out of his pocked and fucking swallowed them like we were in a cop movie.  It was nuts.  We ended up just getting tickets and it was the happiest I have ever been to pay a $100 fine.

Anyway, it was a crazy evening and here are the pictures to prove it.  NSFW for gore and a zombie nip.

I am a huge David Carridine fan.  I have read his books, seen his movies and the only movie poster up in my house is for Deathrace 2000 which as far as I am concerned is one of the greatest films of all time. He is best known as Kain in Kung Fu, which I have never actually gotten that into.  I was introduce to him though his work on films such as Deathrace, Cannon Ball and the film Bound For Glory where he played a reasonably violent Woody Guthrie.  When he was tapped to play Bill in Kill Bill I could not have been more excited.  I thought he was fantastic, and his published diaries from working on that film are incredible.  It is one of the best books on behind the scenes film work I have ever read… and about 50% of the books I read are about film.

Carradine was found dead hanging in a hotel room in Bangkok today.  I cringed when I saw the news. I can’t imagine why he would have taken  his own life.  After reading his books, you get the idea he would not be the type of person to do something like that, especially with the late rebirth of his career.  According to IMDB he has 6 films in post production right now.  I hate to think of what might have happened to him or what could  have made him kill himself.

He was an amazing actor and will be dearly missed.  Enjoy these video clips below.  This will be my only post today in honor o his passing.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdWF7kd1tNo[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J7T1mzD8nc[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTypzOJfuAY[/youtube]

I was somehow convinced by my friend Barry to see The Fast And The Furious 4, which is actually just called Fast & Furious. Because I had to sit through this, I decided to make it that much tougher for my fellow film goers by spending the entire movie on my cell phone. Now if someone was doing this while I was watching a movie, I would be enraged, but since it was Fast & Furious, I think it just added to the ambiance. I thought we would make the viewing a little art project, so I decided to live blog the whole thing. Below I have posted that account. Keep in mind that you should start from the bottom and read up because it is in reverse order and remember, my Twitter is full of brilliance like this so follow it here.

Also a few comments about the Tweets: a) I was twittering under my jacket so their are some typos and misspellings. b) I called all the girls sluts because none of them were wearing pants. In real life I am 100% pro-slut. c) There were no F&FI flashbacks… I was mistaken… I deeply apologize for misleading people. Now, onto the live blog…