MetLA

I am so ready to come home. Love India. Love the people. Love the food. But I've reached my limit. 3 more days left!

That's the Radisson Chennai to those of you not intimately familiar with this city. It's a fine hotel - good breakfast buffet, free Wi-Fi in the lobby, and a guy dressed as a maharajah opening the lobby door for me. But the weak link is the TV. There's only 4 English language channels: BBC News, Travel & Living, HBO, and StarTV. Except this is some JV version of HBO that thinks "Ghost Ship" is a recent release. And it has commercials - what a load of bunk! After I've gotten through an entire day that exists exactly when I'm normally asleep, the last movie that's fun to watch is "The Tuxedo". Geesh, how about some movies on demand?
But if I wanted to watch Indian serials 24/7, jackpot! These shows make "Guiding Light" look like "Saving Private Ryan". I tried to watch a local news channel but from what I could gather the report was about a policeman being hacked to death by townspeople in the jungle. And we're in between seasons of "Indian Idol", damn.
I guess I have to go read a book.

I'm in the south of India now, Chennai (formerly Madras). I think this city is like San
Francisco - completely built up because of the tech boom. It's more prosperous than Bombay, where so many people live in slums and on the streets. Thursday we visited a
commercial set for an insurance company. They recreated a flood (from earlier this summer in Bombay) so they had a street built on an outdoor tank with overturned cars and carts strewn about. The extras were slogging through knee high water and the AD was yelling into a microphone. Felt very familiar! The extras get paid $12 a day. Next door in a stage they were building a train. The set was 1/4 built as of 4pm Thursday and they will shoot it first thing on Friday. Typically, Indian crews build a set in 3-4 days with 100 laborers a day. Damn. I'm learning more than I ever needed to know about Indian film!
I've been keeping up with the hurricane news via BBC news. The good and bad thing about foreign news channels is they are not afraid to show grusome pictures like the British soldiers being attacked in Iraq or the bus in Texas on fire. Plus, now I'm learning way more about what goes on in the rest of the world - places the US networks don't think exist!
I'm going shopping today with a friend of Sai's, who is a TV hostess. I gather she's the Katie Couric of South India. I'd better be careful - there's so much to look at & buy!

Driving here is a study in barely organized chaos. There are few traffic lights, and no definable lanes, It’s every person for themselves. There are many types of vehicles on the road – trucks, cars, 3 wheel “auto-auto” taxis, bicycles, and carts. The idea is to just throw your vehicle into traffic and spend the day doing a series of narrow misses. People use the horn as often as they use the gas – but it’s not the road-rage, I’m-going-to-get-out-and-beat-you-with-a-golf-club honking. Driver honk loudly and lengthily, but strangely, not aggressively. I never see anyone making a mad gesture or yelling at another driver. It makes for a scene of cars flying, people dodging, horns blaring….but everyone has a strangely impassive look on their face. LA traffic is barbaric by comparison, but not nearly as crowded or chaotic. No one here seems competing with each other in traffic, which is the underlying norm in LA. I have a driver, Shibash, who makes moves with our Scorpio vehicle that make me cringe – U-turn in the middle of 2 jammed lanes? No problem. Left into heavy traffic without a pause? Done. In 7 days here I’ve only seen 1 accident, so something must be going right.

Saturday, we filmed at the Ganesh Festival, Mumbai’s biggest religious gathering. I don’t know what 1 million people looks like, but I think it looks like what I saw yesterday. It was mayhem – but not the complete chaos I had feared. There was something actually organized about the procession of people, whether they pulled Ganesh statues, rode on trucks, or simply walked down the parade route. The festival takes place over 11 days and yesterday was the final day. Hordes of people paraded to the beach to immerse the idols in the sea. The trucks had loudspeakers blaring music, and people danced and played the drums on their way. Those on the trucks threw confetti, candy, and bright colored powder on the spectators. I was christened early with a hot pink powder bomb and spent the rest of the night looking like I got a day-glo sunburn on my face and clothes. The thing that struck me the most was the waves and waves of people that kept coming down the road to the sea – where did they all come from? The area we were at – near Chowpatty Beach – was just one of about 10 parade sites in the city. So this thing attracted more people than I’ve ever seen in my life, combined!

Our objective was to film parts of the Festival that we can cut into “One Night in Mumbai”, a film I’m producing. In the script, our 3 lead actors get tangled with a gangster in a Mumbai club and escape into the Festival crowd. So we had 3 different cameras filming wide, establishing shots and close “point-of-view” shots in the crowd. I stayed with the steadicam unit. Our DP and operator were fearless – we’d roll camera and then our crew would rush fearlessly into the crowd yelling and knocking people over to simulate someone lost and confused.

Now that we finished shooting, I’m concentrating on meetings and seeing film sets. It’s going well, more on life here a little later. I need to get some sleep!

I made it halfway across the world. It’s a bit out of a dream – you can spend 24 hours on a plane and in airports, and boom, you’re in a completely different place. The whole process was more surreal because I flew for 17 hours to Singapore and it was night the whole time. Singapore Air gets a big thumbs up. The seats are huge, service is great, and you get your own little TV with 60 channels of programming. At least that’s how I justify watching the first 20 minutes of such classics as House of Wax and Monster-In-Law. The Singapore airport is a marvel in moderninity – free internet terminals everywhere and a first class lounge that treats you right. So I have to say, my travel was pretty darn good, compared to other long trips squished in economy, eating nuts for sustinance. and getting puked on by a baby.

Mumbai is vast, crowded, and full of life. So far I haven’t walked in the streets to fully experience it, but I will soon. After a 2-hour nap yesterday I met with the representative of the company I’m working with. Then we went over to the production services company’s office to discuss the filming of the Ganesh Festival on Saturday. That’s going to be a real big deal. We have 3 cameras covering different vantage points. Logistically, I don’t know how it’s going to work – there are going to be 1 MILLION people in the parade. One Million. But we’re going to scout the locations today so we can have a plan about where to put the cameras. It’s safe to say this will be the most unique shooting experience of my life!

I’m staying at the Ramee Guestline Hotel in Juhu. So far, so good. It’s a “boutique” hotel, nice rooms; I think it’s a trendy place in the area. Juhu is where all the film people live and many film and TV offices are here. It must be the equivalent of Santa Monica. There’s a pool on the roof which I haven’t checked out yet. I had a yummy dinner in my room last night – paneer with makhini sauce and buttered naan. OK, it’s what I would have any day of the week at Electric Lotus, but I gotta ease into this!

I was watching tv and keeping up on the net, and the one thing that struck me about all the pictures coming in from New Orleans - all the stranded people look poor, and are African-American. No rich looking white people being ignored by the government. So thank you Ken Lane at Sploid, for putting this crisis into perspective:

Lacking in automobiles and money or credit cards to secure lodging outside the flood zone, the “refugees” are now attacked by Cable News anchors as looters for simply trying not to die — without food and water, people tend to die — while the few whites still stuck in New Orleans are only “finding” food and water.

Meanwhile, a shocking vacuum of power left in the flooded city in the four days since the hurricane struck has predictably led to tales of gun shops looted, people arming themselves against the chaos, and terrible violence committed by the substantial criminal element that has preyed on New Orleans’ poor for decades.

The population of New Orleans was 67% black. The poverty rate in Orleans Parish was a staggering 34%, nearly triple the national rate of 12%.

Some 15,000 hurricane survivors — black people, with very few exceptions — have been camped out at the New Orleans Convention Center for days. They were told buses would arrive to take the survivors out of the lawless flood zone, that water would arrive, that supplies and medical help would be delivered. They are literally begging on the cable-news channels for a food drop, a few pallets of drinking water dumpted from the helicopters that buzz constantly but deliver nothing.

More surprising, the “objective” reporters and cameramen in New Orleans are now directly appealing to any possible authority to deliver food, drop water, send buses. They are watching thousands of people begin to die, while untold thousands of dead rot in the floodwaters beneath.

Instead, the dead are literally piling up along the walls. The dead include the elderly, people in wheelchairs, and a growing number of infant children. They are also, of course, black.

The blacks abandoned to the flooded horror of what was New Orleans are being raped, beaten, shot dead, and left to die of thirst and disease. It is nothing less than a holocaust, although it is not inaccurate to describe it as “genocide.”

If New Orleans is rebuilt, it is absolutely certain that the ghettos, housing projects and notorious all-black neighborhoods such as the Lower Ninth Ward (98.3% black) will be wiped clean. Instead, New Orleans will build (with federal money) its usual boondoggle of high-end retail, casinos, luxury condos and maybe one of those new ballparks so beloved by blight-fighting redevelopment councils.

The problem New Orleans city leaders have faced for decades is what to do with the poor blacks. That problem is solved, thanks to the miraculous break of a new “hurricane proof” levee and the even more miraculous decision by the Army Corps of Engineers to not bother trying to plug the breech, despite public assurances that they would.

Those who didn’t drown or die in the aftermath are at this moment being uprooted, sent to uncertain exile in cities up north and neighboring states, where they will most likely resume hard lives with dead-end jobs, terrible schools and (at best) a roof over their head that belongs to a landlord or the government.

The poor black survivors of Katrina are being bussed away with the wet stinking clothes on their backs … unless they’re at the Convention Center, where it appears they are being intentionally left to die in full view of the news cameras. They don’t own homes, so they have no insurance to rebuild their property. If they had jobs, those jobs are gone — the rebuilding jobs will go to out-of-state contractors who own the federal government.

We’re on our way to Mackinac, so we flew into Chicago and spent a couple nights with our friends Andy and Corey. They live in the Wicker Park/Ukranian Village area, which is an up and coming artists-hipsters-yuppie area. They have a beautiful new duplex on a cute street near Division. We love the situation many of our friends are in – nice houses, no kids, which makes having houseguests very easy. We had our own bedroom & bathroom – the Hotel Jacobson was quite comfortable! Their place is right near a bunch of cool shops and restaurants. As soon as we got in, Kyle and I took a walk through the neighborhood, up Damen to Milwaukee and back down to Division. We went into a bunch of funky shops with unique clothes, gifts, art, and home items. I’m thinking, where is this kind of thing in LA? Melrose? Silver Lake? Downtown? I don’t think so. Plus, this stuff is half the price. We stopped for a snack at a hot dog place called Underdogg, and got a Chicago Dog, fries, and a bottle of water for $3! I don’t think even Pink’s beats that! Kyle and I start thinking, hey, we could live here – great neighborhoods, great food, cheaper cost of living – but we know that 6 months out of the year it’s freezing! I couldn’t handle it. But it’s a damn fun city to visit. We love the CTA. You can take a train or bus to any location, or walk, which we did a ton of. That’s such a change from LA. We had one problem with the bus – we were waiting for the bus on Division right outside of a Starbucks. We had our suitcases and were on our way to Hertz to get the rental car. The bus came by and passed us without a second look. It just didn’t stop. I guess it thought we were waiting to cross the street on our way to a trendy shop!