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3/31/05 The Scourge Of Prague, The Final Chapter Mam se dobre, sekuji Hey This thing is turning out like the Jason movies (in more ways than one), but here we go with what I promise will be the final chapter. Joe wakes me up a 7:30 for 8:00 call, even after sleeping since last night at 5, I'm still really tired. After a shower and another crazy Czech breakfast of pudding and pickles, we catch the Metro over to Mala Strana, and then walk up the hill to the castle, this time laden with all our gear, camera, tripod (or "sticks" as biz folk call 'em- I call it a tripod) and all our props. The day's really sunny and Danny and Doug are not happy, they're afraid it's going to fuck up our opening shot of Danny and Robin approaching Rudolf outside his Laboratory. Unfortunately, they're right, and we lose this really great shot I'd had planned, with a panoramic view of Prague as seen from the castle (this place we're filming at is right below it), I'm pissed, but what can you do? Improvise, and shoot it another way is all you can do. Fucking sun. We get inside the "lab" and I get everyone in their places- I'm really getting into this directing shit, you better believe, I been unsuccessfully looking all over for a megaphone, and a canvas folding chair with my name on the back- and we get all our props set. Ted's done a really good job on the parchments, I hope you get the full effect of them in the film. I had to get a little creative with some of the other stuff, poppy seed scraped off all these dinner rolls in this restaurant for the black crank (the zombie making drug), a piece of one of the sausages I ate a couple days ago that I set in my window, in the sun, so it'd go all soft and gooey as a zombie tissue sample. Rudolf is impressive as hell in his robe and yarmulke as Rabbi Lowe, he's absolutely perfect, deep Eastern European voice- he sounds like Bela Lugosi's big brother- except . . . he doesn't know his lines. Not a one. He just improvises this shit sort of around what I wrote. I love and respect the hell out of Rudolf, but I didn't bust my ass writing that stuff so he could say something else. I mean, who's driving this bus? I bust him on it, and there's a delay while we write up some cue cards for him. Once filming restarts, and he's reading his actual lines, he's perfect. Danny and Robin, however, are not, both very stiff, and not very good- which Danny is very aware of. There's this one line after they think Rabbi Lowe has taken the black crank, "Rabbi, God will not protect you from this. You will transform." that Danny can't get out right to save all our lives. He just sounds robotic. He gets more frustrated than anybody, but finally we get what I think is a decent take, and by God, I'm driving this bus, and we move on. Comes time to film Danny and Robin's reaction shots to them thinking the Rabbi is about to become a flesh eating ghoul before their very eyes, Rudolf's off having a beer somewhere, so I read the scene while Danny and Robin react. The first time I do it in what Danny later calls "Fucking Bitner speed reading mode", I'm reading, so I'm not really looking at them, Danny goes "wait . . . slow . . . shit, STOP!" B: What? We look at the scene just filmed and it's hilarious, Danny and Robin trying to respond to my speed reading, they're bouncing around like fleas on a griddle. Funny stuff, it'll be on the blooper reel for sure. Filming, while fun as absolute hell, is also very tedious, first you shoot your master, then your individual close ups, and then your inserts. Counting all the exterior staging shots of Danny and Robin wandering through Prague looking for the Rabbi, we shot almost 40 minutes of film for what will be about 5 minutes in the movie, if that. We finish the lab scene and go for lunch, at another little non-tourist place where they treat Rudolf like royalty, and us, consequently, as friends of royalty. We all have schnitzel- insanely excellent- with potato salad, and God help me, I get a Coke- Rudolf looks like he wants to fall out of his chair- cos I just don't need the beer right now, we still have to figure out how to shoot that opening scene that the sun has fucked up. We have to do it in another, shaded area entirely, which also turns out very, very cool- I'm telling you, the LOOK of this stuff we shot in Prague is just fucking fantastic, I love it. This is the intro scene where Danny and Robin finally locate Rabbi Lowe, they come up behind him and Danny's first line is "Rabbi Lowe?" Rudolf insists on the correct Czech pronunciation, sort of like "Lurvf", so Danny tried it, and once again the hilarity, as least if you were there, starts. D: Rabbi Lowe? So are me and Doug and Joe, from behind Danny can't see the twinkle in Rudolf's eyes, he's just fucking with Danny, who's been saying it correctly all along, Danny doesn’t have a clue and this goes on for another couple minutes, Danny getting more and more frustrated and wound up, the rest of us about to piss our pants, finally- D: Rabbi Lowe? Which isn't in the script and gets all of us- except a pretty pissed off Danny, although he got over it- rolling on the damn ground. We finally finish up and head back to the hostel to get cleaned up for our farewell dinner. I give Rudolf a big hug, and thank him for everything he's done for me while I've been over here, including acting up a storm in my damn movie, he say some very nice, even moving stuff back to me, I've not always been the luckiest in love, as I've said before, and I'm sure I have a lot to do myself with making that luck, but I have more mother fucking cool friends- I include all you among them, obviously- than anybody I fucking know. So, another shower- filming is dirty work- and then around the corner for our farewell dinner and again, another delicious meal in Prague, starts with chicken soup, with big chunks of grilled chicken in it, delicious, not too salty- my main beef with a lot of chicken soups- broth, carrots and onions and thin egg noodles, it's the best I've ever had, then onto a main course of pounded, flattened chicken breast in some red sauce, lots of garlic and paprika in it, wonderful, French fries (?), God they love their taters here, creamed spinach, again heavy on the garlic, and a carrot and cucumber salad, with a divine (darling) apple strudel with custard and whipped cream on top for dessert. Since I'm drinking Czech beer, I'm once again able to both eat and drink like the man of great appetite that I am. I notice Mike and Mary are not only not sitting together tonight, they're at different tables. Mary's being her usual ebullient self, Mike is looking like he swallowed a door knob. I figure I know what's happened, and a conversation with Mike later that evening confirms it, Mary has laid the word down on him, sure, they had some fun in Prague (the student theme of the trip was, "What happens in Prague, stays in Prague", except for this one girl who I swear to God had to be impaired, who kept saying "What stays in Prague, stays in Prague", Jesus) but no, he can't see her any more once they get back home, she's already got a boyfriend and isn't in the market for another one. Mike's pretty damn crushed, which I can sympathize with, Mary's an exceptional girl in many ways, but as he starts getting really drunk he wants to start saying some ugly things about Mary, which I'm not having, so before he does something stupid, like piss me off, I manage to get him off of the subject, at least until I leave. I heard he got back on it later, to the point of pissing some other people off- Mary was very well liked by all the students, it's rare that a beautiful girl isn't resented by other girls, but she was just so damn genuinely NICE, to everyone, she made you feel special every time she spoke to you, you couldn't dislike her if you wanted to. Unless you were Mike, who again, has my sympathy, cos he fell hard and fast, and I know he was hurting bad. Been there. We're well on our way to drinking this place dry when Joe, the lesbians, and about a half dozen other students, split evenly between male and female, get after me and Doug to return with them to this strip/sex club they'd gone to the night before. The dancers are all supposed to be uniformly beautiful (yeah I've heard that one before) but it's the live sex they're all worked up about. For 4000 K (the price of a really cool painting), you and five of your closest friends can go into another room and watch two of the dancers have oral sex with one another. I don't want to sound blasé, but I'd rather have the painting. For only 1500 K you can get a private dance, the rules there being no mouth contact by either one of you, and no touching by you below the waist, so basically you can fondle their breasts while they grind against you. Sounds like an expensive way to get frustrated to me. Again, thanks but no thanks. I tell 'em I don’t even have the money left to get in, which is true, I still have a good bit of American cash on me, this trip costing me a hell of a lot less in expenses than I'd thought, but I'm almost out of Krowns, and I'm not exchanging more to go to a strip/sex club. Hell, this whole week has already been a strip sex club for me. Joe says he'll loan me the money. No thanks. Joe says he'll GIVE me the money. Nah . . . really, I'm just not that interested. But for some reason I never do fathom, this bunch is still all about getting Doug and me to go to this club with them. I give them my theory on strip clubs, which is that I see no reason to go out and get my ass all wound up to then come home to an empty bed, I make the drunken statement that the only way I'd go to the club with them is if I knew I was going on a trip afterward, if you catch my drift. One of the female students who's wanting us to go with them, and who hasn't been mentioned here yet, though she's been at just about everything already mentioned in this chronicle that never ends, let's call her Karen, waits a few minutes until no one's paying attention, and then whispers in my ear that if I go to the club with them, when we get back, she'll discretely join me later in my room and we can take that trip. Yeah, well shit, now what do I do? My bluff has quite unexpectedly been called. I'm not embarrassed to admit, Grandpa was looking forward to a couple more beers and then a quiet night alone. I'm TIRED. Also, not to be too graphic, but I'm also sore. Having intoxicated sex, the only kind I had in Prague- hell I was fucking buzzed the whole eight days I was there- one tends to go at things a little more forcefully, just so you can fucking feel it (and feel it fucking) and I already woke up this morning wondering "Who backed that goddamn truck over my crotch?" Also, I don't mind being with some Czech or Brit or German girl I'll never see again, but hooking up with one of the students could lead to . . . complications (I don't figure nympho Paris to even remember my name at this point). There are quite a few what I consider to be good reasons to politely decline and just go back to the hostel after a few more fine, fine Czech beers. However . . . I'm also Bill fucking Bitner, and it's damn hard being a legend in your own mind, I swear to God. So, down to the strip club we all go. Joe spends an absolute fortune, on getting us in, and a couple private dances for himself, plus he foots most of the bill for six of us to see the sex show. It was okay, the girls were both pretty, genuine pretty, not that saline and collagen scary look that passes for beauty here in the US, they danced, then undressed one anther, kissed, fondled, and ended up having oral sex with one another, you got maybe 6- 7 minutes of this for your 4000 K. The room wasn't all that large, so everyone had an up close and personal view of all the action, as Doug said later, "we were so close you could smell it", you got that right, big guy. And it smelled good. As I said earlier, I'm not trying to sound blase, it was certainly better than a lemon wedge in the eye, but it's not anything I haven't seen before, and not being able to participate takes a hell of a lot of the fun out of it, I have to say. Worth 4000 K? Not to me, but for free, like I got it, I'm right there. Before we leave I give up the last of my Krowns and Doug and I buy one of the lesbians a private dance with this one stripper she's become enamored with, her goofy ass appreciation afterward- "If I loved guys, I'd love you guys"- was worth it, she was a damn treasure all trip, I'm sure I'll be hanging with her some now that we're back home. Back to the hostel, back to my room, I'm almost asleep- didn’t take long- and beginning to think my trip's been cancelled, and I'm not too tore up about it, when someone's knocking on my door. And something that- I won't say I was dreading, but not looking forward to with the anticipation I normally would, turns out to be a really great time, she doesn't leave till daylight, almost apologizing for leaving then, saying "I still have to pack", I almost say, "I just got my packing done" but fortunately don't. Even though it's now been Friday for a while, we'll leave off here with Thursday Friday. On the bus. God, I hope I can sleep on the plane- I have honestly never been this tired in my fucking life. I'm looking out the window while the bus is still parked in front of the hostel, when someone sits down beside me. I'm a little surprised, because the bus is big enough that normally everyone just sits by themselves. I turn to look, and it's Mary. M: Hey. So she does, and we have a really nice 20 minutes or so together, more "who's driving this bus", the answer being some goddamn maniac, Jesus, he makes the first guy look like a candy ass, I'm SO glad she made the effort to speak to me there at the end, it's makes a huge difference to end things on a positive note with someone for once. In fact, so positive that I got an e-mail from Mary just this (Thursday) morning telling me they have Pilsner Urquell draft at the Vandalia Lounge- she also rather curiously notes that the Vandalia's only a few blocks from where she lives, why should I need to know that?- and wanting to know if I want to join her there sometime for some reminiscing and Czech draft. I'm going to pass, I already got too many women I'm totally hot for just wanting to be my friend, I couldn’t take the strain of another. So, the ride back was fine as in no turbulence and a good seat (although not next to Mary, but some pleasant enough Czech guy), but I couldn't sleep a wink, that sucked, it also sucked to get into Newark after a nine hour flight, and after a four hour layover have to fly three hours down to Atlanta, and then two hours back up to Charleston. Couldn't we just fly one hour straight into Charleston? Unfortunately, no. But, obviously I got back home, cos here I am. So- thus ends the saga of Bill and the Death Falcon in Prague. As previously stated, I had the time of my damn LIFE, this movie shit is absolutely IT, I can't wait to start filming the rest of it, and getting my acting career started (I already have Second Unit Director, Prague to add to my resume). Everyone take care, I probably won't bug you for a couple weeks- I'll be sleeping- but you all feel free to bug me. Prominte. Later Bill
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