Star Wars: The Seven Jedi shoot #14 in Honolulu's Sand Island rendition of the Hidden Fortress on the filled-in reef outskirts of Pearl Harbor. All Dune and no hurricane, blistering bleaching reflecto-sun and reactor air, screeching of giant old industrial pistons digested over decades by airborne Pacific. Staving off encroaching heat stroke dragon touch with Aquafina lest one be eaten like a sautéed slab of death worm Bacon. An intensely actual heat that short circuits the episodic and it's like you've been redoing, rehashing the same frame of consciousness for untold moebius cycles, a drawn-out pain-swarming orgasm. Mother fucking Aloha Airlines 747 every ninety seconds like a thing's heartbeat, delts crying lactic murder keeping the boom's cardioid milking the hot spot but out of the flanging thunder without defiling the space kimono with dark high noon shadow. "We'll fix it in post, I'll have Ray layer an X-Wing over it or something, let's just move on, fuck. Sorry kids." Yeah, lets. Eye sweat blurs Kubrick symbolism mirages, think I'm envisaging semiotic ghost starship phalli mounted by Eastwood in the deep end of the blue... Cloud cover and thinking in uncurved continuum again, where was I.
So Keoni calls at 8 AM, they're scouting locations, pre-vising, tells me to "pick up a few stuffs" at his house, and there's just a prick of the edge of suspicion that I'll need an U-Haul. I can hear the gleam in his eye, the kind of gleam that sees the surfaces of battle stations in discarded 486 motherboards and hears photon rifles in whiplashing power lines, and can get your driver's license suspended for tax evasion. His place happens to be perched, conveniently, on the slope opposite me in the valley, near a small accidental clan of displaced Australian
wallabies, surviving in a tiny patch of geomorphically sustained rainless outback, ensconced by maurading wild boar. There, his wife, a Japanese and more wasabi princessier Margaret Cho, is pacing the sidewalk in her navy Quicksilver surf shorts, a Palahniuk in one hand, cell phone in the other. She's dishing out teh dramas in A# minor for failing to optimally utilize her complimentary pathos direction skill set whilst rummaging through half-finished wookie getups and sterling spray painted light sabre bases for the wind machine. Trying to keep her toddler from getting too one with the force and breaking daddy's props on game day. I made like an imported cheap labor to stay outside of that shit, just droidal haste with loading the crane and generator, a few boxes of cinema gomi shit then headed down. I got slightly mislayed at first, missing a turn and ending up in a labyrinth of cement rubble piles and warehouses till a guy in a Caterpillar told me, "Ho bra, you no can stay come ova hea eh, dis is da kine konstrukshin site yeah, off leemits bra. What? No mo film shootin hea, you gotta hele on cuz."
Apart from that non-hour hour of becoming deeply fried filmmaker tempura and the usual personnel issues, things went rather well I'd say. Actually some pretty interesting organically unique takes off the masterwork of men-in-action, extended and meticulously choreographed cinematographic wu shu. Good thing they had that crane refurbed immediately after the big rain.
Keoni managed to shanghai his brother into shanghaiing his grade schooler kids into being little Dantooinies for a cute little fandom wink scene. There was a bit of not unexpected fit throwing, "Cut that out Ricky! Ok, Jace, when he says 'action!' I need you to jump up and look at uncle and say 'woah!' like it's Christmas morning. If you get it right this take I'll get you an X-Box game."
Our larger, live-action Yoda did some amazing action work. The guy puts the art back in martial art, quite literally moves like water; apotheosises the whole liminal noh world in the secret geometries of body in motion. Apparently he's an upper-echelon sifu who studied under the legendary Bucksam Kong (tied Bruce Lee in a sparring match). Kalani, the tall, dark, Marilyn Manson contact wearing and spicy poke-loving Jedi is also a joy to watch. Between scenes, he's an amiable overgrown neko plush, but can harness instantly this unhinged, manic presence, like a Hawaiian-Jamaican Toshiro Mifune.
He had a fog machine he heisted via his cousin who bounces at Zanzibar down in Waikiki (perhaps Mizz Zhang's mystery Romeo?). But unfortunately insufficient fog liquid for anything but a particularly bad fart, so there was a contingency laundry basket full of ground bloom flowers, morning glories, sparklers, etc left over from New Years. The sparklers apparently make a great artificial fog substitute. Between sessions we dueled around some shoestring epic ideas involving miniaturization and improperly ignited Chinese gunpowder through high-speed cams, more off-roading on government property, working with Kenny Endo's taiko-fusion ensemble and the Fijian drummers from the Polynesian Cultural Center for "the throne of blood scene". Ways to compellingly detonate moon-like planet-consuming monoliths.
"I need you to die more gooder."
Time for Starbucks run.
Revis comps.
L->R: Mizz Zhang, Yoda, Kalani
