New York, New Jersey, London & Paris!

Again it’s been difficult keeping up with the blog. Our schedule on Machete Maidens is very tight with filming activities and travel. I’m writing this article from my hotel in London. We left New York late on Thursday the 11th of February after filming and traveling all day to Freehold New Jersey. There, we interviewed Producer Sam Sherman. Before that interview could take place though, due to the recent snow falls we had to organise to dig out Sam’s driveway of snow, just to be able to get our equipment into his house! Our local contact, Rob Most, rallied some local kids and a man with a snow clearing machine to do the dirty work which took a better part of an hour! The interview went really well and we then drove through the crazy traffic of Manhattan to JFK. The team then flew overnight to London England, arriving very early on the 12th of Feb.

On the 13th of Feb, the Machete Maidens production team headed for Paris for the day to interview Production Designer Dean Tavoularis. Dean was Production Designer on many films including the Godfather Trilogy, Tucker & Apocalypse Now! Waking in our hotel in London, we had a quick breakfast before piling our production equipment into a van and driving to Heathrow. An hour of flying across the channel & then piling all the gear into yet another van, we braved the -3C Degree temperature! Driving into the centre of Paris we glimpsed the Eiffel Tower & the Arc de Triomphe, but as we would find out later, this was the extent of our sight seeing for the day! Arriving at Dean’s beautiful apartment building, we gathered the equipment & either walked it up a circular staircase or piled it into a coffin of an elevator built in the last century! We setup our set in his elegantly art directed lounge room and for an hour and a half, we listened to some incredible stories of the making Apocalypse Now & filmmaking in general.

Packing down the gear, we only had enough time for a group shot in the courtyard of Dean’s apartment building before calling the driver & heading straight back to the airport! So much for the glamour of Paris! We didn’t even have time for lunch! We arrived back at Charles de Gaulle expecting to be able to buy a descent meal. Instead Mark had to pay some incredible bill of around €50 for bay marie food that was awful & a beer! Dinner was again on our flight back to London!