GAZOONGA ATTACK Hacienda Motor Inn (UNFINISHED, 2004)

 

GAZOONGA ATTACK “Hacienda Motor Inn” filmclip

A music clip with a troubled history, and as a filmmaker perhaps my greatest disappointment. An eventful, manic two day shoot was slowly being knocked into shape by me and Lesbo-A-Go-Go’s editor Michael Klosowski, and was looking fantastic. Then major depression kicked in, and the months dragged on... Gazoonga Attack's singer Elea decided to edit the clip herself, we handed over the tapes, and then nothing. Those original mini-DV tapes have since vanished, and so has Michael’s harddrive with the unedited footage. Sad, as "Hacienda Motor Inn" could have been a minor classic. Nowadays all that exists of this BIZARRE shoot are these photos, which only hint at the collective madness involved, and a baby bonnet I kept as a souvenir. Oh, and these journal entries...

 

SHOOTING DIARY 13/04/04 

So I finished editing the Aampirellas (great Brisbane boy/girl punkrockerama outfit) filmclip from footage of their performance in Lesbo A Go Go (my 2003 feature film with stacks of local band whores) and was literally itching to do something else (was waiting for Josh Mullins my DOP to finish work on his short film so we could restart our "bikers vs Baptists" fake trailer for Birds Of Destruction). The Gazoonga girls, Brisbane's VERY un-PC girl punkers, were also in Lesbo playing a 60s gang of delinquents and scrubbed up pretty well on camera. I asked them a few months ago if they wanted a clip, and chose "Hacienda Motor Inn", a four minute mini-epic about sleazy sex in motel rooms. 'Mini-epic', since the song has so many dynamic peaks and troughs, and I could picture a cut-down sleaze feature while copping an earful. To work.

We had a few loooong script sessions at the bar where singer/guitarist Tamara works, pissing ourselves stupid over Tooheys New. I came up with the skeleton story - unnamed protagonist winds his way through a motel complex, past various Blue Velvet-meets-League Of Gentlemen vignettes of sordid sex and surrealist gore - which would provide the master shots, and the Gazoonga girls (with the help of Elea's boyfriend Peter, who proved a dark horse indeed) helped fill in the blanks which would hang off the main shots.

 

Singer/bass player Elea agreed to use her swanky Valley apartment as the motel interior. Talented interior designer Carmel Haugh jumped on board to try her hand at art department and miraculously transformed the living room into a showcase of motel tack: a grotesque $2 bedspread, 80s clock radio, desk lamps and a hideous black velvet painting of an eagle in mid-flight. Insert shots were filmed first; Wolvy stripped off and wrapped his head with clingwrap while cameraman Josh had to do the same (I am SOOOO sorry Josh!!!) and then make out through the pastic film. We'd already dropped Josh onto the glass top coffee table to do a sickening Wolvy POV shot of our hapless cameraman sliding through a sea of peanut butter! Gak.

Other insert shots turned out great: guitarist Serinda and her boyfriend [now ex, Geordie Stafford] emerging from a real body bag smeared in chocolate, bathroom seediness with Tamara regurgitating Roma tomatoes, Jesus the list goes on. By 5 the rest of the crowd had arrived and were suitably oiled with artistic lubricant (read: four cartons of VB and Tooheys)and did two master takes. First one was fairly tame and will be used in the early scenes; in the second one camera girl/producer Kim and I screamed "more Springer!" and the room erupted into a Bacchanalian orgy!!! Anthony Nobody did a flying leap onto the coffee table (amazingly it didn't snap in two and slice him like a guillotine!) before stripping off his elephant suit (shudder!, while little Jen scored her boyfriend's arms with her nails. Elsewhere Cass (Standing 8 Counts/Stag/Gentle Ben drummer) dressed as a more camp version of Turbonegro's Hank went hammer and tongs on a human pyramid in an effort to irretrievably soil the $2 bedspread. This one continuous shot only lasted seven or so minutes but left the room exhausted! Seedy, seedy, seedy...

Second and final shoot is set for Saturday 1st May - stay tuned, culture lovers...

 

SHOOTING DIARY 01/05/05

I wish I’d come up with this line: Whoever said don’t work with animals or children, obviously has never made porn.

We started the day with a few inserts at Elea’s. There’s a recurring image in the clip of a young, clean-cut couple with a small dog; a last minute rope-in bagged Lawrence and Rebecca English and their dog Schnapps. Larry I’ve known for years (Time Off writer, Iczer One sound artist, did the Hell soundtrack for Lesbo), a nice chap rosy of cheek who earned the nickname “Tin-Tin” the hard way. His wife Bec has known for ages I am a bad man, but to paraphrase Homer Simpson, she has a thing for me which she masks in low-key hostility. Only kidding Mr & Mrs Engleez! Schnapps (or “Yidda”) their pet schnauzer is an incredible little performer who should get a doggy award or his performance, or at least a Schmacko.

They all crowded up against Elea’s bedroom wall listening to the (assumed) sordid goings-on in the next room. The camera pans across to Ken Kirkwood (Lesbo’s disapproving pedestrian, and Jarret Gahan regular who played Mr Bones), sitting in his underwear with pegs covering him, in an armchair watching Christian Pirate Puppets beating a sock puppet Satan to death on a b&w TV, while Elea’s sister Kirky had to balance a desk lamp on her forehead to get the lighting right. Ken had patiently loosened most of the pegs so that they wouldn’t do permanent damage to his nipples; luckily for all of us the camera didn’t go past the navel. We then did a quick set up of Lawrence and Bec with tape across their mouths, dropping down to Schnapps ALSO with tape across his little moustache! He didn’t mind, I swear.

Cut to the Ambassador Motor Inn on Gladstone Rd in Highgate Hill, a beautifully cheesy 70s-style two story motel who had given permission to use (and abuse) their facilities. The establishing and final shots were filmed in the carpark, starting on a wide shot of the motel and then crawling along the tarmac to a group of kids (Greg and Bettina’s kids Kentsch, the evil seven year-old from Lesbo, and his three younger brothers) playing with a hairless dolly and an amorous toy monkey. The two youngest (evil twins) then look blissfully angelic as the other two flip the bird to the camera and Kentsh silently screams “Fuuuuuuck Yooooou!”. Brilliant. Animal AND child exploitation in the one filmclip. My kudos from David and Margaret are assured.

A small crowd had gathered by the swimming pool, which I’m positive hadn’t been cleaned since the 80s, for the final scene: four gents in adult diapers, baby bonnets and pig noses being ridden by the Gazoonga girls into the swimming pool. It was an incredible sight - the daipers were like huge sanitary pads held in place by a see-through pair of stretch pants. The bonnets were whipped up by make-up girl Tiffany, and egg-carton pig noses were a love job from Gooble (next to Trash). We lined up the Pig Men (or Pork Soldiers, or Snout Muffins, or Harlem Pork Trotters) along the side of the pool, Gazoongas proudly astride. Josh valiantly chose to drop into the freezing water to get the perfect close-up of smiling, grunting faces, making his hands shakier than usual. Luckily he shot the close-ups at 2000 frames a second so we can really sloooooooooow the action down. Same setting for the master shot from across the pool; four Gazoonga girls rode the Pig Men into the water like a Peckinpah death scene from The Wild Bunch, the force from eight bodies slapping the surface at the same time sending a small tidal wave across the pool and over the camera! Mark the camera assistant had wrapped a towel in anticipation, narrowly averting disaster.

Now comes the hard part - 4 or 5 nights of cutting this monkey to pieces and reassembling it to look like spun Comedy Gold. Even harder will be convincing the authorities that no child or animal was harmed during the making of this picture. I feel like I have been warned.