"Never Work With Animals Or Children." - W.C. Fields

W.C. Fields once said "Never work with animals or children." Did IDOM listen to those words of wisdom? Nope. It never donned on us that W.C. Fields might be on to something. Twice now, we have made movies featuring animals. If you count that Vietnamese horn dog humping that old lady in "Urgent Care," then make that three. Three IDOM films featuring animals. When will we learn?


It Donned On Me stepped so far out of the box that I cannot find the lid. The National Film Challenge handed us three choices for genre this time around: fantasy, musical, or western. When we met last night, I suggested that we stay far far away from the musical genre and try something other than fantasy since that is was we did with "Exit.' That left us with the western. I called Rick Kemp right away and asked if we could get access to his patient's horse ranch, and fortunately, they said yes. Everyone seemed cool with the idea of the western, so we all sat at my dining table, closed up our mental umbrellas, and waited for the brain storm to soak us. This is what transpired:

• Evan had this idea to create a Kung Fu spoof. In it, a female David Carradine-esque yogi runs away to the American wild west after having avenged the death of her teacher, a blind Vietnamese guru who taught the secrets of the downward dog. With her trusted didgeridoo over her left shoulder, the Yogi travels to the Serendipity Ranch in Old West Half Moon Bay to find work as a midget horse handler.
  
• One afternoon, an evil rival rancher breaks into the Serendipity Ranch to kidnap the midget horse to extract its DNA to impregnate all the horses on coast. That way, the next generations of horses in Half Moon Bay and along the coast would be short and useless, while all of the rival rancher's would be stallions. The Yogi catches on to this and uses her yoga moves to bring the justice to the Serendipity Ranch.

• All of a sudden, Rick blurted out, "The horse speaks! This will be Mr. Ed meets Kung Fu." I then added, "Well, the horse would have to speak in Vietnamese." In the corner of my eye, I could see Tom Flowers roll his eyes. In front of me, I could see Sig take another sip of her wine. I looked to the right of Sig and saw Rob smiling. Hmm.
  
• We continued to brainstorm and decided that the midget Vietnamese horse would have a philosophical discussion with the Yogi. It then donned on me that we no longer had a western. I brought this to the group's attention and we all agreed to change our genre to fantasy. I could see a huge smile on Rob's face. I think he wanted to make a fantasy all along.
• We wrapped up at about midnight and agreed to meet at The Serendipity Ranch by 10am. Mike and my Love Ladies made plans to meet up at my house.

I woke up on Saturday morning and quickly took a shot of caffeine. I knew that we were going to have another long day shooting this Mr. Ed meets Kung Fu flick, so I wanted to go into this prepared. Mike showed up at about 8:30am followed by my love ladies, Sig and Dinah. The four of us went to Safeway to pick up some food for team, and then headed over the hill to The Serendipity Ranch. I swear, when I approached the gate, I felt like I was entering the serene settings of a rehab center. I felt like Lindsay Lohan, only a decade older, about 100 pounds heavier, a few inches shorter, male, and Vietnamese. In any case, the four of us drove into the ranch and saw horses every where. I parked the car, stepped out, and met up with the rest of the group.

The IDOM team congregated in the ranch and quickly got to work. The seven of us jumped on to the little Kubota go cart and Rick took the wheel. We drove up and down the Serendipity hills scouting for locations. I felt like I was on some sort of African safari, minus the elephants, gazelles, and lions. I turned to Dinah and asked if this was anything like Zimbabwe, and she replied, "it's much more humid there." I'm fairly certain that she was going to add more, but the ride was so bumpy that she probably felt it wasn't worth it. I swear, that ride was so bumpy that all of us were gettin' jiggy with it. Nah! Nah! Nah! Nah! Sorry, I had to make that Will Smith reference. In any case, we found the location we wanted and Sig got to work with Evan's camera.

After Sig got the shots she needed, we headed back to the ranch. I swear, going down hill on that little put put of a go cart was much more challenging that going up. At times, I thought I was going to fly out of that front seat an into a pile of horse ca ca. You like how I censored my language there? I think the last time I used the term "ca ca" was back in kindergarden. We made it back down to the ranch in one piece, and the team jumped right into production. While Dinah got to work on Justine's make up, Rob and Sig continued to get multi-angle shots. Tom assisted Rob with the B-roll material, Rick became the midget horse wrangler, and Mike and I ran around like the good production assistants we are. Evan stood back and watched.




Justine did a fine job as our yoga instructor and I have to say that Junior the Horse brought his A game. It was fun watching the two of them act out their scenes. There definitely was chemistry there. We finished filming by about 6pm and headed back to Rick's editing suite to prepare for that long long long night of logging, capturing, and editing. I brought along my over night bag because I knew I was going to crash on his futon. We dropped off all our stuff and went to dinner at The Canyon Inn. Afterwards, we stopped off at the market to stock up on the caffeine. I made sure that had enough to keep me up through the night.