"Clementine" (2004)

I recently (finally) bought this on DVD. A movie I shot over 10 years ago.

“Clementine” was a movie I shot when I was about to turn 30 years old. I was basically handed the keys to a Ferrari but never having taken a driving lesson. It starred Steven Seagal, and looking back on it now, I would’ve done a TON of things differently. The more experienced side of me now looks at it with quaintness. I know the older side of me couldn’t handle the insane schedule. I recall being ill the entire time, since we were dealing with Steven Seagal. And being a raging drunk.

If you go back into my blogs, you may find the one where I discuss having first met him. So moving on from there…the movie isn’t half bad. The situation was that it was funded by Koreans. They had shot a lot of the meat in Korea and decided to come to Los Angeles for two reasons 1) it gave it a different feel than Korea. 2) Seagal didn’t want to go to Korea to shoot. He’d recently been threatened with some mafia reprisal or something. I can’t remember the details. Only that production picked up the cost of having two Escalades, so that the bad guys wouldn’t know which one to shoot at or blow up. I’m not joking.

Anyway, that fucker was getting a TON of money to do a week of work. With a blank check for equipment, I basically emptied Clairmont Camera. For those not in the know, Clairmont is the 2^nd largest motion picture camera rental house in the world next to Panavision. I’d built a relationship with them during my film school days, and wanted my first feature project to go from them. Plus they’d just released these new Cooke s4 lenses which saved my ass. Underexposed, badly exposed whatever, it handled the image beautifully. And for some odd reason, they entrusted me with these brand spanking new set of lenses (valued well over $150,000). We were insured. What’s cool too was that director of photographer’s got their name plate put onto “A” camera. There is was, shiny and polished attached to the camera. I felt like someone.

The movie isn’t bad. It just isn’t what people wanted with the match up between Korea’s Tae Kwon Do champ and America’s movie star who was into Akido. Judging by Seagal’s participation in fight choreography, “akido” must mean “way of the sloth.” Dumb joke. Gimme a break.

I remember very little of the movie, other than I look at some shots and bristle that I didn’t do better. I was tired, and scared. This goes back to the story of when I screamed at a P.A. during the boxing ring scenes. It was Benny the Jet’s dojo we used somewhere in the valley. 100 extras, big named stars, trailers, lighting/grip & camera trucks lined up across the parking lot…and me. No one even knew I was the cinematographer. I think even Seagal forgot, until he saw my clamp lamps that toplit him. Boy was he pissed. I overheard him mumbling about it. Then demanded he talk to the cinematographer. Which I was standing next to him. Yeah, it was like that.

I heard later that it did make money. I saw the t.v. spots for Korean t.v. It was pretty cool that they constantly used a heroic shot of the main actor for all their promotion. A shot my steadicam operator had gotten and I signed off on.

I think this movie business is really funny, since you’re not really sure who anyone is or what they do. I was yelled at recently online about how I was an “errand boy” for movies. And that I didn’t know shit about Hollywood. I didn’t have the energy or time to tell him that I shot two $3 million dollar features in Los Angeles, while his reel consisted of awful (and I mean just awful) projects set in Texas somewhere. He even went as far as to question my credits. To which I just sent him a link and he went silent. I shouldn’t take the bait. It’s internet shenanigans. I mean, I went from being the person everyone relied on to know what shots were next, to sitting in a cold room watching studio movies run through my hands. Yeah, I’m pretty much a nobody, since everyone can direct or shoot now. Can’t make hay about nothing. I’ll send my Pop a copy of this movie. He’s seen it before, but probably wouldn’t remember. I think he’d get a kick outta’ the fact Seagal is in it.