Getting To Know Me.....

.... getting to know more about me.

This post is from my old blog. It will better acquaint YOU with ME!

As I stated in the bio, Bleak Future was made about 10 years ago. It was a very low budget horror/comedy. The film’s writer and director was Brian O’Malley. Brian used to deliver pizza for me when I was the manager of a Domino’s Pizza in Upland California.

We used to kick around ideas about movies and characters. Malathionman is a character I thought up. The "Malathionman" in Bleak Future was not the exact character I had in mind, but the general idea was there.

About 6 months after my wife and I had moved to the bay area (San Francisco), Brian called me and asked if I would be Malathionman. After all, he was my idea, and I would do it for free, so I agreed. This would involve 2 trips back down to Southern California.

The first trip would be to have a mold of my big old pumpkin head made. They figured that I had the biggest head, and because they couldn’t make a bunch of molds, my head would be used as the foundation for all the mutant heads in the movie. What an honor!

The whole process of making a mold of my head was just like that documentary about Thriller. Remember that! So just like Michael Jackson, I had to let the make up guy pour goo all over my entire head, and we had to wait about an hour for it to dry. Not very fun if you are claustrophobic, but I’m not, so it was no big deal. Everyone hung out and kept talking to me so I wouldn’t get spooked, plus they were curious, it was the first time this guy had ever done such a thing. Good thing to know now that I have about 20 lbs of sticky crud all over my nugget.

The second trip would be for filming. I was only available for 2 days. Brian had to save all my scenes for those two days. The first night would be shot on a set they made in some guys garage. The second day would be on location in the desert about 45 miles NE of Baker California, home of The World’s Largest Thermometer!

Day one, or should I say night one, went without a hitch, but it was kind of late when we finished, about 10:30pm. We needed to leave for the desert at 4am! It was about a 3 hour drive to the location. We needed to get there before it got too hot. Take a look at the Malationman pictures, that outfit was hot!

I remember nodding off many times on the way there. I finally woke up for good when I noticed we were going about 100 mph! I told the driver to slow the F--- down. I was very tired and this car was not made to go that fast, so yes, I dropped the F-bomb. I had this picture of Chevy Chase in my head, driving his family in Vacation. I didn’t want the same for us.

We got to the location about 7:30am. I don’t know how these guys found this place. It was literally in the middle of nowhere. Off of this two lane highway in the middle of the desert was a dirt road that led up a hill to an abandoned construction site. No signs or landmarks, you just had to know that dirt road was there. And a lot of people did, we saw quite a few campers drive by on the dirt road while we were filming. I guess further up the road people would ride motorcycles or shoot guns or whatever people do in the middle of the desert for fun.

About ¾ through the shoot we noticed 2 police cars driving up the dirt road. We figured they might be coming up to kick us off the construction site. You know darn well we didn’t have permission to be there. Who would have thought we would even be bothered out where we were. We certainly had no idea that us being there was going to be such a big deal. It was.

We all stood there on top of this hill and watched as the police came closer and closer, and they were driving fast too! They were coming for us. Great, we won’t get to finish, and probably get fined too. They came to a dusty stop right in front of us. They quickly
opened their doors, then surprise, they quickly pulled their guns and shouted, “EVERYBODY DROP YOUR WEAPONS AND KEEP YOUR HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!”

Once again, look at the Malationman pictures. You may notice a silver pipe sticking out from under my sleeve. This pipe is strapped to my arm. It is what Malationman uses to hose down his victims with malathion. The police don’t understand that. They just don’t like what it looks like, and I can’t drop it! I kid you not, two weeks earlier I was robbed at gunpoint. I was more nervous with the cops pointing the gun at me than punks.

This all went down really fast. It didn’t take but a few seconds once the police really looked at us to realize what we were doing. Their next line was classic, “ Take us to your leader.” That just sounded too silly, and we all started to laugh.

Remember all those campers that drove by? Apparently we freaked someone out. The police got a 911 call about some "cult" killing people out at the abandoned construction site. So they responded accordingly. I don’t know what the big deal was. There were only a few heads lying around, some mutants chasing each other with spears, and a guy melting people with insecticide.

Everyone had a good laugh, the police too. They just wanted us to be sure we cleaned up when we were done.

The ride home was much slower, and safer. We had plenty of laughs and good things to talk about. It was definitely a lot of hard work, and a very good time. Something I will always remember.

Bleak Future has a website. If you go there you can see a trailer. I'm the last guy in the clip.