Films . The Purgatory All-Stars Talent Showcase . Details . Production Stills
The Purgatory All-Stars Talent Showcase
Here's a pilot for a series I hope gets picked up by anybody brave enough to program it. The premise is, when for-hire acts like jugglers and magicians die, they wind up in some sort of purgatory where they have to audition their way into heaven or hell in front of audience. We shot on 24-P video. I really wanted to film this, but the sheer amount of film stock it would have required pretty much made that a financial impossibility. I don't regret it though, and I'm actually pretty impressed with how the final product looks. As one observer pointed out, it was like controlled chaos, or a 'happening'. To get performers, I asked an old friend and accomplished magician Alain Nu to round up some talent. This included Jeremy Shawl, who swallowed a needle and thread which he then pulled from a hole in his stomach (!), Alain Nu, who did a stunt with a Tesla coil, and Michael Rosman who had a pretty unique act involving a s'more and a Chinese diabolo. Also in the lineup were a fire eater (Deborah Enten), a woman who played a cigar box harp (Tanya Thielke), a professional whistler (John Ross) and James, who played 'Never on Sunday' on the accordion with some degree of success.
The audience was told there would be a performance, and consisted of anyone who showed up from an email I sent out and anyone else interested in watching. For the applause-o-meter we constructed a box with an arrow which would point at either 'Heaven' or 'Hell' at the whim of the audience'. There were no rehearsals. Nothing was planned or scripted, and everything was left to the performers in that regard. I found a theater to film in (The Warehouse Theater in Chinatown) but when I arrived I discovered a set similar to Oprah Winfrey's talk show had been set up. Totally wrong. By sheer coincidence the manager told me there was another space next door which was used by an underground theater group, known as the 'Black Box' space. It was literally a room with black walls and floors, with a seating capacity of perhaps 20 people. This one we could use, but the catch was we couldn't alter the lighting set up that was already in place. This nonetheless worked out in our favor. I asked my friend Garnett (and featured player in 'The Sexiest Stories on Earth') to be the 'Card Girl' and to come up with her own costume. She chose a look inspired by one of the title characters from 'Celine and Julie Go Boating', complete with pencil moustache and top hat. Perfectly a propos. My friend Liz was the one to escort the acts to their fate, though as the evening dragged on she got pretty drunk on champagne and got progressively wobblier. Scott got a pair of videographers to shoot the event, with Christian Hellmers as the second unit videographer.
Everything was recorded as it happened, complete with foul-ups. Seren-fucking-dipity. It was a pretty surreal evening. The truth is, given the nature of the acts invovled, I'm not sure what was actually a foul up and what wasn't. It's probably best to leave that conclusion up to the viewer. To be honest, what I was aiming for was NOT a Jim Rose-esque freak-a-thon but earnest, homegrown weirdness. And I think it worked. The final edit should be complete in about a month. And regardless of whether or not this gets picked up, I'm going to shoot more installments. If you have a talent, regardless of how dubious or marginal it is, contact us. We want to record it, probably.