Joe Pla & Nelson Pla

July 7th 2009

I went to my 1st home town, Cliffside Park New Jersey, to find the Pla brothers, Joe and Nelson. They currently have a band called Clueless, but in the past Nelson briefly played drums for Empire Hideous, and Joe helped found and played guitar for SpySociety99. For some reason I was compelled to bring a case of beer and the boys had at it.

These guys were hilarious, it was like watching the Smothers Brothers. You'd swear everything they did was pre-planned. I'd ask a question and Nelson would answer for about five minutes, then Joe would give a single sentence answer and Nelson would lean forward apologizing for Joe talking too much. Great guys, and really good musicians.

They both knew Myke for a long time, in fact Joe was the guy who would whip Myke on stage.... really whipped Myke!!! When I asked him how he felt about that he said he told Myke if he isn't satisfied he can always beat him with a 2x4. They were both very cool, and when we left I ate with the crew at Hiram's Hotdog stand (from my childhood). Great day.

Loki

June 14th 2009

Today we when to the studio in Rutherford to speak with Mister Monster/SpySociety99/Gotham Road/Michale Graves guitar player Loki. As we should have expected, it was a bit noisy in the studio, but we worked through it.

Loki was quite and told us he was a bit under the weather. JV Bastard (who has been in 5 different bands with Loki) stopped by as well. Loki is a very reserved guy on camera, but he shared a lot of different information. We spoke about his time in SpySociety99 (which for those who don't know is Myke's rockabilly-esq swing band). He also talked about long term goals for musicians. He said in time, he was going to make the transition to be promoter and spoke about what he thought a promoter should do for bands.

We took a short break and put JV back on camera with Loki to talk about Gotham Road (Michale Grave's metal band). Loki came out of his shell a bit more and they discused working with Michale and they're pet-peeves. They have a lot of strong feeling about Doyle & Chud's band Gorgeous Frankenstein. They felt that a lot of love didn't go into his album, and much more work went into selling hoodies. They see themselves always as musicians before businessmen.

All and all good time.

WorkShop Teaser

This is the first attempt at a teaser. I don't really like it, it uses very little footage that will be used in the film (because we haven't shot it yet). Just took clips of Myke from the "Black Friday" show and sliced in lots of stills of Myke. The film will ultimately be broader then only Myke's story. Myke's book (which this film is based on) can be filled in with much broader strokes then only Myke's story.... this story is about everyone. It can just as easily be about a painter or an actor... or a chief. We've already cut "HIDEOUS" out of the title. The film is now simply "LIVING THE AMERICAN NGHTMARE".