BillsChannel

It was exactly 2:00pm  when I heard some motorcycles pull up outside the room where we were going to shoot an interview with actor Mickey Rourke for Italian TV.  I looked out the window to the driveway below and there was the man in person – the baddest of the Hollywood bad boys. He was riding his own motorcycle – a big harley. With him were two other lone riders who looked like Hells Angels that escaped from central casting. They parked along the wall in the driveway just before it entered the underground parking garage. Their engines revved loudly and then all was quiet.

The producers of this Interview, Carlo and Franco were pacing the room nervously as they had been for almost an hour. I was their cameraman. I can’t say that they were regular clients but I had worked for them a few times. They had a show back in Italy that focused on movies and celebrities. They came over once a year to Hollywood for about 10 days to shoot whatever showbiz stories they could get their hands on.  Usually we were in people’s homes shooting celebrity fluff.  But this one was different. I guessed Mickey refused to let them come to his house so they rented one of the bigger rooms at the Chateu Marmont Hotel just off Sunset Boulevard.

The “Marmont” ( as most locals call it) is a very hip botique hotel where hundreds of celebrities have stayed over the years. It’s probably been taken over by some other swank hotel as the place to be today, but back then – and we’re talking late 80’s early 90’s, the Marmont was the place. If nothing else it was famous for being the location where John Belushi died of a drug overdose in 1982.

“Is that him?” Carlo asked me nervously as he crowded me at the window.

“Yep,” I said. “That is the man.”

“Who are those other guys with him?”

“I don’t know. Probably his security team,” I joked.

Neither Carlo or Franco got the joke. They just got more nervous and asked me if I was ready for the 20th time. Before I could answer a white Rolls Royce drove out from the underground parking lot and stopped. A stately looking woman is her 50’s stuck her head out the driver’s window. “I’m sorry but you can’t park there,” she said in a loud authoritative voice.

Mickey had just removed his Helmet and was attaching it to the bike. He looked up at the women with his famous bad boy scowl. “Oh yeah,” he said to the woman. “Says who?”

The woman was not intimidated. She opened the door and stood up just outside the vehicle.  “You’re blocking the driveway,” she said angrily. “The cars coming out will not be able to get to the street if you are parked there.”

Mickey and the two hells angels looked at each other, then turned back to the woman. “Fuck you, bitch,” one of the Angels laughed. “Get a smaller car.”

Upon hearing this, the woman upped the ante. She left the car and started walking towards them even more angry than before. “Excuse me,” She said. “I’m the owner of this hotel and if you don’t leave right now I am going to call the police!”

When Mickey realized she was the owner of the hotel, he seemed to get even more belligerent. He moved a few steps toward her and they met  just inches apart. “Oh, so you’re the owner of this fucking place,” he yelled at her. “So tell me,  why is it okay for a guy like John Beluchi to come here and get himself killed, but it’s not okay for me to park my fucking god damned motorcycle here?”

Mickey Rourke on his motorcycle

The woman was so shocked by the statement, she didn’t know what to say. She just turned around and headed back towards her car. I took the opportunity to wave at Mickey and the boys
to get their attention. “Mickey,” I said not too loudly. “We’re up here. You can use the gate right there to come up.”

Mickey looked up at me, but before he could say anything the hotel owner spoke up from her car. “Are you going to move or not?”

Mickey looked at the woman, and then back up me and the Italian producers in the window. He then looked back toward the woman. “Fuck you,” he said to the hotel owner, “And fuck you,” he said to me as he turned back. “I’m not doing a fucking interview in this piece of shit hotel.”

With that Mickey and the boys were back on their bikes and making some serious racket with their engines. They turned their bikes around, but just before they roared off the premises, Mickey looked back up at us. “If you want to interview me, you can meet me down on Sunset Boulevard.”

The Italian producers were beside themselves. Their English wasn’t all that great and they didn’t get all the details of what happened but they knew it was a bad scene. It made them even more nervous than before.

“Bill, what do we do?” Carlo asked urgently. “What do we do?”

“Well, let’s go down to Sunset Boulevard and get the interview. Then you can come back up here and apologize to the owner.”

“Okay, okay,” they both said.  “Let’s go. Let’s go.”

I ripped the camera off the tripod and left everything behind except one lapel mic for the interview. We raced out of the room and down to Sunset Boulevard. We found Mickey sitting by himself on a bus stop.

“I like this location better,” I said to Mickey to try to calm things.

Mickey didn’t bring up anything about what just happened, he just asked me what we were going to be talking about.

“I don’t know. I’m just the camera guy. I think they just want to ask you a few general questions. From what I heard, you have a sizable audience in Italy.”

Micky smiled sarcastically at me but didn’t say anything. He then turned to Carlo who indicated he was going to be the one asking the questions. “ So you came all the way here from Italy?”

“Yes, Mr. Rourke,” Carlo said with a big smile. “From Roma.”

“Nice place,” Mickey said. “Lot better than this trash heap of a town.”

About thirty minutes later we were back up in the room. The interview went well. It was pretty much the standard stuff with a few specific questions about the movie 9 ½ Weeks. I guessed it was because it was a big hit in Italy.

Mickey never became chummy with us, but he never got mean either. When we were done, he took off the mic himself and handed it back to me. He then jumped on his chopper and was gone.

“Bill,” Franco said. “ Is Mickey Rourke always like that? Or is that an image he likes to make believe?”

“Well,” I said. “Mickey, does have a reputation. But at the end of the day, what time did you guys set up the interview for?”

“Two O’Clock,” Franco replied as if I forgot.

“And what time did he show up…?” I asked.

“Two O’Clock,”  he replied.

“Two O’clock, exactly,” I added with a shrug.

CROWD SOURCE MOVIE MAKING TECHNIQUES MOVE INTO DISTRIBUTION

I’m sure you’ve been noticing the shift by many filmmakers and artists in our circle of friends who are using crowd source funding for their projects. In the last year or so, friends of mine such as Pam Yates and Paco De Onis, Todd Darling, as well as  Sheila Sofian & David Fain have all made films with the help of Kickstarter. That’s the service where you can post your project and people can chip in a few bucks to support it. It’s pretty cool.

Shiela Sofian funded part of her film "Truth has Fallen" via Kickstarter

Well now comes the Kickstarter of distribution. It’s called Gathr and it works the same way. Once your film is made, you can post it on the site and your fans can pledge to buy a ticket. When enough people pledge to buy tickets, then a local movie theater shows it. Gathr likes to call this system “Theatrical on Demand.”

One of the first films to use this service that I know of is “Girl Rising,” a documentary focused on the impact of education on underprivileged girls. It premiered in New York last week. Along with the premiere came news that the film would be using Gathr for it’s theatrical release. So far, 438 Girl Rising screenings are being organized nationwide, with more than 37,000 tickets pre-reserved.  According to the producers, new screening requests for Girl Rising are coming in at about 40 per day.  Not Bad! Hey I wonder if you could crowd source awards for your film… Oh wait….That’s called the Oscars.

Todd Darling raised funds via Kickstarter for his film "Occupy The Farm."

Peter Kinoy, Pam Yates & Paco De Onis used Kickstarter for their film "Granito"

I’ve been making noise about all the plastic trash I see in my travels. I even made a few videos. One video called “Paradise Trashed” was set in Bali and showed  what it’s like to go for a swim there.  Another, called “The Plastic Opera”   was set in Rome where heaps of plastic bounce playfully around in Tiber River.

Now comes word that a four ton sperm whale that washed ashore in southern Spain last year, died from ingesting large amounts of plastic sheets used in greenhouses on farms in the region.

The whale, which came ashore in Andalusia, had over 17 kilogrammes (37 pounds) of garbage blocking its stomach, including some 30 square metres (36 square yards) of plastic canvas, said Renaud de Stephanis, a marine biologist at the Donana Biological Station, which is run by the Spanish National Research Council.

Over 250 marine animals including turtles, dolphins and otters, have problems because of plastic garbage that finds its way into the ocean and which can cause them to choke.

The discovery is worrying because it shows that “the sea is full of rubbish” and that waste management systems for plastic, not only in Spain, are not always effective.

“These big plastics crumble and the little pieces also go inside fish. And that is what we end up eating,” said de Stephanis.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. Seven more sperm whales died near Italy from the same problem.

If you want to know what you can do to get involved with plastic reduction, visit the “Rise Above Plastic”  webpage created by the surf rider foundation.

NORTHERN TERRITORY, AUSTRALIA  – A Swedish tourist got the thrill of a lifetime when a crocodile leapt onto him and gave him a slap. The reptile had been sunning itself but was obviously in attack mode with it’s mouth open, but the tourists kept trying to sneak up on it.

The animal launched itself directly at Swedish tourist Felix Andersson, hitting him in the face before landing in the water.

European Catfish Like These Have Learned To Ambush Pidgeons On Land

Who said Catfish can’t adapt? After being introduced into the Tarn River in Southwestern France nearly 30 years ago, European Catfish have learned to ambush Pidgeons!

Researchers captured video of the European catfish, which reside in the River Tarn in southwestern France. In the footage, several of the fish, which range in length from 3 to nearly 5 feet, are seen thrusting their bodies from the shallow banks onto land where they capture pigeons and drag them back into the water.

Some dolphins and killer whales have exhibited similar behavior, though both are mammals and better equipped to survive on land for brief periods of time.
Still, Julien Cucherousset from Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse has taken to describing the catfish as “freshwater killer whales.”

Video captured by researchers shows Catfish leaping onto land to grab pidgeons

The study results were published in the scientific journal Plos One. The study’s abstract notes: “Among a total of 45 beaching behaviors observed and filmed, 28% were successful in bird capture.  … Since this extreme behavior has not been reported in the native range of the species, our results suggest that some individuals in introduced predator populations may adapt their behavior to forage on novel prey in new environments, leading to behavioral and trophic specialization to actively cross the water-land interface.”

Watch the video of the catfish hunting the pigeons:

From the great barrier reef to the Caribbean sea, there is no shortage of people who love to get up close and personal with these marine reptiles. There are dozens and dozens of places where you can do this around the world. One of the best places that we’ve found for this activity is on the Island of Zanzibar – just off the coast of Tanzania in East Africa. It’s a place called BARAKA NATURAL AQUARIUM.

The Baraka Aquarium is situated in the North Coast of Zanzibar Island, in the more quiet side of Nungwi. This place is very low key and visitors are so few that you’re almost guaranteed to be alone with the turtles here.

It usually starts with feeding them some seaweed and allowing everyone to get more comfortable with each other. Then,  if you are so inclined,  you can just  jump in an swim around with them.

Unlike some of the other places we’ve been where the turtles are smaller and encounters very brief,  Baraka surrounds you with large gentle turtles who seem as interested in you as you are of them.

And what makes it great is there are no time limits to how long you can hang out with the turtles. You can spend the whole afternoon if you want.  And the cost of the visit? Only US$5.00. When is the last time you got into any park for five bucks.

Swimming alone with Sea Turtles

Baraka likes to think of itself as a Green Sea turtles Sanctuary because Green Sea Turtles are classified as an endangered species. They see their mission to protect these turtles from Egg Poachers, shell hunters, and all the other threats that have caused their numbers to decline.

One thing they don’t do is protect you from some of the more curious turtles… Check out this  video I made (and make sure to check out the LOL ending about just how curious they can get).

Tourists like me can get their pictures taken for about one dollar

Many people think the biggest crocodiles in the world are in Africa or Australia, but actually, the current world’s record was caught in the Philippines. It’s name is Lolong and according to the Guiness book of world records, this 2,300 pound behemoth measures in at well over 20 feet.  The previous record was 18 feet.

Lolong was captured near the village of Bunawan in the Agusan del Sur Province of Mindanao. It was suspected of killing a fisherman and biting off the head of a 12 year old girl.

Lolong just after his capture in 2011

It most places, when a crocodile eats a human it is destroyed immediately by angry villagers, but the interesting thing about the Philippines is that Crocodiles that eat humans are placed in reserves that also double as tourist attractions.

Lolong was placed in the Bunawan Ecopark and Research Center near Mindanao where he is said to be healthy and very popular with tourists. They have also made a replica of Lolong for a science museum inside Manila’s ‘Mall of Asia.’

Tourist holds up T-shirt from giftshop at Bunawan Ecopark

Children playing with Lolong Replica in Manila's Mall of Asia

Lolong isn’t the only killer crocodile on display in the Philippines. On the Island of Palawan is the the Palawan Wildlife Rescue and Conservation Center, otherwise know as the “Crocodile Farm.” For less than 10 Dollars, visitors are able to see some of the biggest confirmed man eaters alive.

One of them is called Roy Roy, known to have killed a young boy.  Two recent additions are Valentino and Valentina, two giant saltwater crocs involved in human attacks in the last year. Another one named RIO (which is now dead) killed a fisherman and is now on display as a skeleton inside a glass case at the center.

In addition to viewing these giant salt water crocs, visitors are also encouraged to help feed them with hunks of chicken meat on a rope.

Here I am feeding some man eaters at Palawan Crocodile Farm

While some people think crocodiles that kill people should be destroyed, the underlying truth is crocodiles are not the real predators in this story. The population of the Philippines has mushroomed over the last 25 years from under 60 million people to nearly 1oo million today.  And with that population boom comes the need for more land – land that is already occupied by wildlife like the Philippine Saltwater Crocodile. The net result is that the Philippine Saltwater Crocodile is now on the endangered species list. And this is the reason why the Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources , which overseas the eco-parks  and conservation centers prevents the crocodiles from being killed. They put them on display as a way to keep the species from going extinct.

Check out the video version of this story that I made.

Photos of Mule Allegedly Killin Mountain Lion

A friend of mine sent me this weird email the other day. You might have seen it too since it seems to be making the rounds these days. It tells the story of a Montana couple who were out riding when a mountain lion attacks one of their the dogs. Before the mountain lion could kill the dog, however, the couple’s mule grabs the cat and viciously destroys it.

Mule Bites Lion

Now the whole thing looks real but is it? Is this “fake?” Or “no fake?”

According to various sources, including Snopes.com, the pictures are real but the story is fake.

“The real story, according to Steven Richards in Western Mule Magazine is this: A New Mexico mountain lion hunter named Jody Anglin shot and killed a mountain lion. It was only after the lion was dead that his Mule became aggressive and started playing with the dead body of the cat.”

Berry the mule, tossing the mountain Lion

THE MOUNTAIN LION FOUNDATION ALSO DEBUNKS STORY AS A HOAX

“There’s an e-mail story circulating about a Montana couple being saved from a mountain lion attack by their mule. The story “1 Bad Ass” and the accompanying graphic photographs of the mule — reportedly fighting and killing the lion — attempt to convey to a gullible reader that mountain lions are dangerous and attack people and that mountain lions can be defeated by righteous, rough-and-tough hunter types alongside their faithful equine companions. But everything about the story is an outright lie.”

“The Montana couple and their valiant fighting mule are a figment of imagination.”

“The mule is not fighting a lion, but instead grabbing and tossing the dead body of a mountain lion shot by a New Mexico trophy hunter.”

“These same photos (with slightly differing titles and stories) have turned up in numerous incarnations since they first appeared years ago.”

SNOPES.COM ALSO DEBUNKED THE STORY

Snopes tracked down two different versions of the story but in the end also came to the same conclusion. The Mountain Lion was already dead when the mule attacked it. You  can read their story here.

Here is the Western Mule Magazine article by Steve Richards.

The Artcile from Western Mule Magazine

You can grab a PDF version of it here 

Considering the overwhelming evidence pointing to the fact that the mule did not kill the mountain lion, I’m going to call it….

The first time I noticed Ella-Vee, she was in line in front of me boarding a flight. She had short hair and looked to be in her 50′s. Her hand was on the shoulder of another woman and handing her boarding pass to the agent when a weird buzzer sounded.

“Ma’am, your seat has been changed to 21E due to a change in aircraft,” the agent told her.

“Is that an aisle seat?” Ella asked.

“No Ma’am, that is going to be a middle seat.”

Ella’s voice suddenly became louder and more emphatic. “I can’t sit in a middle seat. That won’t work for me,” she said.

“Well then, you’ll have to go back to the desk,” the agent told her.

The woman Ella had her hand on murmured something and continued onto the plane, leaving Ella by the door.

Ella made a few cautious steps then stopped and asked quite loudly. “Where is the desk?”

The irritated gate agent continued scanning boarding passes with one hand and pointed over to the desk with the other. “Right over there,” he said.

“Where is there?” Ella asked even louder. “I can’t see.”

Suddenly, everyone realized Ella was blind. A handful of passengers, including myself moved to help her but by that time the airline employees sprang into action. A women from the desk rescued Ella and led the way.

“I’m sorry about this,” Ella said to the woman, “but a blind person in the middle seat is a nightmare for the other passengers.”

As luck would have it, I ended up sitting next to Ella-Vee. She had the aisle seat and I had the window. There wasn’t anyone in the middle seat so I wondered if her friend would be joining us. “No,” Ella said. “She was just somebody who was helping me. I don’t know her.”

A male cabin attendant showed up with a booklet in his hand. He told her it was the safety instructions in brail and asked if she could read brail. She said she could but only seconds after running her fingers across the pages she looked up and loudly proclaimed the pages were out of order. The attendant quickly appeared and apologized but she laughed him off. “It’s not your fault. How would you know?”

Ella then went about trying to re-arrange the pages, but the booklet was put together in one of those cheap plastic binders that made it difficult. I asked her if I could help but she turned me away. “It’s alright,” she said much too loudly. “I’m pretty good with holes.” She then laughed loudly and went about her task.

I was about to turn back to my own little world when Ella suddenly leaned over. “If you want, you can read me the food menu,” she suggested. “Federal laws don’t require those be printed in brail so I’m shit out of luck as they say.”

It took two full readings of the menu for Ella to find something she liked. Once we got that done, we started talking and didn’t stop until the plane landed.

Ella-Vee was born as a normally “sighted” person in Pennsylvania in 1952 and was named Ella-Vee Hoefling by her parents as a compromise between Mom who was Cherokee Indian and Dad who was German. She had a normal childhood and dreamed of being a nurse from the time she was very young. This desire led to her to become a Navy flight nurse during the Vietnam war.

“Flight nurses are the people who fly from the hospital ship in helicopters into the war zone and pick up wounded soldiers,” Ella told me. “Yes, it was dangerous and crazy but I loved it. It’s how I met my husband.”

His name was Charlie and he was a foot soldier from the front lines. She picked him up in a “hot” landing zone near Nha Trang. He was wounded in a firefight with the Viet Cong. He had a gun shot wound as well as some shrapnel in his shoulder.

“My job as a flight nurse was to stabilize the patient as quickly as possible and ease any pain,” Ella-Vee told me. “In Charlie’s case he was hurting pretty bad so I shot him up with enough morphine to keep him happy for a week.”

As a result, Charlie turned into a “chatterbox” and told Ella all about himself. He was from New Jersey and got drafted into the military. Because he was just a grunt he was always on the front lines and had been wounded twice before. As a result, his fellow soldiers had nicknamed him ‘Ricochet Rabbit’ because he was lucky and always came back.

Although they only spent about 45 minutes together, Charlie must have made a strong impression on Ella because 5 years later she still remembered his voice. It was the early 1970′s and she was working as a nurse in a Pennsylvania hospital. One afternoon she stepped into an elevator. Inside, there was a hospital security guard escorting someone somewhere. When this security guard spoke, it rang a bell with Ella. She checked around and soon found out it was her former patient from Viet Nam.

Ella and Charlie eventually got married and had a daughter in 1980, but it didn’t stop them from being the adventurous people they were. Together, they took up mountain climbing and gradually became expert ice climbers. It was a dangerous hobby that filled their need for independence and excitement, but it ended up costing Ella-Vee her eyesight in 1987.

It was a German mountain,” Ella told me. “We were a party of five and I was the lead. Charlie was in the rear and we were all roped together. When we were about three quarters of the way up this cliff of ice, a pinion I had just put in let loose. I fell backward with head down first until the second pinion stopped my fall. When it snagged, it slammed me into the ice head first.”

Ella was out cold and badly injured. And to make matters worse she ended up about half way down a crevice of ice beyond the reach of her fellow climbers.

“So what happened was, Charlie worked himself up to where I was and unhooked my line,” She told me. “With the help of the others, he lowered me down to the bottom of the crevice.”

Once they got Ella down , Charlie then worked his way down to her, re-arranged her ropes so they could pull her back out and get her down the mountain.

“I was in a coma in a German hospital for six weeks,” Ella said. I had forty fractures and blunt trauma to my head. “And when I did wake up, I no longer had my eyesight. My brain injury had affected that area of my brain.”

They tried to save Ella-Vee’s eyesight with brain surgery but it proved to be ineffective. She could still see light but that was about it. The reality of spending the rest of her life blind and dependent on others spun Ella-Vee into a deep depression. “When I became needy, I didn’t like it,” she told me. “I was seriously depressed.”

“How did Charlie deal with it?” I asked

“Oh, Charlie was great but it changes the relationship you know. You go from being this adventurous loving couple to caregiver and caretaker basically. You’re no longer interacting sexually. It wears on the relationship, especially when he’s doing everything he can to get me to move my body and I am in pain and I don’t want to hear about it.”

Realizing they needed help, the couple sought out therapy. But as Ella tells it, Charlie’s real therapy became eating. He wasn’t a very big guy so the pounds he put on were too much for his small frame. About 4 years after the accident, Charlie had a massive heart attack and died.

Now alone with a daughter, Ella didn’t have much of a family to fall back on. She turned to the State run ‘Commission for the Blind’ for help, but when she found out they wanted to institutionalize her, something snapped.

“If I was depressed about feeling dependent on my husband, can you imagine how I felt thinking I was doomed to an institution for the rest of my life?”

Determined to stay in her own home, Ella-Vee sprang into action. She learned how to take care of herself and her daughter. Not only did she avoid the institution, but won the admiration of the Commission for the Blind. In fact, everyone were so impressed, she was eventually hired by the New Jersey Department of Health. She now runs a program that helps blind people who were once sighted adapt to their new lives.

“That’s what I do,” she told me. “It’s pretty traumatic losing your eyesight, but you can live a fairly productive independent life without it. The main thing is, you have to deal with it emotionally and move on within about 2 years or you won’t ever get over it.”

When we got off the plane, I was the one to help her. She called somebody on a cell phone and made arrangements to be picked up outside baggage claim.

As we walked out to the curb, I finally got around to asking her about where she was coming from.

“Oh, I was in Australia seeing my daughter. She married an Aussie. I do it every two years.”

“And you do it alone?” I asked incredulously.

“It’s not that hard,” she smiled.

I got her to a bench near the curb and was happy to wait until her ride showed up, but she didn’t want to hear anything about that. “No, you have a train to catch,” she said. “Besides, I want to sneak a cigarette and I don’t want you watching me smoke.”

I laughed and said my good byes.

On the train home I decided I would never complain about late flights and bad seats ever again. In fact, whenever I encounter major set backs in my life, I am going to think of this lady, her amazing spirit, courage, and what she told me:

“The trick is to just get over it and move on.”