Io chills

EXT. CRACK HOUSE — DAY
Scene #35

EXT. CRACK HOUSE — DAY
Scene #61

INT. CRACK HOUSE — DAY
Scene #90

INT. CRACK HOUSE — DAY
Scene #92

INT. CRACK HOUSE — DAY
Scene #94

Ross gives Hagen a dome polish

 

Francis joins the lunch club

 

The director mops his brow [will the cops notice all the coke?]

Toby (Io Tillett Wright) hears a knock

 

“He’s gonna fucking kill me!”

 

Io next to her second biggest fan

 

Toby takes a break from cutting coke

 

Ronald (William Luke) and his crack ho (Lisa Russell)

Here’s an amusing e-mail message I received during post production:

Date: 5/3/2001 9:22:54 AM Eastern Daylight Time
From: ChelseaG16@excite.com (Chelsea Garcia)
To: joseph(at)cypressfilms.com

“This is about your set of Evenhand. I had never seen so much “coke” being used with so many police officers around. Your makeup artist and producer didn’t even have enough sence [sic] to wipe their noses clean (the powder was still there when we showed up). We will be publishing photos of your crew snorting the powder on our upcoming website, “Film Industry Secrets”. The website deals with what happens on film sets. Although we have pictures of crew memberts having sex in unusal places, the drug usage is of more importance!”

Joseph and Kinya get an energy boost on set

My lawyer friend and my wife (who is also a lawyer) thought this was an extortion letter. I just thought it was insane. Chelsea (whoever she is) obviously found photos, like the one above, of various crew members doing “coke” and thought it was the real thing. This was, in fact, a film set for the Crack House, brilliantly executed by our “crack” production designer, Gary Ledyard. The set featured mountains of fake cocaine, with which we all gleefully posed. I don’t remember who took photos besides Lovisa, but I know there are other pictures out there which, taken out of context, would indeed look incriminating. But, even if we were a crew of mad coke addicts, why on earth would we have posed for photographs with two pounds of cocaine? And why on a day when we had a half dozen police officers on set?

Michael Ross entertains the troops

Chelsea also mentions our “makeup artist and producer” walking around all coked up, which, if you know Fernando and Erin, would make you laugh out loud. It’s just hard to picture either of them as drug fiends. Anyway, I e-mailed Chelsea and told her to expect to be sued if she publishes her pictures and alleges that they depict actual drug use by my crew. She didn’t reply. Odd.

James feels groovy

6/18/01 – I did, however, receive this message today from one of the SAPD officers we had on set that day:

“hey about the coke use…well i myself was in there with the guy’s talking about how to make it look more real. so i told them to line it out and tone done the white a little. I saw no real “coke” anywhere, so tell them to put that up their nose. just thought i’d check in i’m working so much this is the first time i got to check the sight, well hope to hear from you soon…”

Needless to say, if any of ya’ll run across the “Film Industry Secrets” website, let me know and I’ll definitely make a link from here. Additional “coke” pictures are also welcome and will be published here (with permission, of course).

– Joseph Pierson