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So, Haggis Killer and I are going to spend the summer filming a movie about Hungarian Sabre Fencer and Coach, George Piller (György Jekelfalussy-Piller). And it's a real movie, not just one in my head. I know this because, as of Saturday morning June 11, 2016, we have been funded.

Coming soon to a cineplex near you.

Great news!  Congrats.

Can you spend exorbitant funds to build sets that aren't used in the movie much and then have them transferred to your private property?  

Can you cast ScarJo as an Asian android?

Can I throw a fencing mask at Cole?  





There better be swordfights.

Wouldn't be a movie without #3

Just spent the morning making reservations for my assault on the United States. I'm trying to see if I can break the debit card. It's close

Starting July 15, I'm driving across the Southwest to Shreveport, picking up the Haggis in Dallas. Then we drive to PA, NYC, and Boston. 

I'm letting Haggis fly back while I journey back to LA.

Depart for Hungary on Aug 10th.

If you need more funding, have you thought about hitting the SF Film Society? The SF International Film Festival was in May and I just listened to a podcast where a filmmaker was talking about how they received a grant from SFIFF...Not sure where you submit requests though...

http://www.sffs.org/about

--tg

Next time. We actually have an Angel for our funding. A very lovely lovely Angel. Basically, he said here is your money. Go make your movie. Talk to me when you are done. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it.

Still have to do that second step right, though.

So, I am at the 'rents for the next ten days for the film. On Monday, we shoot the first of three interviews with the potential for two more. Next Tuesday it is off to Oregon to film John McDougall and his reminisces of George Piller. Hopefully there are a lot of them.

Being at the 'rents is it's usual delight. Although, I did stumble across a couple of drawers full of old negatives in a trunk my father's. Some of the photos (there were photos as well) were quite cringe worthy delightful. I just wish I had a scanner.

Today, I am shooting in lovely Piedmont, CA. I am picking up the Haggis at 10am in Berkeley at the West Berkeley Fencing Center and then we are going to Mr. Nikolas Molnar's home to do some interviews. Mr. Molnar escaped from Hungary so he could join his wife, an Olympic Gymnast in Melbourne.

I spent yesterday filming the Charles Selberg Invitational up at WBFC. It was a good dry run for the equipment. And I learned one valuable lesson, if the battery starts to go dead on the camera it interferes with the digital video recorder. Good thing that only happened during the final bout of the tournament. Second valuable lesson, make sure you have your back up camera running while you panic with the A camera.

I also seem to think my most time consuming job is battery wrangler. Every device has it's own type of battery requiring it's own type of charger. And there aren't enough outlets to plug them alll in. At my parents house, I've spent the morning trying to remember where I plugged them all. Time to make a list of all the batteries and how many I have.

For those keeping track at home, this morning I was up at 3:30 with the question queue booting up in my brain. Good thing because I hadn't set the alarm.

Sei Brav!

Mr. Molnar kept looking at us like we were crazy, but he was a very pleasant man and very gracious to the Haggis and I. He lives in a beautiful Craftsman style home, bought with his wine and wild rice money. He bottles a lot of wine in Napa and he is the largest producer of Wild Rice outside of Wisconsin and Canada. He has huge tracts of land back in Hungary.


The interview went well. It lasted about two hours after it took me about 45 minutes to set up the two cameras, lights and sound recording gear. Mr. Molnar was nice enough to point out that I had a bigger set-up than the crew that came from Hungary to film him.

He had one big story to tell about his departure from Hungary to meet his wife in Melbourne. There were a lot of good anecdotes, but I don't know if we got all that we could. Too soon to tell.

The only glitches at this point were the cameras acting oddly. One kept shutting off which I guess had to do with the timer for the camera. Periodically it would just shut down which cut off the video recorder. It was a good thing I had two other cameras going at the same time. Lots of duplication.

Probably the best thing he had was an album of his escape to Melbourne and subsequent tour around the United States on the Freedom Tour, sponsored by Sports Illustrated. Lots of great details in there about the course of the trip. It looked like a terrible itinerary traveling through the midwest in February and March. It also included copies of his get out of Hungary free card and his ticket into the Olympic village. We'll have to ask Wednesday's subject for more details on the tour.

After the shoot, Haggis and I did our post-shoot talk at Barney's in Piedmont, where we had entirely too much food in a very warm restaurant.

My mother is in the kitchen on the phone to one of her friends while I work away in the dining room.

My ears perk up when I realize she is about to describe the Piller documentary.

To be honest, I haven't said word one to my mother about the film. I guess she has just gleaned tidbits of the story from over hearing me or from talking with my father.

Her take: It's about jewish fencers fleeing from the Nazis.

Stay tuned as details become cloudier.

So, I couldn't get to sleep because of the myriad questions cascading through my brain. There was quite the battle between the questions and the song lodged in there that would pop up every time the furor from the questions would subside. For those playing at home, the song was When I was seven years old by Lukas Graham. Now it's probably playing in your head.

I went down to the dining room so I could type up some of the interview questions. I hope that if they were on paper, they didn't have to be in my head. Didn't help. The space from the old questions was immediately filled with new questions or tasks that needed to be accomplished. Yes, I but more batteries in the chargers.

My father was quite confused to see me at the computer as he made his way to bed. For the past two decades he's been trying to rap his head around the fact that I go to bed by 9 every night. So, the first question out of his mouth when he saw me was "Are you still up?" Old habits die hard, so I said "no". 

Despite the lateness of my bed time, I still arose at 3am. The questions and task were still there. As was Mr. Graham.

Today I am filming Elvira Orley up in El Cerrito. Yay, another trip to the Berkeley area. We also might get to interview Mrs. Orley's mom, but she is well into her nineties. We'll have to tread delicately with that one. Plus, she's on oxygen.

I have to run out today and get some 3 prong adaptors so I can plug into two prong outlets. I was thinking that might be a problem when we showed up yesterday at Mr. Molnar's 100 year old home. Sure enough, it was. I had to run power from the kitchen where the only grounded plugs in the house existed.

The interview starts at 1pm. Mrs. Orley is tangentially connected to Piller. Her father started the Pannonia club in San Francisco where Piller taught after defecting from Hungary. I don't know how much first hand knowledge I'll get out of her. But if Mrs' Orley's mother is up for it, she knew Piller well and might have some good stories. Fingers crossed.

I had a rough night too.  I'm sorely in need of some recovery sleep after SNWMF, and got to bed early, and could sleep in until 8, but lay awake tweaking on that gorgeous strawberry solstice moon.  

I have easily defeated the 7 years old earworm with visuals of Elvira, mistress of the dark.  Here, now you can too:


I've passed by Elvira in person.  I've never met anyone actually named Elvira.

So, was Elvira one of the jewish fencers that escaped the nazis?

The interview with Elvira hit the rocks pretty much on the first question. One of themes for the picture is how the Hungarian Sabre fencers escaped the oppression of the communist rule. I wrote up a bunch of questions to get to the heart of why people left.

Well, Elvira immediately told us her great grandparents left Hungary in 1902 long before there was even a hint of communism. Sure, there was oppression, just not the kind that will help with the film. Elvira did concede she took one lesson from Piller when she was nine but couldn't remember a thing about it. She wasn't really cognizant about the club until about a decade after Piller's death. Her main coach was another Hungarian, Ferenc Marki, but we really didn't get into stories about him.

So, yeah, not a lot. We got a little background on the Pannonia club, which helps, but I'm still waiting for the elusive Piller nugget.

And the whole interview started off on a bad note when one of the microphones wouldn't do it's only job of being a microphone. I ran around checking cables like a mad man for ten minutes trouble shooting the problem before I realized the recording unit had in it's inimitable fashion decided not to supply the power to the microphone like it is supposed to. 

I brought two prong extension cords so I could plug everything in to all the two prong outlets. We are getting better at bringing all the gear from the car. Still took us about 45 minutes to get set up.

Elvira's house is in a great spot on the top of the mountain in El Cerrito, just north of Berkeley. There was a little bit of fog sitting on the bay buy you could see everything from Redwood City all the way to the heart of Marin up. I could of spent the whole day just sitting on the porch looking at ships transit the bay.

Another plan for the day was to try and interview Mama Orley, but that was a complete no go. She is 98 and is dealing with Alzheimers. She seemed to be very agitated by our presence. Elvira had placed her near where we were doing the interview so she could can an eye on her. At one point, I looked over and Mama Orly had disconnected her oxygen tubes and was very calmly rolling them up. I stopped the interview so Elvira could help her mother get back on the oxygen.

Not a great day, but good practice. I do have to warn Haggis again that we don't really need his stories. At one point, he launched into a story about his father being invited to a nuclear bomb test when we heard mention that Elvira's father worked on the Manhattan project.

On Wednesday, we were going to interview Dan Magay but his bathroom is under repair and we would have to do our interview surrounded by carpenters and plumbers. We have pushed his interview back to Monday. Haggis wants to meet near Dan's place since he thinks it will be hard for me to find. 

Elvira once again put forward the notion that we really need to interview Dan's first wife, which I agree with. The first Mrs. Magay actually knew Piller and took lessons from him. While we were at Elvira's, she called the first Mrs. Magay and told her about the project. When Elvira told Haggis that the first Mrs. Magay had a lot of pictures, Haggis came around to the idea of interviewing the first Mrs. Magay. Haggis will talk to Dan about it today to make sure it doesn't alienate him and then we will start trying to set up that interview between now and when we go to Oregon next week.

Today, I'm going to process pictures, transfer media, and see if I can get one of my cameras to stop shutting off during shooting.

Tomorrow, we meet with the money man back in Berkeley. I am getting sick of that drive already. We also might interview Joe Shamash. Joe was the last man running Pannonia. I am hesitant for this interview because I don't know if we need a lot of stories about the club at that point.

There's always the Apocalypse Now option.  If no one's cooperating and nothing's going right, just film the slaughter of a water buffalo and work it into the climax.  Sanguinity sells.  Just ask DM.

Then again, you're far from that point.  Sounds like a fun nightmare.  Rooting for you from the water margin.