When You're Tripping on Vyvanse and a Man in a Frog Suit Appears
by Matthew J.X. Malady
People drop things on the Internet and run all the time. So we have to ask. In this edition, PandoDaily East Coast Editor David Holmes tells us more about what it’s like to shoot a music video in Brooklyn in 2014.
A photo posted by David Holmes (@holmesdm) on Dec 12, 2014 at 8:06pm PST
David! So what happened here?
So I was helping my girlfriend, the photographer Alison Brady, with a music video she’s directing for this nice Grizzly Bear-ish rock band called Redfoot. I want to make sure I don’t overstate my role or take undue credit, so when I say “helping,” I mean carrying light-stands, sweeping floors, making coffee, and staying out of the way. Available but invisible — which would a fitting title if I ever write a memoir. Or a relationship self-help book.
But sometime around the fourteenth hour of shooting that day, things started to get weird. Part of the weirdness came from taking Vyvanse, which is basically Super Adderall, and which at that point was wearing off and wearing me down hard. (Though it could have been worse: One member of the crew said he meant to take an Adderall that morning but accidentally popped a morphine pill.) As for me, the euphoric focus that carried me through the morning and afternoon had now mutated into a state of semi-consciousness marked by micro-naps, waking dreams, and a perpetual sense of deja vu as moments began to pile on top of one another, as if time was a broken assembly line.
And that’s when I saw the green man.
As Redfoot’s lead singer Luca Pironti emerged from a bedroom of the Bushwick-loft-turned-video-studio, the last thing I expected to see was a man covered from head to toe in a green-screen-ready jumpsuit. After all, we were shooting a music video made up of subversive psychosexual imagery, not some Peter Jackson fantasy epic.
To make the scene even more surreal, the green man was instructed to make out with one of the models hired for the shoot. It was as if I’d suddenly stumbled upon a film set devoted to hipster hobbit porn.
I don’t usually take “behind-the-scenes” photos on set, mainly because a lot of directors get annoyed by them. But this was such an absurd scene — a man who looked like a sperm on St Patrick’s Day making out with a 1950s housewife — that I was willing to risk pissing off the director, even if it meant sleeping on the couch. (She didn’t care.)
That green suit can’t be comfortable. Did that guy complain about it the whole time?
Luca wore the suit with dignity and honor, totally comfortable with having the outline of his penis on display for everyone to see. I did have one concern, though. Unlike King Kong or Gollum or other green-screened characters, Pironti had no cities to destroy, no rings to spaz out over. Instead he had one job: make out with the model. So as soon as he took her into his arms, I couldn’t help but fear for him. The skintight costume left nothing to the imagination, and I worried that Pironti’s subtle and noble crotch bulge would transform into a neon nightmare for all involved. Not that Pironti gave me any reason to believe he’s a creep or an exhibitionist, but dick science is an unpredictable discipline.
Of course, the use of green screen meant that if he had gotten too excited, the offending member could be replaced in post-production by any number of phallic objects, like a banana or a Flintstones Push-Up Pop. But I’m not sure everyone would have recovered from the awkwardness.
Lesson learned (if any)?
I have to say, I was inspired by Luca’s complete confidence inside the suit. He didn’t feel an ounce of embarrassment — or at least he didn’t show it. He just owned it. And I think the lesson here is, just because you’re in a full-body skintight frog suit, making out with a 1950s housewife in front of a camera in a Bushwick loft at 10 o’clock at night, don’t forget that you’re working with professionals. Act accordingly.
Just one more thing.
I know that when we were in college, ADHD meds could be substituted for sleep, sustaining us for days on end as long as we eventually caught up on rest over the weekend. But now that we’re older, that doesn’t work anymore. Especially if you accidentally take morphine instead of Adderall.
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