Episode 3: “Welcome To Vancouver/Can We Go Home Yet?”

This episode also could be called “Location, Location, Location!” Where you shoot your movie makes a huge difference. One surefire way to turn craftsmanship into crap is to shoot somewhere you have no organic reason to be. For “Bordello of Blood”, that location was Vancouver.

Like the script for “Dead Easy”, “Bordello of Blood” took place in the South. But, whereas “Dead Easy” mostly took place in and around New Orleans (incredibly atmospheric), “Bordello” took place in a South that was completely generic. Actually, the entire rationale for even thinking it takes place in the South is the word “Bordello” in the title.

There’s nothing in the script that says the titular bordello has to be in Sarasota or Savannah. I suspect we made it the South out of deference to “Dead Easy”, a project we were all still mourning. Our decision to keep the movie in a Southern location while deciding to shoot up north wasn’t based on anything. I guess we figured that doing something for a poor reason beat doing something for no reason.

Vancouver is a fantastic place to make movies, TV shows, content, music – whatever! Between Gil and I, we’ve worked a ton in Vancouver. But, there are reasons to take a project to a location like Vancouver and reasons to not do that. This episode of “The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast: The Making Of Bordello Of Blood”, starts with the unit’s arrival in “Rain City” – a location we should never have visited.

If We’re Shooting, It Must Be Thursday

At “Tales From The Crypt“, filming always began on a Thursday. Bordello also began shooting on a Thursday. We’ll explain why. But, before we started shooting, we still have casting issues.

Some are courtesy of our executive Producer Joel Silver. His three choices were all producing unexpected ripple effects. Our star, Dennis Miller won’t speak any of the lines written for him (and we can’t blame him).

Our female lead, Erika Eleniak, doesn’t want to play “those kinds” of roles anymore (after having accepted a part in a movie called “Bordello of Blood”).

And Angie Everhart, the super model/actress playing our villain (who got the role because she was engaged to Sylvester Stallone who’s shooting a movie just to the south in Seattle – with the same executive producer), doesn’t know what everyone else on our set knows: her fiancee – Stallone – is cheating on her on his movie set in Seattle.

Can We Go Home Now?

Meanwhile, our production team can’t find any of the southern US locations called for in the script in Vancouver, the northern Canadian city where we chose to make the movie. Our gung-ho but inexperienced (local) special effects team suddenly makes us nervous; they ask us how to make fake blood.

Then our boss – executive producer Joel Silver, one of the biggest action movie producers in the whole history of Hollywood – flies across the border from Seattle (where he’s shooting “Assassins” with Stallone and Antonio Banderas) to visit. Except he doesn’t bring a passport or any ID whatsoever.

And an international incident nearly breaks out.

What was it Bette Davis says in “All About Eve” – “”Fasten your seat belts it’s going to be a bumpy night.”? Yeah, what Bette said!

And we’re only up to Day Three!