don_mynack

Give us all the details.

Well, the thing I most remember is that Joe Piscopo appeared to be, well, high most of the time. He was very "medicated". Other than that, I barely met Chuck Norris, since he was only in a few scenes. The tournament scenes at the end were shot at the gym at TSU, which was only a couple of years old at that point. That is really the only part of the film I worked on - I helped wrangle the extras for those scenes, which took over week to shoot, and they had to wear the same clothes every day. You really get to know the best of humanity when you work up close with extras who would, for $250/week, guarantee to show up every day, and to wear the same clothes all week. One guy was a midget wrestler. He gave me an autographed picture and invited me to one of his matches. I guess he thought I had Hollywood connections or something.

Back in the early 90's, when I was fresh out of UH with my communications degree, I worked on a few films shot here. The first was called Simple Men, by the New York director Hal Hartley. It was set in Long Island, but they filmed it out in the Richmond/Rosenberg area, with a few scenes downtown and in the Galleria area. When you see the film, you can tell if you are familiar with that area, but it does do a good job of approximating the more remote areas of Long Island. I also did some crew work on the unforgettable Sidekicks. At that time, they were shooting a lot of commercials here, too, mostly international stuff, because the economics of doing so made sense. Also, the Houston Film Commission was actively recruiting production companies to come here, touting the low overhead and variety of locations. A lot of that stuff has gone to Canada now, but we do get our fair share.

Also, don't forget Robert Altman's Brewster McCloud, about some guy who lives in the Astrodome (and filmed there). And who can forget the Bad News Bears: Breaking Training, with the immortal William Devane? I sure can't.