Special Release: A Bad Trip (1999)

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

The latest release on my YouTube channel is the 17:13 minute short A Bad Trip (1999). One of the highlights of my career as an amateur filmmaker. I am currently working on the redux of another highlight, the feature length De Gako’s in Thailand (2001), but won’t be able to release it publically due to the extensive use of music (A Bad Trip only has three musical tracks that I have replaced by licenced music).

A Bad Trip is an in-camera-edited short about a drug user Sjakie (my old buddy Boris Bruin) who buys wrong pills from the local dealer Eddie (played by yours truly) and enters into a nightmarish trip. I have improved the edit by removing a few bits and pieces and adding the odd sound effect. I also added subtitles. It is one of the few fictional shorts that I have made that actually tells a complete story with a beginning and an ending.

Reviewing it today, 22 years later, I can see my lack of experience at that point. The camera work is of inconsistent quality and contains quite a few beginner mistakes, like jumping the line. However there are some very nice shots and camera moves as well as a bit of camera trickery.

The acting is – well amateuristic at best – but consider that we shot it in four afternoons and many scenes are built up from one-take shots with dialogues improvised at the spot. Since a lot of focus was on the timing of the shots (we had to edit in-camera, since I had no editing equipment at the time), the acting got far less attention.

What I like most about the short is the scenery from my childhood. Sjakie’s house is my parental house in Heiloo and all other interiors are the houses of my friends. The point-of-sale of dealer Eddie is the first school I attended. And the woods in Heiloo (my Heilooweed) have a unique atmosphere to them. I love those woods.

Working on this project has wetted my appetite for amateur filmmaking. It is still my dream to one day shoot Brainfood, which would be the biggest amateur movie ever attempted. It is about a race of aliens secretly invading the Netherlands to steal our drugs. Then a special military squad is ordered to find them and exterminate them. It is currently budgeted at 150.000 euros, so for the foreseeable future it will remain a dream.

To be continued, I hope….

A Bad Trip (1999, The Netherlands)
Directed by: Jeppe Kleijngeld
Cast: Boris Bruin, Ben Bouwens, Jeppe Kleijngeld
Length: 17:13 mins.

Sjakie buys two pills from dealer Eddie which cause a nightmarish trip. There is only one person who can help him get out of it…

My Favorite TV Episode of All Time

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

You know that we do take-away.
We deliver too.
Open twenty-four hours, babe.
Just waiting on a call from you.

The Sopranos
Episode 26 – Funhouse (Season 2 Final)

Directed by
John Patterson

Written by
David Chase & Todd A. Kessler

Regular Cast
James Gandolfini … Tony Soprano
Lorraine Bracco … Dr. Jennifer Melfi
Edie Falco … Carmela soprano
Michael Imperioli … Christopher Moltisanti
Dominic Chianese … Corrado ‘Junior’ Soprano
Vincent Pastore … Salvatore ‘Big Pussy’ Bonpensiero
Steven Van Zandt … Silvio Dante
Tony Sirico … Paulie ‘Walnuts’ Gualtieri
Robert Iler … Anthony ‘A.J.’ Soprano
Jamie-Lynn Sigler … Meadow Soprano
Nancy Marchand … Livia Soprano

Guest Players
Jerry Adler … Herman ‘Hesh’ Rapkin
Federico Castelluccio … Furio Guinta
John Ventimiglia … Artie Bucco
Dan Grimaldi … Patsy Parisi
Frank Pellegrino … Frank Cubitoso
Robert Patrick … David Scatino
Louis Lombardi, Jr. … Skip Lipari
Matt Servitto … Agent Harris
Sofia Milos … Anna Lisa
Maureen Van Zandt … Gabriella Dante
Toni Kalem … Angie Bonpensiero
David Margulies … Neil Mink
Nicole Burdette … Barbara Giglione
Tom Aldredge … Hugh DeAngelis
Suzanne Shepherd … Mary DeAngelis
John Fiore … Gigi Cestone
Robert Lupone … Bruce Cusamano
Barbara Andres … Quintina
Sig Libowitz … Hillel
David Anzuelo … Flight Attendant
Kathleen Fasolino … Meadow’s friend
Ray Garvey … Airport Guard
David Healy … Vice Principal
Ajay Mehta … Sundeep Kumar
Jay Palit … Indian Man

Wrap Up
Tony is feeling pretty good, despite his mother busting his chops after Janice left. He solves it by giving her airline tickets of the Scatino bust-out, so she can go and visit an old aunt (aunt Quinn, the other miserabile). He’s earning good enough money with a prepaid phone card scheme to buy Carmela a mink coat and he’s not so depressed anymore. Another reason for Tony’s untroubled state-of-mind is the demise of Richie, ‘All my enemies are smoked’, Tony tells his crew optimistically during a diner. But it is too good to be true, his unconsciousness tries to tell him. He gets food poisoning the day after. And in a fever dream Silvio tells him, ‘our true enemy has yet to reveal himself’, in true Al Pacino style. Silvio is even wearing the maroon vest Pacino wore in The Godfather III.

Pussy’s not feeling so well. He has to give his phone card earnings straight to FBI Agent Skip Lipari. He didn’t get food poisoning though, even though he ate at the same restaurants; an Indian place and Artie Bucco’s. Tony suspects Artie’s shellfish, but when Artie calls Pussy they find out he doesn’t have any symptoms, while they had different courses at the Indian place. Tony starts dreaming again, about him at the boardwalks. First he dreams that he sets himself on fire in front of his friends because he’s diagnosed with terminal cancer (‘what if they’re wrong?’). Then he dreams that he shoots Paulie Walnuts during a card game. He discusses the meaning with Dr. Melfi in a dream therapy session, while he also talks about Pussy. ‘Pussy’ in multiple ways.

Tony knows something is not feeling right about Big Pussy. He also knows someone has to get whacked, because of the Paulie dream. In another dream sequence, a fish who looks and talks like Big Pussy tells Tony he has been working with the federal government. Tony still doesn’t want to believe it, but when he wakes up he knows what has to be done. A little later, Tony and Silvio come by Big Pussy’s house to pick him up to help them buy a boat. Tony, still sick, pretends to get another attack and goes into the upstairs bathroom. While Silvio keeps Big Pussy downstairs with Angie, drinking coffee, Tony searches the bedroom. He finds what he was looking for; wiring equipment and tapes. When Tony comes downstairs he says, ‘who’s ready to buy a boat?’

Paulie Walnuts is waiting by the boat and Pussy is getting nervous. The boat departs and when open water is reached, Pussy is taken below deck, where Tony confronts him with his betrayal. After denying it, Big Pussy has no choice but to confess. He knows his number is up. And after a last round of tequila with his friends, the inevitable happens, Tony, Paulie and Silvio shoot Pussy and he drops dead in the cabin. His body is placed in a bag with weights and entrusted to the Atlantic Ocean.

When Tony comes home, his mother calls to tell him that she is being held by airport security for the Scatino tickets. Not much later the FBI comes by with a warrant. Just when Tony is handcuffed, Meadow comes in with her friends, one day before her graduation. Luckily Tony gets off easy but he is still concerned. The season ends the way it started, with a montage of all the Soprano crew’s businesses, such as Barone Sanitation, the Jewish owned hotel, the phone card scam and David Scatino who’s divorced, broke and leaving town. The scene is scored by The Rolling Stones with ‘Thru and Thru’, an insanely great choice.

At Meadows graduation party the whole Soprano cast is present and it’s one big happy family again. Tony stands alone in the living room, smoking a cigar and reflecting on recent times. The final shot is from the ocean, where Pussy sleeps forever.

Why Great?
This final episode of the second season is extremely well written and directed. It is a powerful and surprising final episode that reminds of a Greek tragedy. Tony has to make his hardest decision yet. This is totally necessary in his leadership position, but he was also the one who loved Big Pussy most whose death is therefore a great loss for him. And for the viewer as well. Pussy’s passing and the dream sequences leading up to it are so far the most exciting and memorable moments of the Soprano saga.

When I first watched ‘Funhouse’, I just couldn’t believe it. I was hoping for a terrific episode to wrap up the season, like season 1 did with ‘I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano’. A conventional finale that neatly ties up the remaining storylines, although The Sopranos was never conventional. ‘Funhouse’ did something else entirely. By adding twenty minutes of dreamtime I got much closer to Twin Peaks than to the mob films it originally seemed to be based on. It does resolve the main remaining story – that Big Pussy is indeed ‘singing’ for the feds – but it does so in a brilliantly surprising way. By delving into the main character’s subconscious and making him realise the ugly truth his conscious self couldn’t accept.

Michael Imperioli (who plays Christopher) has a theory*1 about the episode. That Tony didn’t have food poisoning at all, but that it was the knowledge that he had to kill his friend that made him so sick. And killing his friend he does. The scene on the boat, of which the interior scenes were shot in a studio, is a dramatic highlight of the show. Brilliant acting by the cast, especially James Gandolfini and Vincent Pastore as Pussy. It’s ridiculous that season 2 didn’t win the major Emmy Awards that year, but they weren’t ready for The Sopranos yet. The show has been groundbreaking from the beginning, and this episode really took it to another level again.

Finest Moment: Pussy on the Brain
Tony is having fever dreams while suffering from bad food poisoning. All dreams have certain elements in common; danger, cancer (destruction from inside out) and Pussy. It all leads up to this final dream; the dream in which Pussy – in fish shape, but it really looks like Pussy! – reveals to Tony that he is working for the government. It is in moments like this that The Sopranos is at its most powerful; using a dream as a method to really push the plot forward. In the first season, when his mother wanted him whacked, Tony was in denial and started fantasising about a Madonna. But he didn’t acknowledge the truth until he heard his mother speak on the FBI tapes. Now, Tony has learned to listen to his subconscious. He has been having a strange feeling about Pussy for a long time and now he is open to the ultimate truth. When he wakes up he knows. The fish is also a brilliant find. In a macho gang like the Sopranos, it is considered unmanly to betray your friends. Therefore, it is Pussy – the guy with the feminine name – who’s a rat. There is also a pussy joke in there, pussy smells like… you get the picture. The reference is also to death, as in ‘sleeps with the fishes’, and it foreshadows Pussy’s ultimate resting place, the ocean. This dream is the perfect crossover between the series’ essentials; the mob and psychiatry.

*1 Talking Sopranos Podcast, episode 26 – Funhouse.

My Greatest Cinema Moments Ever

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

There was a terrific feature in Empire Magazine last month, especially during a pandemic when all cinemas are shut down and barely any major movies are released. They invited their readers and celebrated filmmakers, like Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Bong Joon-Ho to share their favorite cinema moments.

They are specifically looking for moments in which the whole audience experienced movie magic. Think Hannibal Lecter escaping from prison in The Silence of the Lambs. Can you imagine the audience’s response when he pulls the face off in the ambulance? I sure can, even though I never saw Silence in cinema. Or the ending in Buffalo Bill’s house where the depraved serial killer is stalking Clarice Starling with night vision goggles? These are memories from filmmaker Edgar Wright (Baby Driver, Shaun of the Dead), who initiated this feature.

Wright: “I vividly recall riotous screenings of A Fish Called Wanda and There’s Something About Mary, the unforgettable sound of massed sobs in E.T. or Titanic, or just the palpable energy of the first weekend crowd of Scream or The Silence of the Lambs, which was so electric, you’d think it could power a city. I’ve been lucky enough to have made a few scenes myself where the crowd have drowned out the next scene because they are laughing or whooping (I’m thinking the ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ scene in Shaun of the Dead, JK). Such moments are truly infectious, but again, that’s an adjective that needs to be retired for the moment.”

Other notable contributions in the issue are:
– Darth Vader’s dilemma right before he kills the emperor in Return of the Jedi. By Simon Pegg.
– Luke throwing down his lightsaber, also in Return of the Jedi. By Mark Hamill.
– Neo stops the bullets, but the whole film really, in The Matrix. By Chris Evans.
– The tragic reality of Menace II Society. By Patty Jenkins.
– The ear scene in Reservoir Dogs. By Joe Russo.
– And many many more….

My favorite cinema moment by far is The Lord of the Rings. I went to fellowship on opening day and it was a magical experience. You could feel the whole room just be completely absorbed by the wondrous world Peter Jackson and his team had painted on the screen. It was breathtaking. I remember highlight after highlight, but the ultimate audience engagement happened in Moria where the fellowship faces one challenge after the other. When finally Gandalf sacrifices himself to let the others escape, the audience felt like Frodo: totally and utterly defeated. By the time they face the Uruk Hai at the end, the audience was re-energized, and left the room in pretty good spirit, but also sad because of the loss of both Boromir and Gandalf.

The Two Towers even topped this experience. The way it starts is just a master move. Gandalf being pulled into the abyss and falling and fighting the demonic Balrog. Everybody in that cinema went apeshit. After that: one great scene after the other. But the real show stealer of the evening was off course Gollum. Never before had a digital character been so fully realised. Andy Serkis’ performance is mind blowing. He should have won the Oscar for best supporting actor that year, no question. The movie ends at Helm’s Deep and this is a groundbreaking battle scene in terms of pure scale and spectacle. It is the only movie I saw in cinema three times.

Of course, at the moment there are no cinema experiences at all, but the memories remain. And like many of our favorite movie characters, they will return at some point. No question. True cinema moments are magical. There is no substitute.

American Outlaw: Bill Hicks

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

Onder het grote publiek in Europa is hij niet heel bekend, maar in Amerika is hij nog steeds een legende: de in 1994 overleden komiek Bill Hicks. Hij wordt zelfs gezien als één van de belangrijkste komieken aller tijden, een ware pionier. De documentaire American: The Bill Hicks Story vertelt zijn verhaal.

In de tijd dat hij opgroeide doorzag hij al de leugens van de Amerikaanse droom; armoede, propaganda, oorlog, machtsmisbruik, religie, enzovoorts. In de jaren 70’ stond stand-up komedie nog niet op de kaart, maar in zijn woonplaats Houston was een kleine komedie scene. Bill en zijn beste vriend Dwight wisten op hun 15de al hun eerste optredens te ritselen. Hicks was toen al extreem grappig en grensverleggend.

Na een mislukt filmavontuur in L.A. begon Hicks zich fulltime te storten op de stand-up komedie. Dit leidde tot optredens bij Letterman en Jay Leno. De weg naar het sterrendom lag voor hem open. Maar Bill was teveel een rebel om door te breken. Hij vertelde zijn publiek hoe het echt zat in Amerika, en dat vonden de ‘sterrenmakers’ te riskant.

Bill ontdekte ondertussen ook psychedelica en Oosterse filosofie en daarmee de echte waarheid over het universum. Dat verwerkte hij in zijn shows: ‘I like to hear a positive drug story for once. News is supposed to be objective right? Today a young man on acid realised that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slower vibration, that we are all one consciousness going through itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream and you’re the imagination of yourselves. Here’s Tom with the weather.’

Na zijn ontdekking dat er écht iets was aan de andere kant maakte hem dat nog meer ‘fearless’. Maar hij raakte ook aan de alcohol wat zijn carrière geen goed deed. Hij stond vaak ladderzat op het podium en was dan niet zo grappig meer. In 1988 kreeg hij een wake-up call. Hij stopte met drinken en verhuisde naar New York. Wat volgde was zijn glorietijd. Hij ontwikkelde zich tot de slimste en grappigste stand-up ooit. Zijn boze, maatschappijkritische stijl sloeg ook aan in Canada en het Verenigd Koninkrijk waar hij succesvolle tours hield.

Maar toen kwam het slechte nieuws: alvleesklierkanker. Bill had niet meer lang te leven. Hij keerde terug naar zijn familie, deed nog een paddenstoelen trip met vrienden, maakte enkele memorabele albums, en trad nog regelmatig op. Vlak voor zijn dood vatte hij zijn visie op de wereld en de huidige staat van de mensheid/Amerikaanse droom nog eens prachtig samen:

‘Is there a point to my act? The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it, you think it’s real, cos that’s how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round, it has thrills and chills, and it’s very brightly coloured and it’s very loud, and it’s fun for a while. Some people have been on the ride a long time and they begin to question, “is this real or is this just a ride?” And other people have remembered and they come back to us and say, “hey, don’t worry, don’t be afraid ever because this is just a ride.” And we kill those people. “Shut him up. We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up! Look at my big bank account and my family. This has to be real”.’

En toen verliet de 32-jarige Hicks voor altijd het podium. Maar zijn boodschap is nu nog altijd net zo relevant als toen.