Hello, there! Thanks for checking out the production blog!

Okay, here’s the deal: we (and by we, I mean myself, Jacob, and the movie’s other producer, Gabriel) met John back in April when Gabe randomly discovered John’s newly formed blog. I distinctly remember that day, because it was a Friday and I didn’t really want to be sitting at the computer editing that day. It was real sleety and crappy out, which dampened my mood. I especially didn’t want Gabe calling over to me from the other room: “Hey, Jacob, we should go over to North and check out this guy whose blog I just found. He sounds like a total nutjob!”

Great. Yeah, let’s go over to the Hawthorne neighborhood and hang out with some ex-military wingnut who’s probably going to get us into trouble somehow while we’re shooting, plus it’s cold and sleety out, plus it’s Friday. Isn’t there an easier way to try and tell a story about the housing crisis?

Turns out it was one of the best ideas Gabe ever had. Oh, John turned out to be a wingnut, alright - and I mean that as the highest compliment. We were fascinated at his documentary “ratio.” Where we normally have to shoot a few hours worth of footage to cut together a reasonably informative and - god forbid - entertaining short documentary, we were able to fashion 3 pieces out of what we got that morning with John. And we only shot 90 minutes. The original Johnny Northside short documentaries can be seen here.

Anyhow, now it is August. And a lot has happened. Here’s a condensed list:

1 ) Spring came

2 ) Gabe and I decided to immediately embark on a lengthy feature about Johnny and the Northside and foreclosed houses.

3 ) We started shooting a bunch of activity with Johnny, including, but not limited to: boarded up houses, drug and prositution surveilance, pig testicles, lengthy diatribes on the evil of phonebooks, little bitty neighborhood groups struggling to change things, out of control mold spores, binge drinking with Polish immigrants, grafitti, “shoe patrol,” pizza, fathers and sons, demolitions, slumlords, and giant bullfrogs from Thailand.

4 ) We gave Johnny a camera. Since that day, he’s given us dozens of tapes that he’s shot on his own.

5 ) Gabe threw together a pretty cool website for the movie. We were about to make it public when -

6 ) Our office got robbed and they took everything; computers, cameras, microphones, and all of our footage.

7 ) Gabe and I wandered around in a depressed funk for a few weeks. Johnny continued to blog and drive his truck and feel bad about the whole thing.

8 ) The cops caught they guys and we got most of our shit back! Yay, pawn shops!

9 ) We picked up the pieces, published the website, and continued onward with our little production.

We’re in the middle of a particularly interesting stretch of activity at the moment, and we’re hanging out with John and the other small cast of characters we’ve come to know over the last few months as often as we are able to.

And, as for the title of this post, John’s out of town - driving to Missouri? Mississippi? - to deliver god-knows-what manner of disgusting critters in his white truck.

We will update this blog every time something production-like takes place. We’re really excited about the movie we have so far, and we appreciate your interest more than you know.

More soon!