At The Speed Of Light!!

Download CruXtreme I – The Playroom – DV or HD version
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As we all travel at exactly the speed of light through spacetime, not through space, not through time, spacetime, we’re still bound to our small space and all too short time. And yet, a lot happens in that small frame of time and within that even tinier space. Sometimes the unexpected presents itself right in front of us and in a very, very short time something new begins to take shape.

Jac was moving through time, Saturday, with a definite plan. Do some home tasks, take care of the spreadsheet, do some editing for CruXtreme II – Room For Rent, take the teleferico (cable car) to the far off street market to get cat food, they have a great variety there and his cats are terribly picky, all five of them, but as he was about to leave it began to rain heavily.

Soon before attempting to go to the market, just before lunch, Jac wrote a note to Amy, where he jolted down an idea lingering in his head for a new film. It was a short email, three small paragraphs with a few news and his idea … that was it. Then he felt the need to illustrate his idea with a picture, so he opened Photoshop, grabbed a picture from CruXtreme I – The Playroom and made what is known in the business as the Key Art for the new idea he was kind of proposing. He even had a title: 69 Un Año Erótico.

The day before, during a long walk with Dani, he discussed with her some points of the emerging idea, not a story yet. After dropping her off at the TV station where she hosts her famous show, he continued on his walk with the ideas rushing like a waterfall in his head. By the time he was home he had found what he was looking for, a good ending for the possible story.

So, yesterday, after writing to Amy, he thought it would be a good idea to put down a few notes, based on what he wrote to her. A bit of the beginning and the end of the story he was coming up with. It was raining heavily and it was a bit dark. He decided to listen to Serge Gainsbourg for the process of putting down his short notes, and before he knew it, he wrote the entire first act of the film, dialogs and all, 18 pages of the new script!

When he told Dani what he had done, she said Let’s start pre prod!

This brings me to an interesting point. It was around two decades ago when Camille and Jac were having fun doing some acting exercises for an idea Jac had at that time. It involved crucifying Camille after lashing her, of course. Not long before that nice time, Jac directed a TV mini series where Camille was the protagonist, playing the dual role of twin sisters. She was amazing in it.

During that time they worked with a VHS camera doing some tests, both indoors and outdoors. We call the experience The Training of Camille period of time. Soon after, they set out to do something with more of a story and using the more professional analog camera, the Sony 3/4 inch Umatic, the standard for television in the late 80’s and early 90’s, which was used for the miniseries. The 20 minutes tape for that camera cost 20 dollars each, we call that work The Via Crucis of Camille. 10 different videos around the same subject, one of them The Via Crucis of Camille 9 is next to last in our Sellers List. Which is strange. I have no idea why that particular one sells less than the rest. It’s very similar to the others and yet it’s behind them all in sales.

But I’m digressing. My point is that in a relatively short period of time, a lot happened. In this particular case, between January and September of 1997, to be exact, all The Via Crucis of Camille videos were shot, culminating with Red Feline On The Cross which began this whole mini industry.

By the end of 1998, only one year later, Jac was in New York, editing the 4 part series Red Feline Faces The Inquisition, which was produced that summer with Camille and Gabrielle, and Red Feline On The Cross was out in the world having a huge impact on a lot of people who became our fan base, yeah, some of you remember that incredible time.

When the new century began and the Twin Towers were tragically gone, Jac had 15 titles out, including Martyr or The Death of St Eulalia, which ended up in international film festivals at the end of 2005.

Then there was Amy. She entered Jac’s life and ours that very year, 2005, when Jac was in Bolivia producing a NatGeo doc and she was a tourist who happened to see a casting call for North American actors for a docudrama.

Amy participated in the doc, in a very small acting role. But before going away on her tour from Bolivia to Chile, she saw Martyr at the festival in Oruro, Bolivia, and decided that she found her Holy Grail. In one decade, Amy and Jac produced over 20 films, including the one that broke all records, Maleficarum.

The slow and new time came after 2015, when Amy moved back to the US and Jac went into the jungles of Bolivia to produce another film for NatGeo. When he returned from his tropical adventure, wondering about what to do next, he jumped to work on The Passion of Isabel with Bea and before 2019 was over, he had produced 7 films, including what he’s working on now. Not bad if we considered that practically one whole year was spent looking for a cameraman to work with. At the end, Jac purchased a 4K camera.

It was not easy to get back on track without the previous crew and without the Heskinator, Amy, who was one half of the production company, with total power and tremendous capacity to produce big time, as she proved recently designing the entire film program at a university in the US and producing/directing her new film Rucker.

As we begin 2020, rushing at the speed of light through spacetime, Jac is in full production of a film, full post production of another, preparing the theatrical release of a yet another big production and, if that wasn’t enough, with a bunch of projects ahead in various stages of development and one of them, 69 An Erotic Year, just joined the bunch!