(I live down and to the left.)
And this is where I'm going...
Not too terribly different except for the water and the castle.
The former is the particular part of Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley in which I live. The latter is in the Crimean region of Ukraine on the Black Sea near Yalta. It's a land of beautiful women, deep water and wildly inappropriate Speedos.
I took the first photo, but not the second -- which brings me to a general note about this blog; unless otherwise noted I took all the photos. And of course, clicking on a photo brings up a big version of said same photo. Oh and of course all comments are welcome and encouraged. But I digress.
For the uninitiated, I'll just quickly recap how we got here. Not too long ago I was finishing up a Vikings and aliens movie called Outlander.
Good movie but the distributor, who shall remain nameless (cough-Weinstein Company!), totally botched the project and so it didn't get as wide a theatrical release as it deserved. Rent it or download in HD. I promise, you'll have fun.
Anywaaayy... So I got a call from director/friend Marius Balchunas generously asking me if I wanted to come to Moscow in the dead of a Russian winter and edit a comedy he had just shot called Hitler Kaput! I accepted the offer and this is the movie we made:
Steeped in no small amount of controversy owing to its irreverent handling of several sacred Russian cultural cows, the movie did amazingly well.
So then after that Marius asked me to cut his next film, a romantic comedy called (and I awkwardly translate), No Love In the City. We shot this one in New York City and lived there for nearly half a year filming and finishing.
No Love In the City opened number one at the Russian box office and camped there a nice long time. Big hit. Everybody loved it. So naturally what happens then?
Yeah, we made a sequel. This one was shot in Moscow and in Thailand. I was in Russia for three months on this one. It too opened at number one. So these were all wildly popular movies. And it certainly helped solidify in me my love for Russia and the crazy, passionate, complex and contradictory people that people its 11 time zones.
So now what? Well, the sequel to Hitler Kaput! was supposed to shoot after the first No Love in the City movie but the exigencies of getting the movie together proved too much for that moment in time. So Marius and his partners at Leopolis (the Russian production company) decided to make No Love in the City 2 first and then tackle the 'Hitler' sequel.
While not a sequel in the sense that it shares any of the same characters, story points, placement in time or space, thematic similarities or plot, this movie has been designed more as an in-law, or a 2nd cousin to Hitler Kaput!
Originally the movie started out called Napoleon Kaput! But then, as you can see in the below teaser poster, the title was changed to Cherche la Femme!, which is French for something close to "Such is a woman!"
But since then the movie has been retitled Zhrevsky vs. Napoleon. Sure, the name Zhrevsky doesn't mean much to you, but it's a legendary name in Russia. Sort of along the lines of Casanova, but with a more immediate historical pedigree.
So that's catches us up. I'll be leaving for Kiev, Ukraine in early August and we start shooting August 18th.
