Wednesday, January 9, 2008

An Aguaguagua Production

After the productive day we had chronicled in Josh's last post we needed a couple of days to cool off and do administrative stuff in Santo Domingo. We said goodbye to Oscar and Jacqueline who have gone above and beyond the calls of hospitality. We spent a day returning to Santo Domingo, updating the blog, and other mindless tasks. We finally got a chance to hook up our footage to a decent tv and see how some of it is going to end up looking. We'd been experimenting with a light filter that gives the image a very saturated yellow tint. It came out incredibly well. It wasnt all fun and games though. We spent a good two hours logging film (a tedious process that involves writing down the time codes and descriptions of every single shot). That night we got to interview the GM of the Estrellas Orientales, our adopted team. The Estrellas are the Dominican equivalent of the Cubs. They're the underdogs underdog, they haven't won the title since 1946. Jose Mallen took over as GM and partial owner last offseason, and after just barely making the playoffs, the Estrellas are now 2.5 games up on both Aguilas (Red Sox, won 7x in the last ten years) and Licey (Yankees, astronomical budget, no success). Jose was nice enough to come to our hostel/art gallery in the heart of Santo Domingo and give us a full hour long interview. He had a lot to say about the history and business of baseball. Always remember Jose's advice, "In baseball, anything can happen. The ball is round, but it comes in a square box."

The following day we were stuck in Santo Domingo by rain. We kept waiting for it to let up so we could go get some atmospeheric b-roll, but it didn't give until after the sun was going down. Around that time we caught a guagua (bus) to La Romana. No near death experiences this time I am happy to report. When we arrived we were picked up by the famous Dr. Canela. Dr. Canela is an OBG who has a clinic in La Romana which might as well be renamed La Canela. He knows everybody and everybody knows him. Dr. Canela is a friend of a friend of Josh's father. It seems strange to constantly be relying on the kindness of strangers, but if it was good enough for Blanche Dubois its good enough for us. After picking us up the good Doctor took us on an extended tour of La Romana and Casa de Campo. Ross and I were sitting in the back seat having to pee like the dickens. Everytime we pulled into a neighbourhood we thought we were stopping for dinner or to drop our bags off, but as soon as we were ready to sprint out of the car to the nearest baƱo the docta docta would turn around and tell us about the next place we were going to drive around endlessly. The prize at the end was well worth it though. We pulled upto one of the most exclusive clubs in the country. When we walk in we are greeted by several guys one of whom is clearly a former pellotera. While we are all racking our brains trying to think of what Dominican players would now be in their 50's and at an exclusive country club Dr. Canela says "You recognize this man? This is George Bell." Although we've met a handful of major leaugers, and even some of our own favorite orioles, none of us have had moments of fandom like this. Shaking the former MVP's meaty hands the three of us were dumbfounded. None of us knew exactly what to say. Today we were getting gas and just happened to run into him again. We're hoping to get an interview tommorow. (Josh posted the picture without me in it just to piss me off) I was so eager to get to meeting George Bell I forgot one of our best stories of the trip. As we were walking into the club, Dr. Canela said hi to someone he knew and then turned to us and said something about when he was a kid. Thinking that he meant they had been friends since they were kids Josh pointed to me and said "us too." The Doc gave us a weird look and walked off without commenting. I was confused because the other man was at least thirty years younger than Dr. Canela. When we found out that the Doc was an OBGYN we realized that he said he delivered that man, not that they were friends from a young age. So, Josh basically told Dr. Canela that he delivered me... suddenly the funny face makes more sense.

Our time in La Romana has been very productive. Yesterday morning we headed out to the Toros stadium (La Romana's team. they missed the playoffs.) The GM is a good friend of Dr. Canela's and we had free reign to shoot the stadium and two seperate groups of kids who were practicising on smaller fields outside. We just happened to show up when a scout from the Cardinals academy was their recruiting and got some good interviews. We hired a taxista to drive us around all day again and had a really productive afternoon. We headed first to the local ballfields, but the kids were all at home eating lunch. We decided to get some shots of the poverty to use in the film. Ethically this is a section of the film we have been really struggling. As soon as we step out of the car and into a poor neighbourhood two things happen. First, we put ourselves in danger, and secondly, we change the dyanmic instantly. One shot we are constantly thriving after is a tour of a pueblo houes. We were close the other day when we made friends with the head of the village, but our spider senses went off and told us it would be too risky to go into the pueblo without a Dominican guide we trust. We tried a couple of different tactics to get the shots we wanted. After giving us a weird look when we said we wanted to go to a shanty town our driver took us there, stopped the car and let us out. To say that we felt uncomfortable is an understatement. We felt like animals in a cage. Everyone was coming out of their houses to stare at us, when we were trying to capture them in a natural state. Next we tried driving through and filming out the windows. We felt even worse about this at first because it felt like being on a safari. As we went on we became more comfortable and kids and families were waving to us and running after us to have their pictures taken. We still didn't have the authenticity we needed though. We knew we had to take a risk so we asked our driver to take us to someone he trusted. He brought us a mechanic shop and led us back through the flying sparks and sounds of souldering into a house made of metal panneling. The house had three rooms, a workroom lit by the only elicticity, stolen from the lines outside, a bedroom, with a matress made of straw covered by a sheet, and a bathroom out back made out of a chair with a hole and a bucket underneath. The man was kind enough to let us walk around his house and interview him. He lives on 500 pesos a day, which is about $15, and he was explaining that he is far better off than many of his neighbours.
From the shantytown we headed out to find some kids playing ball. On the way back to the local hangout we found four kids playing in the street using a stick and a nerf ball. They were playing a version of stickball that had two batters at a time and two bases. When someone hit the ball the two batters would run to the middle and start counting, then when the ball was fielded run to the opposite base. It was more like cricket than baseball, in that I will NEVER understand the rules. After this we went to the local field and found maybe 100 kids of all ages playing on three adjacent fields. The fields were shabby and covered in trash, but these kids were hitting line drives and turning double plays all the same.
That night we went to the Estrellas game with Dr. Canela and his son in law, Carlos. Carlos was driving (like a madman) and the three of us were crammed with all our equipment into the back seat. Carlos turns 180 degrees to talk to us with complete disregard to the road in front. "Do you like beer?" he says, and after the obvious response, "you want a beer?" We say we'll wait to the game (about an hour drive) but Carlos immediately swerves off the road and into a car wash/nightclub (a mystifying yet common dominican combination) and orders up four beers for the road. By now, everyone in the Estrellas organization knows us and we had free reign on the field. The highlight of the night was a brief interview with Miguel Tejada of the visiting Aguilas. We sat directly behind home plate and watched Estrellas increase their lead with a 7-2 victory.

This morning we woke up early to go to the Arizona Diamdbacks Academy tryout. This is a long post so, while this was an amazing day, I'll make it brief. We had permission to conduct interviews and tape the whole thing. That alone should end up comprising a whole chapter of our film. We were able to specifically follow two players around and check out on their success. it looks like we picked well because Junior Novoa, the DBacks head of Latin American scouting had them both pegged as guys hes going to seriously consider signing. See Josh's next post for some stills.

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