LOVE STORY thoughts, facts, memories and hugs! A young girl in Dunedin, a complete stranger, hardly wearing anything on a freezing Friday night approached me and asked me for a hug. This is a few weeks ago and I happily gave her one. Wondering if she knew me or not, she soon told me that she’d seen love story on breakfast television, a clip, and added… “I think about you every morning when I put moisturizer on my legs.” (!) She asked me for another hug, and then we went our separate ways. Was I dreaming? Has my romantic experimental film really been playing around New Zealand the last months? The NYC shoot was so much fun, that it still feels surreal that people are actually going to the movies to see it, and that maybe it is a real film… Rebecca, No Magazine’s word nerd has given me the idea to write down some facts and thoughts for this piece, so here are some for you fellas off the top of my head…(I’ll take my hat off...) Cinema is such an illusion, its so fabricated, that I love to collect real things, and throw them into that world. I love film making and it takes up most of my life, so my real life, and the film making worlds, always become the same thing in one way or another. Love Story is no exeption. Some facts I remember… The film was inspired by a psychic, who gave me a palm reading in my first week in NYC. Everything she said was bang on true. I couldn’t believe it, and asked her a simple qestion, “What do I do?” to quickly test her accuracey. She replied with “Stay behind the camera.” That was her advice for my future. “You’re good infront of the camera, but you’re much better behind the camera, don’t ever go in front of it.” One year later, I decided to do the opposite! Love Story is the result. This psychic, an older sweetie, isn’t the one you see in the film. I actually had to ask ten psychics, until I met Danielle in the East Village, who was open to the idea of me filming her readings. (Most psychics believe the camera would interfere.) So her psychic readings also became part of the film, and also dictated the romance, as did the many suggestions that came from the streets. At one stage Love Story was going to end with me marrying her, my psychic! We actually filmed four different endings, and Peter O’Donoghue and I chose the film’s final path during the last stages of the edit back home in New Zealand. Love Story was pretty much shot in chronological order, how it unfolds in the story. In the middle of the shoot, a flamboyant artist (at Obscura Oddities) also the East Village suggested I make Love to my audience. We were talking about love scenes... So we filmed that, me making love to the audience, but it didn’t end up in the film. It won’t end up on the DVD either. Most people in the film were met on camera for the first time. The conversation Masha and I have at Mars Bar, is our first proper conversation we have in real life. Sadly Mars Bar no longer exists. The Lower East side institution was closed down in July by health authorities. And I hear the Chelsea Hotel, another old institution is also closing down. I was hoping to have a Mars Bar screening of the film, on the small lap top that always played black and white oldies for the day time regulars. Anyhow, Hank the owner has promised he will open another bar soon. He gave my friend Isobel his business card. “Call me in six months. if I haven’t opened a new bar then, wait six months, and then call me again.” I will miss seeing Hank, Ray, Brian, Lucille and Eraserhead. “Have you ever got together with a woman and then realized it’s a man ?” “Oh yeah, several times, are you kidding me?” – that’s Hank the owner outside Mars Bar. And he wasn’t kidding, he told me about these incidents in great detail. “Pull back the camera! It was this big…!” I filmed twice as many people that are in the film, and most clips used in Love Story are the beginnings of our meetings. We had to use the footage that propelled the story along, so lots of gold was sadly not used. Lots of the street characters actually made eye contact with me first. Often it was just a smile from them that prompted me to approach them with the camera rolling. So we cast each other… no auditions for this film! We didn’t even have a portaloo on set. Findind a toilet in NYC on the street is actually really hard. Most places wont let you use their bathrooms. Not even Mac Donalds. There’s a scene at the beginning of the film where my Dad tells me that the chances of bumping into someone in NYC are much greater than bumping into them in Mexico or Shanghai. Frank had a point! -A few months later, when I wanted Michael Jackson to appear in the film, I googled ‘Michael Jackson impersonators NYC’ and found loads of clips of Alex, the little Michael (from Peru) impersonating, showing off his dance moves at Subway Stations in NYC. I loved him instantly and posted a you tube clip of him on my facebook wall for my friends in NZ to see. I tried to track Alex down for the film but couldn’t find his contact details anywhere on the web, and couldn’t afford to hire a private investigator. I realized the only way to find him was to literally bump into him on the city streets. And that’s exactly what happened. With only a month left in NYC, I bumped into Alex three weeks later in a busy subway station underpass. Amazing! He was on his way to do a Shakira Strip act, his other job.. and gave me his phone number. A few days later I bumped into Mouse, the homeless girl holding the ‘Need tampons and weed’ sign. I gave her some tampons, and we struck up a conversation. She told me she has been hitch-hiking all around America for the last two years. We were both having many chance encounters with people, sharing intimate things, and then going separate ways again. Mouse and I had a lot in common. She said many beautiful things that didn’t end up in the film. I asked her what the worst thing for her was when she makes love, I was trying to get ideas for what can go wrong during a love scene, and she replied by saying “When it begings to rain...” The stock broker in the taxi invited me back to her house for a coffee after the taxi ride. I showed her the footage from my camcorder, and she liked it. When I make love now, her voice often goes through my head.. “Slow and steady winds the race… Slow and steady wins the race!” Taika Waititi passed through NYC last year, and we caught up at the Jane Hotel, (A hotel and bar, where all the Titanic surviors stayed after the ship sank! Now it’s a hangout for people with money, celebrities, and lots a wanna be’s. Taika and I were on the dance floor, and Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean came on. We both started pulling out our kiwi moves and having a Michael Jackson dance off! Most people on the dance floor stopped and watched. It was classic and I wish some one filmed it. Outside the hotel on our way home, the famous Olsen Twins called out and complimented me on my dancing! Taika hasn’t seen Love Story yet, I think he’s living in LA at the moment shooting a TV series. Masha is still living in NYC, going to art school and doing some theatre. She will have received the film by now and I’m curiously waiting for her response! She didn’t want to see any of the footage during the shoot, so its gonna be very surprising for her. She gave so much trust to myself and the film, and im really grateful. She’s a super talent. My dream is to have a NYC premiere and season next year, so Masha and all the other stars can experience the film with an audience. The New Zealand Film Commission is introducing the film to film festivals, and I’m going back to New York in a few weeks for a visit, to show the film to some of the cast. I’m going to visit Libra, the beautiful black woman in Harlem with the huge smile, I cant wait. I’ll also see what I can do to help getting Love Story a NYC release, wish me luck! At the end of the shoot before heading back home to Aotearoa, I visited my original psychic again, the one who told me never to jump in front of the camera... She gave me another palm reading, and this time everything she said wasn’t true. I reminded her of what she had told me a year ago, (she could remember me) and I told her how I had just finished making a film. She smiled, gave me a warm hug, and told me she was proud of me, and that I was like “her famous son.” She wouldn’t take any money from me, and it was such a sweet way to say goodbye to her and NYC. florian