julian plenti

Monday nights have always been awesome in my life. From the old days of watching 5 hours of wrestling with the guys back in LA (Monday Night Raw and WCW Nitro) to Monday poker nights to my current "band practice w/ cheap sushi then Entourage new episode" Mondays, it's always been good. But even by those standards, tonight was an interesting Monday.

I was offered the chance by a friend, Features Writer for SCMP, to tag along with her as a helping hand/photographer/assistant for this story she's working on, which is about this dude who's making a documentary about drug addicts. Filming took place tonight in TST near Chungking Mansion and CWB at Times Square. We had a camera crew, bodyguard, the works.

Anyway, heading over to TST by MTR, I saw ANN HUI on the same train. Yes, AWARD WINNING DIRECTOR ANN HUI was sitting on the MTR to TST during the hellish peak hours (7pm). I interviewed her a few months back and knew she was down to earth, but I didn't know she was THIS down to earth. I mean she's directed Chow Yun Fat, Tony Leung, Anthony Wong (three of the greatest Asian actors of this generation) and won an award at Cannes. And she on the MTR with the snotty Kowloon chicks with them trucker caps and the Central banker "suits". Yeah...

Got to TST and got down to business. The documentary maker, Paul Boyle, is a former addict himself so he knew all the ins and outs of buying cocaine and othe drugs at TST. The piece is titled Coming Clean (you know, like the Hilary Duff song) and features real life interviews with druggies from NYC and HK.

 He did the interviews, with me acting as photographer and it was pretty cool to be part of a production team.

Stopped in between for a beer and nachos and had an interesting conversation where we talked about Simon Yam and his humor (he'll be hilarious in Vengeance, I can't wait), Billy Walsh from Entourage, and other crap. Then he even offered me a freelance job writing a press release, which is much needed cause I'm unemployed right now and plans on either working at a Starbucks or selling yoghurt soon. Yeah.

Great night in all, and thanks Ms Features Writer for allowing me to tag along for a real journalism experience.

Here's an early trailer for Coming Clean, which may make it to the Sundance Festival this year... (these are all NYC clips, the HK clips will be added I assume in the next few days )

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D7lDTtt-E0

This has nothing to do with nothing but it's a cool pic. Jordan tribute made from Gatorade bottles in the Windy City.