Tag: san francisco

Dr. Sex – PIGS KCW

Posted by: KNOX HARRINGTON | December 1st, 2009

This is a scene from DAY IN THE LYFE: THE MOVIE!

If you don’t know, I filmed this entire film 3 years ago.  For me, getting to meet all these writers was the most fun part of the whole journey.  Dr. Sex was a tough one to track down.  We had spoken on the phone a few times, and we were supposed to link up right after Santa Cruz.  Me and Don’t Sleep cruised up the coast in his beat up old pick up, it literally was on its last leg.  I rented a hotel in San Francisco for the night and then cruised over to meet up with current.tv.  They were interested in buying some footage from me, but fronted in the end.  So we laid low and waited for the Doctor to come to town.  He never showed.  I was bummed.

We called Sex and he apologized for not making it through, he promised that next time we were in San Fran we would link up.  I didn’t think it would happen.  So I flew back to the east coast and don’t sleep kept on trucking up Portland.

A few months later, I got a piece of great news.  A film that I had produced was invited to a horror film festival in Modesto, which is about 3 hours drive outside of SF.  I booked my ticket for a day earlier than I needed to be out there and called up the Doctor to let him know it was time to film.  He was ready to go he said and I was pumped to film with him.  

When the time came I boarded the plane headed to SF, on arrival I called the Doctor and to my surprise he was not even in the state.  Shit.  We talked and I explained that this would be the last chance I had to get him in the movie.  He said no problem give him 8 hours and he would be there.  With some new found time on my hands and no clue what to do in SF, I rented a car and put the only destination I knew in SF into the GPS, the notorious intersection of Haight and Ashbury.  I cruised down the Haight and found a medicinal head shop, but I didn’t have a license so I couldn’t get any medicine.  No worries, there was a guy standing outside with the same stuff he guaranteed, so I gave him the green and a few minutes later he gave me the greens.  Check.

I went back to the car, rolled one up and with a new found energy I set out to get B-Roll of SF.  After filming street levels and rooftops, I stopped into a local video store to get some advice on a place I could go and get shots of the whole city.  I was told there was a great overlook.  Later that night I called the Doctor and he said he was on his way but still a few hours outside of SF.  

The Doctor was in, he made it to SF a little before midnight and we started shooting.  The first spot we did was the gas station, it was framed perfectly, the single light, the gas pump, to this day that is still one of my favorite shots ever.

We filmed all night, including a brief run into the BART tunnels, which had just been buffed.  I was dissappointed to not get a chance to view that piece of SF graff history, but you move on.  Now, I don’t like to tell people what to do when I film documentary style, I much prefer to let them do what they want to just observe the process.  

After a whole night of filming, he had shown me just about every hollow he ever did, but I wanted to see the classic Dr. Sex.  The one that was everywhere in NYC, the one I had seen above so many billboards, the icon.  He turned to me and said you want to film one more spot, of course I said yes.  We headed to downtown SF, it was dead there this night.  That’s when he walked up to that gate, with his first few lines I knew he was doing it.  I stood there and smiled, getting a chance to see one of my favorite throws up close and personal.

Category: Day in the Lyfe the Movie, Lyfe, Video | Tagged: dr. sex, Graffiti, kcw, knox, pigs, san francisco |