Since I ain’t no wordsmith, or nothing, here are some pictures. To give you a better idea of what life in Buffalo was really like, here’s a pictoral account of some of the locations on Poultrygeist…

The grand stage!

We’d hold auditions here. And rehearsals for the 80-100 chicken zombies and protesters. And Lloyd’s dance class. And makeup classes. It later held Dave Molloy’s incredible FX collection, and later became his personal workshop.

The reverse view of the same room.

It also slept about 20-30 PAs (at least those who could sleep thru the construction, the snoring, the paint and FX fumes, the insane heat, the loud air-hangar-sized construction fans, and the bats that would swoop through the air.)

The copy room.

As well as housing two huge, obese old xerox machines (which would chew up every script poor Dan Abdi & Becky Cady tried to feed it), this sweatbox would double as a bedroom for three lucky PAs every night. People would actually fight over who got to sleep in here.

The entry to the main church.

A hand-written sign read “If you enter here, you will be fired.” One PA (Pauline? FancyPants?) slept underneath the sign.

The production office from 6:30am until 2:30am. My realm.

The production office from 2:30am until 6:30am. Producer Kiel, writer Gabe, and script-girl Demonscars’ bedroom.

What would later become the FX lab.

As the FX team grew, and as we needed to… hmm… give the team more space… (foreshadowing here, boys and girls), this became one of four (very) seperate FX labs.

The costume room.

Holly H, one of my favorite costumiers (okay, favorite along with every costumier, my favorite department).

The Actress’ Bedroom

These high-class quarters housed the film’s three female leads. (Proof that Troma will never hold back when it comes to treating its cast like royalty.) We also squeezed a couple of PAs, a producer, and FX-team’s Melissa in there. (Melissa actually slept in the closet.)

The Producers’ Bedroom

My personal private quarters. Which I shared with Maria (the choreographer), Nick (the line producer), Caleb (the AD), sometimes Gabe (the writer), and at least one other person… bugger if I can remember now. I snored every night, talked in my sleep, and woke up screaming at least twice.

The bathroom

Not bad, eh? This housed the only shower in the entire house/church/office/etc. A sign read something like “Maximum time limit: Three minutes.” It was shared by 50-60 people. And had no hot water for the bulk of the three months. It became such a pool of foul water, pubic hair, and moldy towels that two PAs cleaning it ended up in a violent fistfight. It was fucking miserable.

The “blood boys” workshop, in the basement.

Where all of the blood, gore, shit, puke, and skankass cum was produced. Also the location of the producers’ private washroom — a dirty, pitch-black, bug-infested shitter that only five or six people knew about. It was terrifying and somewhat disgusting, but there was never a line. Dead bats were regularly found down here. I heard tell that some folk would bring actor-persons down here for sex. It’s been a year, now. Anyone want to fess up?

The McDonalds.

We had a month to turn this place from a wrecked crack-filled hellhouse into a brand-spanking new American Chicken Bunker. On a budget of nothing.

It’s going to take more than windex.

The dining area

The ceiling tiles that hadn’t yet fallen down were soaked from the leaks throughout the roof.

Speaking of soaked…

The mcdonald’s basement AFTER the PAs had removed the six inches of stagnant water. The mold isn’t visible, but it was everywhere. One PA wouldn’t enter the basement without protective gloves. (He quit two days later — five minutes before I was to fire him.) This later became the craft-services storage area, the actors and crew dining hall, and also a set for several key scenes of the film.

Don’t I look proud?

I don’t want to spoil the blog’s ending, but of course, somehow, against all odds, Team Troma prevails. (Find a couple of amazing art directors — like Doug Markuson Jr and Alyssa Hill — some crazy skilled artists like Emma Brown, Evan Pease, and Pete Williams — a fucking awesome producer like Andy Deemer, and a handful of amazing PAs, and you might just get somewhere.)

So then you make sure everything looks real pretty, and clean, and new…

AND YOU FUCK SHIT UP.

Spray the hell out of it. Use as many Hudson sprayers and fire extinguishers and homemade squibs as you can piece together or steal from WalMart. Those you don’t steal, rebox and return.

And let the clean-up crew worry about getting it looking nice and new for the next take.

Apparently something really important needs to be done over there.

I feel important.

I’ll post a real blog update later this week.