This still from the teaser stuck in my head over the weekend, so I thought I’d throw it up.

Monday, last day of the month, time to face reality. We got 60 days to figure out where the cash is coming from if we’re going to make this film by the end of the year.

This is a cutaway we never used in the teaser, but the memories jogged in yesterday’s entry made me think of it. Feels like the space Sticky knows at dawn’s first light. The only free space he truly owns. There’s an ill remix of Nick Drake’s River Man that Shawn Lee does on Ubiquity’s Rewind: Volume 4… I hear that song when I look at this flick.

My boy Smitty and I want someone to remix “Remedy” by the Black Crowes for BDL… I could that working nicely over some of the cutaways we want to shoot. Hit us with the music you heard when you read the book…

“You begin with an idea and you try to push it all the way through to its completion. The trick is not to go insane, go broke, or lose faith along the way.” – Spike Lee –

First read that quote back when I was an awkward, all-limbs skinny, pimply-faced kid in the throes of puberty who was trying to figure out how to rap to these milquetoast prep school girls walking the halls around me.

I had stood in line at the Royal theater on Santa Monica Blvd and listened to corny-assed college kids behind me discuss the political ramifications of hip-hop on white America. They were all Beasties with not an ounce of Schooly D running their veins. They were so excited to be on line with the predominately black crowd that I thought about offering a paper bag to halt the hyperventilation.

“The majority of youth end up leaving (foster) care without having any relationships with anyone,” so starts the article in the LA Times.

I’ve been reading up on foster care in an effort to give Grayson “The Professor” Boucher some background research and foundation to pull off the emotional scenes in this film. It’s important for him to appreciate what it really means to be a foster kid. He needs to grasp how isolating that experience can be. It’s difficult for anyone who has never been homeless or in the foster system to truly comprehend this reality, but I hope we can get him close. I don’t want our picture leaving the impression of films like Where The Day Takes You or Foxes or some other ridiculous “teenager in LA” tale.

With the fallout over losing one of our actors, I’ve spent a good portion of the day working on new lists. Some of the cats on these lists may not be the biggest actors in the universe, but all of them bring the heat. We will be blessed to get any of these folks on board. Maybe in a few days, I’ll hit you with a wish-list or two on a few of the characters to get feedback on who y’all think we should go out to for certain roles…

I took a quick breather on the casting tip and sorted some photos from past projects with the thought that a few of these images might be helpful for our moodbooks on BDL. I came across this one.

This is a still from a shoot we did with Rafer “Skip-To-My-Lou” Alston and sirmuMsila a few years back for an AND1 drop on a Hoops-TV.com DVD. This is not the most amazing still ever pulled, but I love how it defines the art of a handle. It speaks to what it means to be a point-guard as both a player and a man.

Even though LA is so hot right now that I’m sure people are vaporizing in the Valley (J Period likened it to the 800-degree sunrise in that silly Vin Diesel vehicle The Chronicles of Riddick where homeboy steps outside and zaappp – he’s out like George Bush at the Syrian Ambassador’s summer BBQ), cats are getting cold feet in the Ball Don’t Lie camp.

As I sat at my desk yesterday, building our cast wish list around the few folks that had committed to the picture, I was suddenly hit with a surprise email from the agent. “We lost “Homie”, do you want “Wack Dude” instead?”

Obviously based on this photo, de la is frustrated with my directing skills on this film and thinks he should take over.

So in answer to his efforts to usurp my gig, I offer a short journal entry on moves being made on the film…

Here’s another flick we snapped of sunrise at the Pier. Check out the right of frame. How ill is it that dudes still comb the beach at 5am on a Sunday? You think any of them find real gold in the sand? I see the beachcomber kinda like I view the average ball player: He found a little glory a long while back and keeps showing up for another shot at one really spectacular day, the type of day that’ll make for conversation stopping bar stories for the rest of his life.

I thought that since I’ve been on this Sticky world kick so much of late, I’d drop a couple flicks of the Pier to put in you in that visual space with me. So-Cal is still a unique spot, filled with fascinating subcultures if you care to dig a little. It’s still Novas, El Caminos and Impalas as much as it is Rangies, Cedes and Boxsters. It’s still olde English as much as it is distressed impact. It’s still menthol drinks as much as it Cosmos. It’s still slugs in arcade games as much as it is Xbox 360s. It’s still beautiful, worn, and powerful in one. Believe that.

I’m sitting here at my little piece of paradise, a desk converted from an old door, blasting Ed Motta’s ill brasilero joint “A Tijuca em Cinemascope” (courtesy of my man DJ Ben Velez, a’ight) knowing in my heart of hearts that my Hollywood luck has finally changed.

Disney laid off its motion picture division a couple days ago, which essentially amounts to firing the entire population of a Brazilian town. That’s what you get for having a hit movie that kids in Utah are so geeked up to see that they don Pirate costumes and buy out all 15 screens at the opening Thursday midnight show in some Salt Lake City multiplex.