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On the Set With Spike

Laurie,

Here's that photo I promised you. There are six of us dancers around Spike the director and Roman Coppolla the producer. The music video was for the artist Fat Boy Slim and his song "Praise You." It will be on MTV very soon. They finish editting it in a week or so. We are the whole video. The song is 3:55 in length with nothing but us doing this crazy dancing. They wanted us to look like we were this very serious dance troupe performing for the people on the streets. We supposedly have been rehearsing for months for our big performance. We were dressed to look like dancers from the 80's. It was very funny because we looked really out of place for the 1990's.

Then they brought us to Santa Monica on the 3rd Street Promenade. We got a crowd, started the music and did our dance routine. It went really good but there on the Promenade there are lots of acts and entertainers performing and so we kind of fit in. They didn't want that. They wanted us to stick out. So we moved over to Westwood. A lot goes on there on Friday nights but no street entertainers so we did stick out.

The area was packed. There's this big movie theatre on the corner with space for us to do the dance but people were everywhere. Standing in line to buy tickets for a movie, standing in line to get in the theatre to see the movie, and just walking by. They decided they wanted us to get in the middle of all this and do our thing. So we walked up, turned on the music and did our dance routine. They new we would be asked to stop but they told us to keep on going no matter what. So we did. It was crazy. The audience thought we were very serious about our performance and the dancing we were doing and so they would laugh because we looked so out of place and looked so bad with this weird choreography. They filmed it with four camera's made to look like tourist video camera's. And the camera men were dressed like tourists as well. They didn't want people knowing we were doing an MTV video. They wanted them to think we were for real and very serious about our dance.

There were the six of us dancing and Spike. They also had about 20 other people from production there all dressed to fit in so no one would know they were with us. The costume people, the assistant directors, the camera men, the hair people, security, the producers, etc.

We did have a problem. The theater manager came out and tried to get us to stop. When we didn't, he walked over and turned off the music. After a small argument and the disapproval of the manager we started again. It was funny, the audience booed the manager for trying to stop us. There were people everywhere and we were causing a huge rucas. After starting again and getting through it, they decided they had enough footage and so we were done. They were also pleased with the problem with the theater and may include it in the final edit. They filmed the whole thing. They may show management turning off our music, the crowd booing the management and then us starting up again. We'll see. I'm anxious to see what they do with it.

It's really funny. Us dressed totally out of place, in the middle of all these people and in their way, and very serious about this weird dancing we're doing. They filmed us, the audience and everything that happened. It's hard to explain just how crazy it was. You really had to be there. Hopefully the video will show it though. It was a lot of fun. And Spike was such a good guy to work with.

-Michael

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