What Dain Said…
Ahhhh finally, someone who swears more than I do.. how refreshing.
Lennard the writer from Esquire sent me his draft a week prior to the shoot, asked me to come up with some ideas for the shoot.. Dain mentioned before that in his early days when he was always on the move he wrote some stories in an old train station cafe and on the trains, instantly I had this scene from Casablanca in my head, the part when Rick is waiting for Ilsa at the station.. and basically she blows him out.. bitch!
Well, not quite the same, but along those lines.
Plan A
So off we go, Leong (in place of Lennard as Len is away) and Dain. We already had a few ideas where to shoot, the KL Pac sidings, the old KL train Station and if we really had too, get on a train and go to some old romantic train station in the middle of nowhere… but this is Malaysia, there isn’t anything like this here and I don’t think a Milo vending machine really has the same charm.
Plan B.. Lets shoot in the dining carriage of one of the long distance trains.. great!
We got to the old KL train station, Dain went to find out the time tables of the trains.. Bollocks, the long distance trains leave from a KL sentral and its already left, unless we want to wait another 6 hours for the next. We decided to go to KL Sentral the next day.
Here comes a Starbucks moment.. really, I should get paid for every time I mention these buggers. So 8am, breakfast at Starbucks, another Espresso, at least one foot is awake.
We meet Dain at the ticket office, the train has finally arrived, from Singapore then off to Penang, we ask the Guard where is the dining carriage, he points us to the end of the train, bloody hell, two tripods, rucksack of 35mm cameras and a hard case for my medium, way to early in the morning to be breaking out in a sweat..
We get to the end of the train, where the fuck is the dining carriage? Turn around, rush to the guard, Dain is swearing, I am swearing.. I think Leong squeaked something out, so we all made out way to the other end, not know if the train was about to leave, we all get on an run through the corridors, through the sleepers, a westerner with his trophy SPG complaining about the sleeping arrangements, serves him right sleeze bag, we finally get to the end, now.. where the fuck is this bloody carriage?
Again Dain asked the guard, this time the guard says the carriage was being repaired, really, if someone deserved to be pushed onto the tracks, it would be this bastard.
Right, the next train is coming, this one is off to the east coast, this is sure to have the dining carriage… it didn’t… Bollocks!
Plan C
What now, should we wait for the next day not knowing if there dining carriage would still be AWOL, or should we re-think? Fuck it, lets just shoot.
As we were walking up the stairs, I could see right down the end of the platform, light coming through, maybe we could do something down there? Dain wanted a smoke, no idea why as all we have been doing all morning was inhaling the train fumes.
BTW,for those who don’t know KL sentral, the platforms for the long haul trains are under ground, imaging london underground being used by steam trains, although the trains aren’t steam, they just spew out black smoke. Lovely.
So after Dain’s smoke, it was time to use stealth mode and sneak through the barriers run down stairs and to the end of the platform.. must of looked hilarious on cctv.
As we walked towards the end of the platform we came across these old phone booths with no phones, I though this was a great place to shoot, Dain asked if I was trying to make a statement about the state of Malaysian phone boxes? who knows, but was having Dain covering his mouth another statement?
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