Contact Jim: jim@dollarhide.net

4:00 AM.   Quito Ecuador.   I’m out sitting on a sidewalk outside my hotel waiting for transport.   What a world-wind the past few weeks have been.    This blog on my website is a new thing.  So let’s catch up.  Three weeks ago we spent a few days in Memphis, during the Beale Street Music Festival.  We interviewed a lot of people who were in Memphis for the festival to include in our BB King project.  Probably the most interesting were Joe Bihari who founded Modern Record and Elvin Bishop.   Bihari is around 80, and is really significant to us – if for no other reason than in 1950, he got in his car and took his recording equipment with him and drove to Memphis and recorded BB’s first big hit –

3 O’Clock Blues – at the local YMCA.   Also interesting was Elvin Bishop who played with the Butterfield Blues Band in the 60s.  They, along with California music promoter Bill Graham really were the first people to bring BB’s music to the attention of the young white audiences of the time. 

The next week, we took off to Pittsburgh on the first leg of production on our science education documentary series:   The Biomedical Faces of Science.   We are profiling minority scientists who are at the top of their respective fields.   Our first subject was Dr. Sandra Murray at the University of Pittsburgh.  She did pioneering work in helping identify that individual human cells communicate with each other – which could have huge impacts on many areas of medicine – particularly the treatment of cancer. 

Left Pittsburgh, did a pit-stop meeting in Washington with the BB King Museum Design team, then left the same day for Los Angeles to profile another scientist – and to shoot a day with the Hollywood Habitat for Humanity affiliate.   A week in LA at Marina Del Rey – sounds nice huh – but we didn’t see much of Hollywood – we spent all our time in South Central LA section of Watts.  However I did get to go by FilmTools.Com’s Hollywood showroom where I spent WAY TOO MUCH money on new toys. 

Left Hollywood yesterday and arrived late last night in Quito.  We are here for the next 36 hours or so to shoot Habitat volunteers building modest homes in the mountains here.    The city of Quito is at 12,000 feet.      At around 11pm local, we got to our hotel and had a meeting with our local production contacts.   After lots of talk and translation, I declined the small grip truck that had been arranged for us.  They wanted $3000 US dollars for a small exterior grip package and one 1200 watt HMI.   So we are off to Chase The Light and shoot available light.    More soon, Santo Domingo in the Domincan Republic is our next stop.