Driving for fun, dancing for money, killing for gold

Yo it's Ironik time again. This is JT's follow up to the airplay smash 'Stay With Me', which he himself directed a few months ago. I believe it is also his first video at his new home, Pulse Films. It was a joint commission by Hassinator and Claire.

In the wider context of the Ironik metanarrative I suppose you could call the video a pre-prequal. This is where we find out how Ironik first met his girl. In the next installment, the prequal, we'll discover why she's in hospital. (My money's on a nasty dose of the ebola virus.)

They shot for 2 days, one in London and one in Paris. Claire was on hand to pap the shit out of it on her phone. Here's a picture of Ironik busting a preppy look at a wardrobe call the night before the shoot. Extreme peace.

Here's a shaky picture of Ironik and Naomi Millbank-Smith in the back of a cab, heading to their hotel in Paris. Pap. Pap.


Yes Naomi Millbank-Smith again. As you might remember she 'starred' in the first video. Apparently she got all drunk on the Eurostar and tried to chat up a group of French cage fighters. Gutter.

Luckily Naomi's agent chaperoned her on this trip. She is classic. On 'Stay with me' Ben Cook got me to try and convince her into letting Naomi do a 'tasteful' topless shot. Here's how the negotiation went:

Me (very coyly): So do you think maybe we could get a shot of Naomi kind of wearing nothing on top, but with her back to camera, and then we hold on her for a bit, and then maybe she turns round slowly to face us, but her arm is covering her breasts? Maybe something like that?

Agent (bluntly): She won't do hand bra.

Hand bra. Hand bra. So that's what they call it. Now that i know that shit, I think I'm probably qualified to get a job at Nuts. Speaking of which, while I was in France recently, I noticed that the French version of Nuts is called Guts. Zut alors.

Can I get a Wu... part dos

Sasha Nixon, off of Partizan, very kindly sent this in from her camera phone. It's a picture of Daniel Wolfe busting another Wu-Tang T-shirt while on set with the Sugerbabes. Apparently he has a whole collection. The caption reads 'Listen To Ghostface'. If you follow these instructions you will hear words like these, which will make your life better:

'I slapbox with Jesus, lick shots at Joseph
Zoomin like binoculars, the rap blacksmith
Money's Rolex, with sparkles, Chef ragtop is spotless
I'm Iron Man no cheap cash metal I'm steel alloy
True identity hidden inside secret tabloids'

I wonder if he's got an ODB shirt?

Hoodrat stuff

While many of you were no doubt lying in vomit in Reading or standing in wee wee in Notting Hill, our brothers from Stitchthat spent bank holiday Monday sessioning a local 'homegrown' skatespot in Fleet. They edited a little film about it over night and posted it yesterday morning. You can view it here:



Ok. So Bob catches a super clean kick flip over a traffic barrier. James floats a nice backside ollie over the same thing. But Martyn. Martyn literally destroys the place. No-comply pollie. Pollie, fronside and backside revert out. Pollie over the traffic barrier. Crailslide over the little hip to Gonz crouch out. And he finishes up with a frontside 50 50 followed by a frontside 5-O out of the hip and down the grinder bar. Damn.

Martyn was with me on the Natty video last week, shooting some b-roll, and we got to reminiscing about old skate videos. His favourite is the seminal Anti Hero production 'Fucktards'. That tells you everything you need to know.

Stitchthat's new site is now up and running. Check for it here:

www.stitchthat.tv

Can I get a Wu...

Yesterday we shot the video for Natty's forthcoming single 'Bedroom Eyes' with Daniel Wolfe from Partizan. Inspired by the wisdom of Von Adams, Dan told me in the morning that he was 'Too Jewish for blogs'.

Here's a picture of him repping Staten Island's finest.



Seeing this T-shirt immediately brought the memories flooding back. I love Rae, aka Raekwon the chef, aka Lou Diamonds. Here's my favourite of his many incredible raps:

'Can't stand unofficial, wet tissue, blank bustin scud missiles
You rollin like Trump, you get your meat lumped'

Here's a picture of Natty on set about 30 seconds after returning from a 'magic walk'.



Reggae? Put a donk on it.

And here's DOP Tom Townend having a toke on his light meter.



The thing I love about Dan's shoots is that he still has wrap beers on set. I hated when they got health and safetied out of existence. After a long, hard day shooting you sometimes need a cold can of the numbers to unwind. And what happened to sparks doing rails in the back of the lighting truck? Bring back wrap beers. And gurning sparks.

Finally I want to leave you with these words of purity from Eli Porter's response to the iron mic controversy:

'And if he ever want it from me, he can prise it tonight
From my cold, dead, crippled hand, he can try if he like
I messed up, I messed up, but i stayed on top'

Thank you Dan for making me aware of these.

I'm like superman without kryptonite / Fat as hell without cellulite

After we first saw Blackout Crew's 'Bbbbounce', we spent the next 6 months trying to find out who directed it - all to no avail. Even Hassay couldn't track them down. It was a total mystery. Then, after being on leave for 2 months, I return to work and find a link to 'Put a Donk on it' in my inbox from one of my colleagues. It's open to debate, but i think that 'Donk' might be even better than 'Bbbbounce' - which is surely a shoo-in for best dance video at the inaugural 2008 UK MVAs. Finally Claire managed to locate 'Mr elusive' while perusing Andy Soup's myspace page. Andy Soup. Andy where have you been hiding? Bikini don't even have these videos on their site. Alexa's never sent out links to them. What's there to be ashamed of?

Put a donk on it. Donk. Donk. Donk.

On a sadder note, Chris Massey, off of Academy, sent me this yesterday. Apologies if you're one of the 748,385 people that have already seen it, but it made me cry. Not with laughter, just real tears. I wanna give them all a cuddle.