Life is crazy right now. The movie, havoc at my day job, a tax bill I don't have a chance in hell of being able to pay, and I'm getting booted out of my apartment in 30 days. Time is tight, so this Ultrachrist! Diary will necessarily be a little skimpy on text. But there are lots of pictures so you can see what the heck we've been up to these past few weeks (some of the photos are used courtesy of Dr. Jurgen Fauth):

March 6, 2002: Today is God day. Hoffman and I draw stares as we stroll down Ditmars Boulevard in Queens outfitted if white T-shirts and angel wings. I have a cameo as an angel. We're kind of excited because the closest thing we have to a star, Mr. Don Creech (credits include Flirting with Disaster and tons of television) is playing God the Father. Here's a picture of me directing him and Jesus in their big confrontation scene near the end of the picture.

March 8, 2002: We wrap today by grabbing this scene outside Phantom on 44th Street at 7:45pm. The crew is having a lot of fun. This is the sort of shot you go into guerilla filmmaking for. As we're packing up, Hoffman nearly kills actress Dara Shindler (holding the mic) by braining her with an enormous battery belt. Next to her is Marty Grillo as Murray Klein, a marketing guru who teaches Jesus about the science of the modern world.

March 11, 2002: The wrestling match, with me on the far right, directing. This is tough day. We've got a dozen extras, professional prosthetic makeup, a champion slam poet, a stripper, a dog, and we have to construct an almost-full-sized wrestling ring. We keep the extras amused be feeding them beer, and slam poet Shappy, playing the demon wrestling announcer, ends up waiting around for 5 hours in full make-up getting drunker and drunker. That's Amber Ray of Light as the card girl and, below, Dr. Jurgen Fauth as Richard Nixon.

The script has Max the Dog licking Nixon's face, but the poor little guy is terrified of the mask. With bacon we're able to coax a decent enough performance, but I'd be lying if I said there was all that much face-licking. The angry dude is Samuel Bruce Campbell as A.C. Meany, the Parks Commissioner of New York City and Satan.

March 12, 2002: The day of the big production number. There's a reporter on set, who will go on to publish this article lampooning us. We were supposed to have 12 people on stage with Jesus to represent the 12 apostles, but due to flus and general unreliability, we ended up with only 9. Damn close -- I mean who can name all the apostles anyway (did you even know one of them is called "Thaddeus"??)?

March 16, 2002: At LeisureSuit Media, no one is too important to chip in. That's why on this shoot at an office in Engelwood, NJ, we have Johnny Green working the switchboard when he isn't on camera. (Note to Screen Actor's Guild: we're just kidding. We didn't really make Johnny work the phones.) This location is supposed to be Parks Commissioner A.C. Meany's office.

March 19, 2002: This day gets off to a shaky start when the owner of the bar we're supposed to shoot in oversleeps and we keep the cast and crew sitting around in Hoffman's apartment for 2 hours while we trying to figure out how to contact the guy. A waitress finally lets us in and we get the scenes we need to get. Above is Kim Gatewood and Caroline Whitney Smith as a couple of drunk girls Jesus tries to preach to early in the movie.

They say never work with dogs or kids. We didn't have the best trained dog in the world, but this kid, Samantha Pelosi, was an amazing pro. Hell, she knew her lines a lot better than Johnny Green as Jesus. Shooting this scene in a bodega on Ditmars Boulevard, right as tons of school kids were pouring into the street, created havoc throughout Astoria, Queens.

March 24, 2002: We take Ultrachrist out into the world to commune with the locals (above is Jesus in front of the fountain at the Met. Yeah, the same one from Moonstruck). Tourists in Times Square stop and gawk. A security officer at Lincoln Center starts lecturing us about "mocking the Lord" and I have to diffuse the situation by telling him how "positive" the project is. Today, I'm camera operating myself, so I'm very nervous about fucking up. I think I do a good job, but then when Hoffman watches the footage he delicately suggests we bring our Director of Photographer on the next of these outings. I pout but don't saying anything.