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December 31st 2007 was going to be one of the most uneventful days of my life. My wife, who happens to be a critical care doctor, was on call in a hospital. My 15-year-old daugther was having a turbo-sleepover somewhere in Canada. I was sitting home alone and contemplating similarity of my fate to the one of Mr. Macaulay Culkin in his glory days. We all know that if something unpleasant is happening to us, the first thing to do is to find someone to blame. On this last day of 2007 it was pretty obvious that it was Santa Claus himself. It did not take me long to figure out what to do: I called my agent.
You should understand that Adam Owen Layne is not just my agent. He is also a friend and a soul mate whose wicked sense of humor compounded by a look of a nie little boy from a good Jewish family makes me want to sing. Believe me, I would, but I don't know how. So, I called Adam and told him that we must celebrate New Year. First he was a little puzzled, which was natural for someone who never celebrated Christmas, New Year, or any other non-Jewish holidays. In order to make it easier on him, I explained that we will be celebrating by killing Santa Claus. As expected, Adam immediately changed his mind and became mighty enthusiastic about the idea. I carried on with unraveling of my plan and told him that since real Santas are rather hard to come by these days, especially at that time of the year, he will be the Santa. Adam's reaction was commendable. "If Santa should die, we shall make him die, and nothing will stop us" he said.
Santas are smart and not that easy to kill. My idea was to lure him with something into a trap and then wack him with a fool-proof weapon, for instance a baseball bat. As an any old man, according to my research, Santa must be very horny, even sexually obsessed. Think about it: it's a known fact that libido dies when a person dies. Most of his time Santa spends with reindeer and midgets. Sometimes he fondles little kids in malls and stuff, but there he cannot fulfill his fantasies since parents are closely monitoring him at all times. So, I decided, if we show Santa some boobs, he will lose his mind and totally go for it. Adam concurred. For boobs he had an ideal candidate: a local supermodel fabulous Plain Jayne. For a thug role I secured my former student who used to be an officer in Russian military. You have no idea... I mean, YOU HAVE NO IDEA how vicious and ruthless these people are. They kill for pleasure. It is hard to find another reason since the pay in Soviet Army was close to nothing. Anyway, he was a great candidate also because we needed an assistant since the shoot was supposed to be in the very heart of Detroit where homeless people roam and real hookers may have a problem with our fake one.
I went to a party store and bought an authentic Santa suit complete with a beard and boots. Adam brought a sack of gifts and Plain Jayne. We came to a place that I scouted earlier that day exactly at 11:00pm. It took us fifteen minutes to set up lighting (yes, everything was shot with portable 1200W two-flash kit). It was cold. Snow flakes were dancing all over the place like crazy. A sidewalk covered with salt was wet and extremely unwelcoming. Police cruisers were circling around. When Adam was already on the ground playing possum, one of them stopped and two black policewomen came out to ask what the hell we were doing. I made the flashes go off with a portable transmitter concealed in my hand. When they realized that it was a photoshoot, everything went back to normal and they changed their minds about taking us to jail. A few minutes later a homeless guy missing one of his front teeth came and asked for 84 cents. He really needed exactly 84 cents for a bus to get home to his family and stuff. We were right between to takes when it happened. Despite this fellow we kept shooting. When our fake hooker appeared on a set with her boobs jumping out from a dress, the poor guy totally forgot about the bus fare. I distinctly heard a clunk when his lower jaw dropped on the pavement. Only one thing could make him leave. I told him that now he owed us ten smackers for the show. He disappeared so quickly that we all thought that he was Grinch in disguise, or some other magical creature.
We kept shooting until the clock approached 12-hour mark. Our last frame was at 00:03. Three minutes was the time that our murderer needed to wack Santa, took his sack and give the most precious gift to the hooker. When I said that the shoot was over, Santa stood up shaked my hand and said: "Well, this was definitely better than the New Years Eve that I had planned for myself". I don't know about you guys, but hearing something like this from Santa still means a lot to me...