A guy, a Key West visitor, woke up Wednesday morning, hungover, on a couch aboard a local waitress’ houseboat. Apparently, the two had shared some adventures the night before. As he rubs his head and gets his bearings, the guy decides a morning beer may be his best bet, his only bet, to feel better.
It all sounds like an entirely plausible weekday morning in Key West, right? Perhaps too familiar for some of us?
Good. That’s a sign of well-written, natural-sounding dialogue and the scene i just described did indeed take place at Houseboat Row on Wednesday morning, but it unfolded among cameras, boom mics, a clapperboard to mark the scenes and a bunch of film crew folks with headsets and an air of L.A. urgency about them.
Hollywood has returned to Key West to film a movie. But unlike others, this one is way more Key West than West Coast, with only one day of shooting occurring in California. The rest will take place this month in familiar island locations.
The feature-length comedy-horror movie called “Key of Bones: Curse of the Ghost Pirate,” will be filming through Jan. 20 at locations that include Houseboat Row at Garrison Bight, the Key West Firehouse Museum, Fort Zachary Taylor, the Key West Lighthouse, the local cemetery “and other iconic haunted areas of Key West.”
Writer and director Tony Armer describes the movie as “‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ meets ‘Shaun of the Dead’… with rum, drag queens and lesbian pirate ghosts in the sun-soaked, offbeat paradise of Key West. Ghosts rise, locals panic and one Key West waitress must clean up the supernatural mess she started.”
If it all sounds like a Key West fever dream, that’s the point. And for us locals, Armer provides plenty of familiar local references. The waitress, played by Los Angeles actress Gina Vitore, works at Half Shell Raw Bar. She was filming a scene Wednesday morning on a houseboat with actor Jeremy King. Oh, and one of the main characters, played by Key West’s own film commissioner, Chad Newman, is a Key West ghost hunter and supernatural expert based on the real-life character of, you guessed it, David L. Sloan. Also, Key West resident Bill Francis is an executive producer.
The film crew will be in town through Jan. 20 and “Key of Bones” should be released sometime in 2027.
