I have a confession to make: I was really, really hoping to get arrested last Saturday.
OK, I’m lying a little. But not as much as you’d think.
Like many other Marathon locals, a few weeks ago I made my way down to Porky’s Bayside Restaurant for the open casting call of “Bad Monkey” season 2. Whipping out the most localized fun fact I could think of in my 10 second intro video (I’m a former dolphin trainer, if you didn’t know), I called it a day and patted myself on the back for at least showing up.
So when I got a text last week asking if I was available for a day of filming two days later, I was REALLY glad I took the chance.
Now, let’s get the obvious out of the way. I didn’t get to meet Vince Vaughn, or any of the other big-name actors for that matter. And IF I get lucky and they use the footage from our shoot, my on-screen moment goes something like this: “check out that spring breaker’s butt walking in front of the camera.”
I’m not complaining whatsoever. My role was originally set as “ND jogger” – pretty apt considering I’m voluntarily tormenting myself by training for a marathon in real life. (Does the ND literally stand for “nondescript?” Feels like they could have left that out.) But the day before the shoot, my call sheet changed to “arrestee” – and I thought “oh … HELL yeah.”
Shout out to my sister, who in the family group chat guessed “pirate” when asked to guess my role. Close enough, I guess, especially compared to my mom’s guess of “boater.”
The set for the day was MCSO’s Cudjoe substation, and what initially started as a plan to lock myself and my friend Darby Sheehan up as a pair of drunk-driving spring breakers turned into an effort to make the substation look as busy as NYPD. So my dreams of flashing on screen as a nutjob in cuffs were dashed.
But after watching the day’s operations, all I have to say is “wow.”
Photos by ALEX RICKERT/Keys Weekly
From the moment we arrived at 1 p.m. until our dismissal at 8, the entire ordeal was a highly-coordinated series of “go here,” “do this,” “move on.” And even as a bunch of nobody extras, the entire team from wardrobe to catering to production treated us with nothing but respect and professionalism.
Being on camera when an Apple TV director yelled “action!” was cool in itself, but for a tech and theater geek like me, the magic came from watching a completely normal sheriff’s office transform into a working set with truckloads of equipment in 20 to 30 minutes, tops. Ladders popping up everywhere, cables running across the entire site, lights added in the eaves of the building – all so quickly that if you blinked, you’d miss it.
The sheer number of people, vehicles and equipment that went into what I can only assume will be 10 to 20 seconds of screen time, tops, is downright insane – in a good way.
More than that, it’s fantastic that we’ll all get to watch the second season of this show and see many of our favorite local spots, friends and neighbors represented.
It’s something that hopefully we’ll see more of one day. For the uninitiated (including myself, until recently): Production companies love the Keys as an idea – see the “Road House” remake, multiple car commercials and music videos, “Bad Monkey” and even older works like “True Lies,” “Bloodline” and “2 Fast 2 Furious.”
The problem is, it makes no financial sense for them to come here. Ever since Florida’s tax credits for film and entertainment companies dried up in 2016, work done in the island chain is sparse at best. As one “Bad Monkey” staffer phrased it to me: “We’re left to fight over the scraps.”
That means that for “Road House,” 99% of the work was done in the Dominican Republic, and shots of the Seven Mile Bridge and our buddy Fred the Tree are just about the only authentic ones. For the second season of “Bad Monkey,” while names like Vaughn and Natalie Martinez were spotted in multiple places over the last few weeks, a $20 million tax credit out in California has lured the majority of filming to the west coast. Because it’s quite literally cheaper to re-create the entire set on a sound stage on the opposite coast.
But for now, we’ll take what we can get. Hats off to the crew of “Bad Monkey” for making this experience so accessible for locals who’ve never been in front of a camera before. And when you plop down to watch the show, keep an eye out for your favorite butt walking across the screen.
