xXx: State of the Union – Hollywood Graffiti
Posted: October 5th, 2009 | Author: Con | Filed under: Baltimore, DC, Friends, Graffiti, Movies, Projects | No Comments »I’m following up on my RIME/movie post from a few weeks ago. Watch this clip below.
Notice anything? Besides the bad acting, probably not.
Five years ago AREK and I were hired to paint for xXx: State of the Union, which was the sequel to xXx with Vin Diesel. Remember that dude? I guess he took his money and ran, since he was nowhere to be found in this movie, so Ice Cube stepped in to play the new lead character.
Here is a synopsis from IMDB:
Unknown assassins penetrate a secret National Security Agency underground facility in Virginia, and kill 16 NSA agents. Agent Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) escapes, and must find out who broke security and why. Gibbons must recruit a new XXX agent to do his dirty work. Gibbons has just the man, a former Navy Seal and member of his old military unit. However, Darius Stone (Ice Cube) was put in a military prison for 20 years, because he disobeyed a direct order from General George Deckert (Willem Dafoe), and he also broke the general’s jaw. Just the man Gibbons needs to do the job. Gibbons gets Stone out of prison, and puts him to work. Stone discovers that Deckert, who is now the secretary of defense, is the mastermind of a conspiracy to stage a coup, and become President of the United States. Deckert has been training and placing his old military unit in the right places to stage his coup. Deckert wants the President killed and anybody above him in the line of secession. Darius Stone has other plans and is out to stop Deckert.
Truly a cinematic masterpiece.
So the movie was supposed to take place in/around DC but they shot it mostly in Baltimore. We were hired to paint a few city blocks in front of the American Brewer building (converted to the Capitol Theatre for the movie) over on the east side of the city, to make it look like “a rough neighborhood in DC”. Ironically, this area is a notorious dope strip in Baltimore and a few episodes of The Wire were shot here as well; it didn’t need graffiti to make it a rough neighborhood.
Regardless, we got a nice paycheck to paint about 4-5 blocks. Some of the spots weren’t even in camera range. They actually painted fake brick and put it on some of the businesses and homes, and then we in turn painted on top of that. The inside of the chop shop at the end of the scene was actually a set in Los Angeles.
All this production and work put in, and all you see is a blur in the background. Pretty funny how Hollywood throws money around like that.
So here are just a few of the photos from the scene above:
