When Sam at ThUnderground Films first gave the green light for a documentary on the topic of pro caliber yard sale shoppers, Al and myself, Rafael, began to research the phenomenon that is YSing. It was then that we first learned of the existence of the almighty Yardsale Queen a.k.a. Chris Heiska. You could imagine the excitement at TUF, we had found someone who was ideal for our yard sale doc then entitled "Lawn Gypsies." We immediately contacted her in May of 2003 and asked her to be part of the project. She graciously agreed to help us shed light on the YS subculture from the East Coast perspective, God bless the Queen. Our East Coast road trip was in the works. Let me give you a little back-story as to how it almost didn’t happen:

Initially Buck and Roscoe were not to be our principle subjects in this documentary, though not on account of us. We had been asking Buck to be the subject for a ride-a-long style piece about pro YSers for some time. He kept telling us that Roscoe, his spotter, absolutely refused on account of a regrettable experience they had with a previous doc crew (during the filming of "Zen," I asked Roscoe why he felt that way, he gave me a puzzled look as Buck interrupted with camera related questions). Anyhow, Buck initially stated they could only granted us one hour for an in-depth interview and one hour of ride-a-long time. As appreciative as we were of any time with such YS legends, we were fully conscientious that we could never put together a comprehensive feature length documentary with such little coverage. Our only option that appeased both Al and myself was to structure the piece around an ensemble of subjects in traditional verite format. This sociological piece would now equally feature five pro YSers (Buck Wetmore, Roscoe L. Harding, Chris Heiska "The Yardsale Queen," Susan Goldberg aka "Garage Sale Susan," and Ernest "Psycho Bob" Odom) and profile a few other pros we met while performing camera tests at yardsales during pre-production. However, in a twist of fate, Buck and Roscoe quickly agreed to be the main subjects in our documentary after being allowed to see some of the footage we shot during those camera test sessions. Buck explained that Roscoe was concerned that we would not be able to distinguish a true pro from a gypsy and put pro YSers in a negative light. I later called Roscoe on it and once again he gave me a questioning look, then Buck pulled over and made him get out and double check an obviously expired yard sale sign. Either way, we were ecstatic to have our originally intended principle subjects grant us full access. Needless to say, this drastically changed our whole format. The piece would now be centered around Buck and Roscoe with profiles of some of their colleagues in the Los Angeles yard sale scene. Due to the change in structure of the piece and other reasons such as relevance, logistics, budget constraints, etc., it became painfully obvious that it might not be wise to travel across the country to interview Yardsale Queen. Regretfully, we figured that our pilgrimage to the Chesapeake Bay would be put on hold for the time being, we thought we might at the very least give her honorable mention in the film and if possible interview her for a DVD featurette, after we were done with post-production of course. It was to our great surprise that during filming Buck himself referenced the Yardsale Queen! Could this be some sort of sign? What are the chances that he would mention the one person we had tried so hard to work into the piece? And not only that, as it turns out, not only did Buck know of her, he also knew her personally! As fate would have it, she is one of the very few people he deeply respects in the industry. Without a word having to be uttered it was instantly understood that the pilgrimage was back on. Only one thing stood in the way: producer Sam. She agreed that having YSQ (Yardsale Queen) in the film would be great and was even somewhat impressed that Buck knew her. Ultimately she could not green-light the trip knowing that we would need money for post, we just couldn’t afford it. Just like that, our hopes were crushed once more. It seemed that we would not get to meet and interview one of the most prolific YSers of our time, at least not anytime soon.

Flash forward

Early October 2004 at the TUF studio, most of principle photography was complete. Al and myself were planning the wrap party when he informed me that for his upcoming birthday he plannned to take a road trip up the East Coast. We started joking about how it would be cool if he could make his over to Maryland to pay a visit to the YSQ. We then started discussing how cool it would be if we could actually take a road trip we had talked about over a year ago, stopping at some of the major cities from the Midwest to the East Coast getting different perspectives on the yard sale subculture and grab the YSQ interview on the way. In classic ThUnderground fashion, we spontaneously decided in favor of the trip. We immediately called the bastard Pirate and asked him if he would come along and he said "Aye." We brainstormed as to how we could finance the trip without using much if any of post budget funds, and we decided that taking on crew jobs could finance the trip. That’s when we started heavily cruising the CL (Craig’s List) for gigs, something we now do regularly to pay the rent each month- we were surprised to see how many scumbags were trying to exploit free work out of crew and often even requested free equipment to boot. So those projects aside we started crewing on indie films. Along the way we met people we will most definitely work with in the future, we also worked with a few good 1st A.D.’s and many, many awful ones. After a few weeks of crewing on shows that ranged from decent to complete crap fests we were able to raise enough money to embark on our trip, only using about $300 from the films budget to help cover gas and lodging. Al, being from Chicago, made all the necessary arrangements. With the picture now in its editing phase and back to its original name "Zen in the Art of Yardsailing" (inspired by Buck’s Zen beliefs), we packed up our ThUnderwear and prepared to leave the coast of the sleeping sun on one November 2nd of 2004- ironically just a few days after the wrap party.

TUF's East Coast Road Trip - Coming Soon!