On the set of the short
film version of PRESSURE DROP, to avoid having the actors
drift off into random Shakespeare soliloquies, traditional
Native-American "sweet grass" (a pungent, legal, non
psychoactive rope-like fiber) was used in place of real pot
in all smoking scenes.
Mina Bern and Felix
Fibich, stars of the short version of PRESSURE DROP, are
veterans of New York's legendary Second Avenue/Lower East
Side theater district, having performed there and across the
world together and individually in Yiddish films and plays
for over fifty years.
Ezra Soiferman's late
grandfather, Beryl Pofelis, on whom PRESSURE DROP is partly
based, lost his vision from glaucoma in his late eighties.
After seeing the short, Ezra's grandmother told the
filmmaker she regretted not having known about the marijuana
treatment earlier. Whether or not he would have taken the
stuff is another story.
Pressure Drop Club
member, RAJNEESH, was played by Avtar Singh in the short.
Avtar was cast for the role at Mughul E Azam, a traditional
Indian restaurant in New York's Little India, where he would
sit in the windowsill playing his shurenghi to the delight
of hundreds of satisfied customers three nights a week.
Recent attempts at tracking down Avtar in New York have
proven fruitless and we urge anyone who knows his
whereabouts to leave a message at the Feedback
section.
One production
company, which shall go unnamed, politely declined
involvement in PRESSURE DROP saying that they found the film
"too ethnic and too soft." The same has been said of the
bagel, a world-famous bread-roll delicacy which has just
been added to the menu at Dunkin' Donuts shops across the
nation.
The short film
version of PRESSURE DROP has, according to recent reports,
become a cult classic in Ohio, with bootleg video dubs of
the film floating around college campuses like the plague.
Thank you to all PD fans in Ohio.
The title "Pressure
Drop" comes from the reggae song of the same name by Toots
& The Maytals, one of Jamaica's legendary reggae bands.
Backstage, at a concert at Tramps in NYC, Toots was given a
copy of the short film to take back to Kingston. In
exchange, he offered the film's producers an autographed
poster and blessed the film with "peace and many
blessing."
At a senior citizens
center screening of the short in Montreal, members of the
audience were fascinated by the concept of marijuana as
medicine and after the screening began a rather animated
discussion with their group leader about the potential
rewards of such a treatment. One member of the audience
lamented, "I wish my husband was still around, we could have
had lots of fun doing the marijuana together."
Chances are, most
people you know are aware of marijuana being used as
medicine in the treatment of diseases including cancer,
glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, AIDS and many others...but do
they know about PRESSURE DROP? We think it's time you told
them. They'd probably want to know. If they don't know about
marijuana as medicine, send them to pressuredrop.com anyhow,
and please, let us know their reaction.
You can spot Mina
Bern, who plays IDA POTASHNER in the short film version of
PRESSURE DROP, in the following films: AVALON, LITTLE ODESSA
and IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU.
W. Benson Terry, who
plays SLIM (the founder of the Pressure Drop Club) in the
short, was featured in Paramount Pictures' FORREST GUMP in
the role of the captain of the Bubba Gump Shrimp boat.
It is estimated that
if frequent flyer miles were given to film prints travelling
to film festivals, the short film version of PRESSURE DROP
would have enough points to take a free flight anywhere in
the continental United States.
PRESSURE DROP, the
short, can be booked for screening at your school, office,
film festival, library or community center. Please address
all inquiries to Mensch Films at the Feedback section
of this site.
No animals were hurt
in the making of the short film version of PRESSURE DROP, or
of the PRESSURE DROP Web Site. However, a small herd of
unicorns will be sacrificed on the first day of principle
photography of the feature. For real!? NO. Not at all.
Everybody knows, people who love PRESSURE DROP also love
unicorns.
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