Adventures in personal lubricant

Don’t you hate when you finally find something long after you gave up looking for it? In this case it was an industrial size quantity of personal lubricant.

I worked on a TV movie called “Sorority Wars” a while back. One scene that took place in a nightclub called for a partygoer to barrel down a soapy slide into a pool of suds.

The foam party scene. Filmed at Sugar Night Club, Yates Street. I helped with some of the props and painted the big foam party sign.

The art director, wanting to ensure the stuntwoman didn’t end up with a head-to-toe rug burn declared that a vast stockpile of KY Jelly or similar product was essential and went about seeing if any Victoria drugstores carried lube in such quantities. I told him that I had no clue if it was sold by the jug although I confess that if I were aware you could buy bulk lube I probably would not have admitted it to the crew.

The search was fruitless, and he returned to set with a case of bubble bath, the next most agreeable substitute. The scene went as planned and the stunt went off without a hitch, after the stuntwoman determined that the run-up and slide would not actually be slippery enough to launch her straight over the pool into the stage Wile E. Coyote-style. You can see the finished scene here on YouTube by skipping to the 2:30 mark (safe for work–it’s not that type of movie).

Now, Nick Bergus alerts us to the fact that a massive drum of the slick product is available for sale at a reasonable cost, although the shipping would be killer.

One thing I learned working in movies is that if something is really needed, any reasonable effort will be made to get it. For example, I painted these plastic letters that were only on screen for a few seconds, seen from a distance. They were rushed to Victoria by float plane even though any local sign shop could have printed out a similar-looking banner for a fraction of the price.

So the moral is, always be inquisitive, as you never know when that knowledge will come in handy. And if you need a barrel of lube, try Amazon.