David
Ackroyd, who plays the wise old character "Northway" in the film,
recently dedicated his weekly two-hour internet radio show, "Lights, Camera, Ackroyd,"
to his latest experience on the set of "The Best Bar in America." You
can listen to his hilarious and detailed behind-the-scenes account of
independent guerrilla filmmaking at its finest.

Photos by Loni Workman and John Ansotegui.
We recently returned from the famous Sip N Dip Lounge in Great Falls,
Montana. Even though we talked to a ton of people about this place and
were aware that GQ Magazine rated it as the #1 Bar in the world,
nothing could quite prepare us for what we experienced. We shot for two
days in the lounge, starting at 6 am and ending in the early afternoon.
The wonderful management at the O'Haire Motor Inn (where the lounge is
located) let us film in the bar outside business hours. Tim Huffman,
(who plays a cowboy bartender in the beginning of the film) rented us
SCUBA gear and built a giant bubbler out of PVC pipe and a scuba tank.
Using our underwater housing, Eric recorded some amazing footage of our
mermaids.

The Sip N Dip is an authentic tiki bar will bamboo
walls and ceiling, the house drink is a blue-colored fish bowl that
contains something like 10 shots of booze. Most evenings Piano Pat
comes out and plays classic hits from the likes of Johnny Cash and Neil
Diamond.

Here's the kicker. Behind the bar are two large windows
that look underwater into the swimming pool. At 9pm the mermaids appear
and the place gets packed, everyone drinking blue drinks, laughing and
dancing to Piano Pat's tunes. Several key scenes in the film
happen at the Sip N Dip. Including the meeting of two the film's main
characters: Sanders and Eden.

Check out the pics and youtube mermaid montage.
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Here is the recently-completed trailer for the film. Let us know what you think. For a high-res version of the trailer click HERE..

Entering the "Golden Circle" on
Going to the Sun Road

Wow. What a long strange trip this has already been. We've only been shooting our film, The Best Bar in America
for less than a month or so, but time has become a meaningless blur.
We've clocked nearly 6000 miles throughout Arizona, Utah, Idaho and
Montana. We've shot 500 gigs of amazing footage, witnessed countless
sunrises and sunsets. We've visited a fantastic variety of dirty
saloons, rowdy bars, smokey taverns and crowded pubs. We've drained an
easy dozen bottles of "prop" Wild Turkey 101 and gallons of cheap
American brew. We've laughed, cried, fought and puked together. We've
handled scorpions and rattlesnakes, dug a grave, stole a sheriff's
truck, fired guns and have met more good people than I thought existed
in the entire world.