An enigmatic young musician becomes the captive audience for a crusty old cab driver’s dirty story on the taxi ride from hell!
We’ve all been victims of cab drivers sprinkling us with some outrageous personal stories, but none are quite as pervious as Joe Lonie’s ‘sort of’ true story ‘Honk If You’re Horny’. In this film Joe recreates a personal story, but is not shy to admit that he added lots of fluff to make it even more exciting. In this version an enigmatic young musician becomes the captive audience for a crusty old cab driver’s dirty story on the taxi ride from hell!
Honk if you’re horny is based on a true story. Well, sort of! Back in the early 1990s, when I was trying hard to help my band Supergroove get a foothold in the Auckland live scene, I used to travel by taxi a lot. On the way to band practice one night the cabbie began bragging about a tryst he took part in recently when a couple paid for their ride with sex.
The driver was a good storyteller, but I was too young and innocent to be hearing about such things, and as he went on it all became so outrageous and over–the–top I found it hard to believe. I had to wonder why he was so insistent on telling me. Maybe the driver assumed that as a musician I enjoyed a wild, depraved, hedonistic sex life like Mick Jagger, Prince or LL Cool J, and I might be interested or impressed by such a story, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Instead I was just a shy, young, prudish bass–geek. I couldn’t wait to get away from this sleazy, lascivious man, and play music with my bandmates, but I never forgot the driver, or his outlandish story.
The ambitions in this film is that a story like this can’t just be told by anyone, it has to be told by a great storyteller to really captivate every single emphasis that builds up the story. Joe found quite the man in his cab driver Andy Anderson who pulls off a staggering performance.
Honk if you’re horny has gotten a lot funnier and crazier over the years. Because of the dubious nature of the original source material I have never felt any qualms about amping it up to whatever degree pleased me. While I’ve worked on it I’ve spoken to many people who’ve heard similar stories from similar taxi drivers. It’s almost as if this story is an urban legend amongst taxi drivers, passed down from one driver to the next. This helped to reaffirm for me that, whether it’s real or imagined, this was a story worth telling, and a film worth making.
With everything I do, my number one priority is always to show the audience a good time. Honk if you’re horny is intended to be a high-impact, outrageous, laugh–out–loud cinematic experience that gives a great deal of lasting pleasure to a wide, admittedly mature – but no less deserving, audience. I couldn’t be more pleased with how the film has turned out. My good friend and longtime collaborator Duncan Cole has done an amazing job with the cinematography, and lead actor Andy Anderson (a Kiwi and Aussie legend) has grabbed this juicy role by the scruff of the neck and turned in a truly show–stopping performance.
Enjoy the ride!