No Rest in Bucharest

"Romania is the Tijuana of the Eastern bloc," said actor Christian Leffler. More specifically, he means Bucharest, where he spent three weeks last summer "kicking ass and chewing scenery" as a bad guy in the horror/thriller "Madhouse."

"There are lines painted on the street, but nobody pays attention to them," Leffler said. "You'll see some Mercedes and Eastern European cars we never see in the States, and then a horse-drawn cart." More like Tijuana is the sense that "everything is available, if you're willing to ask and willing to cross that line." The women, he said, "all dress like prostitutes -- they wear next to nothing."

And the Golden Arches are "a godsend, because the food there is so terrible." Leffler said the cast took to feeding its hotel-provided food ("meat and cheese that just didn't taste right") out the window to a pack of feral dogs and instead subsisting, in his case at least, on the relatively safe diet of beer and pasta.

He didn't sleep much for the first week and took to phoning castmate Jordan Ladd in the middle of the night to tell her he was watching a "Charlie's Angels" rerun and noticing the resemblance to her mom. Also in the cast was Leslie Jordan, like Leffler an L.A. theatre trouper, who would take off on a train for days to explore the country when he wasn't needed for shooting.

For his part, Leffler -- best known for his award-winning stage work at the Evidence Room and for playing Phil Spector in the Sonny & Cher TV movie--stuck around Bucharest, marvelling at the contrasts among Old World charm, "Blade Runner"-esque commercial architecture, and follies of the Ceacescu regime. He also tried to suss out everyday Romanian life: One local who worked on the film told him she made the equivalent of $170 a month--and paid $100 in rent.

Maybe she gets by on the McDonald's dollar menu.