Prodigal Ambitions

It doesn't seem terribly likely that MTV will take a strong shine to the "Hand of the Dead Body" clip, especially considering the near-riot situations Kahn's storyboard calls for on Saturday night's shoot. This time we're behind Fleming Middle School, in the heart of the Fifth Ward. As the plot goes, Scarface and Ice Cube are holed up in a neighborhood safehouse, guarded by a squadron of almost 100 angry-looking black men, arms crossed, standing at the curb. There's a rented S.W.A.T. van parked down the street, a rented cop car and a platoon of extras dressed in police blue who run a confrontational pattern through blue smoke with guns raised at Kahn's command. A member of the Nation of Islam, which has taken an interest in the proceedings, shouts at the bodyguards through a megaphone: "We need very hard facial expressions, black men." The bodyguards, many of whom wear black T-shirts reading "Don't Blame It on Da Music," comply. A local radio station has revealed the shoot's location over the air, and hundreds of onlookers flock on the other side of the street. There is some worry on the set

hat the rented helicopter is late.
The Saturday night shoot wraps at around four in the morning, and on Sunday, Prodigal is scheduled to film a commercial in River Oaks for Dream Merchant. Greg Tharpe heads up Prodigal's fledgling commercial branch, and he's responsible for this shoot, the company's first job in that competitive field. Prodigal is in the habit of juggling two to three projects at a time, and turnaround from assignment to product is often as brief as two weeks. Calls are starting to come in from major labels in California, and the work with Rap-a-Lot and Justice is garnering a high profile. If they haven't bothered to paint their company's name on the door, it may be because Prodigal doesn't plan on staying this size for long.

Take a look at one of Prodigal's business cards, or the stationery they now have, or the T-shirts they've printed, and the expansion comes as no surprise. Under the Prodigal Commercial Company banner are three distinct columns: Prodigal Produc-tions, Prodigal Film, and Prodigal Music Videos. The feature-film category is, of course, the as-yet-unrealized dream of nearly anyone who's ever picked up a camera, but Kahn's still only 21, and he expects the company will eventually get there. When he starts talking about Prodigal's future, he sounds like someone who knows how to find the on-ramp to the information superhighway.

"That's another reason we came here to Houston. I never saw Prodigal as just being a video company or a commercial company, or even a film company. What we're actually producing here is software. Music videos and films and television programs -- it's all software. When all television becomes interactive, which it will -- maybe forty years from now, I figure time is on my side -- I see Houston as sort of a long-term goal. Houston was the number-two city to start up a company [that was in Money magazine two years ago] and Houston has the highest percentage of television watchers anywhere in the United States. Like 60 percent of us watch two to three hours of television a day. Once you start paying quarters for every program that you watch, you're going to get some major revenue.