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She was on set today. She's been in the industry so long that everyone's got some opinion of her. I met her once at The Whiskey, back when it was painted black. If you're a slacker dork like me, your only shot at copping a feel with the quintessential Callifornia girl probably is the mosh pit. She laughed and slammed back into me. We goofed for the rest of the Butthole Surfers set. My teenage filter misinterpreted her friendliness for flirting.
Ten years later, I'm watching her do a scene with the cowboy. Nearly everyone's watching her, actually - except him. He's watching the dialog coach, feeding him his lines.
After take eighteen, she excuses herself and very nearly glides toward craft services. The sea of crew parted for her. Momentarily distracted by Rebel, who, I believe, intended to beat her to the table and bumped me hard in the process, I tripped on the camera jib. You like irony, dear journal? The sound stage became a surreal mosh pit as I slammed into her.
My pomegranite juice found a good part of her wardrobe. But she looked up into my face and I'm pretty sure saw the dorky teenager again. It'll make Loree banishing me from wardrobe endurable. |
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Mondays at the studio are usually more peppy than this.
Rebel the grip took credit for the lifesized skeleton prop in the directors chair. Someone had spray painted RIP in gray on plywood and leaned it against the balcony set. Yeah, the overnights were out.
I knew about overnights from the old man. I'd get ready for school to the cadence of his cussing. I thought I walked into a flashback when I entered the exec's conference room with a tray of danish: best retention, second straight week, 18.2 million, adults 18-24.
On a more pleasant note, the chiefs impending reality series is shooting next door. He can move between gloom and hope by the twist of a knob. It's so real over there that there's no craft services table to be seen and both coffee pots are missing. I see an empty copier paper box on one of the writers desk. Looks like the reality show's about to get one more associate producer.
Where's McKenzie, Brackman, Cage, Fish and the big angry man. My point, exactly. |
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It's like holding up a mirror in front of another mirror. The images are ad infinitum. Hollywood's narcissism is never more conspicuous than when it gazes into its own reflection.
Yesterday one of those entertainment 'news' crews descended on the studio to profile the show. Cameras pointing at cameras, hair-sprayed heads pretending to listen to made-up actors. The real talent - Pete can write dialog like nobody's business, Jimmy Bags, our cinematographer, to name two - roundly ignored. But it's selling the product. The production office acted like Spielberg himself was showing up. And The Captain was full-on ham.
The ET camera guy found me on my break, apple in hand, sitting on the top step of the lighting rig. I like it there, above it all. He sat down on the tenth step and asked if working here was decent. Crew guys are always jockeying for the next gig and the greener grass illusion is ubiquitous. Sure, I admitted, if you dig the company of the self-absorbed and self-serving. He nodded, knowingly. I said, "Sorry, man." I could see him mentally crossing off the prospect. Good. Let the reflection show the glossy idolatry. The true love on this sound stage needs to be our secret. |
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I've lasted a week at the Studio. I won my bet with Myron - I call him the 'sparks guy' on account he gaffs with fearless bravado. Myron calls me Spike, but that's another story.
It took me all day to convince him I was still employed. By 5 o'clock, Myron handed me the coveted Rosco #07 Yellow and plusgreen gel from Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, signed by Vincent Price.
I'm considering another bet with Myron. He's got the goods. |
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Pier
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Nov. 28th, 2004 @ 06:06 pm
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Slacker that I am, I crawled out of the townhome mid-afternoon and walked down the boulevard to the Manhattan Beach pier. I had spent the morning with The Transporter and had watched the making of the oil-drenched fight scene - now working out the sequences in my head. My arm would occasionally fly out or I'd duck. Some Grandma, coming back from church, must have thought a twitchy addict invaded her town. I was working on The Untitled Guy Project screenplay - what I call all my solitary attempts to be creative - and needed a good fight sequence. Plagerism works. The pier held a smattering of fishermen. I watched one fellow pull in a fish. I watched him unhook it. I watched it thrash and gasp for a really long time. I kept replaying the scene where I grab it and give it its life back, into the Santa Monica Bay. I saved that fish a half-dozen different ways until it stopped moving. I, also, had never moved. An airliner from LAX cruised over, breaking my fantasy. I gave the fisherman the mental finger and started back. I decided to write out the fight scene. Stop the violence. |
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Cake
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Nov. 26th, 2004 @ 10:47 pm
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It's No Talent day - the Friday after Thanksgiving. Never has there been a better moniker. The actors were sleeping in. Crew and staff were goofing off, good-naturedly squandering their time-and-a-half. Put another way, you have your stripper, your cake and your dubious humor at the expense of a certain recovering actor once associated with this studio.
Scene: sound stage, boom box blaring Robert Downey Jr's "White Christmas", a stripper doing a reasonable interpretation of the song and a cake with four candles. Someone made a crack about spending Thanksgiving in Palm Springs.
I forgo bonding and start making copies of my screenplay in the copy room. I always thought "Less Than Zero" was highly underrated
Current Music: River | RDJ |
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I had pasta brain and excused myself for a walk. Dad excused himself to the bar. The cook cleaned up. My life is so The Waltons.
I take the winding road up into Griffith Park to Bronson Canyon. How weird to hear the traffic from Cauhenga and Hollywood Blvd. but be knee deep in scrub brush. You've seen it, too, in a million old movies; movie stills from the remake of Lost Horizon showed a fake snowy landscape with the Hollywood Sign in the background.
Used to be a quarry here. I walk toward the the tunnels. The path splits into three short tunnel outlets, each with its own distinctive exit. At their fork is a perfect view of four distinctly different tunnel exits, perfect for any kind of filming involving a mineshaft or cave setting. Even though I was a kid then, I loved this stuff. Standing at the fork, you realize this is where fearless Beverly Garland faced off the dreaded Cucumber monster in It Conquered the World. Where John Agar first met the floating alien monster in Brain from Planet Arous. These are the tunnels of Attack of the Crab Monsters, the caves from Cyclops and Monster from Green Hell and Dinosaur Island. Add a wooden door, and it becomes the mineshaft from The Return of Dracula. With some beams and a hole dug in the floor, it's where McCarthy and Dana Wynter hid from the pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Freaky Childhoods R Us.
I wander back to the 'family' home - dad drinking and talking about the ratings bastards. Sometimes I love him so much I want to vomit. |
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The studio is dark today. I sleep in, then head to my dad's for free chow. He's lived just outside Bronson Canyon my whole life. I spent my eternal boyhood walking through that canyon - what amounts to a 1950's backlot: Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country. Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I Married a Monster from Outer Space. But for me, the allure was Bonanza - and the exterior shots of the Batcave. I'm planning an after-dinner walk.
Dad - not one for holidays - had his cook prepare spaghetti and we ate by the pool and watched the Hollywood sign fade in and out with the smog. And I was appropriately thankful for my new job. |
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To Do List
Drive re-writes to three guest stars - in the Valley
Get the prop guy a bucket of gravel
Stand stock still on the set for 20 min. so the DP can work out his creative demons
Buy more binder clips at Target - I knew that was coming
...And I'm one day closer to my future. |
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Lunch
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Nov. 23rd, 2004 @ 11:38 am
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The girl at the deli across from the studio wanted to know if I dyed my hair. I think it was a ploy because her next question was about Actor X's sexual orientation. This is just great. Now I have to drive off the lot to get the producers lunch. Smoked turkey on sourdough - no need to thank me. |
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Gopher
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Nov. 22nd, 2004 @ 11:13 pm
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Guy, here.
It was a short road from West Hollywood to the studios. Depending on the bumps, it either took me thirty minutes or nine years. See, I grew up in Hollywood. My dad was in the industry. He dragged me to a Coca-Cola casting audition when I was sixteen and I worked off and on until last year, when I decided the place to be was in the drivers seat.
Today I start at The Studio. Yeah, there's a small matter of an NDA. You're getting the behind-the-shaded-glass version. My title is Production Assistant, but I'm not fooled. I'm on coffee and paperclip duty until I get noticed or get lucky.
Excuse me - I have to help them wrangle a rabbit.
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