I was working on a shoot where a giant 250 pound guy was going to run through a giant pane of very thick glass (a running theme on this blog seems to be “glass breaking in dangerous ways”) for some stupid reason involving possible injury and death for our entertainment.  I don’t want it to sound like I’m against stupid stunts for our entertainment; I’m a fan of Jackass.  However this was the first stupid stunt I had ever been on set for, and upon seeing the way it was set up I have to say it wasn’t just stupid, it was EPICALLY stupid.

            This is why we all had to sign wavers saying we would not sue if we were injured.  There was sometimes a very REAL risk that we were going to be injured.

            Especially the camera guys.

            As a PA I was responsible for two things during this stunt.  One thing was to set up temporary walls to protect the director and a lot of the crew from flying glass.  The other thing was to set up what amounted to a cushion fort for a camera guy named Juan.  Juan was to sit in front of where the glass was going to shatter as the man charged through it.  He wanted to get the best shot possible and decided this spot in the direct line of fire of the man and the glass was the best place to get it.  Since we did not want him to get hit by glass and killed we basically had to build him a fort.  I am still not entirely sure he completely cared about the fort itself.  I’m pretty sure I remember him simply shrugging at the thought like the glass wasn’t anything close to a big threat.

            So the PAs built him a fort.  We gathered up cushions and blankets and put them in a circle around him before covering his body in another blanket.  He was, in essence, glass proof.

            So when the stunt happened it dawned on us that, although he was glass proof, he was not 250 pound man proof.

            The giant man ran into the window, broke through it, and ended up traveling farther than expect.  Much farther.  He trampled and tripped over poor Juan and careened into the temporary walls.  Temporary walls are basically cubicle walls set up on shaky metal bars and as such it does not take much to knock them down.  So when the giant man ran into the walls they fell over and smashed into a bunch of the crew, including a shocked director and a vocal producer.

            I was over to the left of all this and, as soon as it was revealed no one was hurt in the slightest, thought it was funny as hell.

            Juan was okay.  He did not expect for his invincible fort to be destroyed by a giant man but thankfully the man has not stepped on anything vital.  As he pointed out, the shot was amazing.  To cameramen this is all that seems to matter.

            In the end the only guy injured from this whole thing was the guy who went through the glass because of the glass itself.  He was cut up and bleeding from so many small cuts his arms at one point looked like they had been dipped in blood…and yet all he could do is yell crazily about how awesome his stunt was as the nurse tried to treat him.  I don’t know if he was even aware Juan was there, or that the director had been hit with a temporary wall.  Personally I don’t think he needed to know.  It was funnier that way.

            This is one of those times.

            I don’t always work on sets.  Many times my bread and butter comes from being an office drone at a post-production company known for making DVD menus and editing web commercials.  This is by no means bad work.  I’m not bad at editing, I’m pretty great at quality control type duties thanks to my experience as a game tester (a job I shall write about at some point in time) and on the occasion that they decide to shoot a small internet commercial I tend to be a go to guy.  The company usually pays me well and sometimes even offers me regular work for months at a time.  Although I don’t like being stuck in an office doing somewhat tedious work, I don’t complain when offered money.

            It wasn’t always this way.  When I first started working for this company almost two years ago I sucked at what I was doing.  I also didn’t treat the job with much respect.  I didn’t do good work, would show up late, and committed many sins first time workers tend to commit.  The boss of the company didn’t like me much after that and the only reason I still get work with them is because I have a friend who works as a producer there.  Even so I still wonder how I still get employed at this place with some regularity.

            I have spent the last year and some months making up for my stupidity.  I have tried to cultivate a reputation of reliability and have been slowly succeeding.  The boss seems to like me more, and I tend to get hired for more jobs because of it.  In a time like this where I’m desperate for money this is a huge boon.  I have tried incredibly hard not to repeat my past mistakes, which include talking and not working and coming into work late.  I have mostly succeeded.

            The other day I found out that it doesn’t take much to set back a years worth of work at all.

            This company’s office is small and off the beaten path.  They hire the same people for most jobs which means I get to work with the same freelancers and salaried employees every time I work there.  I have always gotten along with these people, which includes the other producer who is not my friend outside of the office and the editors, headed up by the lead editor.

            Now at this point in time I have learned that talking in the workplace can get you into trouble.  I talk a lot in my daily life but have learned to tone it down when at work.  However, if you work with me, act amazingly friendly to me, and try to start conversations with me about subjects you know I like then I will reciprocate like a normal human being.  This usually isn’t a problem in the office because if you’re talking to me, chances are your talking as much as I am…which leads to what I like to call “The Group Defense.”  Because if you can claim others are doing what you’re doing as a defense then chances are you’re not getting in as much trouble as you should be.

            It’s a defense a six year old would use, and I’m happy to say it still works in your twenties.

            So if the guy who usually acts like your friend and talks to you and listens to what you’re saying about any subject, including work, turns on you it can be pretty bad.  It can be even worse when this guy technically outranks you.  Ladies and Gentlemen welcomes to my current predicament.

            In this case the bad guy in question is the head editor, who many times starts conversations with me about such important subjects as The Weather, Which Girl is Hotter, and How Much The Current Work Assignment Sucks.  He then many times invites me out to eat lunch during break, and at one point even invited me to a movie.  However I am not his favorite employee.  That would be another editor that acts as his right hand man.  I get along with that guy even more, having played golf with him on a few occasions (which usually are when I can afford it).  I enjoy working with these guys.  They make me laugh when I’m bored, which can be often depending on the assignment I’m given.

            So when I left the office the other day after a day of quality control work on some very fun B-Movies, I was asking to be hired more for this type of work.  I love working on quality control work when the work involves watching fun things.  Cheesy B-Movies from the 80s happen to be my forte, so be hired to watch them and get paid is like some sort of minor dream job.  But…then I wasn’t asked back.  I asked my friend why I wasn’t, and I learned an unfortunate truth about the film industry.  Trust No One.

            The lead editor had taken it upon himself to bad mouth me after I led the office very loudly to my boss and others.  His complains included my talking and my work ethic.  I find the part where he complains about me saying I like my job too much funny because, let’s face it, isn’t that what bosses want to hear?  However, by pulling this stunt in the middle of the office to my bosses face I have been set back a years worth of work building his respect.  This is probably a big part on why I wasn’t brought back this week to work more.  My reputation was destroyed in two minutes by one very big bastard.

            The especially ironic part is that this guy has no right to complain.  His work ethic sort of sucks, he talks as much if not more than me, and that day he had taken me out to lunch with his right hand man where he had talked about the work I was currently doing…where I had admitted I really like my job.

            If my boss had complained about this type of thing it would be different.  But he didn’t.  Instead he has been giving me more work.  The other producer also complimented the work I was doing THE SAME DAY saying it was very thorough.

            I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why this guy would go and disparage me like that.  It hurts.  My friend theorized it was because I might be threatening some of the work his right hand man was getting.  I don’t know about that.  They are both more experienced than me, but if he feels threatened many he should….you know…have his friend and employee work harder.  That’s really the only reason we can guess, outside of the dude just complaining because it’s a small office and he has no one else to talk about.

            Dude, fuck this guy.  Fuck this guy in his ear.  And also, someone surgically remove the knife embedded in my back please.  It hurts, and it’s unseemly.

            I can’t really confront the guy since I’m not supposed to know this information, so all I can do is hope to get hired again (I probably will be at some point) and work hard and show everyone just how awesome I am at what I do.  All the while I will be biting my tongue off whenever the lead editor or my boss is around, simply nodding and agreeing with whatever they tell me like a good little stooge.  Oh, and I will never trust anyone in that office again….of anywhere else…again.

            Lesson learned.  Take notes people, so this doesn’t happen to you.

            High School ended up being a decent time for me.  However my Mom always had the joke that I was ready leave for college years before I actually did.  Part of the reason was because my high school didn’t really have what I was looking for.  I wanted some multimedia classes and clubs and what I ended up doing instead was starting up the Writing Club.

            Yes, I was a nerd.

            My only real film education at this point was an easy A of a film class in high school where the teacher though Spielberg directed Poltergiest.  For the record, it was Tobe Hooper (although supposedly Sir Steven directed some sequences, but you can look up the filming of that movie online for more detail).  I said this in class and was told I was wrong, and that was when my brain gave up on film class. 

            My brain was stuck on film and writing, though, and therefore at this school I was not given much in the way of extra-curricular things to do.  I had no interest in sports since the only one I played was bowling…which wasn’t a sport, but a club.  And half of those club meetings ended up with us hanging out inside the bowling alley arcade anyway.  Looking back makes me think how much more productive I could have been before I remember that my thought process was “fuck it, let’s shoot terrorists.”

            At my parents prodding and my own self interest, I tried other things outside of film, writing, or bowling.  I was in different band classes for four years as a Percussionist which satisfied my hunger to hit something with a stick but never really stuck with me otherwise.  I was also in both Moot Court and Mock Trial in an attempt to become interested in Law. 

            Moot Court was what made me decide never to be a lawyer, to my mother’s continuing dismay.  The experience was basically four months of research followed by ten whole minutes of presentation.  Afterwards I asked our teacher when we would do it again, at which point I got laughed at.  I was told that was it.  I dislike real research to begin with, and after four months the payoff was me being told “sorry but your group lost the case.”  I was done with law after that.

            Admittedly, the money that lawyers make is still horribly tempting to my near poverty self, but I digress.

            Then I joined something called Theater Sports.

            Theater Sports was a school club term for “Improv Comedy.”

            Improv Comedy saved me from High School.

            The Theater Sports crew met after school twice a week in order to make comedy.  They weren’t too serious about it, and a lot of the time the club meeting would break down into conversations about which Simpsons episode was the best or what food we hated most at the snack bar.  The club was mainly made up of a bunch of friends that had been thrown together by their lack of interest in anything that would make them remotely popular.  It was made up of a few drama nerds, some comic fans, a whole bunch of Role Playing Game people; in general, the all star cast of misfits we all remember from high school.  My first day in the club they forced me to perform in front of them, which was apparently their version of hazing.  I ended up going overboard and “killing” somebody during the sketch, forcing a halt to the game.  They congratulated me on being the first person ever to kill someone in a skit comedy game and told me to come back whenever I wanted.

            I liked them immediately.

            As the years past in high school, however, it became apparent that drama and improv comedy was not filling that empty void in our souls.  I quickly found out that I could not act to save my life.  If I made a callback at the school plays, I was happy as all hell for a week.  To say I never actually made it into a play is a given.  Looking back on it, I couldn’t memorize dialogue at all so it was probably a good thing that they never put me in something written by Shakespeare.  My brain would have melted.  So I turned to writing.

            Writing was not working either.  I had attempting to write my first screenplay and somehow had created my own format in the process (I didn’t even know what Final Draft was in High School).  At the time I was proud to have written over a hundred pages in my lifetime.  The script was about teen angst and…well…mainly teen angst.  My father read the whole thing in a day and promptly told me that he rather hit his hand with a hammer than read my script again.  Bluntness is apparently encouraged in my family.

            His point was that it was depressing.  This did not encourage me.  I set aside writing scripts and tried to find another creative outlet that did not involve rejection.  I was ignorant at the time.  I later learned that everything involves rejection.

            At some point, someone in the Theater Sports group got the idea to make a movie.  We didn’t really know what it was going to be about, or how we were going to make it, but God dammit we were going to make a movie.  The world could go to hell; this was to be our accomplishment.

            It took about a day to get a stupid low budget idea and most of the jokes ironed out.  The movie did not have a script, nor would it need one.  Our school was old, and had a large collection of ancient wood Podiums the teachers used to mainly lean on.  Our idea, therefore, was to be a satire of the school about alien Podiums coming to invade the high school by posing as students and eventually killing us all.

            We thought this was genius.  No one was around at the time to tell us how truly idiotic it all sounded.  We did get a few jokes out of it, though, including one where a podium simply falls over to kill somebody.  The trick was to be done by fishing wire and trick camera angles.  We had it all planned out in extreme detail by the time the day was over.

            We just needed a camera.

            A guy in our group told us not to worry, he had it covered.  His name was Mike.  He was easily over 6 feet tall and had a gigantic curly white guy afro.  He talked in a deep voice, was mainly known for his funny one liners, and drove a giant red Van we called “The Flying Toaster.”  He was not known for any technological prowess or for having any money to spend.  He was simply the guy who thought Podiums killing people was funny.  No one has any idea how he was getting a hold of a camera, but if he could get it to us for free no one would complain.

            The next day Mike showed up to school with the biggest camcorder we had ever seen.  This thing was not digital.  It was not even Hi-8 tape.  It was a gigantic camera that easily weighed about 20 pounds that used whole VHS tapes as film.  VHS tapes are quite large.  To accommodate them, the back end of the camera was especially massive.  We all stared at it, trying to comprehend how it actually worked.  I finally was the one to voice our concern.

            “Mike,” I said, “what is this?”

            “This is the camera.” Said Mike, oblivious to our stares.  

            “…Are you sure?” Was all I could respond with.

            The camera, we found out, belong to Mike’s parents.  It was probably about ten years old.  It had a lot of switches and knobs on it that only Mike knew how to use, so Mike quickly was deemed the camera guy.  The quality of this camera could not be better than “poor” and the thing was so big it reminded us of a news crew camera, only a lot worse.  After all, it did go over Mike’s shoulder.  Mike also had a very limited amount of tapes for it, but at least VHS could record for about two hours per tape.

            Mike proved the camera did work so we decided to roll with it.  We would start filming after school.  And that’s exactly what we did.

            The first shot was to be a special effects shot.  We would film a place where nothing was, then move two podiums into the area and film again.  BOOM!  Transporting Podiums!  We patted ourselves on the back for our ingenuity.  I chose to ignore the fact that I had met a kid who could do this when he was eleven.

            After that shot came the shot of the kid dying via Podium falling on him.  It was not chronologically next, but it was the easiest to do at the time.  This begged the question “how are we editing this?”

            I asked Mike.  Mike looked back at me confused, as if he had never thought about this problem before.  Then he thought about it for a second and said “By VCR, I guess.”

            “Can you do that?”

            “I don’t know.  I’ve never tried it.”

            I then had another question.  “How do you edit on the VCR?”

            At this point Mike shrugged and someone else in the group told me not to worry about it because it would all be figured out.  Somehow I doubted it.

            Filming continued on the scene and it became apparent that tying string to a podium so it will fall in the correct manner on a person who is not there was a hard thing to do.  The shot could not seem to match up with what was in our heads.  We did a few angles of the podium falling and had a comic-gold shot of a friend of ours screaming horror movie style (we hoped he was screaming; we were unsure the camera was actually recording sound).  At this point we gave up, called the shot good, and went home because it was getting dark.

            The next day Mike showed up, the camera showed up, and we showed up.  Filming lasted all of five minutes before we became distracted by conversation.  Eventually we went home swearing things would get done tomorrow.

            The next day Mike brought the camera but everyone had something to do after school.  We’d wait until the next day.

            The next day was more of the same.

            And the next.

            And the next.

            A week later I mentioned the movie, and expressed interest in finishing it.  So did Mike.  Everyone else sort of shrugged and said variations on “yeah, sure” and then proceeded to do nothing.

            A few days later I mentioned it again.  This time even Mike shrugged.  No one cared.

            A month later we had an inside joke about Podiums killing people and that was it.  We never saw the footage we shot and we never talked about the movie again.  It didn’t take long for me to figure out why this had happened.

            Filming things was work.  How do you get an unpaid high school student to become disinterested in something in record time?  Tell them that something is work.  It’s that simple.  My group did Improv Comedy because it was fun.  The movie was work we weren’t even getting free meals to do.  One day of one scene being done over and over again was not a fun way to spend an afternoon.  It felt like work, and therefore no one wanted to do it.

            Life returned to normal.  My friends and I would go see movies in theaters, talk about how to make them, do Improv Comedy, stake out the comic store and never talked about making a film again.  This was too bad.  I had decided I liked that sort of work.  I wanted to do it again.

            A year later it was the beginning of Junior year and I decided that I needed to know if I could still enjoy film work, even if I wasn’t being paid.  I wanted to see if this sort of thing was as interesting as it seemed.  I started sniffing around the school for anything resembling a film job.  It didn’t take long for a somewhat legit one to actually fall into my lap.  But that’s a story for another time.

As of right now I’m working 12+ hours a day on a reality show as, you guessed it, a Production Assistant.  Also known as a grunt on a large set.  I’m happy they pay well, and the production is going smooth, but one of these days I hope to be done being a PA.

I am getting some great stories out of this set though.  And I’d love to tell you all about them…except I can’t because I signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement, or NDA.

NDA’s pretty much mean what the name implies.  I can’t disclose anything.  Sometimes even if you sign them it isn’t a big deal to talk about some details.  Other times, like this one, they are extremely strict about it.  so strict that they threaten to sue you outright and then state they can’t film a frame until everyone on set has signed an NDA.

My current work is one of those situations.

So when the show comes out in October or so I’ll tell you all to watch it, and tell you where to watch it.  And then when it’s over I’ll tell you some stories about shooting it.  Until then I’m just going to have to tell some stories about the past that pass the time.  When I can post at least.

Right now I’m going to sleep because I have to wake up at some ungodly early time tomorrow.  Then I’ll get off work at some late time well past 11 hours because I’m insane and like my work (and also like money).  I will post a big post when I can.  Until then I hope I stay safe.

Happy Mothers Day everybody.

Also, I’m still in LA.

Miracles happen.

So I didn’t have work for over three months, except for maybe a day or two a month if I was lucky.  The reason I stopped writing was because my life became more about finding food and finding work than having the spare time to tell stories about working in the Film Industry.

But I survived.  My friend says I always tend to survive like some sort of Los Angeles cockroach.  I don’t like being compared to an insect but I can’t really argue.  This time it was mostly due to luck and my ability to talk myself out of many situations.  I don’t think I’ll get the same chance again.

That’s why I’m happy to have work now.  It’s not exactly permanent, but in this field not much is.  I have worked solidly since early March so I have money again…which means I can buy food again…which means I can stop stressing about rent…which means I can get back to writing!  See?!  This benefits you most!

Wait stop, don’t run!  I have somethings to tell you about surviving without a job and not giving up or going crazy due to boredom and stress.

1) Always stay busy.  In my case that meant apply to as many jobs as possible (including a game store in the LA Ghetto and many, many Starbucks) and writing a lot.  Meanwhile I came up with new ideas for scripts and stories.  Some of these led to researching topics, which led to lots of reading, which led to me becoming interested in certain subjects I wouldn’t be interested in otherwise.  For example, I entertained the idea of writing a story about a guy who joins the Peace Corp.  Since I have no experience with the Peace Corp I ended up researching them, which led me to reading Corp members blogs, which led to more understand and some blogs that still entertain me even though the script is on hold for the moment because I have ten ideas going on at the same time.  I’m weird like that.

2) Need to save money?  99 Cent store has what you need.  Of course, this means braving the 99 Cent store and the people in it.  I have no problem with anyone normally, but when I am accosted by a crazy person, annoyed by five screaming children and followed by someone for awhile for no real reason except I look like a target ripe for the picking it makes me pretty much hate the 99 Cent story and the people in it.  That being said it’s how I survived a month of my life so it was worth it.

3) No job is too small if it pays as long as it’s legal and doesn’t involve sex.  Janitorial work is preferable to starvation.

4) If you keep ramming your head against a brick wall there will be a lot of pain and blood but eventually you might get somewhere.  I applied to an incredible amount of jobs and got rejected by almost all of them (even the Game store in the Ghetto) but eventually I got an assistant editing job that went over a month…that turned into a gig with a reality company…that turned into the gig I’m working now.  I have a bit of money saved now, and at this point I can officially say I’m surviving May IN THE FIRST WEEK OF MAY!!  Considering in February I didn’t know how I was paying rent the day before rent was due this is a massive improvement.

Then again, who knows, mid-June I might be completely fuckered again.

I’m happy to say right now it doesn’t look likely.

So in the next week expect regular posting to resume, telling more stories about how the Film Industry is insane and sucks and might kill you and how I work in it anyway and somehow enjoy it’s pitfalls unless it makes me starve.

And if you’re still reading, Thank God for you.

            I seem to be a magnet of sorts for blood makeup.  This, to me, is never a bad thing.  It can become interesting, however, when other people realize you don’t mind getting covered in gore.  Since I like to use gore in projects too I tend to put up with it.  I figure if I’m going to subject my actors to this treatment I might as well be willing to go through with it.  Plus the pictures that come out of these situations tend to look awesome.

            One of my first major film projects was in my third year of college, and it wasn’t very major.  It was a comedy skit for a skit show I ended up being in charge of (that’s a long story for another time) involving a guy (played by Chris who was actually not behind the camera this time) killing his roommate and trying to pass it off to the authorities when they investigate.  The guy apparently hadn’t killed just one person, but numerous people…with a sword.  This encouraged a cartoonish amount of gore and the immortal line from the killer “I cut myself shaving…with my sword” while trying to explain the blood.  We thought it was funny as hell, but then again it was 2am when this thing got done so everything was funny.

            During this time most the filming took place in my friend’s room.  He was the director so it wasn’t any big deal.  The bathroom was going to be the big climactic “awesome” moment.  It would involve numerous bodies dead all over the bathroom and some blood.  The makeup artist was my friend named Wayne, who also happened to be one of the roommates of the director making this his bathroom.  The first thing to know about Wayne is that he loves special effects and makeup.  The second thing to know about Wayne is that he might be bugfuck crazy.

            When he heard “some blood” his brain apparently translated it as “gallons of gore and entrails hanging from the walls and ceiling.”  I was set to play a dead body in the bathroom and help some of the effects.  The extent of my involvement was to last an our.  It lasted six, mainly because I got caught up in Wayne’s craziness.  So did another cast member.  Eventually the filming out in the room (behind a closed bathroom door) went over an hour long so NO ONE checked on us for over an hour.  This was, in retrospect, probably the problem.

            By the time the director thought to check his bathroom, the place was absolutely destroyed.  We were all soaked in gore from head to toe (my clothes were ruined forever) and there was guts hanging off the mirror.  The floor was basically one big inch deep lake of fake blood, and the walls looked like the elevator scene in The Shining.  We could only smile and leave.

            The director, with a shocked look on his face, simply shut the door. 

            Soon after that the other roommate got back.  He took one look at the bathroom and his jaw hit the floor.  He muttered something like “Oh my fucking god” and simply left the apartment, wanting nothing to do with the carnage.

            The scene was eventually shot without a hitch.  At this point I resembled a car wreck victim; every inch of me was covered in blood or some sort of crusted over thing that made my skin looked cut up.  It was glorious.  One of the gags was the authority figure poking my body in horror and me rolling off the counter I’m laying on into the lake of blood below.  It was fantastic.

            The side effect of this was the clean up, and by extension, how I looked while we were cleaning up.  I now looked like a standing, walking, talking car wreck victim on a day that wasn’t Halloween.  Or as my friend put it, I looked like a zombie.

            I had to take advantage of this immediately.

            We needed paper towels for the cleanup and I quickly volunteered to go to the store.  I called my friend John for help.  He met me outside the building and simply stared in shock at my appearance before simply accepting that I was covered in blood.  I don’t think he expected any less of me, come to think of it.  Then we walked to the store.

            We passed some people on the way, who all stared in some mix of shock and humor.  One person commented on my appearance and my response was “I can’t remember the last fifteen minutes” which got a decent response, but not exactly what I wanted.  Then we reached the store.

            The store was small and full of things students need to survive.  It was also full of people for some reason at 2am.  They all froze and stared as soon as I entered with John.  You could hear a pin drop in the store quite suddenly.  I froze and smiled back.  John looked between the store full of people and me, then turned to the clerk and said loudly…

            “Paper towels and band aids are over here, right?!”  The clerk could only nodd.

            John and I quickly grabbed all the paper towel and napkins the store had to offer with all eyes on us (we forgot about the band aids, since it was a joke anyway) and dumped them in front of the clerk.  He asked what the hell I was doing.  I responded that I had woken up in South Central like this and couldn’t remember why.  THAT got a laugh.  It was about damn time.

            We carried the paper towels back in a very public way and got two more questions about my appearance.  For one I simply said something about a possible murder that I can’t remember (it wasn’t as funny), and for the other person I said in a quiet intense scared voice “THEY’RE HERE!” which got me a frightened look back which still causes a laugh when I remember the story vividly.

            With John shanghaied into helping us clean the bathroom (whether he wanted to or not) it still took two hours to make the bathroom goreless.  In the end it turned out the “washable” blood had actually been soaked into the bathroom’s plaster walls, turning all the walls a strange shade of pink that wouldn’t come out.  Oops.  It later turned out that the bathroom repair and repaint due to our skit cost 600 dollars at the end of the school year, making this thing the most expensive skit we ever shot.  It turned out okay at least, although it was edited by a sophomore who was apparently influenced by Michael Bay so it ended up looking more like a pot head’s fever dream than a funny gore filled comedy skit.  The best thing we ended up getting out of the gory bathroom was funny extra footage that had Wayne sliding across the bathroom floor on his stomach and flopping around like a fish.  We ended up using that in some commercials to preview up our skits.  I can safely say the advertisements worked.

            It took 45 minutes in the God Damn shower to get the blood out and it painted my shower red for a few days, but it gained me a reputation of doing crazy shit on and for film I still have with my friends to this day.  It was also one of the more successful things we ever shot that early into our insane “careers” at school.  Wayne and his two roommates (especially the one that left the room) still call it “the most expensive skit we ever shot” and with some remorse.  I’m just happy nothing that day cost me anything at all except later some skin care products.

Thanksgiving was good up to a point.  I got to visit San Fransisco which is simply a great city.  Also, food with family is always nice and filling, especially free food.

This leads to the real reason I haven’t been posting much; I’ve been too busy looking for work and money.  I’m basically broke, and the still poor economy combined with the holidays equals very little in the way of actual film jobs.  Currently I’m looking for work, or some way to eat.  One of the two.  This takes its toll and sucks up time like you wouldn’t believe.  I’m just thankful I got last months rent paid.  On top of this I have family yelling at me over the fact that I’m failing and that just makes me feel even better about myself…

On top of this a friend of mine died.

2009 has been like this all the way through and needs to be over immediately.

A real post is coming soon, I promise.  I have a backlog of at least five actual stories to post here slowly so I’m not lacking material.  I just don’t have the time to actually go through and edit them, at least until tomorrow or so.  Anyway, wish me luck and I’ll say when things are getting better.

            A PA I was working with in Big Bear got hit by a car.

            On the day he was hit by a car we were stuck in the worst blizzard Big Bear had seen in seven years trying to dig out the grip trucks so we could start our first day of shooting.  We were already over five hours behind, which meant we were already starting to go over budget.  At some point something had broke, and at numerous points people had nearly been injured.  An event like someone getting hit by a car was bound to happen and, frankly, not the worst thing that happened that day.

            Still, getting hit by a car isn’t a great experience.

            He and I had been doing the same job since 7am in the morning; running back and forth helping whoever we could.  I was getting fifty dollars a day (it was yet another Lloyd movie) to run through the snow in jeans to try and get a generator on a trailer out of a snow ditch and was seriously debating on asking for a raise.  We might all have had frost bite, who knows.  By 1pm in the afternoon I was soaked, cold, and tired and yet was still running back and forth across a parking lot trying to dig cars out of snow drifts and bring people warm coffee.

            Anyone who lives in snow knows how tough getting cars out of the snow and ice can be, especially if the car has been stuck there for a long period of time.  Basically, even after clearing away the snow, the car can still be stuck because snow underneath the it has frozen over, fusing the car into the ground.  This means that when the car tries to move its tires spin uselessly while nothing happens.  The main way to solve this problem is with brute force; a few people shove the car as hard as they can while the tires continue to spin.  Eventually the car wins and comes free.  Sometimes this action is especially violent, with the car popping free and flying whatever direction the wheels are spinning until the driver stomps on the breaks.  This is always unexpected.

            The PA was running through the frozen over parking lot when a jeep did just that.

            There was a pop, a revving sound, and the jeep flew backward and rammed right into the PA that just happened to be running behind it at that very moment.  The back of the jeep is tall and flat, meaning instead of falling under or over the car the PA was simply hit head on.  The Driver immediately jammed on the breaks as this happened.  The resulting collision caused the PA to fly back over ten feet and tumble end over end on the ground as the car screeched to a halt.

            The Driver got out of the car at the same time the PA lifted himself off the ground.  “Are you okay?!” the Driver asked, clearly worried for the PA’s health.  The PA, in the meantime, was feeling over his body and shaking out his arm which had taken most the blow.  He finally brushed himself off with a groan and looked around the parking lot.

            “I don’t have time for this!” The PA said.  Then he ran back to the hotel, his original destination.

            The Driver was very confused.

            I later learned a few more things.  The PA had thought he was more important moving and helping the crew than wondering about his arm.  His job was important, and therefore since he could still run his job took precedence.  He seemed fine, and therefore didn’t want to worry about it, especially since the car was undamaged.  He did his job to the letter before sitting down and examining his body for any actual injuries.  His arm, he found out, was bruised up badly and sore but otherwise fine.  The rest of his body had some bruises and scrapes but was otherwise unharmed.  With all the chaos happening that day, he had come away relatively unharmed.  He was lucky and he knew it.  Much much worse could have happened.

            He got a free beer that night for marching on after being hit by a damn car, and then went on with his life with a cool story to tell.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/43125

Fuck it, I’m on team Conan.  That is all.

-       One time I told my friend about what I do for a living, which is described pretty well here on this blog.  He responded that I was the quintessential LA Film Kid.  I’m still trying to decide if I should take offense to this or not.

-       If you’re a producer and you treat your crew like crap, they won’t like you very much.  If you don’t know if you treat your crew like crap, think about how much you yell.  If it’s “a lot” then you treat them poorly, at least in their eyes.  So then if something bad happens and you throw a hissy fit, or if something bad happens to you, the crew will actively root against you and laugh at your misery.  I’ve seen this happen repeatedly.    And if you cry it’s like solid gold for everyone.  Just saying.

-       Some friends of mine were on a set once where for some odd reason the sprinklers that were supposed to be shut off weren’t shut off.  Once they went off they caused puddles and hit lights.  One of the lights went off in the process and due to reasons I don’t understand (for I wasn’t there) the water became electrified, popping and cracking.  Since security in the area did not know how to shut off the lights the fire department was called, causing even more chaos.  This was made worse because it was at a school.  There is no moral of the story here, except that sprinklers and electricity are bad news and electrified water is about as dangerous as it gets.  Seriously, you just stay away from that shit.

-       Many film school teachers are actually great big film snobs.  Most are the friendly type of snob that will actually try to help your film tastes, for better or worse, to rise to their standards in the nicest way possible.  Yes, that’s right, there are actually nice bearable film snobs in the world.  Sometimes they are the obnoxious annoying asshole snobs you want to punch in the face.  I had a teacher I didn’t like at one point who was one of these people.  After putting up with him for months he accidentally admitted his favorite movie might be the animated Transformers movie, at which point he paused and then said “I should have admitted that.”  This did two things: It humanized him slightly and made it so all his other film snob bullshit could easily be excused for being hypocritical.  Optimus Prime wins again!  God I love Transformers.  And remember, Optimus Prime died for your sins.

-       I like working at places that have a good sense of humor about everything, especially what they do.  The place I worked at most recently was staffed full of great people that knew how to do their jobs.  I wish I could go back.  My biggest shock while working there was the fact that they had a dog walking around the office.  When I asked about the dog they responded that the dog was the President of the company.  I was taken aback before I realized that the office had actually tagged the name “President” to the front of the dog’s actual name, Rusty.  So the dog was officially, as far as the office was concerned, “President Rusty.”  They even had a picture of the dog on the staff picture wall with the picture labeled “President. Of the Company.”  The actual owner of the company thought this greatly amusing.  I knew right then I’d like working there.

Film Quote of the Day – “I think they thought ‘we’re both screenwriters, they’re both from the east coast and they are both white.  Fuck it, they HAVE to get along.” – A guy guessing on their school’s logic on why his roommate and him were actually roommates in the first place.  He probably wasn’t far off.