The Secret Lives Of Others

Sometime last week a pinup calendar mysteriously appeared on the camera truck. Somebody (probably the sound department) had smuggled it in and hung it prominently above the bench. It was opened to the month of September where an aging cheerleader stared out at us, sleepy-eyed and legs spread (skirt protecting her naughty bits), her cheeks dented inwards from sucking with tremendous force on a lollipop. The lighting was flat and the image was not particularly erotic and I thought about taking it down because it offended my sensibilities and there were women in my department, blah, blah...

The calendar was called "Hoodrat Hoochie Mamas 2005" and the rest of the girls possessed a similar ghetto-hottie aesthetic. The Latina in cutoffs bending over to sponge a lowrider, the African American girl showing hyperbolic cleavage in a hot pink bra and Adidas sweatpants, the incongrous working-class Irish lush in a tartan skirt holding a Guinness in either hand. The women weren't pretty, exactly--they looked like rejects from the legitimate modeling contest down the street--but their inclusion in this girz-in-da-hood calendar seemed appropriate. Their short bios were sexually suggestive, to the point of satire, and for the first time it occurred to me that it just might be satire after all.

Turns out the calendar was the brainchild of N, the on-set dresser, a short, quiet, respectful young man with glasses, small moustache, and ambiguous sexual orientation. N had made the calendar on spec. This blew our minds. I tried to picture him getting some seed money together, receiving head shots, doing the auditions, casting the girls, approving the costumes, organizing and locking down the locations, conducting the photo shoots, overseeing the printing and the copywriting, all of it. It kind of threw me, it really did. He had obviously spent a lot of time putting this project together.

And that made us love the calendar and love N for making it.

I love that my Southern Boy 2nd Assistant--who won't let his wife work and who smokes very aggressively out of the side of his mouth--I love that he adores old show tunes and drives a Korean car. I love that my PC left-wing loader obtains 80% of her meat from hunting. And I loved that one morning when the reticent, mild-mannered late-40s/early-50s VTR/playback guy started dancing and singing along--COMPLETELY WITHOUT IRONY--to the Violent Femmes on the radio.

It was so surprising, and yet, not.