Surviving Powder Blue

Well, I said I was leaving the movie business but here I am working on another motion picture. This one is called "Powder Blue" and is essentially a "Crash" retread without the on-the-nose racism. What we do have, though, is (after three days of shooting) plenty of non-racist on-the-nose dialogue, a sad stripper, a suicidal Santa Claus, a guy just out of prison trying to redeem himself, a child in a Hollywood coma, hospital jargon and combat photography (whip pans, handheld, etc) to intensify surgery, a dream sequence in heaven?, and a "Magnolia" rip off ending where blue snow falls on everyone and everything. Four depressing stories of losers intertwining on Christmas Eve...no doubt they will redeem themselves...

"Powder Blue" is not exactly subtle, and in many ways it is worse than the last masterpiece, "Midnight Meat Train." Because it actually tries. At first I thought it was pretentious, no, but it's not even that. It's just heavyhanded. Or ham-fisted, as a grip commented. But the best thing of all is that Ray Liotta, Forest Whitaker, and Jessica Biel are turning in good performances (I think Carrie-Anne Moss is in it too), but all of the supporting characters are simply atrocious. Atrocious! So the effect is of having a bunch of A-list actors in a student film. Here you have Forest and Ray in an intense scene... and then a cop comes over and says his lines... Doh! Or the nurse speaks! Ouch! Or maybe these characters are drifitng through a parallel universe where all the bank tellers and barflies an meter maids--all of the support--are incapable of sounding believable. Very surreal.

But here's the real reason for this post:

On the last movie I gained over 20 pounds (eating out of existential boredom) and was such an asshole to be around that the gf basically forbade me to take this movie unless:

1. I wrapped my head around that it was only 7 weeks.
2. I wrapped my head around the fact that I wasn't going to be able to write for 5 hours a day while working 70-hour weeks (seems obvious, sure, but not to me).
3. I understood I was only going to be able to do one thing in my limited downtime, not fifty things.
4. I understood that good physical health leads to good mental health.

So I've abandoned the polyphasic sleep experiment, although I'll go back to it once we finish the movie... I've started the Zone diet and I've started running and doing pilates (which I scoffed at for a long time before actually trying it and having it kick my ass).

We'll see how things develop. Temptation abounds:

Tuesday they had carrot cake, German chocolate cake, homemade white chocolate and macadamia nut cookies, and ice cream with toppings on the dessert table. Yesterday it was the wonderfully crusty mac-and-cheese, corn on the cob, biscuits, and tangy lemonade that came with BBQ at lunch.

Not sure how long I can continue to say no to this stuff...

Some Kind of Monster

As you probably already know, "Some Kind of Monster" is the Metallica documentary that came out a few years ago. The film begins in 2001 when their bass player quits the band and they are having a hard time getting started recording their new record, "St. Anger." They are pressured by management to bring in a celebrity psychiatrist to help resolve interpersonal tensions and get the record done so that everybody can make their money.

Metallica in Therapy is a promising hook and much of the film is good, but there is an awkward tension between what is onscreen and what is really going on. One gets the feeling that the documentary filmmakers have to answer to the label, and to the band, and even if they actually do have some autonomy then there seems to be some self-censoring going on. There are scenes where the band confronts the filmmakers on-camera about whether they actually want the documentary made. These are important scenes for a lot of reasons -- mainly because they address the issue of whether the film crew's presence alters the reality of the bandmembers and their creative impulse (of course!) -- but in the end the filmmakers come off as lackeys of the band, too eager to play nice, too eager to walk away or just fall into step. It's clear that the documentary is only a Rockumentary--a promotional tool--and not investigative in any way.

From this week's New Yorker on biography: "What those uncooperative witnesses want--and what the famous people themselves want, too, when as has sometimes been the case for Secrest, they are still alive and competent to make trouble--is what everbody wants in life: to control the narrative."

The problem is that the band just isn't that interesting. The whole situation is kind of interesting (lead singer Hatfield disappears for a year in rehab, band in therapy, the puppetmasters all coming in to try and steer the foundering ship) but the people aren't so bright and it goes nowhere (for 2 hours and 20 minutes).

More interesting stuff comes when the band decides they are going to cut off the psychiatrist after 2 years on the payroll (at $40k/month). We learn that the psychiatrist is moving his family out to San Francisco to be closer to work (the band) and for the first time in the film the band kind of comes together to gang up on him. After encouraging the lyric writing of the songs to be spread out among all the bandmembers instead of being the sole territory of the lead singer, we see the psychiatrist himself submitting lyrics. He thinks he's part of the band! He's gotten used to it... and when the band tells him he's not needed anymore he backtracks and looks uncomfortable and says, "The work isn't finished. There's still a lot to do on tour." He looks so disappointed.... Haha. This is great great stuff but it gets buried...

Most interesting to me, though, is real story--the psychiatrist's presence and the need for harmony in the band cause EVEN MORE TENSION than before.... St. Anger is, by all accounts, the worst Metallica record ever. Just go to Amazon and check out all the one-star reviews from hardcore fans. The band jams for two years, trying to find good songs collectively, and the results just SUCK. The songs on St. Anger are AWFUL. Hatfield is emasculated as the creative fountainhead of the band and told that he has to accept lyrics from all of the others. No one is in charge. They are supposed to work in a group and because they have to defer to each other's opinions the results are a Frankenstein's monster of compromises. Perhaps this is the true meaning of the film's title.

There are plenty of other bands like this... where the members demand more creative control at the expense of the overall product. Billy Corgan wrote and played all of the guitar parts on the Smashing Pumpkins records for their first three hugely successful records. The band wanted to be more included in the studio instead of just being a tour band. What happened? They started to suck. The Cardigans last record was a similar story. Everyone wanted to contribute instead of letting the original songwriter do everything. Frank Black broke up the Pixies when Kim Deal tried to exert too much influence. Thank God, because I'm sure a series of mediocre records would have followed (nothing against Kim Deal--I have all of her records--but she's certainly no Black Francis...).

(A counter-example of this is XTC, which always seemed to have four or five ABSOLUTELY INFERIOR songs on each record by the bass player, Colin Moulding. I always wondered why Andy Partridge allowed this, but to him, and to them, I guess, band harmony was more important than quality...)

The gf and I have this argument all the time. Collaboration works to a point, after which it stifles individual vision. On the other end of the spectrum you have non-genius-auteurs like Robert Rodriguez, who make decent but not-brilliant movies, all by themselves. They could use a little collaboration. But three people in a room, being told that all of their opinions have equal weight.....well, it just doesn't work.

Harmony in a group setting and producing great work are incompatible. Someone has to lead and someone has to follow.

Our Man In Havana

I was thinking about my last blog posting and the new Wes Anderson movie and how the white-man-journeying-abroad narrative is falling under increasing criticism. These stories focus on Western protagonists navigating an alien land and alien culture and track their reactions to it…or simply use the place as an exotic backdrop for their adventures.

An African artist was talking about this in an interview—he was complaining how Babel and The Constant Gardner just used Africa as a corrupt, fucked-up background for these white melodramas to unfold.

Which is true.

But isn’t it worse for a filmmaker to make a movie entirely about another culture/ethnicity and to get it wrong? How about Memoirs of a Geisha directed by a white dude starring Chinese actors? How about Brother directed by Takeshi Kitano about LA gangs? Whatever you think about Wong Kar-Wai, his first American film (w Natalie Portman and I forget who else) rings false, or so I’ve heard.

For every Ang Lee-directed Ice Storm, there are fifty films where this doesn’t work at all…

Wes Anderson is a white boy and makes films about white boys navigating a foreign landscape. It is what he knows. Wouldn’t it be more offensive to presume he could make a film entirely about the Indian experience, with no Western characters, better than an Indian filmmaker?

So maybe the idealistic answer is to give these other voices a way to express themselves, sure, everybody should have a voice, everybody in the world…but then the market isn’t going to support that either. A movie made entirely in Afrikaans isn’t going to bring the same dollars as Rush Hour 3, even if the marketing budgets are comparable.

Is the free market always good? Will it regulate itself? Will people get sick of these recycled Hollywood movies and go elsewhere for their stories? Will audiences revolt, eventually?

I am very skeptical. Even when you look on the gender front, there seem to be fewer women working than even twenty years ago. Whatever happened to Susan Seidelman, Amy Heckerling, and Penelope Spheeris? Or action directors Kathryn Bigelow and Mimi Leder? Sure, there’s probably a lot of interesting women working in indie film land, but basically all we’ve really got is the inane romantic comedy robot, Nancy Meyers.

Women do seem to flourish in TV, as guest directors, where their voice can be steamrolled by the momentum of an existing show and its tribe of writer/producers.

But, Jesus, I am getting so tired of the same narratives...

Post #201

Yesterday was the 200th post on the Front Porch, by the way.

Hey, That's Mine! (Long)

Part I: The Teen Wolf Effect

On the first day of shooting “Way of the Puck” three and a half years ago, we discovered the unthinkable: another film crew starting their air hockey documentary at the same time. It felt like that meta-moment in the early underappreciated mockumentary “Man Bites Dog” where a film crew following a hitman around stumbles across another crew following around ANOTHER hitman. One of the crews is using film and one is using tape and I think the film guys kick the video crew’s ass, if I remember right, maybe even killing them.

A few months after meeting this other air hockey documentary crew we heard of a third film crew making THEIR air hockey documentary.

First, I thought, “Oh shit, it’s a race.” For a while, though, I considered the residual effects of niche success, or, what I call the Teen Wolf Effect. Maybe it wasn’t a race. Perhaps the success of an air hockey movie would open people’s minds and air hockey could enjoy a little run before fading away again. Perhaps two movies coming out at the same time would convince viewers that some sort of fad was happening and encourage them to sit up and pay attention.

That lasted for a few minutes before I came to my senses. There would be no Teen Wolf Effect. The movie and the market were too specific. Whether it turned out as crap or as a masterpiece, the first movie would block the success of the second one (and the third one). Watch a movie about shuffleboard. You’re not going to want to watch another doc about shuffleboard with a slightly different perspective. You’re going to want to see something else.

No way. The race was on.


Part II: Another Wacky Sport To Tick Off the List

A year and a half ago a friend and I finished writing a ping-pong movie called “The Secret Unbelievable.” About this time, we heard noise of something called “Balls of Fury,” a ping-pong movie starring Christopher Walken. This was a little discouraging—there wouldn’t be room for two ping pong movies in the world, after all. It was too specific. Two jai alai films coming out in the same year—no, I don’t think so.

But we took comfort in the fact that “Balls of Fury” would take the obvious approach—broad comedy, Asian caricatures, sub-SNL writing. Ours was about ping pong, sure, but it was very different animal from whatever “Balls of Fury” was going to be.

Well, I’m seeing the ads all over now:

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809702030/video/

And it looks like “Balls of Fury” was everything we thought it was going to be: obvious, broad, and kind of lame. It’s like they wrote down the first things that came into their head when somebody said “Ping Pong Movie.”

Our movies are apples and oranges, apples and oranges—our movie isn’t really about ping pong even though it’s definitely central to the movie. Anybody could see that the projects couldn’t be any more different, right? Surely they could see that? It hurts to have the market on our little movie niche cornered already, sure, especially when it’s by this low-grade farce, but surely people will see the vast gulf of difference instead of just labeling our project as “another ping pong movie”?


Part III: The Kibosh

No, way more disturbing is the newly released trailer for Wes Anderson’s new movie, “The Darjeeling Limited,” which effectively puts the kibosh on our efforts.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox_searchlight/thedarjeelinglimited/trailerb/

If we argue that “Balls of Fury” is a totally different movie than ours, then we have to admit that “The Darjeeling Limited” is exactly the same. Except our movie takes place in China instead of India. And it has ping pong. And there are two brothers instead of three.

But the rest of the thing is exactly the same.

Almost exactly.

Two brothers who embark on a flawed “spiritual journey” in order to—usually reluctantly—reconnect with each other. A road trip in a foreign country where everything goes wrong. In fact we even talked about Owen Wilson as a face for one of the characters. “Like Owen Wilson without being Owen Wilson,” I think I said. “Or Owen Wilson before he became popular,” he said. “Before we knew who he was. Before we got sick of him.”

Even a lot of the dialogue is similar. The aspect ratio and a lot of the compositions we talked about are the same.

But mostly it’s the tone of the thing. Kind of sad and yearning, but funny too. I can’t really explain it—watch the trailer. The spirit of the movie is identical, even though I’ve been finding my relationship with Wes Anderson going increasingly distant, ever since Bottle Rocket.

The problem with Wes Anderson is that he just doesn’t seem to be evolving. He’s the talented kid in class who pisses you off because he is so bright and original but doesn’t live up to his potential. “The Life Aquatic” pisses me off more way more than lazy product like “Balls of Fury” because Anderson is so close to greatness (you can see it, taste it) but he seems to fail every time. And every subsequent movie makes me think he’s a one-trick pony.

I feel that he’s let me down. Personally.

And now so even more than ever.


Part IV: The Front Porch

Recently, Starbucks started a whole campaign called “The Front Porch.” “Life’s Better on the Front Porch” it says. Then there are little wacky quotes of hipsters next to hi-con, graphic compositions of people slurping foofy drinks—“Heard on the Porch:” it says, “Running and Flip-Flops Don’t Fix.” Or: “Some Do Yoga. I Do Hammocks.”

Keep your goddamn hands of my Porch. Hear me?

Just give me the damn coffee…


Part V: Here I Pause So That You May Reflect

Karen says I should feel good about all this because it means my ideas are viable and that there are always more ideas, right?

I choose to take a less optimistic view. It’s not like any ideas were stolen (although that has happened too, in the past). It’s not like any of them are startlingly original either, but they are specific, and the risk doing something specific is that you bone yourself if anybody else is doing a similar project, and you can bet your bottom dollar that someone, somewhere, is doing a similar project as yours.

It’s easy to be eclipsed when you’re skinny, after all.

That’s about it. Thanks for listening. Go Mariners.

Back From the SLC

Well, another visit has come and gone and I’m back in Los Angeles gearing up for what I do best: slaving on motion pictures nobody cares about…

Highlights from the activity-jammed weekend in the idyllic Salt Lake City area:

--Chrysler Sebring—Get in my Sebring, Now, Sucka
--Captain Fireball Bowls Two Consecutive 170+ Games at the Sue Rich. And is Very Noisy About It
--3.2 Beer at the Pub. I Am So Full.
--Gus: Lovable Pet or Alternative Energy Dynamo?
--Mosquito Free Mountain Lakes
--10,000 Calorie Dinner For One: Bacon Cheeseburger, Corn Dog, Onion Rings, Coke, Raspberry Shake in Kamas
--Logan Street Book Fair
--Gus v. Garden Hose
--Startlingly Low Breast Implant Ratio at the Local Non-Starbucks Coffee Shop (Also No One Wearing Clingy Sweatpants That Say “Juicy” On Da Butt). Shocking!
--Incredible Pop-Up Book and Folding Exhibit at the University Museum.
--Black Eye at the Hper
--Harry Potter and the Filler of Big
--Sheesh, Look At How Far My California Dollar Will Go In the Real Estate Market Here. Why Don’t I Just Move To This Place?
--Are You a Member of this Club? Errr. –or— Forget Pay to Play, You Gotsta Pay to Pay
--Logan Street Docco-Thon
--The Pub, Part 2

Grizzly Man (Long)

I used to find excruciating pleasure in watching student films. Usually they were terrible, of course, and technically incompetent, but sometimes they were quite brilliant, and often they were brilliant BECAUSE they were technically incompetent. The editing was a little wrong and the eyelines were off, the lighting was inconsistent, the performances were way too big or way too small. The camera was always in the wrong place, wearing the wrong lens, composing a weird frame. There were a lot of tiresome films about smoking (I did one of these too, I admit, as a lighting exercise), or films where nothing happened, but there were also Michael Bay wannabees who went for sledgehammer tactics right of the gate.

Because there are rules about these things. There is a certain filmic syntax that has developed over the last hundred years—about how to shoot a scene, where to put your camera for all of the coverage so that it cuts together unobtrusively, how to edit without jarring. And often times—watching these student films—things would jar without knowing why. Things are jarring universally—it doesn’t matter if the viewer has some film theory under his belt or not. Something just clicks in the brain—That’s a weird edit… or.. What just happened?… or that actor is facing the wrong way… or this angle bothers me. Some of it is because we’ve developed a shooting and editing style that everyone is used to and when is violated it triggers an uncomfortable response in the viewer. So much of the way we ingest cinema is is learned. But just as much is with us from birth, I think...what the brain will accept and what it won't when it's provided with a string of separate images.

You can’t cut from a wide shot to a close-up if you only come off-axis a little bit. You can punch in directly or come off-axis more than fifteen degrees but nothing in between. Eyelines should be just slightly off camera—too close to the lens and the viewer thinks he’s being looked at and the fourth wall is demolished…too far away from the lens and the viewer feels more like a spectator and less like a participant. Shot-reverse-shot dialogue needs to match the same head size between actors. Etc. Etc.

Student films often violate the rules because they don’t know the rules, or they just aren’t good at the rules. So watching them suddenly makes you conscious of the filmmaking craft—because suddenly you’re conscious of where the camera is and how the editing makes you feel weird and how the music is a wrong. Hollywood does such a great job with mechanics that we’re used to a seamless string of images rolling right on through. It’s natural, it feels natural, everything edits together like butter. We only concentrate on performance and story; there is nothing mechanically weird to disrupt the fictional dream.

Well, not only does Grizzly Man violate the rules of narrative, it violates the more lenient rules of documentary.

Grizzly Man appeared on quite a few top-ten lists and was one of the most successful documentaries of 2005. And yet, I hated almost every single aspect of the movie (spoilers ahead):

--Didn’t like Timothy Treadwell, the Grizzly Man himself. Thought he was a wacked-out surfer dude with problems, who cares…
--Didn’t think that he was interesting enough for the viewer to care. Didn’t think his past as an alcoholic and failed actor made me care. Who cares?
--Didn’t like his wacky, non-contemplative schtick..
--Hey, how about the surplus of weird interviews that went nowhere?
--And the motley group of thoroughly unremarkable and unauthoritative group of interviewed experts? What about these people?
--Weird anecdotes selected form these interviews (friend’s irrelevant story of how Timothy’s Prince Valiant haircut stayed in place, always, even while surfing). Why is this in the movie?
--Herzog’s pretentious and intrusive narration. “The glacier was a metaphor for Treadwell’s tortured soul” etc. Come on Werner! Sheesh!
--Herzog’s intrusive philosophies: “Here I disagree with Treadwell. Life is chaos and murder, and unthinking!” Who asked you?
--Herzog’s presence in a scene where he, filmed from behind, listens to the recording of Treadwell and his girl getting mauled. Herzog tells Treadwell’s ex-girlfriend “that she must never listen to this tape” and that “she must never look at the pictures down at the coroner.” Hi Werner! What are you doing here?
--Curious musical choices.
--Scenes where nothing happens.
--Scenes where Treadwell rants.
--More scenes where Treadwell rants, just like those other scenes, hmmm. Not a lot different, no.
--Odd interview questions and non-sequiturs.
--Intrusive camerawork. Unmotivated zooms.
--An absolutely bizarre handheld interview with the coroner who walks around with the camera in his face, re-enacting the contents of the mauling tape. He stares into the camera, floating around, bug-eyed, gesturing wildly like a first-year drama student. Why is he looking into the camera? Weird! Yikes!
--The fun-loving sequence where timothy plays with wild foxes! Awww! Look, he’s domesticating wild animals while a cheery acoustic guitar plays in the background! Isn’t it cute?
--A general, pervasive, filmmaking clumsiness.
--On and on.

What fascinates me about Grizzly Man, however, is that in the end it’s a rare rare rare bird: A film composed of awful, incompetent component parts that’s fairly magical as a whole.

I can’t get this movie out of my head!

Of course the movie isn’t really about Treadwell in the end. It’s about Herzog, of course. This doesn’t really come as a surprise—Herzog’s self-indulgent nihilism and madness have been on display for decades. I mean, anyone who has Klaus Kinski as your alterego for several movies isn’t really a poster child for mental health. You can read about “Fitzcarraldo” here, when Herzog had a ship hand-carried over the Andes for his movie…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzcarraldo

But why do you have to insert yourself in the movie? I yelled at the screen. ARRRGG!!! Awful! In fact, I kept groaning and saying “awful” over and over. Herzog is awful! Why can’t he just be normal? Terrible, really terrible….Damn you, Werner. You suck. Werner Herzog needs to take some filmmaking classes down at the JC, goddamnit.

But in the end it was great! Treadwell’s footage is spectacular and Werner’s weird Teutonic nihilism offer an nice counterpoint to Treadwell’s naïve and sentimental relationship with nature.

Is Werner smarter than all of us or is he just lucky? I have no idea. All I know is that Grizzly Man took me somewhere else for 2 hours and showed me a world that I’ll lever live in, with remarkable people I’ll never meet, doing remarkable things.

Good job.

Heat the Heat

I never did do a proper wrap-up of Picky's visit last April. I have been remiss, I have.

I shall note the following things:
--We are no longer able to consume beer with an intensity higher than 3% or we will be useless the next day, this will be noted...
--Picky lamented the absolute lack of street tacos and roach coaches in the strictly zoned West Hollywood region, this was noted, repeatedly, around 2AM nightly...
--No basketball was played, for better or worse, this was noted...
--Picky noted multiple establishments on Sunset Strip that liked to "heat the heat," that is, bring out those outdoor seating furnaces and ignite them at 4pm when it dipped below 80 degrees, this is noted...
--Celebrity sighting (sort of): Former Jazz player John Ameche at the Griddle Cafe. Picky was very excited about this and claimed (rightly) that he was the only person in the whole restaurant who could identify him and describe his play style.
-- To-go items wrapped up in bright golden foil in the shapes of animals (rabbit, here) from Gladstones on PCH, this will be noted.
--Sat around and watched SportsCenter on Picky's last night here, instead of going out, this is noted...
--Coffee or beer, this was the existential question of the weekend, here noted....

I shall be returning the favor this weekend, where I will come to the SLC to dominate Picky in bowling, karaoke, and, of course, one on one...

Day 8 -and- Condiment's Polyphasic Sleep Index Week 1 In Review

Day 8:

Not so good. Very sluggish.

Three napping meltdowns in a row:

Nap 3 from yesterday, shut alarm off and slept an additional 90 minutes.
Nap 1 from today, shut alarm off and slept an additional 90 minutes.
Couldn't make it to nap 2 today before going down for another 100 minutes or so.

Totally out of it.

Extremely non-productive on the writing front. Slowing down on the donkeywork as well. Must refocus.

*Sigh*


Week 1 Review:

It could very well be that this sleeping project is not sustainable and that I'll feel more and more sleep deprived as it goes on.

Another, more hopeful, hypothesis: I've only been taking 2 naps recently instead of the inconvenient 3. It seemed like I was fresh and productive and not missing the third nap, but maybe the third nap is more important than I've realized.

I've also upped the coffee intake which is basically robbing Peter to pay Paul. More awakeness now but more sleepiness later. I will try to minimize the coffee intake and take the 3rd nap, in spite of the inconvenience.

Week 2 will be more problematic because I'm working Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and will not be able to take 3 naps (or even two, most probably)

Literary Potboiler

I'm wondering if anyone can recommend some plot-driven fiction that rises above the muck, preferably (but not exclusively) in the mystery/suspense/crime genres. Books that create a nice mood of psychological dread are especially coveted!

Old and new books are both good, all genders, other genres are okay too, really whatever, anything is great as long as it's plot-driven and cool.

Thanks!

Ballhog

Last Sunday I invited a friend to come out and play in our closed Sunday morning basketball game. He isn't a close friend, but he is a good work friend, and I've known him since I moved out here. These days I don't see him much--maybe twice a year--but I just worked with him recently and we always seem to get along. He's genuinely friendly and not arrogant, in other words, totally un-Hollywood.

He's short and round, not fat, and not really possessing a pure basketball body if you know what I mean. I think he played soccer in college, but these days he looks a little dumpy (that's a terrible word but I how else to describe it). But he showed interest in playing with us and even though the games have been crowded lately I invited him to come because he's a good guy and why not, right?

Well, he ended up on the other team, and much to my surprise, was kind of a ballhog. He shot the ball about 75% he was passed to and, if he was open, he shot it 100% of the time, no matter what the distance.

I was kind of shocked. He was out there gunning 3s and taking off-balance shots and generally being kind of a black hole. I couldn't believe it. In the end he started hitting some of those shots, but I was bothered by this breach of basketball etiquette, especially his first time out with another group, my group.

Now he's talking about coming back every week.

We showed up separately so people don't know he's connected to me, necessarily, but they will.

Arg, what to do, what to do?

Condiment's Daily Sleep Index:
Yesterday was a little murderous (I slept through one of my alarms for 90 minutes) and felt out of it, but today, Day 5, has been pretty good. I'm even cutting my naps back to two a day to see if that's more workable. Once I start this movie I don't know how feasible taking 3 naps a day, every 4.5 hours, is going to be.

The Polyphasic Sleep Experiment

Today is day 4 of my new sleep system. The MB heard me preach about it yesterday but I still have a lot to say.

Polyphasic sleep (there’s a good entry at Wikipedia) is sleep that spreads itself out in little naps throughout the day instead of going for one big 8-9 hr hibernation every night. The legend is that DaVinci took 6 30-minute naps spread throughout the day, without ever having a long sleeping period. Buckminster Fuller was an advocate, as was Edison, perhaps, and others.

The idea being that you can substitute a full 90-minute sleep cycle with a 20-minute power nap if you get down into REM sleep immediately.

One also becomes forced to consider the length and duration of his cycles. Sleeping 7 hours will make one feel way more zombiefied than only sleeping 6 (because 7 hours has you waking up in deep stage four sleep, sabotaging you with all of that sleep intertia, whereas coming up after 6 has you emerging right as you come out of light sleep).

A lifetime of naps is pretty hardcore, however, so after considerable reading I decided on a hybrid system:

4 ½ of core sleep nightly (12am to 4:30am)
3 20-minute naps (roughly every 4 ½ hours)

That’s it.

The gf thought it was insane, but now approves, and says I actually seem more rested, and certainly happier.

The Cons:
--This may work but might not be healthy for the body in the long run. There’s probably a reason why the human body defaults to an 8-hour long sleep if left to its own devices without alarm clocks around. I plan to do a fortnightly 9-hour reboot just to give my body some of the missing deep sleep it craves.
--I could very well feel like a zombie from days 3-8 as the body adjusts to this new sleeping methodology. I admit, this morning was hard.
--Normal people think this is strange behavior…and don’t get why I have to retreat for naps all day long.
--A normal job situation makes this difficult unless you can nap at lunchtime every day.

The Pros:
--Over 18 hours of pure productivity every day.
--Daily exercise, cooking, film watching, reading, and blogging because of these extra hours.
--Alcohol consumption down to zero, immediately (it’ll screw up my sleep schedule)
--Coffee consumption down to 16 oz a day, immediately (about a third of what it was)
--Drinking gallons of water throughout the day to flush my body so I can sleep during my naps.
--More time freed up to spend with the GF
--Fewer hours of sleep, but better quality sleep, so feeling more rested.

Anyway, I’m going to post a little footnote everyday to monitor progress. I might need this thing to stay on target. So please indulge Condiment and his Daily Sleep Index if you will….

A random side note: We saw Ratatouille last night and it was AWESOME. Just great. The GF and I were remarking that it might have been the first time both of us had wanted to actually go to the same movie... Pixar and its people just blow my mind. I was reading somewhere (the New Yorker?) that Ratatouille gets better, more believable, more moving performances out of its animated characters than 99% of live-action movies do from their real actors. That’s about right, I think. The best part: a flashback near the end which had me howling with genuine laughter, the gf bawling her head off, and the kids in the audience gaping in wide-eyed wonder. All at the same time. Really great. Highly recommended.

That's Mr. Whore, To You

Following Dr. Write's inspiring lead, I've decided to dedicate July to the resumption of the novel. I took a movie that starts on July 30 so hopefully this'll motivate me to get going.

The problem? I've admitted to myself that my plotting is sucky, with way too many characters and way too much going on, so I've decided to stoop down into Hackworld and use traditional plotting for mysteries and detective novels as a skeleton. I'm not really writing a mystery and I'm certainly not doing a detective novel, so what's the point? Not sure, but it does seem to be solving some elemental problems.

The big issue now is reconciling the new need for intricate plot planning and puzzle-making with the old Forge Ahead No Matter What yawp that is NaNoWriMo. I started forging ahead but I am finding that this is not the best way to form an efficient, tight, satisfying plot. Indeed, I am still trying to undo the freeform damage that my frist draft laid out so messily.

So, it feels like a copout but I've got the index cards on the floor and the How-To books from the library and I'm devoting the first week to actually sorting out the narrative. Instead of doing actual writing.

Is this work? Hm. It certainly takes time.

I mean, I don't think it's unproductive. But it's not really productive, either. It's somewhere in between. Semi-productive?

Really, it feels like an excuse for just not sitting down and doing the work.

Lollygaggin.

Don't Hate the Playa

June was my busiest bloggin month since November 2005 (the heyday of the Front Porch), so there. I will try to continue at this pace through July. I feel more self-actualized than ever. I think bloggin helps me lose weight, too... (not really)

Thanks for listening.

Find the Interesting Human

Lately I've been thinking about starting another documentary project. I have been considering what I would do differently, what I would do the same, what I would do at all. And although it's a messier way to work, I do think it's important to allow the material to shape the work. The opposite of this occurs in news (or Michael Moore documentaries, for good or bad)--they start with a script and the whole point of the filming is to grab sound bites and clips that support the original story. Kind of like narrative work, but with "real" imagery.

Sure, it's a stronger, tighter, more efficient, more structurally sound way of working, but it hardly leaves room for surprises. Look at Capturing the Friedmans, which started out as a doc on NY birthday party clowns, then became something much different.

No, I think the more honest way to work is to not have a definite plan at all. Gradually it'll become clearer what the angles are, who the stories belong to, etc, but initially one should be open to pretty much anything.

Secondly, I've been thinking that the "angle" and "subject matter" of the film are utterly secondary to the characters. Documentary is not so different than narrative cinema; it needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. It needs an inciting incident, continuing conflict, character development, rising action, etc. All the usual stuff. Sure. But the subjects are more important than all of this stuff, in my opinion. Your film could be about shuffleboard, or plate techtonics, or paper manufacture, and if your characters are interesting, then they'll carry the film. It's harder, I think, to make an IDEA carry the movie (though I am looking forward to this Helvetica documentary in limited release now).

So the other most important thing becomes: Find the Interesting Human.

To Recap:

Find the Interesting Human.

-and-

Don't Have a Plan.

So these are the life lessons that my 3-Year Self-Created Documentary Film School have taught me.

Hardly a curriculum to start an academy around, no.

Hardly a good way to go about getting outside funding too, hmmm, how about that? Then again, I suppose this is what everyone goes through when writing a grant, or any proposal, really. There will be a certain amount of bullshitting, and deviating, and later, explaining, lots of explaining to do.

For now, though, we must bullshit.

Behold the Forwarder -or- Share the Wow

I've never really liked all the forwarded stuff that ends up in my in-box. Best case scenario: There are some funny jokes. Worst case scenario: A bunch of behavioral surveys or modern-day equivalents of the chain letter.

In the event that the forwarded material isn't junk it's pretty hit-and-miss as to whether I'll appreciate it or not. Which got me thinking that forwarding has a lot more to do with the Forwarder than the Forwardee.

Sometimes the act of forwarding has nothing to do with the content of the message itself. It's a nonverbal text message.

Hey.
I see you.
How's it going?
I acknowledge that you're alive.
Look, I was thinking about you.

But it also assumes an intimacy on the part of the Forwarder. I understand you, it says. I saw this thing and I thought it was cool and I thought you would think it's cool too so you should consume the Forwarded Material then we can commingle in its coolness.

Look, we can share this cool thing together. And that will make us closer together.

But the thing is rarely cool. This is the problem. So sometimes a schism is created, or a cleft, or whatever. Instead of bridging a gap it splits it open. It announces something different:

Hey, you know nothing about me.
Those things that you think are interesting, hmmm, not so sure about that.
Why are you making me read all this?
We are totally different people.

I say all this because I've become an avid Forwarder over the last 2 months. I have forwarded more in the last 2 months than all of the months that came before it in my life, combined.

Part of it is because I've started my Internet Reading Effort (IRE) and I've increased and widened my reading load tenfold. Every day I am wowed by some Internet article in a field I thought I had no interest in.

And I want to share this Wow. Is that so wrong?

Share the Wow, yes.

But what if they aren't wowed? What if they don't care? What if they are annoyed and curse their spam filters and wonder to themselves "Whay are you making me read all this?"

Well, that's too bad, because I'm on offense here. I'm in charge, and forwarding makes me feel good.

You have no choice in the matter.

I am the Forwarder.

Shortlisted But Ultimately Rejected NBA Development League Team Names

Orlando Bloom
New Jersey Pronouns
Annapolis Anomie
New Orleans Hurricanes
Salt Lake City Spazz
California Kings
New York Vitriol
The Green Bay Fighting Leprechauns
Washington Bullets

Board Games For Married Couples

Monotony
The Game of Wife
Clueless
Hungry Hungry Kiddos
Sorry, But Your Wife Doesn't Love You Anymore
Trivial Lawsuit
Bottle
Jenga, That Bitch Who Keeps Trying to Sleep With Your Husband
Risk

Dunk Report

The problem with getting in shape is all that damn weight. Why can't I be skinny and out of shape? That would be a lot easier. Why is it always that I'm fat and out of shape? So now I'm carrying around 30 more pounds than I should (almost 50 more than I was in high school) and I'm expecting to be able to dunk? Imagine trying to jump with two 25 lb weights hanging off your gut. Not fun, I tell you. And hard to get vertical!

People always say that the beginnings of weight loss usually go pretty quickly and then it tapers off and becomes harder and harder to lose weight past a certain point. My theory, though, is that you're getting lighter and lighter as you are simultaneously getting in better and better shape...so it gets easier and easier to run/swim/dunk/play tennis. The tendency for weight loss to become less and less efficient is canceled out exactly by the increased efficiency of your lightening bod. I see no reason why you couldn't just keep losing weight at the same rate until you evaporated or became a Singularity or something...

In other words, No progress on the court. Playing the worst basketball of my life. Running four days a week and getting better but I'm still a lardass, it's still torturous.

More later.

Rejected Titles of the Forthcoming Horror Movie Midnight Meat Train

Midnight Meat Bus
Midnight Meat Barge
Midnight Meat Tram
Midnight Meat Copter
Midnight Meat Sedan
Midnight Meatro
Midnight Meat the Parents
Please Do Not Bludgeon Me
Ouch!

Myers-Briggs Personality Category or 80s Music Entity?

1. EPMD
2. TSOL
3. UTFO
4. INTJ
5. SNFU
6. KRS1
7. ENFP
8. Ultramagnetic MCs

Personality Category: 4,7
Music Entity: 1,2,3,5,6,8

Taking the Fun Out of Reading

Recently I've been contemplating all of the unread books on my shelf. I expect everybody does this at one time or another. Then they go out and buy new books... with silky covers, with all that promise of newness. Or they visit the library... and all of that interminable freeness...

I expect there is a reason why these books haven't been read (maybe they just aren't that interesting), but it offends my sense of efficiency... and discipline... to see all of these volumes there while I'm out buying magazines and whatnot. I suppose one could argue that the moment all of one's books are read then it ceases to be a working LIBRARY anymore and becomes merely a repository of information and plots, books as furniture...

But that would be rationalizing.

My list is shorter than most, I guess, which makes it short enough to be doable, but long enough to be a major task. What's interesting is that this list of titles really brings back different periods of my life, when the book was purchased or borrowed with the full intent of reading immediately. Never did I (nor the book) figure it would sit on the shelf forever, unglimpsed.

The oldest is probably seven years old and the newest, a couple of months... So without further ado, here's the list of books I have to get through before I'll allow myself to visit the library or buy new books at all.

In no particular order.

1. A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
2. Crazed - Ha Jin
3. The Comedians - Graham Greene
4. Waterfront - Phillip Lopate
5. Los Gusanos - John Sayles
6. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006
7. Personal History - Katherine Graham
8. That Old Ace In the Hole - Annie Proulx
9. Another Country - James Baldwin
10. Suttree - Cormac McCarthy
11. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
12. Midaq Alley - Naguib Mahfouz
13. Malloy - Samuel Becket
14. Paris Review #171 Fall 2004
15. Greasy Lake - T. Coraghessan Boyle
16. The Nimrod Flipout - Etgar Keret
17. Underworld - Dom DeLouise
18. In Fact (Best of Creative Nonfiction)
19. Men and Cartoons - Jonathan Lethem
20. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth (longer than all the previous 19 books combined)

Awww, Happier Times

Click [HERE]

Sleepy E In Print (Pixels, Anyway)

Please ignore the questionable visual look of the SITE in question.

Thanks!

Hump the Hostess

The all-emcompassing Movie Hate is not so new anymore. It is difficult to pinpoint when it all started, but think it began around the holidays, when the gf and I went to Casino Royale in Tacoma and were underwhelmed. I do remember enjoying The Prestige in Taipei, and I also remember loving The Squid and the Whale on DVD back in November, but I can't locate a traumatic episode that may have caused my Movie Hate. Some switch somewhere got engaged, that's all.

Last week I saw that Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf was playing at the Arclight (the best theaters in LA) as a part of AFIFest or something like that. Aha, I thought, this will be a great test and will determine for once and for all: Is it the movies that are the problem or is it me? I actually fantasized about blogging afterwords, how I would declare that cinema had been redeemed and how I'd thrown away all of my DVDs and replaced them with a singular copy of WAOVW that played in a loop.

My expectations rose. A lot was a stake.

I hadn't seen Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf since college and that worried me. One by one my heroes were being cut down to size. What's next? The Coen Brother's pre-Fargo catalogue, no doubt.... But WAOVW was especially important and pivotal filter back in the day: Could one be trusted if they didn't like this movie? Could you ever really be friends with someone if they didn't "get it"? Could you ever really be intimate with someone who didn't think Duck Soup was funny?

Well now.

In the end?...

In the end Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf was....pretty good.

But it wasn't amazing.

And the last half of the movie dragged and dragged and dragged. Sure, it dragged like a long night of alcohol-fueled arguing would drag, but why would I subject myself to that punishment???

But I will say that the first 30 minutes were stellar. And I laughed out loud, over and over and over, with a packed audience. And then I just got bored with George and Martha and their schtick...and then it got very very melodramatic, much more so than I remembered...

But it was still pretty good. And that is all we can ask for.

And it was interesting to see it big. With an audience. And it clued me in to how I have changed as a viewer.

My new favorite moment? When Richard Burton gets the shotgun out of the closet and walks into the living room and levels it at Elizabeth Taylor's head and pulls the trigger and eveyone screams and this umbrella comes out of the end of the gun.... Taylor gets up and lunges toward Burton, and she's playing this mixture of utter relief and fear and hilarity and drunkenness and the total BURN of the joke makes her kind of horny too and she starts making out with Richard Burton right there, in front of the guests, because she's actually kind of happy to be alive and with him...

That was great.

Incident at West Hollywood Park's Basketball Courts

This just happened so I thought I'd write it down before it vanished forever.

There will be a test.

Sleepy E goes down to the park at around 11:30 to shoot around by himself. He knows the main game doesn't start until 1:30, but he isn't really interested in running with that crowd--he just wants to shoot around for a half an hour.

There are two full courts. There's the A court and the B court (unofficially labelled so..the A court gets the pick-up games, the B court gets people without skillz).

Each court has a preferred side, closest to the park itself. Which I'm going to call the A-side. So if there are four half-court games going on then the A-side of the A-court gets the best game and the B-side of the B-court gets the worst. The B-side abuts a questionable softball diamond encircled by a chain-link fence.

All four courts are vacant, so E sets up shop on the B-side of the A-court, in order to be the farthest away from other humans. About 15 minutes in E notices a figure walking toward the A-side of the A-court. E turns his back and continues shooting at the B-side.

Suddenly, a whistle. Then another. And another.

E: (to himself): Surely that person isn't trying to get my attention by whistling at my back?

Another whistle.

E decides to keep shooting and not turn. Finally...

Man: Hey!
E: (turning) Yes?

A Man sets a small backpack on a bench and comes out onto the A-side of the A-court. He is empty-handed. He has no basketball. He yells the length of the court.

Man: Shoot down here!
E: (pause) But I'm shooting on this side.

The Man stares in disbelief.
E waits, then decides to be neighborly (even though he wants to shoot by himself).

E: You can come shoot over here with me if you want.

The Man frowns. He shakes his head, disgusted, picks up his pack with an angry swoop, and leaves.

E turns and keeps shooting.

That's it!

Now, the test:

TEST
1. What kind of person whistles at a stranger's back to get his attention?
2. What kind of person doesn't bring a basketball to a basketball court?
3. What kind of person shouts orders at total strangers?
4. What did the Man expect from this interaction?
5. What if the Man had a kid who was playing on the playground and The Man thought could keep a better eye on him from that side of the court, and so wanted to play but on that side and so that was what was going on???
6. If number five is true, why did the Man not say something like this?
7. And why did he exit the park altogether with no children by his side?
8. Why are people such weird assholes?

Hammer Time

Went to the UCLA Hammer Museum tonight to hear Miranda July read from her first book of stories "No One Belongs Here More Than You." July is the writer/director/actor of the similarly titled art film "Me and You and Everyone We Know" which won some awards at Sundance but which I will probably never see.

Dave Eggers says "Fans of Lorrie Moore will want to take Miranda July's 'No One Belongs Here More Than You' and rub it all over themselves." Or something like that. So there.

This is a picture of Ms. July:



I like the idea of Ms. July very much. She grew up in Berkeley, moved to Portland and became a performance artist, then did a movie, then a book of stories, then some kind of artistic interactive website called "Learning To Love You More." I think she put out a record too. It seems like she experiments (and succeeds with) different media because she likes to try new things. What a great reason to do anything.

A Renaissance Girl.

What I do not like is the idea of the Reading Itself. I think I pretty much hate readings. I hate the Appreciative Noises. I hate the Knowing Nods, the audience wanting to participate, VERY MUCH LIKE A JAZZ SHOW, THE JAZZ NODDING, WTF IS THAT??? And by jazz I don't mean the Utah Jazz, of course. I hate the Q & As: "Where do your ideas come from?" I hate the Performance of it all. I hate the Pandering to the Audience by trotting out the Short Funny Stuff. I Hate The Person Who Tries To Show Off By Assuming Familiarity With the Author's Work.

Most of all, I hate sharing the story experience with 150 other people. I want to experience it by myself with no one else in the room clucking their tongues and nodding appreciatively.

July actually commented about this: "Well," she said, "I'll let you go now. I know how it is to be trapped in a reading." Then she laughed. "Readings. Maybe they're actually good for us, or something, otherwise why would we keep going to them?"

I Will Dunk Again

Well, I turned 36 last week and I'm easily in the worst shape of my life. I've been far heavier before (nearly 240 lbs then v. 225 now) but never have a been this physically unfit. I gained about 20 lbs on the Meat Train and didn't exercise once over the course of those eight weeks.

Then I went and played b-ball on Sunday. Whoa. I played decently, considering I had to sit out most of the time to regulate my breathing, but one glaring thing stood out (besides sucking air the whole time): I Should Be Dominating These People.

I Should Score At Will On These Guys.

I'm being beaten down the court by intermural guys, guys who got cut from JV, you know, HOBBYISTS... It's humiliating, really. This got me thinking about another humiliating thing in my life: The fact that I'm 6'5 and I can't dunk anymore. So after watching Baron Davis pack that facial over square-jawed Karilenko last week I got inspired to do something about it. I haven't been able to jam with any regularity since I went to go live abroad in 96. I might have put down some baby dunks in Korea but I didn't really play in Japan and I didn't really get into a real game in LA until 2001.

So I haven't been able to dunk regularly in over ten years.

I'm giving myself three months to put one down with authority, and four months to do it with regularity, and six months to do it in a game off the dribble.

I'm also going to drop 30 lbs. (but not in 3 months).

Am I the Shawn Kemp Comeback of the Chevy Chase Rec Center in Atwater Village? Am I that absurd? Perhaps. Perhaps an almost-40, slow-footed white guy has no business looking cool on the court and I should just work on my set shots and chuck 3s like everyone else.

So these are the goals:
1. Score at Will
2. Lose 30 lbs
3. Dunk

Also, I assure you: I am not using the definite goal of dunking as way of conquering the abstract goal of getting in shape.

I just want to dunk.

Time to strap on the Strength Shoes.

Midnight Beat Down - or - The Glorious Return to Poverty

Back in the summer of 94 my brother spent a few weeks travelling around Mexico, then returned home to Tacoma via a four-day bus journey from Mexico City. I remember him describing the first three days as being relatively painless but obviously quite wearing overall...but then the next six hours contained about the same amount of physical and mental anguish as the first three days, and then, in some strange carbon-dating scheme of half-lifes, so did the next three hours, the following ninety minutes, etc, until the final ten minutes of the journey were just as hellish as all of the torture that came before it.

Rather like being able to hold your bladder for 2 full hours, but having problems getting the key into the front door and struggling across that final threshold, the living room, to make it to the bathroom.

This is how it feels on the Meat Train, where we are to finish this week, but they keep adding days. We always seem to be four days away from finishing. It's like Lewis Carroll's race that cannot be finished, because the distance to the finish line can always be divided in half, ad infinitum....

And this is probably my second blog entry since we began two months ago, so it's definitely getting in the way of that...

No, I do not think I am cut out for feature films.

This makes me feel like a pussy amongst my peers (not really, but I just wanted to use the word pussy once as my 20th high school reunion approaches (okay, it's 2 more years, but STILL))...Okay, yes, I do feel like a little bit of a pussy, truthfully...

Working on the Meat Train has provided a lot of existential clarity, however. This is the Good Thing.

Working 70-hour weeks (80 with the commute, etc) is not my idea of a good time. Yes, the money is decent, but only because so many hours are worked. Is it worth it? Well, if you want to buy a house in Los Angeles you're going to be hard-pressed to find anything non-awful for less than $800,000, so there, so this is what a lot of people do...they sacrifice their lives to working nine months in a row (70 hours a week) on a TV series, year after year, then they buy a house and then they are happy.

What is the role of a human/father/partner? To be present in the lives of others? To take responsibility for one's own happiness? To be a Money Making Machine?

I am not sure.

What if I work 80-hour weeks for the next fifteen years, attempt to retire early, then get hit by a bus my first day on the golf course? What then? Is that a good life?

There was a story on NPR a few months back that talked about the difference between giving raises to employees and giving bonuses and which worked better on their productivity. The bonus system always dangled a prize in front of the employee for completing a short/mid/long-range task and proved to be 50% more effective than the raise system, which made people happy temporarily but did nothing for their productivity. People got used to the new income level almost immediately and saw it as what they deserved. And soon that level became what they Expected, and what they were Dissatisfied with, even though they were doing the exact same thing as they always did.

This is all to say that it is human nature to turn wants into needs. It is easy to get used to a certain lifestyle or standard of living. It is difficult to consider a Return to Poverty when one has crawled their way out of those circumstances...

It is difficult to be the adult student at the back of the class of 23-year old grad students.

And how can one return to entry-level status when he or she is approaching 40? Hmmm. Then again, Pride is a Motherfucker. As they say...

And then there is the concept of Retirement, which was invented during the Depression, I think, to make rooom for a younger work force. Do we slave for 40 years and then stop abruptly and then idle around for 20? Or do we try to intersperse those 20 years of retirement throughout our entire lives, knowing that we'll be working (at something we love, hopefully) past the age of 65?

I don't know about other people, but I'd prefer to live the latter way. Unfortunately, the two-weeks-off-a-year American Work Model doesn't really facilitate this. The European Summer Month Off system might sabotage their economy but what does it do for their happiness? And what about some of these European states with 35 hour work weeks? What about them?

All I know is that the Coen Brothers work ten-hour days and Michael Winterbottom works eight-hour days and their movies come out just fine, under budget every single time. When they show up to work, they work. And the crew makes no overtime, but then they can have dinner with their loved ones.

I know it's not for everybody.

We Are Not Teenagers Anymore

Discussed:

1. 401(k)s
2. Pedagogy
3. House Payments
4. Bran Intake
5. Gastrointestinal Distress

Pick's Disease

1) Pick's disease is the old name for the disorder frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) and in particular the behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Certainly a number of patient support groups continue to use the name "Pick's disease" in their titles. This confusion has led many neurologists to suggest other names for FTLD. The most prominent is perhaps Kertesz' suggestion of the term "Pick Complex" to encompass not only the clinical subtypes of FTLD, but also the overlapping syndromes of corticobasal degeneration and progressive supranuclear palsy.

2) Neurologists use the term "Pick's disease" to mean specifically one of the pathological subtypes of FTLD. The pathological hallmark of Pick's disease are Pick bodies. These are spherical cytoplasmic inclusions found within neurons in affected portions of the brain.[1] They cause neurons to swell, taking on a "ballooned" appearance.

Spring Cleaning In Time For Picky's Visit

Not even the gf gets this kind of royal treatment (insert rage-deflecting emoticon here).

I will not reek of batch, I will not...

The Horror, the Horror -- or -- Torture As Entertainment

Working on a slasher film gets existential. It is difficult not to ask big questions of the universe and your role inside of it when a large crew intelligent adults is devoting its time to getting blood to splatter in a certain way or getting a camera to roll just so like a decapitated head.

There is a new production model, championed by Michael Bay, and that is the $10 - $20 million studio horror film remake, usually helmed by music video directors. These include the two new Texas Chainsaw remakes, the two Hills Have Eyes remakes, the Omen remake, the Hitcher remake, the Amityville Horror remake, et al, ad nauseum. There are also remakes to Friday the 13th, the Changeling, Near Dark, and The Birds planned. And of course all of these remakes will spawn sequels.

It seems there is a new thirst for horror movies that we haven't seen since the 80s. It could be that I'm just noticing more horror movies because I work in the industry now and that I remember the horror movies from the 80s because I was the intended audience that consumed them then. It could be that there have always been gobs of horror movies, all through the 90s, but I really don't remember them if they did exist, except for Scream, which seemed to launch this new thirst for teen horror.

It could be that I'm getting old and crotchety, but it seems that the new horror model is particularly sadistic and I have to object to it. I haven't seen Hostel or any of the Saw films or this new movie Captivity coming out, but the new horror films are particularly mean and usually focus on torture as a device to scare audiences. Torture as entertainment. There was an article in the New Yorker a few months ago, I think, focusing on the show "24" and it's stylish torture sequences.

The stuff we grew up with no doubt horrified our parents (Friday the 13th, Halloween, Nightmare On Elm Street, Happy Birthday to Me, April Fool's Day, Chopping Mall, etc) but seems particularly cartoony and harmless now, especially when juxtaposed with the new Michael Bay model. Even the darkest of dark 80s cinema, the Faces of Death franchise (people getting mauled by bears, fake snuff footage, etc) seems downright quaint when these days any five year old can go on the Internet and watch Saddam Hussein getting brutally hanged.

Will today's teenagers look back on the Hills Have Eyes remakes fondly, like we look back on Johnny Depp in Nightmare on Elm Street? Or on April Fool's Day? Will they think about the time they snuck into Saw and got scared shitless?

And what's going to happen 10 years down the road? How will Hollywood movies ratchet up terror to the next level when the next generation is laughing its way through Hostel like a comedy?

Get On That Meat Train and Ride, Choo Choo!

So this is what I'm doing with my life these days. Unexpectedly, I am starting to root for this movie. It will contain buckets of blood, not horrible acting, gorgeously moody cinematography, and quirky J-Horror sensibilities (like a camera attached to an arm as it pummels someone to death). Expectations are so low it could surprise everyone....

Grapefruit Juice

When my brother and I were young men and growing into our 2-meter frames and eating our parents out of house and home, Pops started buying frozen grapefruit juice and keeping it an unmarked plastic pitcher near the back of the fridge. We would pour out glasses of the stuff, thinking it orange juice, or just mouth the pitcher itself and wind up with a blast of sour unexpectedness down the front of our shirts.

Pops discovered that we'd leave the stuff alone..so he cultivated a taste for grapefruit juice so that he could carve out a little corner of the edible world that we wouldn't eat through.

Today the gf (girlfriend, not grapefruit) and I were in Trader Joes. Now I drink grapefruit juice by choice, dammit. I must be a real man. Sour and bitter foods are for adults only.

Then there was the time Pops wrapped some leftover pizza in brown butcher paper and scribbled "Rotten Meat" on the front of it.

Genius, really, and totally effective.

I Hate Movies

Something has happened to me in the last six months. I have begun to hate movies. I thought this would go away but it has not gone away at all. It has worsened. I watched four movies in the new year (all in a theatre, none at home). Tonight I watched Zodiac (for free, at the DGA 3 blox from my house) and thought it underwhelming. Children of Men was a plotless chase scene. Babel was relentlessly humorless. Pan's Labyrinth was okay but all I could think about was reading the Economist. All were way too long. If you can't tell your story in 80 minutes, then what's the point?

In college I could watch Tarkovski and early Wim Wenders and take it like a man, even enjoy it.

The gf says she doesn't know if she can date someone who doesn't appreciate movies. I do appreciate them, I say. I just don't like them. Even the good ones.

And forget about the fact that I'm working on a slasher movie called "Midnight Meat Train" which very well might be the worst of them all....

I do like Team America, however.

Another One Bites the Dust

Martin Amis came to the LA public library on Tuesday evening to read from his woefully serious new novel, "House of Meetings." He is a small, slight man with a largish bobbleheady head and dreadful trembling hands that relaxed as he consumed his water (with a suspicious lime wedge floating in it).

The impressively nerdy Michael Silverblatt of NPR's "Bookworm" moderated. Even with thick glasses Silverblatt had to hold the text inches from his face in order to read.

Amis delivered dry, politically incorrect comments to an audience alternatingly fawning and offended. Amusing, really, to hear the hush fall upon them as Amis talked bluntly of multiculturalism, Christianity, religion in general, racism, and feminism, and nothing, really, of his writing process or the book itself. He seemed quite bored with the whole thing. Seventy five percent of his comments were quotes from other people; it was like viewing some cynical, half-drunk, human version of Bartletts.

Ten years ago I was a big fan. Now he just seems small and alone and unhappy.

The audience was able to ask three questions before the library called it quits and herded everybody to go queue up and get their books signed.

Merry Texting!

In the past two weeks I've received 10 text messages wishing me a happy holiday season (this in place of cards and phone calls and things like that). Is this a national phenomenon or is this the nadir (or zenith) of Hollywood Awfulness?

How I View Myself (After the Holidays)

Happy New Year!

Happy Holidays

Sorry for the blogging silence, everyone. Next year will be different, I promise.

Have a safe and happy new year.

Tip

If you walk into a salon and the owner is the person who cuts your hair, do you tip him/her?

The "What Is This?" Contest

Winner receives a prize still yet to be determined.


Kiss
Ozzie Osborne
Monster Trucks (several)
Barney's Big Surprise
Disney on Ice
Wedding expo
MLKing celebration (2)
Motorcross (several)
Bull riding
Kaiwondo
Globetrotters
Christian concerts (several)
Bruce Springsteen (2)
Tina Turner
Confederate Railroad/Eddie Money
Mexican Mothers Day (2)
Dixie Chicks
'N Sync
Erik Towes benefit
C of C Expo
Popeye's Comedy Show
Anger Manangement Tour (Eminem et al) (2)
Billy Joel/Elton John
Backstreet Boys
AT&T Broadband Comedy Show
Benny Hinn
WWF Smackdown (3)
RV Show (2)
Promise Keepers
Festival of Trees (2)
Blink 182/Green Day (Heavy Metal)
Eddie Money
Brittany Spears
Heartthrobs (India)
Ringling Bros Barnum & Bailey
Gem Faire (2)
Arrowsmith
Korn/Disturbed
Acquire the Fire (Christian rock)
Los Patita de Perro (Mexican rock)
Bob the Builder
Cinderella (Metro ballet)
Lipizzaner Stallions
Card/Coin/Doll Show (many)
Marshall Tucker Band (ugh!)
Vicente Fernandez
Mark Chesnutt
Korn et al
The Wiggles (2)
Dome of Destruction (Cage Fighting)
Army Soldier Show (!)
Green Day
Martin Nievera (Phillipino Concert)
Pepe Aguilar

Camo

I recently made my first and only purchase of camouflage clothes. I've always been fundamentally against the idea of using camo in contemporary fashion. These are war clothes. American war clothes.

The purchase was made sight unseen from 800-OLD-NAVY because their primitive website can't handle Safari and I couldn't actually select what I wanted. Since I wear cargo shorts to work year-round but they don't stock them in their stores in fall and winter, I had to make the purchase over the phone. The friendly customer service rep listed all of the colors and styles available in my size, including green and blue camouflage.

"Sure," I said, without thinking. "Give me the camo. Why not?"

About a year ago I read an article in an arts and culture magazine about some fashion company that specialized in creative camo. There was this whole line of rhetoric about reclaiming camo from its warmongering associations. About how the more we wear camo in the streets the more diluted its military link becomes. I thought this was a lot of bullshit, too.

There is a lot of bullshit.

So do they look good or what?

Eye Contact

I've always been lousy at eye contact. It's terrible. It makes me look sneaky, or dishonest, or bored, or disinterested, or that I'm leering at women in the background. I'm conscious of it, though, and I recognize that I'm looking away when its happening. But I can't help myself. I just don't like staring at people's faces for long periods of time.

Perhaps this is why my Celebrity Sightings sidebar is so lame. I go through life with my head down, largely, in a book or otherwise. I'm not going to make that celebrity sighting because I'm not so into the idea of looking at people in general. Z, of course, has had tons of recent celebrity sightings--including waiting at the valet with Dan Rather and sitting next to comedienne Judy Tenuda on the plane--but usually I only have sightings when I'm with someone else who puts their identity together. Then I confirm it or deny it. This is my role in life. To say, yes, you're right, but they look a little OLDER. Or to say, no, i don't think so, nice try, though.

So today I'm trying to start the Eyecontact Performance and Maintenance Directive (EPMD). I will look at people until it's uncomfortable for both of us and then I'll continue to stare into their eyeballs. This morning I went up to the Coffee Bean and felt something happening in my periphery...and instead of ignoring it I turned my head and flicked my eyes over instantly and caught a cute book-reading woman checking me out. She immediately looked down into her book, embarrassed--humilated really! It could have been my vintage green Lucky Charms shirt. Or my charming bedhead. Or perhaps she wasn't even looking at me. But by seizing the moment and not looking away, I reclaimed control of the situation. She feels like she was caught staring, even if she wasn't. Ha ha! Look at all of this fine entertainment one can have by looking people right in the face! My god, who knew?

When the Proactive Measure You're Taking To Avoid the Awful Thing in the Distant Future Instead Causes the Awful Event To Occur In the Miserable Prese

First of all, I'd like to say that Blogger could not accommodate my lengthy title by a margin of two letters. This is bullshit. The last word of the title is "present."

Secondly, I'd like to say that I went down to the hardware store to copy my house keys and car keys, of which I only have one set of each. So far things haven't been a problem but I can easily see that day when I lose a set of keys and have to resort to the others to gain entry to my life again. If there are others...

So I marched down to the local hardware store (Laurel Hardware, not Home Depot, support the little guy) and the old man (it has to be good, an ancient man runs the place!) goes into the back and I hear furious metallic grinding noises and then a couple of minutes later he returns with my originals and the copies on separate little rings and I pay the trifle and then go home and when I stick my key into the lock nothing happens but I think I've just used the wrong key perhaps that's it but no none of the other keys work neither nothing works on either key ring, old and new.

So I march back down to the hardware store, feeling enraged, feeling like I'm the verge of a problem here and that I need to make a serious effort or I'm going to blow up at the old man and that just isn't admirable behavior. The small problem is that I've been sold a product that doesn't work. The big problem is that this has undone something that did work, that is, getting into my house. So one of three things has transpired.

1. The old man set my keys on a surface next to some other keys, made an involuntary switcheroo, then copied the wrong key and returned the two impostors to me (old and new).

2. Putting the original key into the "Play" component of the key thing somehow damages it so that when the "record" side does its thing it records the newly damaged lines of the original.

3. Someone knows I'm going to get my keys copied and quickly changes the locks on my door as an elaborate practical joke.

I tell the old man what has happened. "F***" he says. He goes into the back for awhile then comes back, empty handed. I make some comment and he disappears again. This time when he returns he's holding a new lock in his hand. "S***," he says, "call a locksmith and send me the bill." He hands me the lock and I return home.

I don't want to call a locksmith so I force entry through my small kitchen window, scale the wall, and jump in over my dirty dishes. Then I change the lock.

Now my landlord (who lives elsewhere and wouldn't answer my calls after 5pm) is angry b/c I've changed the locks and is demanding something. What is he demanding again? Who are these people?

Sheesh.

The right thing to do would have been not to plan and not be organize and not think about preventing the bad thing from happening.

The right thing to do is to be lazy and forgetful.

And today I locked myself out of my car when a woman driving an SUV was so far up my ass that when I signalled and slowed to parallel park she couldn't get around me and just honked and yelled and gestured while I did the same thing. After about a minute she finally got around me and I could back into my spot but I was so enraged that I shut the car off but got out with the key forward in the ignition and the car in reverse.

The engine was off but making that humming clicking "I am receptive, please start me now" noise for well over 30 minutes until the vato in the molester van with the giant key on the side took a coat hanger to my door and set me free.

Listing

When you move house you find some old things and lose some new things. I moved over 6 months ago but I'm still coming across stuff that has been buried for years.

Yesterday I found this:



It's a list of books read and movies seen for the first five or six months of 2005. Because of this list I remember the period vividly: moving from Middlebrow's place in Bellingham to the U-District in Seattle, working at a software publisher in Kent, feeling very alone and isolated.

I'd say that 80% of these books and movies I had totally forgotten about. But seeing them now brings them back vividly.

I'm kind of amazed that I was able to crank through this many books while working full-time and enduring a long commute. And since I didn't have a TV or a VCR all of the movies were seen in the theater (up to Ed Wood and below, which were seen while housesitting).

Every two or three years I'll get inspired and try to start a current list of reads and watches...but it always peters out. Finding the list makes me think about all of the other books and films and experiences that have been lost forever. Listing these things prevents them from disappearing...and keeps those periods of my life and all of their nuances from slipping into nonexistence as well.

Seeing "Jefferson in Paris" with my aunt at the Egyptian, the awkward Hal Hartley date "Amateur" at the same theater, the TS Eliot biopic "Tom & Viv" at the Metro, "Miss Parker & the Vicious Circle," Albert Finney in the forgotten Oscar Wilde thang "A Man of No Importance."

I haven't thought about these things in over 10 years...but boy it all seems crystal clear right now.

I suppose Lisa B. knows this which is why she lists her movies (and reviews) in this fashion....

BTW, am I insane, or wasn't there a single-screen theater on 45th in the U-District that was east of the Metro and the Neptune but west of the Ave and the Varsity? I feel like I saw a 70mm print of The Wild Bunch there as well as the original Parker Posey vehicle Party Girl... Hm.

Anyone remember this theater?

When Things Fix Themselves

Can a broken thing really fix itself? I like to think so. That weird shimmying alignment thing that happened on sharp left turns? Gone. That unnerving clicking noise my computer used to make? Gone. My leaky showerhead? Huh, it's fine now for some reason.

I want to believe in this because a belief that things can fix themselves is a vote against entropy, a vote against science and logic and loud shout for the idea of "good luck" or something. This naive hopefulness is probably a diirect result of my lack of mastery over the technical workings of these things...a return to superstition...where I need to make sacrifices to appease the Water Pump God and pray to the Microwave Oven Elves because bad things just happen for no reason in this world so why can't good things too?

Ultimately there is probably some confusion between the symptom of the broken thing and the broken thing itself. The shimmying thing has abated and the shower isn't as drippy but does that mean the problem is fixed?

I hate to admit it, but probably not.

The Fuzzy Logic of Credit

Recently I went to the bank to open a checking account for my company, Creative Ape. The guy setting me up said I had excellent credit and that I could qualify easily for a small business loan or home loan.

"Really?" I said. "No kidding."

I had always thought my credit was kind of mediocre. There were some big scabs from the college years and a lot of late payments, followed by the last ten years of what has been essentially non-usage. Debit and debit only has been my purchasing strategy.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to take concrete steps toward the organization of my sloppy life and one of my tasks was to cancel all dormant credit cards and open just one card with a better frequent flier mile scheme. I discovered there were still a lot of cards which were still active (although there was never any activity on them and they never sent statements and I never called that 800 number on the sticker on the back when the new ones came in the mail). I get a lot of mail from the different companies and often it was difficult to determine if it was a new card coming for an old account or if it was just a promotional thing or what. And who wants to read all of that fine print?

So in the end I cancelled about seven cards that had been dormant for 3 to 10 years. And each customer service representative stuck to the script and asked why I was leaving, especially when I had such excellent credit?

Because this is the data: I've had all of these cards for a significant amount of time and I'm not carrying a balance on any of them and I have no late payments on them.

Well duh. I haven't been using them.

But does the credit bureau know this?

Anyway, maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like my lazy, totally irresponsible behavior has sculpted my scabby credit into something smooth and firm and toned and reliable.

Maybe this fuzzy logic can work in my favor for a change.

Go figure.

Here Comes the Past

In the June of 1993 my girlfriend and I finished up spring quarter, quit our jobs, and moved to New Orleans. She had family friends there with whom we stayed for about four days while finding our apartment on 2nd and Carondolet. After that we were pretty much on our own. I had difficulty getting a job and eventually lied about my experience and got a job waiting tables in the French Quarter. She got a job doing photo processing all the way down St. Charles at the Riverbend. We had no money.

But it was a great time, and great fun. A great adventure, if you will, and one of the only memorable periods of my lame-duck college years. It was my first time to live away from Washington state and it felt so foreign. More foreign than going to foreign countries now. I crave this foreignness often but you can only go away for the first time once, and after that, well, everything pales.

It was a totally irrational decision to take off for a new place with no plan and no money, but had we actutally had a goal of scrimping and saving then we never would have left. And I can say that the adventure shaped me in some way, that it made me a better person, and more worldly, and much happier than I was, and I think about this period often, and about how even the humidity seemed foreign.

A couple of weeks ago an extremely flaky old friend showed up at my door. A and his wife were moving from Seattle down to Los Angeles. He was 34 and bored utterly with Seattle where he was never able to make headway doing artistic things there. He worked mainly in hi-tech and software development but near the end I think most of their savings got eaten up around the move and the transition out of working in Seattle.

They don't have a lot of money. And they don't have jobs. And now they are here. There might be a plan, or a loose goal, or something like that, but it all seems quite off the cuff.

Insane, kind of.

But exactly what my girlfriend and I did when we were in college.

So what has happened in the last 13 years of my life to make me change my opinion about this kind of behavior? I mean, it's always been irresponsible, sure, but isn't it worth it? Surely, it's worth it. Funny enough, I was one of the loudest proponents for them moving down and even gave some kind of "you have to seize life by the balls" motivational speech...but never in a million years did I think that they would actually get it together, say goodbye, and make the physical move down to LA.

Am I turning into a pussy? Is this what "adulthood" is about? Responsibility?

The whole thing is very weird...and it's very weird too to be one of two people that this couple knows in LA. So now there is pressure to hang out and have this whole chapter of my past reopened. I don't know that there is room for him, exactly. He burned me multiple times in our history. I don't know that there is space for new friends, or new old friends, or whatever. I have my life and I am satisfied with it and now there's this whole weird new awkward component coming in and knocking on my door.

But I am more concerned about what I am becoming, which is someone who acts out of a fear of losing what he has...instead going after what he really wants, which often entails risk...

Even more disturbing is that there is a motivational book about this called "Who Stole My Cheese?" and I have read it!

If I were still 22 and met my 35-year-old self, I'd spend a few days laughing my head off. Then I'd throw up. Then I'd laugh some more.

Eighteen Dollar Burger

The gf bought me an eighteen dollar burger last night (okay, so it was $15.50 w. tax and tip).

Remarkable!

Cinema of the Relevant

1. Jonathan Glazer
2. Alfonso Cuaron
3. David Fincher
4. Christopher Nolan
5. PT Anderson
6. Noah Baumbach
7. David O. Russell
8. Sofia Coppola
9. Richard Linklater (barely hangin' on)
10. Spike Jonze
11. Alejandro Inarrito
12. Ang Lee

Poseurs
1. Doug Liman
2. Guy Ritchie
3. Luc Besson
4. Robert Rodriguez

Noveling

I've decided to revisit the novel for another month, starting today. It's already been 9 months since the first draft petered out back on November 30. I can't seem to make any progress at all these days so I think I need to try the speedwriting thing once again. The goal will be to increase the scope of the book by about 50 percent while trimming by a third and dividing all action into 18 discrete chapters. This will be fairly hard because the things are still very poopy at this point. Alas, poop in, poop out.

Will post from time to time at the Noveling blog.

Anyone up for this? Anyone?

Cinema of the No-Longer-Relevant

1. Martin Scorsese
2. Wes Anderson
3. Atom Egoyan
4. Hal Hartley
5. Brian DePalma
6. Ridley Scott
7. Mike Leigh
8. Woody Allen
9. Oliver Stone
10. Spike Lee (oh wait, Spike is suddenly relevant again)
11. Quentin Tarantino
12. Francis Ford Coppola
13. John Woo
14. Anything with Al Pacino in it
15. The Coen Brothers

Joel Schumacher isn't on the list because he was never relevant

Meteor

There was this crate in the back, see, this unmarked crate in the back of the Bonham's and Butterfield's, that auction house on Sunset. This was six years ago and I was working on something called "Ginger's Rise," a low-budget movie, and non-pornographic too, although you might not be able to tell from the title. We were shooting some uninspired and talky scene in the auction house and ordered not to touch anything and there were paintings everywhere and antiques and they normally peddled fine furniture and wines and jewelery and even antique cars and things like that, but I am not a part of that subculture so it's hard to say for certain what exactly goes down at B & B amongst the auctioneering set. But I found this crate in the back and and lifted the lid off and inside was a dark gray stone, about two feet wide and a foot high and not spheroid or elliptical in any sense but like an enlarged version of the rock you might pull out of the ground, just kind of rocky overall, but smoothed out, very smoothed out, creamy almost although if you shrunk it down to the size of your palms the edges might get sharp again. I reached out and touched it and it was then that an employee happened by, because in stories like these employees wander by just at the moment when one is compromising his ethics and law-abidingness in general and spinal well-being too by leaning over and trying to heft a very heavy space object with poor lifting technique. He told me that it was, in fact, a meteor or rather a meteorite, technically because it was no longer not-of-this-earth and rather now-on-this-earth but not from it, if you know what I mean. I bent my knees and prepared to deadlift this medium-small stone and found that I could not, it was heavier than anything I had ever experienced, heavier than something designed for heaviness, like weights, for example. I could not lift it. It was dense and smooth and ridiculously weighty, like goddamn no wonder it made it here to earth where it probably crushed a football-field-sized hole in the desert before B&B found out and sent out an appraiser to hoodwink the white trash meteorite discoverer and buy the thing for a song and then smuggle it back to Hollywood to peddle to old Beverly Hills ladies with toy dogs and Bono glasses. I am telling this story because I drive by Bonham and Butterfields every day that my car is not in the body shop, and every time I drive by I think of the meteor and how fantastic it was that it was just sitting there, this object from outer space, amongst a bunch of vases and gilt-framed oil paintings in an unmarked crate where no one would ever see it except for me and my friend Luke who happened by with some scripts and when I showed him the 'roid he laughed long and loud and said he couldn't believe it either.

Unnecessary Risk

So we're hired to do seven days of second-unit reshoots on a poor man's "Fast and the Furious" racing movie called "Redline." My guys and I are on a commercial for the first two days so I bring in a whole new crew to replace us for those days and then we come in on "Redline" on Day 3 after the machine is already up and running.

The stage is up by Magic Mountain Parkway but us lowly second-uniters have other things to do this morning--that is, launching the producer's $250,000 Porsche off a cliff and filming it. Five cameras. Two crash cameras at various stages up the cliff, two cameras at the top filming the launch, and one camera below, my camera, right below, far below, but right in the line of fire. A wheel is rigged to pop off during the crash; who knows where that will end up?

The second-unit director is a short Italian stuntman named Johnny with a slicked-back pompadour. The second-unit DP is also short and Italian, and though there is far less back-slapping machismo coming from the DP, he seems willing to go along with Johnny's persistent need to push the boundaries of safety.

I turn around and gesture at the assistant director, who (with the neophyte key grip) is supposed to be in charge of safety on set. The AD makes a feeble comment to the director, who glares defensively. The DP looks at me directly and asks if I'm willing to do the shot from the bottom of the cliff. It seems clear that he is telegraphing me to be the bad guy here and say no for all of us, so, having nothing to lose, I do. "I'll be more than happy to roll the camera and then walk away and have the camera get crushed, but I'm not manning that camera."

The director storms off, cursing me under his breath (this is about 3 minutes after I've met him for the first time). The DP glares at me, as if to say, "What are you doing? Why are you jeopardizing my relationship with this director?"

And so it goes for the next five days, with the stuntman/director putting us in jeopardy. We're out in the middle of the street, where three cars drift around a corner, fishtail, then split the camera on either side. Or they strap the DP to the hood of a car with a ratchet strap around his waist and no helmet. The DP is excited to have this job; it is a giant step up from the low-low-low budget movies he is used to doing. He is going to do whatever the director asks him to do, and the director, since (as a stuntman) he is used to taking unnecessary risks, expects everyone to do the same.

So everyone thinks I'm a pussy. But whatever. I hate this environment where speaking out and standing up for one's personal safety is seen as the most treasonous thing in the world. Take the job. Do the shot even if it's unsafe. If you say anything, you'll never be hired again. Terrible. I'll probably never work with these people again. But that's okay...it's not really too big of a deal.

But the whole situation reminds me of Haskell Wexler's documentary, Who Needs Sleep? which takes on Hollywood and its abusive 80 hour workweeks that cause people to fall asleep on freeways. There are an infinite number of people who are willing to work these hours, hazardous as they may be, and if you try to change anything then you're gonna be canned and someone will fill your spot. It's medieval.

On the last day of the shoot I rear-ended this guy while driving to work. It's been really busy and we've been working long long days out in the sun every day and I was spacy but awake and looked away for a second..enough time for traffic to stop so I could crush the guy in front of me. My car had been out of the body shop for less than a week. My hood is all pushed up and my grill and bumper are demolished, but the car was still drivable. I made it to work and we worked all night and when we finished at 5AM, I couldn't make the 20-minute drive from downtown to my place in west Hollywood. I kept falling asleep and running off the freeway on the 101 and no amount of windows-down, radio-up, face-slapping, singing-as-loud-as-I-could would keep me awake. I exited on Sunset and pulled into a gas station and slept for a few hours.

So I actually feel lucky that I rear-ended that guy, when the alternative is much much worse.

This is a picture of two of the ridiculous cars in "Redline." The orange car in the foreground is a Saleen and gets 3 mpg.



This is a picture of the 2nd Unit DP, strapped to the hood of the car with a handheld Eyemo. No helmet.



This is a picture of the set medic, treating the DPs wounds after completing the hood-strapped, car-to-car shot.



This is a picture of the stunt coordinator mapping out a motorcycle stunt with leaves, twigs, rocks, and little squares of black tape.



This is a picture of Surly E.



This is a picture of the Corvette that got trashed in the course of shooting.



This is a picture of my newly scarred car after the last day of shooting.

Chess Boxing!

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1348

My Ridiculous Rental Car

Last week my Subaru was crushed in the parking lot of the Camera House. The offending vehicle, I am happy to report, was the camera truck for the commercial I was working on at the time (Kay Jewelers, eww). It seems so fitting that it was the camera truck (our camera truck) was the very thing that wrecked my parked car. Something about my personal life getting the smackdown from my work life, an "unrewarding" work life, something like that. The production assistant driver punched the side of the truck to show how upset he was by this.

This is a picture of my poor Subaru, which was hit sideways in the rear-end area and shoved three feet sideways.



This is a closer-up version of the damage.



Now the Subaru is in the body shop and I'm driving a ridiculous rental car, the Chrysler Pacifica, a pimped-out SUV in Chrysler's newish "luxury" line (PT Cruiser, etc). The thing is so large I can barely wedge it into my parking space at home.

This is a picture of the monster.



This is a picture of my record-setting gasoline purchase.



The gf's Prius is at least ten times more efficient. But not as fun! No, not as fun! Besides, I will survive any accident now, yes I will...