Life Below the Line

2008-07-09T22:35:00.003-04:00

Thanks…

To those of you who have dropped me a line or made a snarky comment (okay, those were all people I know) along the lines of Where the hell are you??? Things have been very busy with the doc lately and so all of my time in front of the computer has been spent either writing grant applications or e-mailing with my partners or editing. And I've also had some work, some of which will hopefully make for interesting blog-fodder.

But I have not left the building. So thanks for paying attention, if you still are. Here goes…

Uh, how do I do this again?

2008-07-09T21:03:00.006-04:00

Life Behind the Fourth Wall

It's hard to explain. You arrive at a housewarming party, or a 3-year-old's birthday party, or a dance recital, and everyone is glad to see you. You chat with people, eat red hot dogs maybe (if you're in Maine) or an unidentifiable "hot dish" (if you're in Minnesota), make the usual small-talk, joke around, catch up on what's going on -- but then you catch yourself. You stop and say, "Wait! Hold that thought."

And just like that, you go get out your camera, and all of a sudden, everything's different. And you and everyone else there knows that no matter how much they like you and feel like you've become their friend, you're really in their lives to make a movie.

Yeah, it's a little weird, what we're doing. This is the second documentary that I've directed and I don't know if you ever get used to it. I don't know if it's something you can or should get used to: moving back and forth between being a normal person and being an observer behind the quote unquote fourth wall of every intimate detail you can possibly get to pass through the lens, and the more intimate the better.

With the film I'm currently co-directing, this can be especially weird, because a lot of the conversations we get into have to do with serious subjects. We'll be having a casual house tour with a woman we've known for an hour or two and all of a sudden we're hearing stories about how three of her children died. We're having a friendly interview with a very tall, apple-cheeked lady in front of a cheerful, autumnal diorama complete with wooden scarecrows and pumpkin hummels, and then one question later, our subject is in tears telling us how the hospital she was working in as a nurse in Vietnam was bombed and she was one of only two people who survived. In fact, a lot of our interviews end up with people in tears -- including us. Sometimes I'm trying to keep my mascara from running all over my notes and then I hear Lauren sniffling behind me and I know she's trying not to get snot on the camera.

Of course, we provoke the tears, though not on purpose. But we ask. And then we ask some more. And the funny thing is, most people tell, and seem to want to. We always say up front that nobody has to answer any questions that they'd prefer not to, or they can decide what they want and don't want to talk about on film. We had one subject, even while we were unearthing a story about her marriage and the raising of her daughter, somehow manage, through avoidance of the words "husband," "ex-husband," and very careful verb tense choices, to completely talk around the issue of her divorce. That took some skill, and she was more media savvy than many. Even when people aren't, very often the best moments come when we're not filming because the camera transforms everything. But then there are the people who talk much more, knowing that the world is, potentially, listening. Or simply because somebody asked, and that somebody happened to be us.

A lot of the time, you and they end up in places neither of you ever expected. With Chris, one of the subjects in my first film, we started out talking about personal grooming habits, went on to looking at photos of his friends, and family, and half-naked ladyfriends, moved from there to him modeling his extensive collection of hats and sunglasses, and eventually, after four hours of tape had been rolled, ended up in a discussion of how he was in recovery from addiction to crack. That was surprise information that both bonded and separated us. Because it was out there, and I knew about it, and he knew that I knew about it, and it was now part of the film, it could never be taken back or taken out of our relationship with each other -- a relationship which hadn't really existed four hours previously. But would he have told me without the camera there? Or at least, would we have spent the four hours together of non-stop show-and-tell that created the intimacy that allowed him to tell me about it? And even if he had, without the camera between us, would I have dared to probe into the details? My thinking is no.

There was also the case I've already written about with J, who started out as a friend of a friend, but became in some ways more intimate with me than with many of her friends, because she told me things that she would never have occasion to tell anyone, or reveal, even, maybe, to herself. I knew not just about her tough break-ups and how she came out to her mother, but her dreams; how she thought about who she was and who she wanted to be -- the kind of thoughts that a lot of us don't think to formulate until we're asked about them. And then, like J, we surprise themselves with what we were thinking and and feeling.

Or with how much we're willing to reveal. Vanessa really wanted to tell everything, or so I thought. I hardly needed to ask her a question and she was off and running. She really could have been the star of her own reality show because she was constantly changing her job and where she lived and her appearance in the interest of reincarnating herself. And she wanted to talk about it, because talking to me was, in some ways, making her transformations real. But then came that day when we were talking about what I'd shot when she suddenly said, "Well, you're not going to use that, are you? That's private." I'd kind of thought that the fact that she'd said it on camera meant that it wasn't, and I'd come to believe that she wanted to say pretty much everything on camera. But then I realized that it's pretty easy for people to lose track of where they're heading when they start to open up. Which, on the one hand, is what you want most as a documentarian when you're talking to your subjects, because you want them not to censor themselves. But you don't want to feel bad because you took them too far -- even if you went there with them. After talking with Vanessa, we came to an agreement about what was for public consumption and what wasn't. I kept in the conversations about her family and cut the photos of her with her ex-boyfriend and the story of how a former boss had try to extort her for sex -- which, even though it was fascinating, didn't really belong in the film anyway.

That's one of the hardest parts: navigating that territory which is not only about ethics but who you are as a filmmaker. You need to build these relationships, because if you're not the friend or the confidant, you won't get what you need to make the film. You have a lot of power and, yes, a lot of responsibility. You don't want to hold back because you feel guilty. But on the other hand, you don't want to exploit the trust that people place in you by ending up with an image of them that they would loathe -- or even really, really dislike -- particularly one that is forever committed to celluloid, tape, or zeros and ones. So you just try to make it true. Whatever the hell that means, because if there's one thing you learn in the editing room it's that, man, there are a lot of versions of the truth. So you've got to man up (so to speak) and admit that from the start, remember that that person is a whole person, and accept that your mission, if you choose to accept it (and if you've shot it you've already accepted it, baby) is to do justice to them while also doing justice to the story you're trying to tell. Which goes right to the heart of your personal integrity, and how you do right by others, and your responsibility to the human race, and why you're in this fucking business in the first place, yadda yadda yadda.

But there's another hard part, which is about how you relate to people and, in particular, what connecting with them means to you. Because the time will come when you'll stop filming and you'll have to figure out where to go with all of this connecting. With Chris, even when I was still trying to finish up with him, it was harder and harder to get him to return my calls, and then, once we were done, I never heard from him again. I wanted to know if he was still all right, that he was still holding down his two jobs and trying to finish his masters -- a routine that had him going without sleep two nights a week. And I wanted him to see the film, to see how people responded to him, how much they enjoyed hearing what he had to say and admired what he was doing. But I think opening up in the first place had been hard, and now having someone around who knew too much too soon was, well, too much. And who was I to try to tell him otherwise? What was my role now? Who the hell was I, anyway?

With J it was similar at first, and then things suddenly switched when she was diagnosed with leukemia. Now I was the one who wasn't sure I could handle being so invested. For her, things were a lot clearer. I think that happens when realize your life is finite. But then she helped me realize that once I was in, it didn't matter so much how I'd gotten there, or where the lines were drawn, as long as I wasn't afraid to be there when it mattered. And as hard as it was, I did my best to do that.

With Vanessa, she was the one who didn't want to let go. After five years, I had become not only the person who would always take an interest in her life and listen, rapt, wanting to hear what came next, but I think talking to me had become her way of sorting out things for herself. To this day, she'll continue to call me up, out of the blue, often when something's happened -- she's gotten a new job, or she's in a new relationship, or she's dyed her hair blond. And the funny thing is, as busy as I am, and as unsure as I am about what this is now -- is it a friendship? Am I free therapy? -- I call her back. And we get together for lunch or coffee and she tells me everything, and I admit it: I want to know. Partly it's that we've got a routine. Partly it's that I do care about what happens to her. And partly it's just that I can't stop following her story and I want to know where it's all going to end. Because even when I pack up and go home, their lives go on. But I guess once I'm in, I'm in.

But that's okay. I like being hooked. If someone lets down their guard for me, I tend to return the favor. And I think that's a good thing. It's at times like this -- or when you're utterly slain by a spectacular view, or when your nephew holds your hand, or by that incredible spark that comes off a certain person when the two of you collide -- that you've just gotta think, Damn it's good to be a human being. No matter which side of the camera you're on.

2008-04-17T17:35:00.008-04:00

I Luv Free Stuff

The other day, I was at work, and as usual at the end of a workday, there was leftover food at craft service. When this happens, if it's food that will go bad and can't be reused, they generally leave it out for us to take home like the pathetic little scavengers some of us are. This time it was a bag of green apples and navel oranges. I was getting ready to leave on another shooting trip for the doc, and had pretty much cleaned out my fridge, but I also knew that when you're on the road, you need snacks. So I took three apples and two oranges -- which added about four pounds to a backpack that already contained a laptop, an iPod, a hard drive, four New Yorkers and several power supplies. Trying to lift that thing on to my back nearly pulled my arm out of its socket half a dozen times on our way from New York to Minnesota. But we had snacks. And they were free.

Fact is, if it's free, I want it. I mean I won't take absolutely anything, but pretty darn close. From craft service, aside from the occasional fruit windfall, I've taken home loaves of Italian bread from Eli's, slabs of luncheon meat, pocketsfull of mini chocolate bars and who knows how many packs of Dentyne Ice. And that's when I'm not hungry at the end of the day. When I know certain caterers are going to be on set, I'll bring Tupperware for leftovers.

And it's not just about things that are edible. I one cursory glance around my apartment, I can spot a decent-sized number of my overall possessions that came home with me from film shoots: the set of orange-and-yellow-striped glasses, the fake leopard-fur slippers, the two little plaster cherub heads I use as doorstops, the Best of New York Issue of New York Magazine, and of course a rotating roster of plastic bottles that I refill so they can live in my bag. I also have a somewhat lethal combination of absent-mindedness and a teeny tiny bit of kleptomania, which means that I have a host of other people's mini-screwdrivers, batteries and foot foam, and God knows I don't remember the last time I bought a pen.

But it's not just the film shoot stuff. Probably a good 50% of what I own I've somehow inherited, either from family (my car, my grandmother's tarnished silver, three hammers -- yeah, exactly, why do I even have three hammers? Because they were free!) exes who left them behind (a futon, half a stereo system, the large stripey plates, the Italian bowl, the Turkish pillow-cover) or friends/roommates who were moving to France or California or Macon, Georgia (2 bookcases, the coffeetable, a large tabletop which is now my desk, one current and many plants that now rest in peace, seven assorted wine glasses, six martini glasses I really don't need but they go with the two martini shakers I've gotten as gifts) or just got married and didn't need any of their old dish- or cookware (um, pretty much all the rest of the dish- and cookware). Then there's the 10-15% found on the street: the nightstand, loads of books, some read, some never to be read, the plaster bust of Elvis, and, formerly, a lamp whose base was a horse. And the 5% that were gifts, which includes many ill-fitting polyester sweaters and small yet tacky purses in colors that can be worn with nothing, much odd artwork of distant/unknown origin, and a number of just plain oddities like little rubber she-monsters and a toothbrush holder that contains plastic ladybugs floating in unidentifiable but no-doubt toxic green liquid.

Yes, it's true, and no, none of it matches. My place pretty much looks like a flea market sprang up one Saturday in my living room and nothing ever got sold -- and the fact that the stuff I have actually paid for comes from flea markets doesn't do much to improve the effect.

I suppose this behavior, as a general tendency, started with my childhood. After my family moved to the suburbs when I was seven, my family lived in a nice house with two cats, three television sets, and every Intellivision game ever made. But both of my parents did grow up without money, and didn't have much when they started their family, and so we always had a couple of Holiday Inn towels in our linen closet that I think they've only recently parted with. My dad also likes to buy massive amounts of odd tchatchkes and gadgets -- the kind of stuff that one might think fell off the back of a truck if you didn't know about his penchant for random binge shopping -- and then gives it to me and my brother. Oinking rubber pig keychain with a light-up snout? Check. Mugs displaying a Bill of Rights that disappears when it is filled with hot liquid? You know it.

Then there was film school. For my thesis film, I had a great production designer who could create full-blown sets for twelve dollars and change. When I asked her to make me an entirely white room, she did wonders with gauzy shears, a variety of linen and white satin tablecloths, two cracked white mugs, a huge set of white sunglasses, even a couch from the Salvation Army that she covered in white fabric. And all of it ended up in my apartment. The couch not for a while -- it sat in the living room of the two frat boys from my film school class who'd let anyone shoot there (provided they agreed to crew on their films) until I could arrange for a van to go and pick it up at the end of some shooting day -- so by the time I got it back, it had suffered a certain amount of ignominy and beer spillage and had generally become sort of an off-ecru. But considering the fabric had been attached using a staple gun and hot glue, the whiteness was pre-destined to be temporary anyway. But up until two years ago, I still had that couch. And I only got rid of it because I was moving into an apartment where the residents were leaving me behind a couch that was in marginally better shape. Marginally. Oh, and the rest of the set dressing? Still in residence, stirred in with the other detritus.

One part of the pathology happening here is that I hate throwing anything away. Something has to be irrevocably broken in a way that makes it either unusable for any purpose whatsoever or dangerous for me to get rid of it. If it's simply chipped, or leaky, or in need of minor repair, or unreadable, or just plain ugly, it can still be used to hold a plant, or pencils, or prop up the air-conditioner, or simply sit on the top shelf of the closet where it can be forgotten until I have to move again. I'm too classy to regift but clearly not to hold on to something that has no obvious purpose until the end of time, often placing it on full display between the family photos and the television set. Shit, I admit it: I'm sentimental. And compulsive about recycling to perhaps an unhealthy degree.

But let's face it: a large part of this is that I have hardly progressed, financially, since my first years out of film school. I might be nearly 40, but my bankbook is still living in a more innocent time, when everyone's furniture was milk crates and rug remnants and bookcases made out of planks and bricks, when I didn't eat out except at Dojo's or Cozy Soup and Burger, when I only went out to bars knowing I wasn't going to have to cover my own drinks (as a girl on a film and tv set, that's not too hard to swing). Back when I used to do features, this was somehow glamorous. I was living on a shoestring but I was living the dream, surrounded by the flotsam of independent filmmaking -- Anne Heche's frilly shirt in my wardrobe, or leftover blue gel taped around a bulb to create a lampshade. Now, it's just sad.

There was actually a short period of time when I transcended this state. Back in the 90s (yeah, remember the 90s?), right after I joined the union, I started getting calls from this sound mixer, George. One of the first things George asked me was if I had my own boom pole.

"No," I said, "the mixer always brings the boom pole I use."
"You know, a lot of boom operators have their own boom poles in the union," said George.
"Really?" I was such a newbie.
"Yep. They just feel more comfortable with their own pole. Plus, it helps them get jobs. For instance, if you got a boom pole, I would definitely be able to hire you for these commercial jobs I'm getting."

So I bought a boom pole, the cheapest decent one I could get, for about $600, which, needless to say, was a heck of a lot of money for me at the time.

Turned out that on point one, George was full of shit: most boom ops don't have their own boom poles. The truth, which became apparent after a day of working with him and his magically disintegrating sound package, was that he just didn't want to have to buy a new one to replace his own, which was heavy, dented and scratched, and no longer locked in place. But on point two, he made good: he started hiring me and my new boom pole for lots and lots of union commercials. And I started making lots and lots of money. More money than I knew what to do with. And I realized that I didn't have to be on the miniscule budget I'd been living on for as long as I'd been out of my parents' house, that I had that most wondrous of things, DISPOSABLE INCOME. So naturally, I started buying stuff -- things I'd needed but hadn't been able to get, like new jeans and underwear and real raingear; things I'd long coveted, like new CDs, and lipstick, and dry cleaning; and things that I saw and desired and just bought, like a new suede jacket, and some cool pants with sequins down the sides, and a new -- actually new -- lamp with a stained glass shade. Suddenly, I could afford it all. And just as suddenly, I found myself with a $4000 credit card bill. Which I was able to pay off, and then even open an IRA. But it didn't last, and soon I was back to being downwardly mobile, even if I do still have the IRA -- although I soon after went on to invest a large chunk of it in high-tech mutual funds. Oops.

I guess at this point I'm kind of sick of life in the free lane. It's all well and good to be a starving artist, toiling in obscurity. But it really sucks to be an obscure starving artist in the film business, which most people don't even believe results in art, and in which everyone expects you to hit it big and cash in and get famous at some point, fifteen years or so probably being that point, and then some. Plus, where's the art? What have I got to show for those fifteen years? A couple of videotapes that I keep in my closet because I'm too embarrassed to show them and, besides, the formats are outdated (U-Matic, anyone?), or in the overly-fat file of un-produced screenplays, or in a couple of obscure places on the web that someone occasionally trips across. Oh and yeah, this site, where you fine dozen or so people come to read how I rant, on occasion. Which is, in addition, to being unpaid, anonymous. So much for fortune or fame.

I do like to rant, and do like writing the screenplays even if they'll never grow up to be movies and I think the doc will be really good. But when you're residing in the residue of your past, never seeming to move on or move up, sometimes you have to wonder: should I have gone to law school? If I was eventually going to have to sell my soul, or at least sell out on my dreams, should I have done it at an early enough age and in a dependable enough business that it would have at least been a sure thing? And at this point, am I fighting the good fight, or am I just living the lifestyle?

2008-03-16T15:33:00.012-04:00

How You Know It's All Going To Go Horribly Wrong

When I show up for a job, very often I go in with a minimum of information about it. Particularly if I'm booming and I'm only going to be on whatever it is for a couple of days. The unspoken rule for crew is don't ask too many questions because everyone is far too busy to bother with you, and when I'm booming I do pretty much just have to come as I am. Plus, I generally just don't want to know. My work ethic is simply, "I work for money, you pay me enough, I show up."

But there are a few details that can clue you in, either during the initial meetings about a production, or on the first day, to the fact that you are in for a bumpy ride. Here are some of them.

1) "This is such a great project!"
Hearing this from someone who is trying to hire you for a movie is generally an indication that
a) You will not get paid or
b) You will get paid very little and, in fact,
c) Probably nobody is getting paid, because
d) There is no money in the budget for just about anything.
This generally can lead to conclusion
e) The job is going to most likely have inexperienced crew, bad/tiny locations, not enough equipment, bad catering, long days because they're trying to cram an insane amount into them and don't have to pay overtime…so in other words, it ain't going to be pretty.

2) "This production is going to be run like a military campaign!"
Back when I was still mixing features, an AD/Producer once began a job interview with me with this line. If the script featuring the dominatrix and screen direction like "THREE LARGE-BREASTED WOMEN enter the room" and the fact that the film was being financed by the Guccione Brothers hadn't been enough to drive me away, this would have. Because only ADs with absolutely no clue think that indie film crews getting paid next-to-nothing have army discipline, or like to take orders, so any intention he had of whipping us into shape was going to backfire royally -- and if that was his overriding idea of what was going to make the movie happen, that was even worse.

3) The script is a rainbow of differently-colored pages.
When you get a production script with a cornucopia of colors, and with lots of scenes that say, "OMITTED," this means that the script has been rewritten many, many times. And very likely will continue to be rewritten as time goes on. Perhaps you will even be getting pages the day you are supposed to shoot them. Needless to say, this means everyone is always going to be extremely prepared.

4) The production calls you in the days leading up to the job with really stupid questions.
These people don't know what they're doing.

5) Several different people from the production call you with the same stupid questions.
These people don't know what they're doing, and they don't talk to each other.

6) The day before the shoot they order all sorts of new equipment.
This means that only at this late date did they decide exactly how they're going to do the job -- like either they decided to shoot with two cameras, or decided to use playback -- all of which has huge ramifications that will now confuse everyone.

7) There is not enough parking.
This can indicate all sorts of people not doing their jobs. And even if not, it's just a royal pain in the ass.

8) The location is a 5th-floor walk-up.

9) The location is a functioning nightclub/bar/restaurant or is across the street from a firehouse/construction site/functioning nightclub.
Two words: sound nightmare.

10) The location is Gary's Loft.
Gary is a nice guy, and his loft is very pretty. But it has only one, fairly slow freight elevator that you have to go up a flight of half a dozen stairs to get to, the floors are creaky, there are inevitably people walking around on the floor above you, the windows are thin, and it's in a post-industrial zone where there's all sorts of post-industrial noise to be had coming in through them.

11) You arrive on set to find that everyone is either really old or really young.
Now, I don't like to be ageist. But the truth is, when you show up on a set and only the crustiest of grips and electrics are there, you know that they scraped these guys up off the bottom of the barrel. On the flip side, if everyone looks like they're 12 and they all just got their union cards, then you're really fucked. Not just because you have to work with all of these jokers, but there's something wrong with a production when these are the best people they were able to hire.

Mind you, it means something entirely different when people on the production side are young. I tend to meet a lot of baby-faced agency and directors these days, so that doesn't necessarily predict a bad day, just a lot of immature jokes, and a high level of arrogant hipsterdom.

12) You arrive on set to find you don't recognize anyone on the crew.
Not that I know everybody, but if you've been working in the business as long as I have and you show up on set and only recognize the person who hired you (sometimes not even them!), you have to wonder what kind of circle (of hell?) you've entered. Though, um, if we've never worked together, no offense…

13) You arrive on set and recognize one particular person who spells DOOM.
There are a few directors who you know will make your day difficult -- or at least interesting. They are screamers (Giraldi, Pitka), or incommunicative idiosyncratic celebrity wackos (Tony Kaye). There are also a few DPs/Gaffers/Key Grips who can do the same, either because they're lousy at their jobs, or because they hate you, often simply by virtue of the fact that you are sound. Then there are the actors who are notorious for spelling trouble -- either because of their drug habits, their attitudes, or just the level of stress that travels with them like a cloud of tear gas. Or they can be cute and charming but incredibly high maintenance, which drives the crew mad -- like whenever it was a Kristen Davis day on Sex & the City, the sotto voce groans of grips could be heard echoing throughout set. And rock stars -- you know you're in for a ride. Of course, the difficulty level of talent can vary widely depending on where they are in their career. People on the way up are usually the most gracious, then when they get that first mainline shot of fame, they often become impossible for however long it takes them to either adjust to the situation or slide from the pinnacle -- although sometimes people on the way down are the most evil of all.

Then there are one or two people who, when you see them on set, you know you're in trouble because the jobs they work on are always bad, and any production that hired them must somehow be in trouble. Of course, this goes both ways, because then you have to wonder, "Why am I on the job? What if I'm that person?!"

Of course, sometimes you can also be lulled into a false sense of security by seeing all the right people on a job -- and then it still ends up being a total nightmare. Sometimes bad jobs just happen to good people.

14) The sound guy is soldering something when you arrive.
You can usually tell from the look of the equipment how much abuse it's taken, and how well it's going to work, and how hard or easy that's going to make your day as a boom. But early-morning repair work is generally a bad sign. So is when you arrive to find him or her frantically going through cases, looking for something.

15) The camera crew is standing around.
This can mean one of several things:
a) The camera hasn't arrived.
b) The camera arrived and had to be sent back.
c) The camera arrives but isn't working -- in which case the poor First and Second AC are not standing around, but are trying desperately to fix it.
Bottom line: you, too, will soon be standing around.

16) Everyone is standing around and nobody seems to know why.
This tends to mean the AD is awol, or is trying to make time with the agency producer, or simply has no clue –- which is always a sign that things are going to go to hell real fast.

17) The director is a still photographer.
This means that he (or she -- if she's Annie Leibovitz) thinks that he knows everything, but really knows nothing. Bad combination.

18) The still photographer-director is also the DP.
This triple hyphenate means that this person is taking on two jobs at one time which he (I'm just going to say "he" since they are nearly all "hes") really does not have down -- but they're going to try to cover that with swank threads, loud music, and attitude to spare.

19) When any director is the DP.
This means that either the director has decided he is such a control freak that he must be his own cameraperson, or that the DP has moved up to directing but can't let go of the camera. Neither one is good for you. These are both big jobs and neither one should be half-assed. Plus, on these jobs the flow of information is even more of a disaster; because since the DP and director are communicating intercranially, they just forget to talk to anyone else.

20) Y-Cats is the catering/craft service company.
Eeew. Not very often do you see everything on the table scattered with M & Ms or Gummi Bears, on purpose.

21) The First AD has his own mic and speaker system/There is a bus-load of 200 extras between you and your breakfast burrito.
Choreographing large groups of people always makes for a fun day.

22) "We just wrote this this morning" or "We just added a couple of shots."
This actually gets said all the time on commercials, and it never bodes well.

23) Nobody knows the timecode frame rate.
This actually happens more and more often in the age of HD. There's still enough shooting on film that most people haven't switched their mindsets and technical knowledge fully over to video, least of all people in production, so very often they haven't thought to ask the editor how things are going to be done -- or haven't hired one yet. Not only will this lead to confusion on set (and indicates confusion on other fronts), but inevitably, something gets decided, and then, also inevitably, no matter what the decision was, the transfer people or editor will call and blame the sound person when it's wrong.

24) There are babies.
I love kids, but I especially love not working with them -- especially not when they're under two. They just don't tend to deliver on cue. And generally toddlers and younger come on jobs in twos and threes, so that there can be back-up babies around if one goes into meltdown, and those babies will be doing their own burping and crying off set during the take as well.

25) Second meal is already on the schedule.

2008-02-09T19:03:00.000-05:00

Vegas, Baby, Vegas

When you think about going to Las Vegas, you think about roulette, about partying with Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr, about going to overpriced shows where men in tight, shiny costumes tame lions or dance behind Celine Dion. What you probably don't think about is running around, tethered to a camera, trying to cram three interviews and a parade into a day's work.

Well, that's how I spent my week in Vegas, working on The Doc That Shall Not Be Named. This time, there were three of us, since our producing partner, Jen, decided to come along. Little did she know what she was in for when she told us, "I'm bringing along two nice outfits, and you two should let me know if you want me to get tickets to any shows!" I didn't have the heart to tell her about how we generally work: land, drive, roll camera, repeat ad infinitum until the plane takes off -- perhaps occasionally stopping to eat and sleep, time permitting. Needless to say, the only casino we saw the inside of was the one that let us interview one of their employees in its restaurant. Our view of the Strip? B-roll, shot from the passenger side of our rented gold SUV some time after midnight on our last night there.

Now I knew when I wrote the words "gold SUV" that it would become as apparent to you as it did to us: Dorothy was not in Kansas -- or Minnesota, North Dakota, Colorado, or anywhere else that she could at this point relate to -- any more. If the slot machines at the Vegas airport don't make you aware that you've landed somewhere quite unlike any place else, then the fact that SUVs are really the only mid-size cars they have on offer, most of them gold, starts to clue you in. But why fight it? Especially because the lady who rented us our car was so nice. Mind you I'm not talking Minnesota Nice here, or any of the other nices we discovered in Ohio, Maine, or even Connecticut. We're talking a completely different species of nice.

"It'll cost you 25 bucks a day for the extra driver," she told us, somehow tapping away at the computer despite her three-inch fingernails.
"Wow." Jen and I looked at each other. This film is on a budget where every $25 counts. A lot. "Maybe we don't all need to drive."
The lady stopped tapping momentarily. "Well, is the renter always going to be in the car?"
"Yeah," said Jen. "Pretty much."
"Well then, say you got pulled over and she was drivin'," the lady continued, pointing at me with one of her talons, no less frightening for being decorated in bright and swirly patterns. "You could just say you got sick and she had to take over. Now, I'm not sayin' you should do that." She looked each of us in the eye before turning her gaze back to the computer screen. "In fact, I didn't say anythin'. I'm just sayin'. That's what some people do."
"We'll add the extra driver," said Jen. Jen's a straight arrow, which is good, because who knows what I would have done given my dubious moral code and general predisposition to both want to be cheap-ass and stick it to The Man. "But thank you," she continued. "We appreciate it."
"Hey, just trying to help out. Used to be you didn't have to pay for the extra driver at all, now they got these new rules. Just don't seem right." She went back to tapping. "Where y'all from?"

This was our first brush with what I would describe as a surprisingly potent Wild West spirit. Aka, "Them rules just don't seem right." Yes, Nevada, or at least the Vegas part of it, is the land where not being about to gamble, or smoke anywhere but a restaurant (another new rule), or drink out of an open container pretty much every place but your car, or do anything else in your own car, or anybody's, is considered a violation of your constitutional right to do whatever the hell you want.

This became more evident when we were on our way to film our first air show. We were already a bit paranoid about going on an Air Force base given the extensive background checks we'd had to go through, all of us wondering what skeletons from our dubious filmmaking or liberal hellraising pasts would leap out to "Boo!" us into trouble. Lauren, for instance, knows that when you Google her, one of the top listings is for a film she worked on called Terrorist!

Then, someone told us, "You know when you're on the base, you can't talk on your phone."
"Oh, wow." As freelancers, we are all extremely cell phone-driven -- not to mention that at that point half of Vegas had my cell phone number (because we were interviewing them, okay? Get your minds out of the gutter).
"Is that considered some kind of security breach?
"No, no, I mean don't talk on the phone while you're driving there. If they catch you they'll give you a ticket."
"Oh. Right."

In other words, things that are normally off-limits to those of us from uptight, law-beridden NYC are strangely up-for-grabs in Vegas.

Once we realized this, and that perhaps it was everywhere other than the base that we ought to be worried about, we had fun at the air show. It's sort of strange, when you think about it, that hundreds of thousands of people gather in one place to watch planes designed to shoot other planes out of the sky perform tricks for their amusement (and reduce their hearing by 5%), but if you're forced to go to one, it's actually pretty entertaining. Although getting a tight shot of a fast-moving Thunderbird swooping by in formation can be kind of a challenge.

"They're coming in!" Jen would shout.
"Where?" Lauren would shout.
"At eleven o'clock!" Jen would shout back.
"Where?" Lauren would shout.
"Huh?" This was my contribution, since I'd turned the gain all the way down on the mixer in an attempt to record half-way usable sound of fighter jet effluvia, as well as equally-deafening loudspeaker announcements, along the lines of, "AND NONE OF THIS WOULD BE POSSIBLE WITHOUT THE MEN AND WOMEN OF THE THUNDERBIRD GROUND CREW! LET'S GIVE 'EM A HAND!" (And, yes, applause is another sure way to make the mixer over-modulate.)

But one could say this epitomized our Vegas experience: everything roaring by so fast it was hard to keep up. Particularly with the interesting people we were meeting, who were, again, very un-Northeastern/Midwestern/pretty much anything else-ern but Vegas. To grossly generalize, where Minnesota is the land of the wholesome and the corn-fed, Vegas is a town of, how shall I put it…delinquents. We heard again and again how kids got into trouble with drinking and drugs -- and ended up in the military as a way of getting out of it. That's the odd combination that is Vegas: a town full of people who work in casinos and whose kids join the military. As you'd imagine, it attracts an interesting mix, from teenaged beauty queens to Danish pastry chefs, from former New Yorkers born of cops and firemen to Army brats who'd lived all over the world. We were shocked -- but not that shocked, since at that point we pretty much thought we'd heard it all -- to learn that one sweet old grandmother had been married at 13.

"My second husband was a truck driver," she told us, "so I started driving truck to be with him. Then after we split up, I was driving truck to pay the bills. And when my grandson was a kid, his parents were off working the carnival, so I took him on the road with me."

And what did that grandson grow up to be? A Marine.

Perhaps because we spent much less time eating and sleeping, and also spent most of our time in and around one city, we met many fewer interesting waitresses or bartenders, and we only had one set of desk clerks, at the Downtown Vegas Super-8. Of course, we stayed there out of necessity, but let me just say that Downtown Vegas has a much more fascinatingly decrepit ambiance than the Strip. Along with the abundance of neon and older casinos like the Four Queens and the El Cortez, which attract a more crusty, blue-haired and serious gambler crowd, there is an overall seediness, highlighted by pawn shops and quickie wedding chapels, which has it’s own, particular, down-and-dirty appeal.

"Yeah, this is pretty much the edge of where you'd want to go after dark," one desk clerk told us. "Keep going down that way and things get a bit sketchy."
"Really?" We were often privy to drunken shouting in the middle of the night, but this had always seemed to be coming from the Super-8.
"Oh yeah. Prostitutes, muggings, you know. Best not to walk in that direction."

We actually spent a lot of time in similar chats because the motel office/lobby/dining room was the only place we could actually get the free wi-fi (another reason WE LUV U SUPER-8!). So around ten or eleven every night, the three of us would exhaustedly troop across the parking lot and plunk ourselves down in the pleather sofas in front of a television that always seemed to be showing football. Leading to the typical late-night conversation we always wanted to avoid:

"Oh, a documentary, huh? What's it about?"

But for the most part, we liked the pasty white guys who worked the desk. Until one morning when I hurtled in to grab my "free continental breakfast," which we had about five minutes to choke down before running off to shoot. On my way I passed a group of little kids, heading back to their room, bearing paper plates piled high with sticky pastries. When I arrived in the office, there was one lonely-looking glazed donut left on the sneeze-guarded fake silver tray.

"Have you got any more food?" I asked.
"Oh yeah, I was just waiting until they left." He glared after the kids. "Those Mexican kids, they'll eat everything if you let them."

Somehow I don't think he'd have made the same comment about three raggedy and unshowered white girls, no matter how many cups of horrible coffee and lemon poppy mini-muffins we took. And we often took quite a few. They were small.

(And he wasn't the only person we met to make such derogatory comments. If you want to see where Tom Tancredo gets his support, look no further than the Wild West. I know that many of you have made comments pointing out how I tend to highlight the quaint and the avoid ugliness that is also America in these documentary travel blogs, but that's only because I'm trying to escape my own Blue State mentality. Believe me, that, too, is a big part of what we see when we leave New York -- although make no mistake: you can find good ol' xenophobia right here in NYC too.)

Luckily, though, things didn't end on that negative note. I can't tell you a lot more about our trip, which included much strangeness, laughter, tears, and an opportunity for all three of us to try on body armor. But I can tell you that it ended with a bang and not a whimper. After our whiplash-inducing visit to the Strip, we shot some nighttime b-roll of Downtown and then went home and packed and finished the last of the bottle of really awful Elvis wine that Lauren had bought in some cheesy souvenir shop. Then, before we knew it, it was 2:30 am, and you know what time that is in Vegas? Time to blow something up! Well, maybe not every night, but our last night there was the night they decided to implode the Frontier Casino. The Frontier was the place where, apparently, Elvis did his first show; a casino I'd never been to and would now never see up close, or closer than from a block away, where the crowd had assembled to watch the event. First, of course, there were 20 minutes of fireworks. Then, finally, they hit the button and this massive, once-glittering edifice melted gracefully into dust and smoke.

Thanks for the honeymoon, Vegas. We'll be back.

2008-01-17T09:13:00.000-05:00

Fear & Sex
Or
Rampant Capitalism Eats the World Part 3 (yes I know it's a new year but I've still got things to say on the subject, all right? And I know I promised to story you all on the Vegas shooting trip, and I'm working on that, but in the meantime, I had to get something up here, so…)

Recently, I worked on the job on which I took this photo. It was an ad for Chuck E. Cheese, where a mom wraps her kids in bubble wrap before sending them out to play.

The kids were quite good at showing their exasperation at Mom, and she played it sort of obliviously perky. And yet, the subtext is: Yes, this mom is psycho, and you, Viewer Mom, are not like THAT…but wouldn't you feel safer with your kids frying their minds on bad pepperoni and video kickboxing at Chuck E. Cheese, "Where a kid can be a kid," as opposed to out in the unsafe streets of America, where a kid can be a target for drunk drivers and drive-bys?

Now, before I put it that way, I'm sure you were thinking this ad sounded cute, funny, maybe even marginally clever. You were thinking, "In the annals of advertising, this ain't too bad. It's better than our former Surgeon General talking about how he has a button that he wears around his neck at all times to alert a medical unit if he's fallen and he can't get up, which just makes me incredibly depressed."

And you know, you're right. It is. And in general, a lot of the commercials I've worked on have been more entertaining and better crafted than the features I've worked on. Which says more about the features than anything else. Except perhaps how much money goes into advertising compared to what goes into independent filmmaking. (And, hmm, maybe this is one reason why I seem to have major bug up my butt about advertising at the moment…But I'm not here to psychoanalyze myself today...)

Still, here's one thing these two ads, and much of what you see in between your favorite reality shows and reruns these days on the boob tube (MPAA YOU SUCK!!!!!), if you don't have TiVo, have in common: they're trying to sell you something by scaring the shit out of you.

Not on any level that you're necessarily even aware of it, but on that slightly subliminal level that you don't want to admit is there, because you don't want to feel manipulated, and you don't even want to admit that you have fears, do ya? But you do. And they have to do with everything from your airplane going down in flames when you have 30% less legroom to having those little wet patches under your arms if you don't use the right deodorant. Oh, I know how you think. I'm right there with you. I'm a New Yorker, remember? Neurosis is my middle name.

Of course, fear is not the only tool in their arsenal. Let's not forget commercials for Bud/Victoria's Secret/Levi's/Calvin Klein/any perfume or cologne except for maybe Egoîste (although really that too, because screaming women are hot)/any ad starring Kate Moss (and there are a lot of them since she became a famous coke-head)/need I go on????

And again, as with when they take aim at the fear jugular, it's not intended to be obvious when or how this is all working on you. For example, is it logical that that they use sexy spots of women in various states of undress to sell products to straight women? (though we know that men do a lot of the lingerie shopping out there. What woman is really that excited to buy herself garters?). But aside from targeting our unconscious lesbian impulses -- Ooh, I just felt a few pulses quickening there! That was the main reason I wrote that, cheap shot, right fellas? -- somebody smart/with access to a few focus groups figured out at some point that while men tend to be sold on being sexed-up, women are sold on the feeling of being sexy. That's why while a lot sales du sex are in-your-face -- Axe Body Spray? Pretty in-your-face -- many absolutely aren't.

But, really, when you boil it down, you can stick all advertising into one category or the other:

Amaretto di Sarono ad where that woman licks the ice cube: sex
Cleaning products with germ-fighting potential or scrubbing bubbles: fear
Canon Powershot with Maria Sharapova walking in high heels even though she's playing tennis: sex
Those ProActiv spots where they show Jessica Simpson's acne real close up: fear and sex.
iPhone, iPod, all Mac products aside from the ones with John Hodgman playing the PC: sex
Mac ads with John Hodgman: fear (sorry, John)
Jenny Craig spots with Kirstie Alley: definitely fear
Hanes underwear spots with Marisa Tomei/Jennifer Love Hewett/half-neked boys playing dodgeball: sex
Hanes underwear spots with Cuba Gooding Jr making an idiot out of himself in front of Michael Jordan: fear
Most car commercials aside from Volvos: sex
Volvos ads (they're even scary in Japanese): fear
Completely unsexy Mastercard commercials that try to get you to buy cars for Christmas: hmm…

Well, okay, maybe there is a third category, and that's just plain old greed. But then again, isn't avarice highly powered by fear? Fear that you won't measure up to what your buddies have, or what the world thinks you should be? And it's also supercharged with sex as well, because as we all know, the more shit you have, the more sexy you feel, and the more tail you get. At least, that's the theory if you're male. Yeah, I know how you guys think. I work in an all-male environment with way too much downtime, remember? I've got all damn day to psychoanalyze you all. Not that it gets me dates.

And I know what you're thinking now (cuz like I said, either I feel your neurotic pain or I can psychoanalyze you): what about commercials aimed at kids? Like the kind of ads you see on Saturday mornings, for video games, Transformers, My Little Pony, Count Chocula (do they even have My Little Pony or Count Chocula any more? Boy am I old), Bratz, Hot Pockets, etc. Yes, those one would definitely categorize as greed greed greed. But also -- speaking figuratively of course -- these ads are the most in-your-face toy and food porn out there. They are designed to appeal to kids on a purely sensory level, and boy do they work. I don't know if you remember what it was like to see those ads when you were a kid, but I do. The moment you saw those cookies coming out of the bag or the little girl combing Barbie's hair, you wanted one nownownow I WANT IT NOW! Or at least, um, that was me, as my parents, who I can see nodding their heads in unison as they read this, can attest. But for those of you who weren't bratty, think of it like the iPhone spots, just not as artful and with way more low-budget production values, because they only have to appeal to the mind of a seven-year-old who doesn't care about the lighting. That's right: 100% desire.

And now you're thinking, "Okay, Beotch, what's your point?" Or at least, that's what you're thinking if you're Queen Latifah (who has sold her soul to Wal-Mart, Curvation and Pizza Hut and so I can understand why she's a little defensive).

Well, I don't know if it makes a difference, but for a long time I've thought that if you know you're being manipulated, you can stop letting it happen. If you can break down the process and see through it to what's really going on, you can decide not to cave. Is that true? I don't know. Let's face it, I want an iPhone as much as the next geek.

But I think that the only way that media gets better is if we pay attention to it and watch as active consumers, not passive ones who just let it crawl in our eyeballs and cozy itself up to our brains to do its dirty work. I know, commercials are not like, for instance, most local TV news or Extreme Makeover Any Edition or Cops, which you can (AND SHOULD, especially if you're a Nielsen family) choose not to watch. Not everyone can afford TiVo, or to get up and go to the fridge at every commercial break, unless they really want to add some pounds. I suppose you could just walk away and go to your computer during those breaks, but then again, what are you going to find on your computer? Advertising. It may not be as sophisticated at this point as what you get on your tee-vee but it will be.

So the point is: just think about it. Maybe go through the ads you see and come up with your own list of fear and sex (and feel free to post it here) or however else you think they're trying to get you. And don't let them get you. If you want to buy something, buy it, but don't buy it because some piece of mind-warping bullshit got you going.

Because you're better that that. I know you, remember?

2007-12-11T23:11:00.000-05:00

Cars for Christmas
Or
Rampant Capitalism Eats the World Part Two (Part One was that Gorbechev thing)

I worked on this holiday ad recently. Maybe you've seen it, 'cause not only is it running like lemmings on television (or at least on Bravo and Comedy Central, since those seem to be the only channels I watch now that Cablevision wants me to PAY for IFC and Sundance and I am way too cheap for that), but it's being shown on screens at a theater near you before the previews. And as if that weren't offensive enough, it's a commercial in which a guy gives his wife twin cars as holiday gifts.

Now, granted, the cars in this particular ad are a free sweepstakes prize, so he doesn't actually buy them. But this isn't the first time I've worked on advertising promoting giving automobiles as gifts. In fact, if you haven't noticed, there are a ton of them out there this season, trying to convince folks like you and me to do just that: buy cars for Christmas.

What the HELL???? Aside from the fact that in our world, with its dying-a-little-more-every-day atmosphere, nobody should be encouraged to buy another gas-guzzling, smog-producing vehicle -- What sign foreshadowing the apocalypse will it be this week? Wildfires? Bee die-offs? Trees budding in Central Park in November? -- there's the fact that in our world (yes, this too is our world, your world, my world), where folks are dying from lack of food, shelter, vaccines for diseases that should no longer exist, mosquito netting for Christ's sake, ANYONE should be getting a Hummer, a Volkswagon, a used fucking Subaru, or pretty much ANYTHING as a gift THAT COSTS OVER TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!!

Now look, I know. I work for The Man. And specifically for The Man Who Made This Ad. And even though we only recorded sound effects on this one, which they very well might not have even used (even though they were damn good, 'cause we are the best sound people EVER, we even make the useless shit sound good), I am a cog in the machine without which this ad would not exist, and people would not be inspired to spend this kind of money on crap. In fact, in general, as we all know, that is my day job: helping to make crap that's going to be used to get people to spend money on crap they don't need. Oh, and did I mention all of the crap -- money and uneaten food and landfills of plastic water bottles and entire power plants of megawattage -- that's expended making this crap?

Yeah, it's a living. And without me, there would be another very willing cog, quite thrilled to make my $57.50 an hour plus OT to take my place at the pole. In fact, I know him, and he already is, which is why I'm sitting here at home writing this instead of holding the pole over my head for The Man right now.

But still, I am part of The System, some might argue more than most. And even if I use The Money I make off The Man to create something(s) that attempt in some way to buck The System…is any of that any more than, well, hypocritical bullshit?

Nevertheless. That doesn't mean I can't call bullshit. And it certainly doesn't force me to buy the crap. In fact, it makes me think twice, or three or six or twenty-eight times if I'm feeling obsessive, about what I do and do not need to get by in my own little life when I'm not holding the pole.

So in our world, where Gorbechev lends his face to Louis Vuitton, let me lend my pathetic, anonymous, potentially hypocritical voice to this:

Plywood and nails (Habitat for Humanity): $10.

Measles vaccine for 50 kids (Unicef): $27.

A loan to start a tomato-selling business in Tanzania (Finca International): $50.

A llama (Heifer International): $150.

Giving something that matters: priceless.

Oh heck, I don't want to end the year on that churlish note (even if I am a churl -- I'm not sure what that is exactly, but I am one), since we're off on another shoot and then I'm away for the holidays, and this will very likely be my parting shot for 2007. So here's a little phone video from our last shooting trip, to Las Vegas. Yeah, you haven't heard about that one yet, but you will, in 2008. I know, shoes, Vegas, the evils of rampant capitalism, what could be more apropos, and yet contradictory? But for some reason, watching this makes me happy. Hopefully it will do the same for you. Vegas, baby, Vegas.

Oh and, um, happy holidays. Ha ha.

2007-12-10T10:56:00.000-05:00

Back, in Sweats

Just wanted to mention, for those of you who frequent the blogosphere (which I don't, which is part of why I get no hits), that one of my all-time favorite bloggers, Josh Friedman -- not to dis any of y'all, Danator, oneofhismoms, all of you should go read their blogs too RIGHT NOW -- is back again after a 10-month hiatus, at I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing (see link at right). Basically because he's on strike, so this might be a limited-time offer.

Now, me plugging Friedman is kind of like Modest Mouse saying, "DUDE, you've gotta check out this AWESOME band, they're called The Beatles!" But I'm a fan. He's clever, dark, bitter, cynical, occasionally poetic and dare I say deep, and pretty much everything I wish I were as a blogger and hope I am on a very, very good day.

So go, read, and if you see him in his sweatpants on the picket line at Warner Brothers, tell him he rocks.

2007-11-26T12:08:00.000-05:00

The Kind of Stuff That Happens When You Leave New York (Part Two)
Or
Minnesota Nice

In case there was any question, let me tell you a secret:

Minnesota is definitely in the Midwest.

It's apparent not just from the lay of the land, which is flat, I mean flat, and green, except for the parts of it which are a toasty shade of golden brown, all of which you can see when you fly in. But it's also the nature of the people. For one thing, there's the deadpan sense of humor, where you can't tell if they're joking or if they're just funny and they don't entirely know it. Especially when they talk to each other about what's funny about Minnesotans.

"Well there's the fact that we always have to have a hot dish. That's what we call them, 'hot dishes.' It's that need to feed people."
"Oh, yah, I was wondering if you were going to make something for us."
"Well, we have some chips and salsa and some pizza we can heat up."
"And then there's the thing about Jell-o."
"Oh yah, different kinds of Jell-o for different occasions."
"Yah, green for funerals."

And did I mention the accent?

"Yah, when Fargo came out I kept sayin', 'Oh we do not talk like that!' But then I realized that I do say it, I say it, 'What a hoot!' I say it all the time!"
"Oh, yah. Or 'That was a hoot!'"

Then there's the part of Midwestern nature described to us as "Minnesota Nice."

"So, where you ladies from?"
"New York."
"Wow, all the way out from New York! Isn't that a hoot?"

Yes, despite all we'd heard about being thought of as liberal East Coast devilspawn in the heartland, people always seemed excited to meet us. Granted, we had the glamour of film on our side, apparent from our wrinkled clothes, eyes hollowed from staring at the double-yellow line down the center of the interstate, and the midsize rental car we splurged on once we realized we'd need it to fit our eight pieces of luggage, including a camera, two huge cases of equipment -- cases that were packed and repacked, placing the maffer clamps in with the shampoo and the gaffers tape under pajamas, once we found that one could not be taken on the plane because it exceeded the 75-lb limit -- and a light shaped like a suitcase. This light, in particular, seemed to get elaborately searched and swabbed at the each of the airports (there were four) we visited in our eight states in five days extravaganza.

But even before we got to the purpose of our trip, people were friendly. They just were. Plus, you forget that America is a nation of movers and transplants, which was always driven home by the inevitable,

"New York? I've got a cousin in Poughkeepsie/Great Neck/White Plains. So what are you doing out here?"

A ten-second conversation would then become a fifteen-minute one, so we tried to save it for when the bill arrived at the restaurant, or during the shuttle bus ride, or pretty much any time other than when we were checking into a hotel at 2 am. Although at any other hour, the reception we got from Pat who works all-night at the front desk of the Fargo, North Dakota Super 8 -- which is also definitely in the Midwest -- would have been welcome.

"Where you girls coming from?"
"Minnesota."
"Wow, long drive, eh? You must be tired."
"Yeah."
"And what're you doing here in Fargo?"
"Oh, we're just spending the night here on our way to Bismarck."
"What are you doing in Bismarck?"
"Working on a documentary."
"Oh, really, what about?"

We'd been driving since about 9, when we'd finished dinner back at The Jack Shack (no, we don't know where the name comes from) -- or rather I'd finished my fried chicken and Lauren, who you may or may not remember is vegan, left most of her fried mushrooms behind (the mushrooms popped easily out of their no-doubt-fried-indiscriminately-with-all-sorts-of-meat-products batter, but this, she concluded, was because they had been dipped in mayonnaise). Driving, that is, aside from the two times we'd been pulled over for speeding, causing Lauren to proclaim, "The Midwest sucks." We'd actually communicated with Pat en route a couple of times, once to ask if it was okay that we'd be arriving late -- "Oh, I'll be here all night" -- and the second time when we got lost en route.

"We're at the Kwik Shop and there is a Super 8 down the road --"
"Are you at the one on Main Ave?"
"Um, yeah."
"Then you're in Moorhead. You're almost here. But you're still in Minnesota."

Little could we have anticipated from these conversations, delivered in flat Midwestern monotone, the extraordinarily friendly and pear-shaped individual with the boyish black toupee who would enthusiastically drag our luggage down the hallway with the moldy-smelling carpet to our room. Another thing that goes in the "the Midwest sucks" category: not all Super 8s are created equal. And we were just putting all of our batteries up to charge into the two outlets in the room that actually worked out of the six that were there when the phone rang.

"Hello?"
"Hi, this is Pat at reception. Everything working out all right for you there?"
"Yes, everything's fine."
"Okay...I just wanted to call and make sure you girls were fine."
"Thanks. Thanks so much."

Poor Pat.

The highlight of our trip to North Dakota was not, in fact, the scenery -- a great disappointment to those of us who have visited South Dakota. North Dakota doesn't have the glorious vistas of the Badlands, the monumental absurdity of Mount Rushmore and the Corn Palace, or even the tourism for the sake of tourism value of Wall Drug. What it has is no downtown. Believe me, we looked. To quote Wikipedia, "the downtown area is rather unique because the city's major shopping center, Kirkwood Mall, is located there instead of in a suburban setting." And it is home to a state capitol building that is essentially a nondescript, 19-story edifice that, at 241.75 ft, is the town skyscraper. And the residents know this.

"The old state capitol was nice," said one of the folks in our documentary, "but it burnt down in 1930 and then they built this one to be as Unitarian as possible." (We think she meant "utilitarian," but considering how many churches we filmed in Bismarck, possibly not).

But the highlight was Space Aliens, a chain of theme restaurants in North Dakota and Minnesota, advertised via billboards with floating green hollow-eyed heads, each of which (according to the website -- though tempted to hit all five, we only went to one) features a full room of videogames, the "Bar from Mars," and well-known extraterrestrial favorites like ribs and quesadillas, as well as three-eyed creatures staring down at you from a porthole above your table. And the folks who work there, at least at the Bismarck, North Dakota location, are Minnesota Nice.

"How much are those inflatable aliens?"
"Oh, you're supposed to win those with tickets. But here, just take one."
"What about the pencils?"
"Just take a couple of those too."

Mind you, Colorado is not the Midwest. For one thing, there are mountains. For another, there's Boulder. Only in the West will you find a city where you can get fined for creating too much light pollution. We stayed with friends of mine there -- friends who go out every day before work to take their dog for a little five-mile jog somewhere on the 130 miles of hiking trails just beyond their backyard. It was the first place on our trip we were hard-pressed not to want to pick up and move to, particularly once they showed us the garage organized specifically to facilitate all of their outdoor adventure activities, which made us feel like we were missing out even when we had no idea what they were talking about.

"This tub contains all of our camping food. This one has our snowboarding accessories. This one has the kiteboarding gear --"
"The what? Is that a sport?"

Colorado was also interesting because we spent September 11th there. It wasn't my first 9/11 outside of New York since 2001 -- I actually was in Montreal for 9/11/03, which, perhaps because I was too busy trying to barhop in French, didn't make me think a lot about my Americanness. But in Colorado (not Boulder, which is in an entirely different Colorado), it was all about How American Can We Be?, at least for the local radio station, which tried to make a sparsely-attended event out of it, complete with singing by bad local musicians, a lot of talk about "fighting for our freedom," and a display of military vehicles with tires bigger than three of me, which they let kids climb into and pretend to drive (and no, in case you were wondering based upon this and our previous encounter with a tank, our documentary is not on huge and scary military vehicles. But good guess). Unlike being in Canada, being in Colorado made me realize how a lot of the rest of the country thinks about 9/11 as a call to arms, whereas I think most of us who were here in New York that day probably got the closest we ever will to feeling what it's like to actually be under attack and were just happy to wake up the next day and find that we weren't, in fact, at war. But that's another blog. Perhaps the most sinister thing about the whole event was the fact that the local minister who led everyone in the Pledge of Allegiance chose to omit the words "with liberty and justice for all." I wonder what that says about Americanness now.
Strangely enough, the other place we were tempted to move to (or at least I was, and Lauren claims this was because of the cute young blond men we interviewed, but that is NOT true), was Toledo, Ohio. We were both surprised by how much we liked it. Partly, it was that the center of town is laid out along the Maumee River, lining it with the refurbished remains of old warehouses and factories and including one somehow beautiful towering smokestack gesturing up at the sky. Not to mention that we found great vegan-friendly food there.

But most of all, Toledo might actually win the prize for the most friendly place we went. Although this could have been purely because it had the highest boredom quotient. Not that people seemed unhappily bored. On the contrary, they seemed very content to stand around shooting the shit with us, and probably anybody else who came across their path. Even one of our subjects whose wife was 8 months pregnant and having contractions just wanted to hang.

"I'm so sorry, it's just I have to take her to the hospital, you know. But darn, I was really looking forward to us going out and having a couple of beers."

Then there was Gladys, our bartendress at the Emerald City Lounge, located in the Days Inn around the corner from our hotel. The lounge had earned its name by virtue of its lime green color, which naturally drew us like moths who are exhausted from flying (and driving, but that sort of kills the analogy) but unable to resist singeing themselves against the light of kitsch.

"We don't get too many people out here from New York," Gladys told us. "Though we had a whole bunch of Filipino nurses here from New Jersey last week for a convention. It's funny, one of 'em, this guy, came in here and we were talking for a while, and he asked me, 'So where should I go out around here?' and I said, 'Well, you could go to this area, or this area, but you probably want to avoid this area here.' Then he looked at me and said, 'But where for, you know, guys like me. You know, gay.' And I said, 'Oh. All those areas that I just told you not to go to? That's where you should go.'…But I wondered, why was he asking me?"

We looked back at her AC/DC t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, her bleached-blond mullet and butch biker jewelry, and shrugged. "Dunno."

Probably because we were her only customers, Gladys was kind enough to answer all of our questions about the alcohol on the shelves, a rather unconventional stock. There were brands of gin, bourbon and scotch we had never seen, about fifteen kinds of Pucker and Schnapps, Goldschlager, Jagermeister (which I will never touch again thanks to some experiences on low-budget films out of town in my youth), and Tequila Rose.

"It looks like Pepto-Bismol, but it tastes real good," said Gladys, pouring us a shot. It was kind of like drinking perfume with a kick to it. We would probably have finished it had not the karaoke in the back gotten into full swing at that point, causing us to decide that it was time for bed.

The last night of our trip that confirmed that Michigan, too, is Minnesota Nice, or at least Ohio Bored n' Friendly. It also gave me my last encounter with the late night lonely crowd; specifically, those folks who work in the area of rental car return at the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport.

"I don't suppose the shuttle could take me all the way to my hotel instead of just back to the airport?" I asked as the guy at the desk -- who looked to be just barely legal -- closed out our rental.
"Oh, gee, you know, let me ask my manager." He returned looking genuinely sad. "I'm real sorry. He says we can't spare the driver." He leaned in conspiratorially. "But you could ask Papa Joe when he gets here. Come on, let's go watch some tv and wait for him."

We went and planted ourselves beside the other two pubescent night duty car rental guys, who slumped in the customer waiting chairs in front of a huge flat-screen.

"Ooh, 'The Hills Have Eyes Two,'" said Young Desk Guy, scrolling through the channel listings. "Did you see that?"
"No, I haven't."
"Well, you're lucky, that was nasty. Hmm, looks like we got news, news, news..."
"How about 'Sex & the City'?"
"Oh, we don't get that channel. You like that show? I never seen it. Is it kind of a chick show?"
"Yeah."
"What else we got…What about 'Family Guy'? That's a funny show."

Papa Joe finally arrived. White-haired and slumped defeatedly over the wheel of his shuttle, he completely lived up to the image conjured by his name.

"Nope, can't take you to your hotel." He waved his walkie talkie. "I'd be outa range, they wouldn't be able to call me. Couldn't get the hotel shuttle to come pick you up from here, huh?"
"No, they said I had to go back to the airport."
"Shoulda slipped him a ten. That's the way things work," he said with a meaningful look, which I only realized later meant that for ten bucks I probably could have gotten him to drop me at my hotel.

I waited at the airport. As one might guess, the Super 8 shuttle was not prompt. But then I saw the shuttle for the much nicer hotel across the street from ours pull up. I climbed aboard behind two businessmen.

"Hi," I said to the young woman with big hair who sat behind the wheel. "I'm staying at the Super 8, could I take this shuttle?"
" I guess," she said warily. "But I gotta drop these guys off first."

Her apparent surliness changed the moment her real customers got off at their hotel. I was starting to get off too.

"No, no," she said, "I'll take you across. Honey, you don't want to cross that road at this hour."
"Really?"
"Oh yeah, people come barreling down that road late at night, nobody's watching where they're going, they don't think anyone's going to be crossing -- and it is NOT well lit. People have definitely gotten killed out there. I've been driving this route a long time, I can tell ya…"

Needless to say, she did.

2007-10-31T09:30:00.000-04:00

Overheard Set Conversation: Two Actors Looking at Prop Magazines While Waiting on Lighting

(Apologies in advance to the Brits, you know I couldn't make this shit up)

Her: You know, this is the worst magazine, the British In Style. Total trash.
Him: Yeah? Who the hell are these people? They're ugly. See, the British are ugly.
Her: She's ugly, and her baby's so ugly it's cute.
Him: Emma. Emma Breen. (faking English accent) Hello, my name is Emma Breen…(pointing to another page) Oh, I've worked with her. And I've worked with her.
Her: On what?
Him: "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Two."
Her: Was she nice?
Him: Yup, they're all nice. They're just a little too famous for words…I've worked with her...And I've worked with her.
Her: Whoopi Goldberg?
Him: Uh huh. Very nice…(pointing to next page) My brother is obsessed with her.
Her: I know, I love her. She's so trashy but she just doesn't care that she has no class. She's like, "I show my breasts for money, that's what I do." They had a Disney wedding and it was actually really cute…
Him: Oh, look at Britney.
Her: Poor Britney.
Him: Do you think she has, like, a billion dollars in the bank?
Her: No, I think she has, like, ten thousand.
Him: Really?!
Her: Actually, no, she just had a single come out and a new album --
Him: Oh, so right now she has like a billion dollars --
Her: Yeah, but she'll spend it all. She doesn't know how to manage it. She needs an intervention.
Him: She needs someone to adopt her.
Her: She needs to be adopted by Madonna.
Him: Exactly. Madonna. Madonna's not a great performer but she's an amazing businesswoman.
Her: Wow, this magazine really has way too many pages…

2007-10-16T23:13:00.001-04:00

Does anyone else find this Louis Vuitton ad to be horribly wrong?

Maybe I just don't like what it says about our time.