Life Below the Line

2010-08-31T20:47:00.006-04:00

What the f*** is wrong with us?

Working in commercials really shows you how fucked up our society is about food.

For one thing, when you see food in a commercial, you've probably figured out by now that it ain't exactly what you're getting when you chip the thing out of your grocer's freezer. It's a beautiful facsimile made out of the same ingredients, only better, by somebody the same as you, only better, at cooking things that look appetizing -- aka a food stylist. These are people who deploy tweezers, glycerin spray, and the occasional last-minute blow-torch action in the interest of making the stuff look like it does on the package: hot, moist, containing particles of victuals that you might recognize; in short, edible. Not to mention that there may be some digital color enhancement or air-brushing later on to remove anything that shouldn't have been there, and I'm not going to go into what that might have been. But of course, when you see something on TV, you can't smell it or taste it, so you are judging the potential yumminess of the foodstuffs presented purely based on looks. That's what gets your salivary glands going and destroys your impulse control -- which is both exactly what they're counting on and sad, considering that the looks you're seeing have very little basis in reality, and the fact that you shouldn't really judge what you should eat based on prettiness. I'd like to say that James Franco is so cute I could just gobble him right up, but really, I couldn't.

Then there's the fact that a lot of ads for eatables hawk it specifically by attempting to show you that the "food" being advertised will not, if you eat it, actually affect your body the way that actual food would. Take for instance anything with "light" in the product name, or, worse, its dreaded step-cousin "lite." Light n' Lively, Crystal Lite, Tasti-D-Lite. Generally these products are spokes-modeled by a woman who appears as if all of the growth that was supposed to happen at puberty was channeled vertically -- such as Heidi Klum, currently seen in ads for Dannon Light n' Fit, which is the name of a yogurt, not a Chinese gymnast. While we all do love Heidi for her perkiness and slightly dictatorial accent, the main reason she's the one selling this yogurt is because she looks like she doesn't actually consume food at all. So in effect, advertisers are selling you something you should eat by telling you that if you eat it, it will be just like you didn't, or at least like you ate it and then threw it right back up.

Then there are the foods that are sold with the tag-word "healthy." Healthy Choice, Healthy Request (because we all know that healthy people are demanding with their choices and requests, just look at those vegans), Hearty and Healthy, Light and Healthy, Le Menu Healthy (I'd like to have been at the pitch meeting for that one: "It's Frenchy and healthy, get it?!?!!!??!!"), etc etc. With ads for these products, the food stylists snap into overdrive because "healthy" naturally connotes "sans taste" to an American audience that is used to all flavor coming from fat and salt; those food tweakers spend a lot of time on the set primping the noodles to make the dish look at least not un-delicious. But it's not entirely clear to me what "healthy" is supposed to mean to people in these ads. In one I recently worked on for microwavable _________Healthy ________, the selling points they had to mention in the copy were the reasonable cost, how quickly it cooked, and that it steamed the vittles in the package to make them "tender" or "crisp," depending on whether they were talking about chicken or vegetables (and NOT "crispY," as one actor who sent us into overtime kept saying, no doubt because "crispY" is part of the advertising vocabulary used to describe potato chips and chimichangas). But not once in the spot did anyone actually say the product was good for you. Was that because "good for you" evokes your mom force-feeding you lima beans or because they weren't allowed to say it, because it didn’t meet certain standards?

Because there are rules about these things, and I just have to share with you as an aside some snippets that I found in my research -- What, she does research? -- in a book called The Handbook of Food Science, Technology and Engineering. Basically, it's what you can and cannot do when you name a food product. Here are some excerpts, because you can't make this shit up:

"GERMAN POTATO SALAD WITH BACON
This product must contain at least 14% cooked bacon in total formulation.

LASAGNA
Sauce is an expected ingredient of lasagna products and its declaration in the product name is optional.
Cheese Lasagna with meat: 12% meat.
Lasagna with Meat and Sauce: 12% meat.
Lasagna with Meat Sauce: 6% meat in total product.
Lasagna with Poultry: 8% poultry meat.

CUTLET, PORK
'Pork Cutlet' may consist of pork temple meat, inside masseter muscles, and small pieces of lean from the tip of pork jaws. These are flattened and knitted together in 'cutlet' size products by means of 'cubing' or 'Frenching' machines, or by hand pounding with 'cubing hammers.'

LOAF
A 'Loaf' (other than meat loaf) consists of meat in combination with any of a wide range of nonmeat ingredients. These products are not identified with the term 'Meat Loaf,' 'Beef Loaf,' or the like but with designations, e.g. 'Olive Loaf,' 'Pickle and Pimento Loaf,' 'Honey Loaf,' 'Luxury Loaf,' and others that are descriptive.

DUTCH BRAND LOAF
A nonspecific loaf that must be qualified as 'Made in the USA.'

CHEESE (PASTEURIZED PROCESSED CHEESE FOOD OR SPREAD) A cheese food product with a standard of identity, but is not considered a cheese. Therefore, it cannot be used in meat food products where cheese is an expected ingredient, e.g., 'Cheesefurters' or 'Veal Cordon Bleu.' It is acceptable in non-specific loaves, etc.

GUIDELINES FOR LABELING OF MEAT AND POULTRY STICK ITEMS
1. If sold in fully labeled bulk containers, i.e. canisters, caddies, or similar containers, stick items do not have to be fully labeled unless they are individually wrapped.
2. If sold in bulk containers, i.e. canisters, caddies, or similar containers that are not fully labeled, stick items must be fully labeled.
3. If sold in small, fully labeled cartons, boxes or similar containers, (e.g. 3 oz net weight) that are only intended for retail sale intact, stick items may be individually wrapped and unlabeled."

There are so many things wrong with all of that that all I can say is, Wow. I've never heard of Luxury Loaf, Cheesefurters or Frenching machines, but now that I know they exist, the world is a much freakier place. Basically, though, it just shows you the rules that have been created for how you can find a way to call things you want to pass off as food but that have very little actual food in them something that at least sounds like something that won't send you screaming into the night.

Oh, and then there's how they advertise eating establishments. I'm not talking about the local ads where Sal the pizza guy stares into the camera like a deer in the headlights of a teleprompter while pronouncing stilted copy accompanied by flabby gestures of excitement. No, the ads I work on are for national chains, like Olive Garden or Red Lobster, or for fast food like Taco Bell, Burger King, McDonalds, Dominos, Subway -- there's a lot of it out there, believe me. The funny thing about these ads is that, while they do have images of food that is as pretty and plentiful as any you've ever laid eyes on, their advertising strategy generally rests more on the experience of being in close proximity to the food than eating it. For instance, McDonalds' current campaign, "I'm lovin' it!", shows images of busy soccer moms squeezing in a little fun time with the kiddos. Olive Garden commercials, which employ the tagline, "When you're here, you're family," show groups of people laughing and cavorting and saying dialogue you can't hear (One entertaining part of those ads for me: if they cast sassy and easily bored actors, the dialogue often quickly spirals downward in taste, creating improvised scenarios having more to do with things like bondage or incest than your standard restaurant chit-chat. Sometimes the clients freak out when they hear the actors talking about herpes while smiling and twirling their product on their forks...which just makes it funnier). The idea is that these families are having a super-awesome experience that really has very little to do with those stale breadsticks and that glop-covered cardboard they call pasta. Chili's is similar, only it's dudes hanging out with their buds and talking smack; Dominos' ads are about how many pizzas you can get for your small investment and how fast you can get them; and Taco Bell used to be all about that little talking Chihuahua, until people finally got sick of that, so those ads are now are asking you to "think outside the bun." In short, you're not deciding what or where you want to eat so much as deciding, Am I the kinda person who's lovin' it, the kind who likes to eat fresh, or the kind who knows when it's real?

And lest we forget, there are the food ads that are all about sex. These are ads with some deep-throated siren describing to you the taste of something really really good, most likely chocolaty, and at some point assaulting you with an extreme close-up of lips being licked. The strange thing is that most of these ads are directed at women, trying to tempt them with the naughty, naughty vice of eating things with calories, which all of us good girls who want to be bad must associate with other naughty naughtiness. In other words, forbidden food is hot. Oh, but the ads for alcohol? Those are directed at men. They nearly all feature scantily-clad babes making eyes at the drinking dudes, the implication being that 1) only men drink beer, which really pisses me off as a beer-drinking female, and 2) the only way a man will score with someone this hot is to get her drunk. And since Knocked Up, the idea that this is really and truly possible has taken root in the male consciousness to an even more absurd degree, and so ads seem to feature it even more. Thanks for that Judd Apatow. Every time some really wasted guy leers down my shirt and tries to buy me a drink, I'll think of you.

But aside from that, what really disturbs me in all this is, if aliens were to intercept these ads, what would they think that humans actually do for sustenance? Because they certainly wouldn't think that we use food for that. And then of course if they came across terms like "hide the salami" or "drink your milkshake," they'd be even more confused. But I think this just reflects the general confusion we have as a society about what food is for. Not that other societies don't have it too, based on foreign commercials. According to their ads, food in Spanish-speaking countries is really 85% about sex, and food in Japan is for…well, I'm really not sure what, but it definitely involves throwing, yelling, and American celebrities embarrassing themselves. Most ironically, if we didn't have all these issues around food and what entices us to eat, we probably wouldn't be so fat while simultaneously worshiping women who look like stick figures; we wouldn't have hyperactive children who are allergic to everything but high-fructose corn syrup and chicken nuggets; and we wouldn't think that our enjoyment of life hinged on where we went to dinner. And God forbid, if we didn't have all of these messages telling us what and how to eat and how it would make us feel, we would actually learn to figure that out for ourselves.

2010-08-15T18:43:00.006-04:00

Improv Lines Said By The Woman in the Eyeglass Commercial Whose Breasts Grew Five Sizes When She Tried On New Eyeglasses

Large.
Nice.
Yes!
No!
Yay!
Giddyup cowboy.
This is pornographic. And I like it.
I look pretty.
These are nice glasses.

2010-05-14T11:41:00.006-04:00

Ruined

People always ask me, "So, does working on movies and TV spoil watching them for you now?"

I've always replied that it doesn't. At least, not if the movie or show is halfway decent. It's only if a film is kind of, well, bad that I start to watch the gears turning -- meaning that the formula the filmmakers used was so incredibly obvious that you can't not pay attention to it. The gears are pretty much sticking out of the screen like a 3-D ikran (that's one of those flying creatures from Avatar, get with it people). Otherwise, I find watching movies as absorbing as you civilians do. I am certainly more analytical about them, so when I do or don't like something about a movie, I can usually pinpoint what it is -- a weak performance, a great directing choice, a screenwriting hiccup in the second act (that hiccup often being that the second act is a directionless and never-ending pile of mush -- yes, I'm talking about you Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Matrix Reloaded, X-Men: The Last Stand, and pretty much any film where they bring on five writers and bring in some new hack director -- yes, I'm talking about you, Brett Ratner), etc. But for me, that doesn't diminish the enjoyment of watching it, if it's worth watching. The same with sound issues: I don't notice the bad sound or a boom shadow unless it's pretty darn bad, at which point it would've taken you out of the movie too. In fact, friends I go to the theater with are generally pointing out to me the egregious mike pack on a person's back, possibly because I am so used to looking at them that I think they look perfectly normal.

There is always, however, the "I can't forget I was there" problem.

I have been working with celebrities for years, and if you know somebody is a jerk, that certainly does make it harder to enjoy their performance. Ever since I worked on a film where William Hurt complained about how much he hated the crew and gave me his piercing and contemplative look of disdain every time I had to boom him (you know the one), I've had a much harder time enjoying The Big Chill. After Jennifer Coolidge (aka Stifler's Mom) almost got me fired when she had a hissy over my telling the director that she was overlapping someone else's dialogue (aka, doing my job), I found her distinctly less funny in Legally Blond, or Best in Show, or…well, let's just say it sucks a little because she's in a lot of funny movies.

By the same token, there are also positive if perhaps no less distracting effects to brushes with fame. Whenever I see a Johnny Depp movie, I often find myself distracted by the fond memory of our romantic moment together: him pretending he was going to tickle me while I was booming. Whenever I see David Strathairn in something, I remember killing time doing the crossword puzzle with him on long days shooting in a New York City courthouse; with Michael Imperioli, I flash on talking with him about the Emmys while standing on a countertop at Satriale's Pork Store. But because in these cases the I.C.F.I.W.T. effect is just a nice if not exactly motivated afterglow surrounding the characters they play, I can't really complain. Plus, when a performance is really good, it doesn't matter. It's very easy to forget that Stanley Tucci is one of the nicest guys you will ever meet when he plays a creepy psychopathic child murderer because he can act. And very often the truth is so close to reality that finding it out in the flesh it enhances an otherwise not-so-impressive performance. Blake Lively from Gossip Girl actually is kind of good-hearted but spoiled, and Matt Bomer from White Collar is charming and hot. Yeah, I know, major newsflash there, quick, somebody call OK Magazine!

Then there are the experiences with talent that forever alter your worldview. Working with supermodels the first few times was something of a revelation. For one thing, I realized what total freaks of nature they are. Most models are absurdly tall, dangerously thin (some of them look like their legs oughta just snap out from under them like twigs) and have huge eyes and lips that, in person, are actually a little frightening. If I were on their home planet, I'd be worried that they would eat my head in one bite -- luckily we have laws about that sort of thing here. But okay, the truth is that most of them are not aliens, or even sex kitten fantasy babes, but actually pretty normal human beings. They don't eat, true, but they do make conversation, which even, sometimes, extends to making jokes about how stupid the ways that they are made out to be sex kitten fantasy babes -- wearing giant wings, trying to act normal while staring into a wind machine -- can be. Believe it or not, Heidi Klum doesn't like to be stared at in her underwear by a crew of a hundred men who can eat their weight in red meat any more than you would, and Tyra Banks doesn't enjoy walking around all day in 6-inch heels -- even if they will both suck it up and do those things because that's their job. In general, knowing this has had the effect of making me hate them less, and less hate is always a good thing. It also reinforced my general feeling about what we worship as beauty in this country being really fucked up, because we worship freaks.

To be fair, though, I've had a lot of other experiences on sets that re-educated me about certain facts of life, many of them involving animals, inanimate objects and foodstuffs. The very existence of food stylists, for example, a whole profession of people who primp, plump and spray food to make it look desirable to eat -- and nothing like it actually looks when you purchase and/or cook it -- taught me quite a bit about the boundaries between truth and fiction in advertising. As in, what boundaries? I've also learned that cows are huge, cats are far more unlikely to be tricked into doing something ridiculous than dogs, and skunks are probably not going to do anything you want them to do, period. And that any object you see in the background of a shot was probably put there by a prop person, and is therefore somehow fake, and often held together with gaffer tape and safety pins. These are all good life lessons which have improved my day-to-day existence. Well, maybe not the information about the cows and the skunks, but you never know when that might come in handy.

No, I think that there is truly only one thing that is unshakable and affects my viewing pleasure: the pain of working in episodic television. It doesn't help that TV shows have a very short turnaround time, so I can watch them within a few weeks of working on them. At that point it's still fresh in my muscle memory that the scene I'm watching took a grueling eight hours to shoot -- the second half of a 16-hour day, which put us outside in the rain at 4 am on a Friday night, aka Fraturday. And I wonder why I've started shivering and trying to curl up in the fetal position on my couch. But even if I get past that, I move on to the sensation of being really pissed off, when I see that all of the unnecessary coverage we shot, which made the scene take the eight hours to shoot, didn't get used -- or it did get used, but it makes no sense whatsoever. That's the worst, because it's really distracting when you're trying to watch a scene and find yourself thinking, WHY are we cutting to the completely unmotivated shot through the glass table??? Or, Why the extreme close-up when we already had the close-up, the medium, the two-shot, the over-the-shoulder, the over-the-other-shoulder, the over-the-other-other-shoulder-of-the-other-actor, and the shot through the glass table? Are we just trying to see the actor from every possible angle and test how good his hair continuity is? And then you remember, Oh right, because we went into meal penalty on those shots and the director just had to use it to prove that every single one was necessary. The bastard. Back to more hate.

And yet, I also remember the fun we had talking about how much we hated the bastard. The nicknames we gave him, what we joked about doing to him, mimicking his pretentious and unidentifiable accent behind his back. And I remember the weird solidarity among cast and crew that working 16-hour days builds, even if a lot of it is built on misery. I remember the lead actress sticking up for us and forcing them to wrap at 14 hours one day when she couldn't take it any more, which, in my opinion, made her worth every dollar of her $5 million contract. Good times!

I guess the conclusion I'm coming to in my very roundabout pondering way is that my viewing experience hasn't been spoiled, it's just been altered. And as with most things in life, you have to take the good with the bad. Plus, is my take on a movie or TV show more altered than anyone else's who has a day job? Like have you ever watched Grey's Anatomy with a doctor? Man, is that annoying. So I just try to keep my pleasure and pain to myself, because nobody wants to hear about it…except for maybe you I hope.

2010-02-26T11:24:00.005-05:00

Second Hand Fame -- on Revolving Floor

Do you want to know the secret to becoming cool at your school, a social sophisticate, and the center of attention at any party? No, it's not dye your hair blond, get a piercing in a really interesting spot, or work out on the Roboflex -- which you can buy for just $299! The real answer is in my latest blog "Second Hand Fame," which is now up on the group forum Revolving Floor.

This month's topic is "Blank Slate," and there's all sorts of other cool stuff to check out there too. So go there now, and we'll add this free cubic zirconium necklace as our special gift to you at no extra charge!

No, not really. But you may find out what's up with this picture of Flava Flav and Jon Lovitz...

2010-01-20T18:31:00.009-05:00

My Brush With Kink (And Then Some)

Several months ago, I was at brunch with my friend Raani.

"I went to this festival last week and I really want to go to the closing night party," she said. "Do you want to go?"
"Sure," I said.
"It costs $30."
"Forget it." I'm cheap, lest you forget.
"But I met this really cute filmmaker at the festival and I told him I'd see him at the party, before he leaves town," said Raani. "And I don't want to go alone."
"Why not?"

Raani reached into her bag and took out what looked like a fancy invitation. It read, "Sexalicious Film Festival Closing Night Party: The Chariot Couples Club."

It turns out that Raani had just attended a sex film festival. Or, as described on the Sexalicious NYC website, a festival "featuring a specially-selected program of films and videos that celebrate and explore a wide diversity of sexuality." Raani described a few of them for me. Some sounded like silly sex comedies, others pretty much like straight porn.

"Mostly the films were really bad," she said, dropping her voice the way she always does when criticizing a movie, even a big movie – like she's worried McG is going to be sitting at the table next to us. "I mean, bad. We could have made something way better."
"But why would we have wanted to?" I asked.
Raani shrugged. "Why not?"

As far as I knew, Raani had never written a scene that had gotten beyond a hot make-out with added innuendo. Raani is a screenwriter from a traditional Muslim family. She didn't drink until her 30s and still mostly confines herself to Bellinis -- although I have seen her catch a healthy buzz off of them. I knew her dating history contained very little casual sex, much less casual pornographic kinky sex.

"Okay look, what if I pay for your ticket?" she asked.
"Really? Okay." Free stuff! Free stuff!
"Great! What are you going to wear?"
"I don't know," I replied, contemplating for a moment. "I don't think I could possibly own the right thing to wear."
"Well, we don't want to give anyone the wrong impression by wearing something too sexy anyway."
"True. We wouldn't want anyone to think that we were at the sex party for sex. Honestly though, it's probably just going to be a bunch of filmmaker wannabes."

When it comes to uninhibited sexual behavior, I've seen a bit and heard about a lot more -- but most of my stories are about actors and easily-coerced PAs...and occasionally people in the art department. Filmmakers themselves? By and large, conservative and fond of rules. They like to think they can think outside the box, but in terms of actually stepping outside of it themselves, not so much. Truth is, they prefer the box. I mean, have you ever read a book on how to write a screenplay? I rest my case.

I arrived at 8 pm at the address Raani had emailed me, which corresponded to a shabby office building that couldn't have looked less like a den of iniquity. But then a group of three people arrived, including one guy who was checking me out in a really obvious way that seemed to say, "Hey baby, are you going to the same sex party I'm going to?" So I felt fairly sure I was in the right place.

Raani arrived and, on her heels, the two guys she'd met at the festival. Harry was the cute Australian she'd had her eye on, and the other was an American named George. Just as I'd expected, they were your kind of average filmmakers who had made some sexy comedies just to be edgy. George's was a pilot about a couple that opens an S&M club to make money. Harry's was a short about a guy who thinks he's foiling a kidnapping, only to find that he's beaten up the husband in a consensual bondage scenario. Apparently this second film had caused some controversy at the Q&A.

"Were people upset at the violence against women?" I asked.
"Sort of," Harry replied. "This woman stood up and asked, 'Why is this a comedy? This is our lifestyle, it's not funny.' Then someone else got up and started attacking me about the same thing." He looked a little demoralized. "I think the humor was just too Australian."

We arrived on the third floor, where we handed our coats to an extremely tall transvestite. "We don't serve alcohol but you can order beer from the deli next door," she related as she hung them up. "There are showers on the right and lockers in the back."

A healthy, uninhibited buzz definitely seemed called for, so Harry and George got on the phone. Raani and I each gave them a couple of bucks.

"I guess we can't order Prosecco," Raani sighed. "Come on, I want to get a locker. I don't feel like carrying my bag around with me."

We passed a "bar" where a fulsome woman in a tight leather bustier was selling soft drinks; the afore-mentioned, grey and institutional shower; a couch area where a bunch of rather unattractive men, most of them middle-aged, turned away from the porn playing on the tv next to them to stare at us as we walked by; and a bunch of tiny rooms which had chairs, pillows and some lumpy little foam beds. Nothing was separated from the main room by more than a flimsy curtain. My first impression: not very sexy. Not even the porn. But my personal feeling on most straight porn in general is that it's directed at men who like women who have been physically enhanced to the point where certain parts of their anatomy look like they might just explode at any moment. I mean, really, why not just get an inflatable?

We arrived at the lockers, where a very nervous, young, slightly overweight woman in a short black skirt and low-cut blouse was trying to unlock one.

"Do you know how these work?" Raani asked her. "Do we just pick any --"
"I--I–-I don't know!" stammered the woman. "I've never been to one of these before!"

She quickly turned and walked away.

After Raani stored her things, we rendez-voused back with Harry and George and the beer and continued our look around. In one of the dim rooms toward the back, we were lured in by the sight of an impressive set on handcuffs chained to the wall.

"Hey, put those on, I've got to get a picture," I said to Raani.

She obliged, smiling in an "If this picture gets out I'll kill you" kind of way. Then we all gathered around something that looked like a gymnast's vault. George, who, like any self-respecting filmmaker, had done a fair amount of research for his S&M film, knew the ropes already, so to speak.

"It's a spanking horse. You climb up on it and get spanked. And you know what this is for, right?" George said, pointing at a set of stocks that fully evoked The Scarlet Letter. "Here, put your head in here, and your arms here," he said to Raani.

She did, and he closed them up.

"Ow," she said.
"It's supposed to hurt," said George. "These were used for punishment --"
"Well right now they're punishing me," said Raani, "so can you let me out?"

As George released her, the busty bartendress entered.

"Let me know if you guys need anything, if you have any questions."
"What do you have for spanking?" asked George, trying to impress us with more of his expertise.
"Well, you're supposed to bring your own," replied the bartender. "But there are people here who may have something you can borrow. Are you looking for something stingy?"
George shrugged. "Yeah."
"Well, let me ask around. And we have tablecloths if you'd like them, Saran Wrap..."
"Okay."
"Anything you need, just let me know," she said, this time directing her smile, laser-like, at Harry.

Uh oh. If Raani had to compete in a one-night-stand situation with a woman who wore a leather bustier and knew her way around a spanking horse and Saran Wrap, the odds might not be in her favor.

We all headed back into the main room, which was definitely starting to fill up.

"Those middle-aged men are creepy," Raani commented.

There were a large number of them now, ogling us and pretty much every woman in the room like they actually thought they had a shot.

Little did we know that they actually did. I soon noticed that one of the middle-aged guys, who wore an unbuttoned orange shirt with a wide collar that more or less screamed "Swinger here!" was rubbing himself up against an attractive 20-something Asian woman in semi-see-through attire. And she seemed to be okay with it. When, a few minutes later, she started kissing his navel, I concluded that she was definitely okay with it. Then there was the chubby, rather pasty guy in the bowtie who started feeling up the tall, geeky-looking girl in a kilt who seemed to have come with her boyfriend. But her boyfriend, who also was tall and geeky-looking, was standing right next to her, watching, seemingly unperturbed. Oh, and holding a cat o' nine tails.

I think this was the point at which I started thinking to myself, Um, okay, what the fuck is going on here? But don't get me wrong, I was fascinated. Two genuinely consenting adults can do whatever floats their boats to each other as far as I'm concerned. I just didn't quite get the appeal. Well, okay, the spanking thing I kind of got. You could look at it like a sport almost -- only a naughty and therefore, for some, titillating sport that you could only play with certain people in an environment like this. And I am not unfamiliar with the one-night stand, I know the appeal of a hot, no-strings-attached sexual experience when you're drunk and horny, and then you leave in the morning (or that night, which tends to be my personal preference) and never have to see that person again. But this was not that. For one thing, the men were extremely un-hot. So was the dingy and public setting. Where was the romantic music, the satin sheets, the candles, or at least the light switch? Although with the open plan and all of the open ogling going on, I was starting to realize that public was at least part of the point.

Now, when I get into situations that make me uncomfortable -- which generally means parties full of people I don't know, should impress, or who are distantly related to me and cover their furniture in plastic -- I snap into research anthropologist mode. This involves a certain level of alcohol consumption and a willingness to talk to anyone about just about anything, but it allows me to mingle in a way that a former social outcast like myself would normally not be able to. And it works because people love to answer questions, and I like to be nosy.

"Is that yours?" I asked the geeky lad, in my studiously non-flirtatious, curious-but-only-in-the-interest-of-science tone of voice, pointing to the cat 'o nine tails.
"Yeah," he said. "We brought it." On closer examination, it was kind of like a leather feather duster.
I turned to George. "You could borrow that."
He eyed the flapping tassels dubiously. "That would not be stingy," he said. "That would hurt."
"Oh," I said, realizing that "stingy" was a technical description regarding the whipping power available in the implement. I wondered what the term was for the category that the cat o' nine tails did fit into. Hurty? Painy? I was learning a lot tonight.

Just then, the guy with whom I'd had the stare down in the downstairs vestibule appeared. Only now he was wearing a red silk kimono. Which made him look pretty harmless, not to mention slightly embarrassed.

"Did you bring that?" I asked.
"Yeah, I did," he replied. "It's actually very comfortable."
"Oh, huh…Did you, um, have a film in the festival?"
"No, a friend of mine did. I work on Wall Street. Are you a filmmaker?"
"Yeah, but, my film wasn't in the festival."
"Oh. Well, is it a feature or a documentary?"

Aside from the kimono, this was starting to feel like normal party conversation. Just then, George & Harry reappeared. They checked out Kimono Guy. Harry smirked mischievously.

"Hey, what you got under there?"
"Nothing."
"Really?"
"Oh yeah. I mean, literally nothing. It's like a Ken doll under there, just totally flat, wipe it down with Windex."

I appreciated that he had a sense of humor about the situation. But at the same time, he had brought his own kimono.

Then all of a sudden, people started heading to the dungeon room. Raani, George and Harry were quicker on the uptake than I, so they actually got a viewing position on the leather couch ("We had a front-row seat!" Raani later told me), but by the time I got there, it was too packed to get in. I heard slapping and yelping, and over people's heads I could make out the bartendress astride the spanking horse doling out punishment to a woman who I thought I recognized as the one we'd seen at the lockers. She didn't look quite as nervous now, but maybe that was because her skirt was pulled up over her head.

"Pretty crazy, huh? Ever been to one of these before?"

I turned to see a 30-something guy in a goatee and button-down. Because he wasn't wearing a kimono, leather or something transparent and wasn't ogling, I assumed he was another civilian.

"No," I said. "Have you?"
"I came last year for the first time. I'm a producer, this year I had a film in the festival, about fetishes."
"Wow. That must've been interesting. I have to say I don't really get most of that stuff."
"Yeah, I never really understood the whole fetish thing either until I got involved with this film. But once you talk to people it kind of makes sense. Like in the film," he continued, "we have this guy who likes to have his girlfriend stick him with needles, in his arms and chest. It looks really awful."
"Yeah, wow."
"But then he explains that when he was a kid, he went to the doctor and watched his sister get a shot. And he swooned, and this nurse caught him and held him to her breast. And that was his first erotic experience."
"Interesting…" This is my favorite word, naturally, when in social anthropologist mode. It fills a lot of gaps in conversation. "So he knows where his fetish came from. I'd think that talking about it would kind of demystify it."
"No, actually, for fetishists, talking about fetishes is a very big part of the process. It gets them turned on. Anyway, from a distribution standpoint, there's a huge market for this stuff, and learning about that, I started to get more into the scene...Hi Lisa!" he yelled to a woman walking by in a very short skirt and revealing a leather thong. "She's the director of the festival. So what's your film about?"

Now if you're the kind of person who likes to answer the question, "Oh, what's your film about?" and watch people's eyes glaze over immediately -- and come on, who doesn't! -- go to a sex film festival party and try to tell people about your film, which has nothing to do with sex. The producer/distributor dude tried to be polite but kept looking over my head in the way that people do at networking parties when they're looking for the person who actually can help their career. Although I think he was looking for a different sort of opportunity, because a short time later, Harry said, "Oh look, there's the producer you were talking to getting spanked." I had never heard that sentence uttered before, but sure enough, it was true.

There was a lot of spanking. With that cat o' nine tails, but also with belts, gloves, and so on. At one point I was watching a woman lay a man in lacy, bright purple lingerie (no, that's not a grammatical mistake, it was the man wearing the lingerie) across her knees and spank him with various implements.

"Is that a brush?" I asked of nobody in particular.
"Yes, it is," replied a distinguished-looking older gentleman who was also observing the process. "People often use a brush for spanking." He pointed at the brush-wielding lady, who looked rather normal and middle-aged, aside from the lascivious grin on her face. "She's very experienced, she's written several books on spanking. Her last book was a how-to to teach men how to explain to their women how to spank them properly."
"Huh. I could see how someone might need help with that."
"I have a whole collection of silver Victorian brushes myself." He somehow managed to say this like it was the most normal thing in the world, the way someone in my world might say, "I have a collection of Bolexes," or, "I have a collection of original 35mm Hitchcock prints."
"Really…" This is another one of my favorite social anthropologist words. "How did you get into that?"
"Well, I've been a lifelong fetishist. But I was involved in a very vanilla relationship, and when I told her about my fetishes she was completely disgusted, so that's when I started looking into things. I've been in the scene now for about 11 years. I'm into Victorian pornography, which is very bondage oriented. An uptight society is very into punishment. It has a huge following in Britain."
"Why don't I find that surprising."
"I'm a longtime supporter of the festival and a close friend of Lisa's --"
"The woman in the leather thong?"
"Yes. Now what's your film about? I'm not a filmmaker myself but I'm very interested these sorts of things."

I sighed, but my inner publicist (who also only shows up after a few drinks) said, "Pitch! Maybe he's a rich dirty old man who also has an interest in non-fetishy topics."

I launched into a description of my film yet again and of course the conversation went nowhere very quickly. Also, the spanking the man had been spectating had ended and he was looking around uncomfortably.

"I don't generally come to the play parties."

I turned to to look where he was looking and saw that the dumpy guy in the tuxedo was performing conalingus on a different woman than the one he'd been pawing earlier -- next to another couple who were having full-on, doggy-style sexual intercourse. A few of the creepy men were looking on, while others had started to make their moves on other women, who seemed receptive.

"Wow," I said. "Wow." It wasn't pleasing to the eye, but it was hard to look away. Like with a train wreck. "So this is a play party? Are there other kinds of parties?"
"Oh yes," replied the man. "Haven't you seen the list?" He handed me a flyer, which read:

Chariot Club Winter Calendar
Feb 1st NYC Swingers Party
Feb 7th Jack and Jill Party
Feb 8th NYC Swingers Women Who Love Men Glory Hole Party
Feb 20th NYC Swingers Women Who Love Women Party
Feb 28th Sinsations.com Party
Mar 5th All Asian Swingers Party
Mar 9th Adult Socials Club Party
Mar 20th School of Sec Club Party
April 3rd Brother D All Women Party

My thoughts upon seeing this list were, in order: sex with buckets?; are there really that many Asian swingers or are there just a lot of men who like Asian swingers?; wasn't this all supposed to be for social adults?; unless they're advertising "School of Seconds," which does not evoke positive sexual connotations in either use of the word, that seems like the kind of typo you wouldn't make at a sex club; and why does Brother D get to throw the All Woman Party?

Basically, I still couldn't wrap my head around the appeal of what was going down around me. So to speak. Aside from the unattractiveness issue with the guys, which also involved their overall sleazy demeanor, if you were a member of this club, you'd see these same people again. Wouldn't that be just a bit strange once they'd all seen you have an orgasm? And what about the person you'd had sex with? Would you just be able to say, "No thanks, once was enough" the next time you saw him or her, and not have it be uncomfortable? Or have him or her say it and not feel like dirt? In other words, even in a world where this is all normal, can you really keep your emotions out of the fray? I could see men managing, perhaps, because men are good at stuffing their feelings away and leaping right in. Like Kimono Guy, he just said "What the heck, I'm gonna go kimono and see what happens!" In contrast, Nervous Locker Woman clearly was feeling all sorts of conflicting shit.

And that's the thing about us women. I do know plenty who sleep around as much as men do, but honestly…most of them really are looking for intimacy. And whatever this party was, it was the opposite of intimate. I guess I have a hard time believing, at bottom, that that isn't what we all want. Don't we all, as human beings, want a good cuddle afterwards? I just couldn't see anyone getting a good cuddle here.

I caught sight of Raani, also looking like she was in overload.

"I think I've had enough," I said.
"Yeah," said Raani. "Should we say goodbye to George and Harry?"

George was sitting on the porn couch watching the porn. He seemed bored but wasn't ready to leave yet. We looked around for Harry as we headed toward the door. He was sitting on a couch in one of the side rooms, deep in conversation with the bartendress. He looked up long enough to wave. We headed out.

"Sorry that didn't work out," I said.
"It's okay," said Raani. "I wasn't in the mood any more."
"I know," I said, "Who could believe that a sex party could be such a turn-off?"
"Yeah, all I really wanted was to make out with him," sighed Raani. "You were talking to that old guy for a really long time."
"He knew a lot about spanking. You never know when that sort of information will come in handy."

I saw the odd look Raani was giving me. "For material!"

And I started writing this blog on the train on the way home.

2009-12-06T21:50:00.007-05:00

Naked, with a Nagra -- Now playing on Revolving Floor

To sleep, perchance to dream. Aye, there's the rub.

Those of you who don't have stress dreams, aren't Hamlet, or have never seen that particular episode of M*A*S*H* (you children of the 80s know the one I'm talking about) may not quite understand this quote, or the connection that I have found between this month's Revolving Floor topic, "Lost and Found," and my blog about nightmares, "Naked, with a Nagra." See, in most of my dreams, I tend to be either metaphorically or physically lost; I can't find the room where I have to take the SATs that I haven't studied for, or I'm wandering around some endless warren of soundstages with a broken boom, or I'm on a bus in a foreign country and my suitcase has been replaced by a chicken, etc etc. And sometimes I'm being chased around that warren of soundstages by a guy who looks like this.

You might also not understand what the naked part has to do with anything, and I'm not entirely sure that I do either. I knew I should have been a psych major. But you can find out at least a few answers at

http://revolvingfloor.com/issues/4/naked-with-a-nagra/

And while you're there, poke around and look at some work by other contributors -- poetry, fiction, and artwork of various sorts can generally be found revolving around the topic as well.

2009-11-23T11:28:00.014-05:00

Snippets
yes, from actual conversations

#1: Why you should never talk with prop people about dental hygiene, or
Why we're glad that all set conversations must come to an end before too long
Prop guy: You ever use that shit?
Me: What, fluoride rinse?
Prop guy: Yeah.
Me: Sure, sometimes. My dentist says I have a lot of tartar build-up.
Prop guy: You know what's wrong with fluoride don't you? Causes cancer.
Me: No...
Prop guy: Swear to god. You know how they say 4 out 5 dentists recommend it? Well those fifth dentists they know -- that's why there's this huge split in the ADA. It's very controversial.
Me: But you don't swallow it.
Prop guy: Doesn't matter, goes right in under your tongue. And you see all this silver here? (shows me his fillings)
Me: Uh huh.
Prop guy: I'm getting it all taken out because you know what they make that out of? Mercury.
Me: That's not --
First AD: Can we see the hero bottle please!
Prop guy: Excuse me.

#2: Why you should never get into party conversations with certain actors about anything
Actress: I like it here. I was here the other night having a lovely conversation with Noah Wylie --
Writer guy: Oh, why were you here the other night?
Actress: There was this event I was invited to. Well, it wasn't an invitation thing but I was on this list of people who were allowed to come. Anyway, I should spend more time here, it's right around the block from where I live --
Me: I thought you live on the East River. We're on Park Avenue.
Actress: Yes, just a few blocks away. Anyway it's very friendly here, I just said, Oh, there's Noah Wylie, and we had such a nice chat. So, you write screenplays?
Writer guy: I've co-written one, this one I worked on for --
Actress: Oh, do you know that producer, the one who produced, oh what was that movie, the one with Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman, when they get divorced --
Me: Kramer vs. Kramer.
Actress: Yes. Do you know him?
Writer guy: No, I don't know him personally.
Actress: But you know, you know who I'm talking about?
Writer guy: Um, yes.
Actress: Well, his son's a very good friend of mine!
Writer guy: Oh.
Actress: Anyway, I just need a good supporting role, one that I can sink my teeth into. Today I'm so tired because I was shooting a film.
Me: Oh, really? Today?
Actress: No, yesterday, but you know, it's just so exhausting. It was a short film, with just a wonderful script. We were shooting out in Princeton, New Jersey and it was so lovely out there. Although the man who was directing was this history of film teacher who I don't think had ever directed anything, so I was giving him all these ideas. Oh, this is a good story: we were shooting this scene where we were on this date and he shakes my hand and says I had a wonderful time and then after I leave he puts his wedding ring back on. So he dropped his wedding ring and we could not find it.
Me: Who are we talking about the director? He was using his own ring?
Actress: I'm telling the story.
Me: Sorry.
Actress: He was just like, "Oh well, it's gone." So we couldn't shoot. So I called my husband and said what should I do, should I come home? And he said no, you go back and you find that ring. And so I went back and combed every inch of the grass until I found it!
Writer guy: Wow.
Actress: And then shooting the next day was so wonderful because he was so warm and happy and relaxed.
Me: The director.
Actress: The actor.
Me: Who was using his own ring --
Actress: Yes. But he didn't seem very upset that he lost it. I think maybe he's really tired with his marriage, you know he has two kids, I mean we just had this wonderful chemistry, and I was thinking...I don't really want to know of course --
Me: Maybe he was just, you know, acting. Ha ha.
Actress: Anyway, I should give you my card, just in case anything comes up. I just really need a good supporting role…

#3: Why indie film directors should not introduce their films after having had a few drinks
Director: I want to thank you all for coming. You know, yesterday I was trying to come up with some remarks, and I started doodling. And I started doodling my producer's face. And then I started stabbing it. So I said, This isn't going to work, ha ha, so I figured I'd just come up with something on the spot. Anyway, I'm going to apologize because occasionally you're going to see these words on the screen, "This film property of, etc etc, any unauthorized screening of this film will be blah blah blah." I guess they were worried that we would run off and try and steal the film -- which we almost did, ha ha. But we figured we'd have to let everyone know we canceled the screening, that would have been a pain, ha ha…Anyway, we're so glad you could come today to see the film. I'm pretty happy with this version of the film. Although it's not my version. There is a director's cut, which is better than this version. And there are some things that I wanted to get that we were never able to film, because we ran out of money for the re-shoots, or my producer wouldn't let us shoot them because she didn't think they were necessary. But you can't have everything I guess, ha ha…Anyway, I hope you enjoy the film. I'll be outside.

2009-10-09T09:04:00.008-04:00

Shit Happens Now on Revolving Floor

Heh, I kind of enjoyed writing that without punctuation, but the truth is that my blog, "Shit Happens," is going up today at some point on the group blog Revolving Floor.

For those of you who may have forgotten, Revolving Floor is a group forum I've joined, along with a lot of other great writers, poets, and artists of various sorts, where we choose a topic each month and then do our own peculiar spin on it. The topic of October is "This is a Test," and so my riff on that is about the process of troubleshooting that is soooo much fun and sadly soooo much a part of our everyday work lives as film technicians. And then I get into various related topics, such as "Smacking People in the Head With the Boom, Actors Hurting Each Other, and Other Things That Can Go Wrong On a Film Set," and "Why Most Sound People Should Be Institutionalized." Or something like that, you've really got to go there to find out the full story:

http://revolvingfloor.com/issues/3/shit-happens/

And check out some of the great work by other contributors while you're there...

And I will blog here again soon, promise, about the sex party.

2009-09-13T17:30:00.009-04:00

A Few Fun Facts About South America

A. Bolivia
1) Llamas are plentiful, and cute. And tasty, although a bit chewy.
2) Coca tastes like tea leaves. If you try it, be prepared to pull masticated green stuff of your teeth for hours.
3) Bolivia lost its coast to Chile in a border war. Don't talk about Chile in Bolivia.
4) If you have to go from 2700 to 4500 meters in one day (and you probably will at some point), take it slow.
5) There is a good chance that you will be woken up in the middle of the night by a sheep bah-ing outside your window, even if the best hotel in town.

B. Peru
1) Alpaca tastes better than llama. Mmm, alpaca...
2) You can buy pretty much anything here (hats, scarves, blankets, t-shirts, sweaters, postcards, notebooks, mugs, belts, keychains, centerpieces, etc etc etc) with a llama on it. Or an alpaca.
3) Despite the fact that the Incas were little people, the steps on their trail are fucking huge.
4) Peruvians say they originated Pisco in the city of Pisco, Peru.
5) The Inca flag looks an awful lot like the gay pride flag, which probably isn't something the Incas anticipated.

C. Chile
1) Chileans say that they originated Pisco, in the city of Pisco, Chile.
2) Peruvian Pisco Sours are better. Don't say this in Chile.
3) Chileans are wine snobs. They have the best boxed wine around, but they refuse to drink it.
4) There is excellent sushi in Chile. Only it doesn't look or taste like sushi, and everything is called "Kana" something, or something something "California roll."
5) Chileans hate Argentinians because they had a border war, and because they think Argentinians think they're hot shit.

D) Argentina
1) Argentinians do think they're hot shit.
2) Argentina does have the best steak, empanadas, chocolate, fashion, and nightlife in the region, so this is understandable.
3) It's more difficult to have dinner in Buenos Aires before 9 pm than after 1 am.
4) It's impossible to walk around Buenos Aires for a day without seeing one or two women who have been surgically enhanced. (I also hear the Botox is very cheap.)
5) Don't talk about the Falklands War, especially if you're British.

2009-08-09T19:09:00.006-04:00

I'm Proliferating

For those of you who haven't heard about it directly from the Twitters or the e-mails, I've joined a group blog called Revolving Floor. Each month, we all choose a topic and blog in some way related to that topic, and a different person's blog goes up every day. There's a wide variety of talent on the site -- poetry, cartoons, & dramatic writing in addition to us good old wacky essayists -- and the blogs I post there, while similar to the ones I post here, won't be available anywhere else.

Our first topic is, "How Do You Like Your Eggs?", and my response is a blog called, "What's For Chicken?" It's about being a captive audience for the good, the bad and the ugly in film production catering, and why eggs sometimes feel like freedom.

But I'm not telling you any more than that, so you'd best go check it out at:

http://revolvingfloor.com/issues/1/whats-for-chicken/

And poke around and read some of the other folks' stuff while you're at it. There are a lot of ways to cook an egg...

2009-07-22T13:43:00.010-04:00

Don't Let the New New Be Normal

A few months ago, I was on set with nothing to do, as I often am when I'm employed. Whereas when I'm unemployed, I seem to have too much to do. Like recently, when I sit at home and work on grant applications and e-mails and Facebook -- but no, I know, not blogs, I've been bad, I admit this. (But have I mentioned that I've recently been UNEMPLOYED??? IN JULY??? When I need to be earning my health insurance hours so I won't have to rely on Congress to pass a health insurance bill that would actually help freelancers like me, instead of leaving us to twist in the wind with the rest of the uninsured who show up in emergency rooms every day when their common cold or swine flu turns into pneumonia???)

Anyway, I was looking for reading material. I always have a couple of New Yorkers with me on set for such occasions, but sometimes, I just don't want to get sucked into reading about how all the bats in the world are dying off due to killer fungus, or children growing up in an immigrant detention camp. When you're trying to boom someone talking about how all they need to make their day is a Pepperidge Farm biscuit, having more weighty matters on your mind that really drive home the fact that the work you're doing is pointless and idiotic can be a bit distracting.

So at times like these, I often look to see what pointless and idiotic crap I can steal to read from the client coffee table. Generally, I'll go for the lowest level of brain candy, People or Us Magazine, because I know I'd never buy it and because I know that the comparison of Who Wore It Better, Mary Kate Olsen or Kim Kardashian (who IS Kim Kardashian??? Did I mention that I'm UNEMPLOYED???) won't even make a dent in my psyche.

So one day, I decided to go highbrow and read New York Magazine, having been drawn in, like all good cash register impulse buyers, by the cover. The title of the cover article was "The New New Face," and it showed a close-up of the face of a woman who, based on the dotted lines and circles and arrows drawn all over her countenance, had probably had plastic surgery. She also happened to be Madonna, which made it even harder to resist. What woman who came of age in the 80s can not want to be dished dirt about the Material Girl?

The article detailed how new innovations in plastic surgery had been based on a revised concept. Rather than face "lifting," the new new surgery required face "volumizing." No more tightening of skin that pulled it into a reptilian, cheekbone-bearing death grimace and put women's eyes practically on the sides of their heads, yet with incongruous, anaphylactic lips (examples pictured included Faye Dunaway, who already had cheekbones the size of Kansas to begin with, Cher, and Melanie Griffith). Now, based on the success of Botox, the new design concept was to make the face look fuller by restoring the dewy plumpness of youth. In other words, not changing your face but putting back what you'd lost so you truly looked like you used to look -- examples, aside from Madonna, being Demi Moore, Elizabeth Hurley & Michelle Pfieffer.

The odd thing about this "new you = old you" thing is that this surgery is actually more invasive. Rather than simply making tiny incisions by your ears and pulling the skin back, this surgery is real surgery, involving basically going under your cheek skin and fat to the layer of muscle that holds together and lets you move the lower half of your face, disconnecting that layer, pulling it higher and stitching it in so it stays there. Then you add the Botox or collagen or butt fat (yes, butt fat -- but at least it's generally yours) to sculpt and plump everything else to match.

I have never had elective surgery, but, as those of you who follow this blog already know something about, I have had some minor health problems leading to a few non-elective procedures. Some of the side effects/results of these have been pain, swelling (once to chipmunk proportions), headaches, leaky wounds, absolutely unbearable itchiness, fainting, all-night diarrhea, and having people stare at me on the subway, probably thinking that I was a victim of domestic abuse. I've even had kids point and laugh. It's not much, really, but it's certainly been enough for me to ask, Why would anyone choose to go through that?

Plus, I know stories of people who have gotten talked into elective procedures that were, let's say, un-fun. Like the friend of a friend whose husband did a favor for a plastic surgeon and got offered a free boob job, only to be told that she "had" to get liposuction as well to make her figure "proportional" (and explain that to me: bigger breasts mean you need a smaller ass?). She was in pain and draining through tubes for months. Then I have a friend whose dermatologist said that, to deal with her sun damage -- aka freckles -- she had to get a chemical peel that left her skin carnation red and burning for days.

Of course, both these people lived in L.A., where everyone always wants the new new everything, but here as well, Botox brochures can now be found in nearly every GP and dermatologist's office. And when I went to my dermatologist recently, while sitting by the receptionist waiting for them to bring me in and cut into my nose, I was forced to watch a series of videos on a giant flat screen TV. These alternated between infomercial-style frozen-smiled spokespersoning by the doctor himself and videos showing giant animated flowers blooming and bees buzzing, while the soothing woman's voice of a tampon commercials told me this:

"Life is Beautiful, Chapter One: The Ageless Face. Nature is beautiful. But like nature, your skin can have elements that break down over time, reducing its youth and freshness. Reducing the inner beauty you feel inside. But what time takes away, your dermatologist can restore. Microabrasion and chemical peels, dermal fillers and botulimotoxin are now available to make your skin reflect your beauty to the world. In fact, these treatments are often used in combination! So talk to your doctor about how you look and feel. We can make your outer appearance reflect your inner beauty. After all, life is beautiful!"

And then there would be a fade to black, followed, after a brief pause, by,

"Life is Beautiful, Chapter Two: Dermal Fillers..."

Heck, who needs therapy, when you can talk to your dermatologist about how you look and feel and just get him to inject cow toxins, originally called "fatty poison" by the German man who discovered them making people sick in 1817, into my facial muscles, so that they can't contract for three to four months -- at which point, I'll get him to do it again!

Think about it: if you'll consider that, where will you be willing to go next? Which brings us to the stories of faces gone truly, horribly wrong. Like the Lion Lady, New York socialite and commonly known plastic surgery addict Jocelyn Wildenstein. Can she really think she looks attractive, or even human? Or Jennifer Grey and Meg Ryan, who got surgery that made them look so little like themselves that it effectively ended their careers. Or Diane Hershey, whose face shriveled around her collagened lips to form a grotesque and permanent pucker. Or Michael Cimino, who looks like he's in the witness protection program (though, thanks to Heaven's Gate, maybe he is). I won't even go into the Jackson family, because that just seems wrong at this point in time, but God knows I see someone on set or on television or in the style pages (although then it's more like ten people) every day who has definitely had work done.

Of course, once you start to see the work, then you see it everywhere. I went to a party soon after reading the article and could hardly talk to a woman I met because I was so focused on her oversized lips and sumptuous babycheeks. Ever since a friend told me she'd gotten a nose job for her 15th birthday "because that's what Jewish girls in Westchester do," I can't help seeing when someone has the nose, that perfect little ski slope that every mediocre nose job results in, that makes all of its wearers look like members of the Von Trapp family.

That's one major scary thing about all this: all these women, who are supposed to look so much like the way they picture themselves looking at their best, now look alike. That's how you can tell they all have the New New Face, they all look like they're part of the Cabbage Patch Family. Same thing with Botox, everyone has the same, immobile, expressionless expression. The nose, the lips, the cheeks, the chin (oh yes, the chin), the straight blond hair that all actresses have to get at least for a phase early in their careers -- it's all about sameness. There is a type that, once it becomes beautiful, is what everyone wants to be. And it's not exactly like a supermodel, because supermodels actually look like freaks. Have you ever seen one up close? Boney Amazon super tall twig people, with giant eyes and cheekbones that could give you a paper cut. But what they share are big eyes, big lips, heart-shaped faces with wide foreheads and narrow chins, small noses, and most of all, thinness, and youth.

You might say, What's the big deal? If these women want to go under the knife, that's their business, what's it matter to me? And in general, I agree. It's their bodies, their faces, they can refigure or disfigure them as they see fit.

But, there's more to it than that. The fact is, the way these women look matters, because it becomes the way everyone expects us to look. We see them on TV, on the big screen, on every billboard and in every magazine, and if they don't age, we're all expected not to age. If they have phenomenally thin and muscular bodies with enormous breasts, we're expected to have all that too. Even though it's not normal -- unless you have a personal trainer you work out with 4 hours a day and a team of stylists and make-up and hair people and a good, expensive plastic surgeon and dermatologist at your beck and call -- it becomes the norm. And in an age when we are constantly confusing reality with unreality, when airbrushing and soft focus are everywhere, when we believe that anyone can become an American Idol and Jon and Kate get more tabloid time than Brad and Angelina, it becomes easier and easier to see the people we see on TV and in magazines and think, That's what 40 is supposed to look like -- so why do I have wrinkles, cellulite, a belly, graying hair and bags under my eyes if there's not something wrong with me? If you're a woman, you may say you don't do that, and if you're a man, you may say you don't care, but that's all bullshit. If those are the images out there, it's also in there: inside your head.

I'm not saying don't dye your hair. I used to say that, but now that I have gray hair, I get it. And I'm not saying don't use moisturizer or night cream or toner or Retin-A, even if nobody knows if those things really work. But know that it's a slippery slope. How many steps is it from facials and chemical peels to Botox, from Botox to collagen, from collagen to an eye lift, and from an eye lift to a tummy tuck to some neck tightening to the New New Face? I mean, once you start seeing the things happening in the mirror as flaws rather than the natural effects of age, you're never going to stop seeing the flaws.

Because you're not going to stop getting older. And why should you? Life is getting older and changing and becoming a different person over time. If you want to look like yourself, then look like yourself. It's hard to resist the pressure, I know. When a woman gets to that age when her age is not just a fact but an impediment, one that means people won't date you or hire you or sometimes even talk to you because it suddenly seems to make you invisible, how do you not want to fight it?

But I believe the only way to fight it is to not fight it. It's to get old and still know you're beautiful, and make sure everybody knows it, and that that kind of beautiful is normal. You think Madonna is the norm? I mean, the woman has been more people over the years than Sybil, including the one who adopted a British accent to move to London and marry a film director, who she's now divorcing because she slept with a man who makes something like $10,000 every time he swats at a ball with a piece of wood. And even though she and Hollywood and fashion magazines and the Real Housewives of Anyplace are fighting for your subconscious, don't let them win.

We may not be perfect, we may not be famous, but WE are the norm. And we need to keep it that way.

2009-05-03T14:44:00.013-04:00

The Kind of Conversation You Can Only Be Part of in a Video Art Booth on a Gallery Crawl With Free Wine, Vodka, and Gummi Bears

OUTSPOKEN FRIEND and I, clutching plastic cups of cheap chardonnay, enter small booth to find DARK-HAIRED MAN sitting on velveteen-covered bench, watching 4x2 foot screen. We sit as well.
OUTSPOKEN FRIEND: Oh. That's interesting.
Beat.
OUTSPOKEN FRIEND: Do you know what's going on?"
DARK-HAIRED MAN: Not really…
OUTSPOKEN FRIEND: Are those his balls?
DARK-HAIRED MAN: I think so. I've seen a few of his works and he always has those, the dangling giant balls. It's a recurrent motif.
OUTSPOKEN FRIEND: Oh, wait, now that guy in the sailor outfit's not wearing pants either...
ME: Well, he's clearly done his homework. It looks like a lot of old silent films, Murnau, Buster Keaton... (Yeah, I spent $90,000 on film school so that I could sound like I know something)
DARK-HAIRED MAN: Kind of a cross between Chaplin and "Last Tango in Paris."
ME: Exactly.
DARK-HAIRED MAN: I always wonder how people can afford to put all this money into these things.
ME: Really? It looks pretty cheap. I mean, um, on purpose.
DARK-HAIRED MAN: Yeah, but it's an hour long.
OUTSPOKEN FRIEND: Oh, God, really?
WOMAN IN DOROTHY HAMILL HAIRCUT and CONSIDERABLY LESS HIPSTERESQUE DATE peek in, hesitate.
OUTSPOKEN FRIEND: Come on in. Don't be shy, just because the man's not wearing any pants.
They stumble in, somewhat tipsily.
DARK-HAIRED MAN: And like finding these locations, all that space, and the giant oven. I mean, where would you find something like that?
ME: Well, Brooklyn.
DOROTHY HAMILL: But Brooklyn's not cheap any more.
DARK-HAIRED MAN: True. There's nowhere cheap left.
ME: Queens. Jackson Heights isn't bad. (Yes, all conversations in New York City eventually turn to real estate. Or cell phone plans.)
OUTSPOKEN FRIEND: Washington Heights. That's where I live.
DOROTHY HAMILL: Really? Me too. 175th.
OUTSPOKEN FRIEND: Oh, I'm at 143rd.
Uncomfortable beat of having revealed too much personal info to roomful of complete strangers.
ME (reading): 'The uterus'? Really?
OUTSPOKEN FRIEND (annoyed): Oh, so the oven is the uterus, uh huh, of course. That's why he's sticking his balls in there, so they get burned up. Lovely! Why does the uterus always have to be negative!
DOROTHY HAMILL: I wonder where the vagina is. I wonder if that's the whole nautical thing, you know, since it smells like fish.
OUTSPOKEN FRIEND: It does not! I teach kids sex ed and the boys are always saying that because they don't want to go down on the girls. It's really just a cop out.
DOROTHY HAMILL: Well, you smell like whatever you eat. I do eat a lot of salmon.
OUTSPOKEN FRIEND: Right, but everybody's vagina is different.
DOROTHY HAMILL: They always say the nicest thing you can do if someone's going to go down on you is drink fruit juice and eat a lot of vegetables.
CONSIDERABLY LESS HIPSTERESQUE: I just know that smell asparagus makes.
OUTSPOKEN FRIEND (scornfully): Um, yeah, that's urine? Not the same. They don't come from the same place.
ME: Speaking of urine, is that a bathroom?
OUTSPOKEN FRIEND: Is it? Oh good, I need to go next.
Film ends. DARK-HAIRED MAN gets up.
DARK-HAIRED MAN: Well, it was wonderful meeting you all, and discussing all…this.
OUTSPOKEN FRIEND: Yeah, have a good crawl.
DARK-HAIRED MAN leaves. I go to bathroom, return. OUTSPOKEN FRIEND goes in. TWO FASHIONABLE GIRLS enter and sit on the bench to watch film, which has started again.
FASHIONABLE GIRL: Wow.
ME: He's the black plague, and that oven is supposed to be the uterus.
FASHIONABLE GIRL: Huh. Did you figure that out or --
ME: Intertitles. But it was toward the end, we came in at the end of the last showing. Apparently it's an hour.
FASHIONABLE GIRL: Wow.
Beat.
FASHIONABLE GIRL 2: Well...I just came in to use the bathroom.

2009-04-11T10:45:00.008-04:00

Ten Reasons That I Am Happy This Interminable Fucking Winter Is Over

1) All of my wool sweaters are starting to pill.
2) I have no money to buy new sweaters because I've had next to no work and unemployment doesn't allow for a budget that includes the occasional trip to Anthropologie. (Or eating, really, but that's another story).
3) I don't want to get desperate enough to have to work in episodic.
4) I'm sick of having to wear so many layers when I do work (cotton socks wool socks snow boots long johns jeans snow pants t-shirt long-sleeved shirt wool sweater fleece jacket outer jacket scarf hat gloves that aren't warm enough) that my appendages are immobile. It's especially hard to boom when you can't turn your head.
5) How am I supposed to maintain my reputation as a glamour girl if my nails keep breaking? And having the skin on my nose flake off doesn't exactly help.
6) I miss going to the Red Hook pool and getting fresh ceviche at the soccer fields afterwards, then heading up to that place with the snotty French waiters, sitting in the backyard eating mussels and drinking white wine while watching hipsters play boules. Cuz BROOKLYN ROCKS, only it kinda rocks less when you don't want to leave your apartment.
7) I hate it when my hair freezes.
8) I've already lost one black glove and one brown glove so now I have to wear one of each. Again, this lack of color coordination is messing with my image. (GLAM GLAM, GO GLAM!)
9) I'm so pale I glow in the dark. Which could have its advantages in certain situations. But those are situations I'd rather avoid...
10) I hate living in fear of getting called to work a night exterior, knowing I would have to say "yes." (I still live in fear of that, but at least now I don't have to worry about frostbite! Yay!)

2009-02-28T16:29:00.020-05:00

My Favorite PAs

(Note #1: I know this wasn't the blog some of you were expecting after the twittering of last night, but this one was already in the done pile. Sorry, you'll just have to wait a bit for the salacious details).

(Note #2: I thought about writing this entire blog in verse so that it could be sung to the tune of "My Favorite Things," but then I decided that A) I really wasn't up to the challenge, and B) Nobody would actually sing it, and C) If anyone did, I'd feel personally responsible for inflicting that torture on the unsuspecting. So -- I think it was a good decision for everyone involved.)

I'm terrible with names. It's just a fact, and it stems, really, from another fact, which is that, deep down in my soul, I'm an extremely socially awkward geek who often experiences brain freeze when meeting new people. So when someone introduces themselves to me, I'm so focused on not making an idiot out of myself, and being able to say my own name in an ungarbled fashion, and worrying if I've got pieces of greenery stuck in my teeth, that I inevitably am too flustered to actually listen to the other person's name.

Needless to say, in a business that lives and dies by the shmooze, this can present a problem. It's also especially bad when you work on a different set every day or two and are constantly meeting new people -- or running into people you haven't seen in, say, two years, so that they might as well be new for all the likelihood that you're actually going to remember their names, if you're me.

(When they've lost hair or gained weight or grown beards or dyed their hair a new color, this gets extra tricky. One grip who I did an entire movie with back in the day, and spent a good chunk of that four weeks flirting with, showed up recently on a commercial set I was working on and it took me practically the entire day to realize that he was that svelte, clean-shaven boy I knew in 1996, now doubled in size, with long hair and a goatee).

My biggest problem, for the longest time, was PAs. I know this sounds terrible, but at the beginning, it seemed like there were just so many of them, scurrying about, and I hardly ever had contact with them anyway -- other than when they occasionally helped carry my heavy cases of equipment to set at the beginning of the day, something for which I was (and am, eternally) grateful, but never really had the chance to properly thank them for before someone on the walkie forced them to scurry off somewhere else. Even when I did get to thank them, I would never get names because I'm often late and flustered even more than the usual amount given the prospect of having to set up said equipment in record time. Generally speaking, in my world, the beginning of the day, when the sound mixer is freaking out over our late call being a little too late or the location being next to a construction site is not the best time for formal introductions and hand-shaking.

Although sometimes I don't even get names at the end of the day. Once, I got severely busted for this. After spending two hours one night driving home in the van and gabbing the entire time with one particular PA about jobs where we'd known the same people, I ran into her on set a few weeks later.

"Hey, ___!" she said cheerfully.
"Oh! Oh, hey...Hey!" I stuttered. "How's it going?"
"You don't even remember my name, do you?"
"Sure I do, Hilary."
"It's Kimberly."
"Wow, really? Gosh, sorry, I could have sworn it was Hilary."
"Um, yeah, I'm pretty sure since it is, you know, my name."
"Oh...right."

Since that little humiliation, I've gotten a lot better. In fact, at this point, I have my own personal catalogue of favorite PAs. This is based, as you might imagine, not only on general helpfulness and the ability to do their jobs well, or at least correctly, but on quirky and distinctive personality traits that make them especially entertaining, and of course, blog-worthy.

First of all, there's Nora. Nora always seems to be looking for both a new guy and an apartment, and so, at a time when I was similarly homeless and unattached, the search for those the two things was the subject over which we originally bonded. Although our attitudes tend to be a bit different.

"Yeah, I just met this one guy, he's been calling me," she'd say, stopping then to bark, "Copy that, going back to one!" into her walkie before continuing without missing a beat, "But I'm really into this other guy I've been sleeping with. Oh, and then I gave my number to some guy in a bar the other night. He was hot, but I don't know if he's going to call."
"Yeah," I'd say, "I've been dating this guy for a couple of months, but he's kind of ignoring me right now."
And then I'd have nothing else to say, but that was okay, because she did.

I've noticed that we tend to flirt with the same men on set, albeit, as you might imagine, with different results. This difference can also be seen in our Facebook pages, where Nora is inevitably replacing one provocative profile picture of herself sprawled, come-hitherly, in bed, with another of her in a bikini, whereas mine tend to be of me in a Super-8 hotel room in some unflattering state of exhaustion, or a baby picture, or a friend's shaved Persian cat, which I put up just because it looked so ridiculous (although nobody seemed to get it when I had status updates that read, "Does this haircut make my head look big?" They would just comment things like, "I could tell you if you put up an actual picture of yourself!")

Then there's Matt, or Goldstein, as I like to refer to him. For some reason, we always greet each other at the beginning of the day by shouting each other's last names across the set like a pair of old Jewish men. He started it. I don't know why.

But Goldstein is really one of the most helpful, friendly and competent people I have ever met. If he doesn't know the answer, he'll find out. If you need something, he will get it. If you need a better lock-up, he will go out and break some heads (although not really because he's too sweet and totally non-threatening like any other nice Jewish boy). But the man knows how to get things done, usually with a smile. Forcing me to wonder, as I do with many of my favorite PAs, what the hell he's doing in the film business.

Then there's Ken. Ken is also super helpful, but this is not just because he's a good PA, but because he's a big fan of my blog. I'm not used to having fans, so of course, while I am very flattered, it also embarrasses the shit out of me. Not to mention that it can lead to the occasional uncomfortable situation on set.

"How's the writing going?" he'll say eagerly and loud enough for everyone, including my boss, who definitely does NOT know I do this, to hear. "I loved the last one! It was great what you said about --"
"Ix-nay on the talk about the og-blay," I'll mutter out of a corner of my mouth as I try to occupy myself with checking Comtek batteries.
"Oh, right, right," he'll reply in a stage whisper with a knowing nod and a smile. Only to return later in the day to bring me a water when I'm standing next to the producer, chirping, "So why haven't you written anything in a while?"

Then there's Lorenzo, otherwise known as, "The Voice." Lorenzo does the most incredibly powerful and seductive lock-up you will ever hear in your life. I don't know anyone else who can shout out, "VERY QUIET PLEASE" in a commanding baritone that both can be heard through concrete and makes you weak in the knees. It doesn't hurt that he's also tall, dark, and a Yale graduate who's far too brilliant to be a PA.

And, actually, he isn't one any more. In fact, the thing about most of my favorite PAs is that they're so damn good, they don't stay PAs very long. While the film business may not be a meritocracy, and it contains some of the most half-baked people in positions of power that you will ever meet, enough of those people start as half-baked PAs that ADs are always looking for good ones to second for them. So a smart and competent multi-tasking wonder like Nora or Goldstein earns their DGA hours and moves up quickly to 2nd AD, or to coordinator/production manager. And then I see them less and less, because they do more prep days and fewer production days, or end up in the moho handling paperwork or running talent all day, either way spending less and less time on set. And then if they move up to first AD, they're so busy spying on the director and trying to keep the DP on track and yelling at their PAs that they have very little time to stand around and bullshit with me any more. (Contrary to what you might think based on some previous bloggage, there are first ADs who I like, and with whom I would gladly stand around shooting the shit all day long if possible. But they have no time for me!)

But then there are always new PAs. My latest fave is Ezekial Wong. Ezekial is a very large guy with a baby face and Chinese parents who were fond of Biblical names. I took an interest in Ezekial because of that odd combo and his totally sweet and helpful disposition, but it wasn't until he showed up to set one day in a tux that we really got to talking.

"It's for work," he said, looking a bit bashful. "I have to leave straight from here to go to my second job."
"What are you, like, in catering?"
"Event security," he replied. "You know, parties at clubs, dinners. Nobody famous, though. Or at least, nobody you'd know. Chinese movie stars and sports figures, mostly. The fifth richest man in China, he always hires me."
"He hires you directly? So you have your own company?"
"Well...I am the company. It's just me and my guys. I should probably incorporate. I kind of just fell into it, but I'm trying to get out, do more of this."

I had a hard time seeing how this kid, even if he is huge, could intimidate anyone. But then I checked out the photos on his Facebook page, and decided that I was quite glad that we were on the same side. (Not to mention that he has 667 friends. Then again, as you might imagine, all my favorite PAs are pretty friend-heavy).

So of course, I friended him too. Because if there's one nice thing about the film business, and having to remember the new names and new faces with which you are constantly bombarded as the new blood comes in and the old blood moves up and over -- and I seem to stay exactly where I am -- it's that you get to make a new friend every once in a while. And they may even help you carry the sound cart up the stairs, or get you breakfast when you don't have time to go to the catering truck, or just keep you awake and lighten your day with good conversation about the secret lives they lead when they're not attached to a walkie.

2009-02-20T21:38:00.005-05:00

I Know I Owe

...cuz it's been a month, but for now, at least those of you who have been following the twittering may appreciate these.

2009-01-20T09:22:00.010-05:00

Observations from Inauguration Weekend in D.C.

1) D.C. is not New York
Everyone knows this, but I think what struck me was exactly how D.C. was not New York. I expected it to be wonky, for everyone to be talking about politics. But no, the people I met were talking about the people who they hate in their offices, and what they did last night at the bar, and Facebook (naturally), and how they met their wives.

The closest thing I had to a policy conversation was with the guy -- who looked a bit like Hunter S. Thompson, and cultivated it by smoking those skinny cigars -- who had just inherited a bunch of money and wanted to use it to create a completely self-sustainable community. I thought that was a cool idea. Until we started getting into the details.

"So you want to create something like this and then replicate it?"
"Oh yeah, and there are already a lot of them, all over the place." At this point, he sidled closer to me by the fireplace. "It's this whole idea of community that I really dig. A community that's truly open, sharing everything, including sexually."
I leaned in the other direction. "Huh."
"Yeah, a lot of the whole idea of the hippy communes was being polyamorous. I've been looking into that."
"Right. But, I mean, isn't it sort of contradictory, that sustainability is about taking complete responsibility, and free love is about totally evading responsibility?"
"Well, I don't know about that. You know, if everyone knows about it and it's all out in the open and everyone's into it…Though, actually, I've been having trouble finding women who are into it."
"Yeah, I can imagine you might. Have you tried California?"
"Yeah, the California women are especially not into it. I don't get it."
I looked at his balding, pony-tailed head, this man pushing 50 and using sustainability to get sex, and had to admit that I did get it.
"Well…good luck with that!" I went to get more red wine.

The second closest thing I had to a policy conversation took a really long time to get to the policy.
"Oh, so you're a filmmaker?"
"Yeah, I'm making this film about --"
"I've got a film you should make."
"Really."
"Yeah. It'd be about the drug trade, but it wouldn't really be about the drug trade, it would be about all of these conversations that would happen along the way. You know, these little vinuets --"
"Vin -- vin whats?"
"-- kinda like Pulp Fiction, but not exactly. More of an exploration of, you know, interesting stuff."
"Interesting." Which generally means the opposite when I say it, because I say it because I have nothing else to say.
"I mean, it might not have the panachay of your Hollywood movies --"
"Hmm."
"-- but I think it would make a lot of money. I think it would be really good. With really good music. Do you have music for your film yet? Because I write music."
"Oh. Do you have a website?"
"No, I'm trying to get a few really good pieces together first -- I keep playing them for my friends and they're like, 'Yeah, that one's good, I'd buy that one.' Here."
He handed me his card. It said "Department of Transportation."
"There's no info on there about my music, actually. I work for the DOT on trying to create greener bus systems and stuff."
"Oh, really?" Here we go, I thought, finally.
"That must've been hard to do under this administration."
"Yeah, we had this science worked out a long time ago, it all got buried. I wrote this really important paper, I mean we had a crackpot team of people on this thing --"
"Um, do you mean 'crack' --"
"And nobody wanted to pay attention to it."
"Huh. I wonder why."
"But anyway, I don't think you should buy my music before you listen to it, though I know it'd be perfect for your film. What'd you say it was about again?"

When I told my friend about this conversation later, she asked, "Was English his first language? He had a ponytail." Lotta ponytails.
"Well, he had no accent." I looked at his card. "And his name is Bob Jones."

I guess all this proves is that government has wanna-bes just like the film business -- who also try to impress you in all the wrong ways.

2) Every other person in D.C. is a lawyer.

3) Every other lawyer in D.C. works for the Department of Homeland Security
I think this has something to do with the fact that so many departments got bundled into DHS, and then renamed something else, so when they say they work for ICE, that's another term for a new division of the INS. So in other words, we've all gotta learn new acronyms just to figure out what has happened to the government in the last 8 years.

4) …And yet, they can't get you into the friggin' inauguration concert.
What is up with that??? I mean, they all have badges, and the friend I went with apparently has the biggest and shiniest of all, because she's ranked high enough that she's actual law enforcement. But no.

Her biggest complaint was that she kept on getting automated cell phone calls telling her that they'd raised the terror alert level to orange -- she was the terror alert coordinator of something for her department.

"God, will they just leave me alone?" she said when her phone rang for the fifth time. "Orange alert, big whoop. What else is new."

5) Everyone who is not a lawyer and doesn't have a government job does nothing, or something kinda, well, boring.
Out of the other people I met, several had money and so had no need to work (the woman who hosted one party was the Bob's Big Boy heiress, another guy came from old Washington money of a more nebulous sort); one was a former bike messenger who now was owner of a medium-sized bike messenger business, and was one of the only people I have ever met at a party that I really and truly could not figure out how to make conversation with; and one made eyeglasses (who the aforementioned people actually made seem interesting, until he explained that he doesn't design them, he just actually puts the lenses and the frames together). The most interesting conversation (where I did not feel like I was being propositioned for polyamorousness) I had was with someone who works in IT. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I guess I just expected more.

Oh -- there was the woman who at some point mentioned that she'd been giving stripping lessons. But I came into that conversation too late to get all the details.

6) Even the people who seemed more wrapped up in their own panachay and didn't want to talk about the inauguration –- unless they were talking about who had tickets to what ball -- were excited.
It was palpable. Not just everyone at the party, but everyone at the concert, even though we couldn't get closer than 5 football fields' distance from the stage, was laughing and chatting like we all knew each other.

Woman with punk eyeliner and dyed black hair: "Is that him?"
Woman in funny hat: "It doesn't sound like him."
My friend with the badge: "That's Denzel! It sounds like Denzel."
Woman obsessed with Bruce Springsteen: "Oh, it's my boyfriend!"
Woman with punk eyeliner: "Who's singing with him? Is that Sheryl Crow?"
Me: "No, too big a voice for Sheryl Crow."
Guy with binoculars: "I can't see who it is but it's definitely not Sheryl Crow."
Woman obsessed with Bruce Springsteen: "Oh, I just LOVE him!!!"

One woman was showing around a snapshot of Obama laughing at the camera. "It was at a fundraiser before he announced he was running. I was trying to get a shot of George Clooney, and he was in the way, so I asked him to move. He said, 'What, I don't even get a picture?' So I took the picture just to make him happy."

He did look really happy, confident in his own destiny. She also got the shot of Clooney.

And everyone was happy, just plain psyched. People getting off the Metro, packed together like sardines, were talking to the people whose armpits they'd just had their faces in. People were giving strangers their e-mails and asking them to come stay with them in Minnesota (okay, maybe that was just one of my friends, she's very hospitable). People who didn’t like Garth Brooks (including me) were singing along to "American Pie." Even the people who had the "ARREST GEORGE BUSH" signs -- one guy had "ARREST CHENEY FIRST" -- and were handing out cards telling people to give him the finger as he flew away from the White House were giddy, even joyous in their hatred, and the thrill of his imminent departure.

I think that's the best way to describe it: joyous.

7) Barack Obama looks even better on a jumbotron.

Welcome to a new era, my friends.

2009-01-15T10:25:00.003-05:00

So It's Come to This

After months of bitching and moaning about how annoying Twitter is...I've decided to try it myself! Typical, ain't it?

Sign up if you want. Since I'm so haphazard on the blogging front, you'll probably hear from me more often this way...

2008-12-28T09:12:00.008-05:00

The Devil You Know or Why We Make Fun of the Product

The other day I was on a fast food commercial. It was actually not a bad day: we had a fun crew and cast, we were inside, which is important in December, and, all in all, people were in a good mood (even the electricians, who had to spend most of their day outside. I had lunch with them and they seemed to be giving each other less shit than usual, or at least good-natured shit.

"We haven't settled on a boy's name yet. I kind of like 'Ziad.'"
"Ziad, that's a really nice name."
"Plus, whenever you're looking for him, you can just say, 'Where'zee-at?'"
Loud, raucous laughter.
"No, but seriously, that's a really nice name.")

But when you eventually make the people you're working with punchy by requesting take after take (yes, I'm talking to you, overindulgent director/agency/client), they start looking for somewhere to direct their ire. And since they can't take it out on you directly, 'cause you're too important and they want to get rehired, they're going to take it out on something that won't fight back: the product.

Even the actors, when they've been forced to eat the product for ten hours. At this point, they're trying really really hard not to swallow ANY of it, chewing the same bites for the entire take, even once they become a pulpy mess in their mouths that they can finally spit after "Cut!" into a little cup lined with paper towels, which will then get dumped into a big bucket of mastication.

"That one was totally cold," said the actor playing a lank-haired young hipster with a low-paying job behind the counter of a music store, who was, in fact, a lank-haired young hipster who'd gone to Julliard and now was going to make a lot of money in residuals.

"Mine was kind of warm that time," said the actress playing the cool black chick with attitude and big earrings, who in reality was paying her way through Columbia, where she was pre-med.

The relative temperature of the sandwich did indeed vary a bit because it was the job of one of the three food stylists to stand a few feet away, waving over them with an electric steamer. They then passed them on to a prop guy who sprayed the meat to a glistening sheen with a little pump bottle, that I looked over at one point and saw to be some kind of hair product.

"It's fine," said the prop. "Look, it's all-natural."
"But should they really be eating beeswax?" I asked.
He shrugged and kept spraying.

"Oh, see, now you're burping it all up," said the actress.
"Ugh, I know," said the actor.
"You're going to burp it up all night."
"Going to lunch in 15," called the AD.
"Oh, lunch. Yum," said the actor. "Could I get a Coke?"

The product was called "The Wrap Sandwich," but when I looked at it closely, I realized that it looked familiar.

"So these are actually just burgers cut into strips and then put into wraps with lettuce."
"Yup," said the actor. "It's a Big Mac in a wrap."
"It's a Whopper taco," chimed in the DP.
"He's going to break out in a rash right there," said the prop guy, who was now watching his colleague apply a dollop of sauce to the actor's lip – with explicit guidance about size and shape being shouted over from the monitor by the agency.
"Or a tumor," I said.

This is why we turn down the feed to the Comtek headsets between takes. Actually, it's really so the director can talk shit about the agency and clients, but it benefits us as well. Because sometimes it's really hard not to make fun of what we're selling or how we're selling it.

At least in the case of the Wrap Sandwich, even if the product was idiotic and kind of gross, the commercial itself was clever.

Not so the Lucille Roberts spots I'd worked on a few weeks before. In those, a woman named Jessica who claimed to be trainer to the stars, urged viewers to come to Lucille Roberts for the "Glam Workout."

"It's easy, it's fun, and it's proven to take off the pounds, guaranteed!" announced Jessica.

I must say I find the idea of a target audience that aspires to be "glam" but needs to "take off the pounds" to do it to be an incredibly depressing concept. All I could think of were overweight housewives and secretaries, tricked by watching too many makeover shows into thinking that they could bring out their inner glam. This was only made more sad/absurd by the fact that we spent most of the rest of the day shooting professional dancers with perfect bodies performing elaborately-choreographed hip-hop dance steps that were supposed to look like workout routines that could somehow be mastered by your average mother of two from New Jersey. But the part that was hard not to make fun of was when they had the dancers line up behind a spandex-clad trainer with a headset microphone, jumping around with large rubber balls, chanting "Glam, glam, glam it up! Glam glam -- GO GLAM!"

And then the people making the commercial were also hard not to make fun of. The agency guys were two men in their late 60s with hair dyed black or blond and wide collars unbuttoned to reveal chest hair, who looked as if they, like the commercials, had stepped out of another era. Perhaps the era of Don Draper, only a Don Draper who was no longer smooth and partially deaf.

"Where the hell are the girls?" bellowed the one who seemed to be the most important, or at least the loudest, at the beginning of the day. "Bring out the girls!"

Someone brought the girls.

"Where's the red lipstick?" demanded the producer, who also seemed to have been sent by central casting, probably for a Coen Brothers movie.
"I think make-up was going for a natural look," said the AD.
"I said RED lipstick!" yelled the agency guy. "They have to have RED LIPSTICK!"
"DON'T TELL ME THE GIRLS ARE READY IF THEY'RE NOT READY!" yelled the producer at the AD.

The girls returned in half an hour, looking nothing like any woman in her right mind would look at the gym, unless she liked the experience of sweating through pores clogged with pancake make-up. Then they started on the "Celebrity Work-out," for which they chanted, "Be a star at Lucille Roberts! Superstar! Superstar! Be a star at Lucille Roberts! Superstar! Superstar!..." Oh, and did I mention they did this one in sunglasses? While the agency guy watched the dance routines by the monitor, snapping and swinging his hips like Sinatra?

The sound guy and I smirked and sent text messages to each other saying "GO GLAM," and I comforted myself with the thought that if we were going to be helping to make commercials that exploited both women's bodies and their body image issues, we were doing it in the stupidest way possible.

But herein lies the conundrum that typically hits me at holiday time, a time known for peace on earth and good will toward your fellow humans, particularly if that good will runs to buying them an iPhone, a Wii, or a new Mercedes. Yes, it's the season of consumerism run rampant, and I contribute to that, I know, in my line of work; in fact, it pretty much is my line of work.

And we do need to buy stuff. Especially now, with the economy in the toilet, people need to work, and for them to be able to, products need to be made and sold, young people need their Mcjobs selling food that's bad for us, and somebody needs to grow the flimsy iceberg lettuce, and a whole laboratory of people, probably, is needed to come up with the red dye number 6 and mayonnaise substitute and corn sweeteners that go into that special sauce. Lucille Roberts trainers and administrators and Jessica, even though I have no idea who she is, need those women who need a proven way to lose weight to come out and join up, so they can pay their rent and feed their cats and clothe their kids.

And I need these companies to hire the people who hire the people who hire me. And so does the actor who's paying off his Julliard loans and the prop guy who needs a new pick-up truck. And we'd all rather not work on bad commercials because, well, we don't like putting our time and sweat and missed hours of sleep or creativity or sex into something that will utterly suck.

But then again, I spent a week this past year working for and shooting in Wal-Mart, and when I saw that those commercials actually turned out to be really good, it made me feel like I'd been doing the devil's work. I tried to make myself feel better by running around, trying to stop everyone on the crew from buying anything there, but even the most scrupulous of them, when confronted with a 10-pack of AA batteries for $4.99, could not resist.

But whenever I have these moral dilemmas, I remember this: back in 1996, when I was first working in the business, I got a call from two friends, two of the gayest men you could hope to meet, asking me to record sound for them on something for more than I had ever made for a day of work. The catch was that we were working on the Reagan tribute for the Republican National Convention. I balked.

"How can we do this?"
"Look," my friend Anthony said, "they're going to pay somebody a lot of money to do it. It might as well be us. And just the fact that they're paying us…Think of the irony."

So I thought about the irony, and the $1000 plus that I was going to make, and the credit card bills I'd run up making my thesis film, and I said "yes."

And I don't know if I can really, truly, justify it that way. Maybe the point is not to justify it, but to knowingly subvert it; to remember who paid us that money, and use it to in some way make the films and write the blogs and go to the protests and cast the votes that take them on -- and by "them" I mean the Wal-Marts and drug companies (I've worked for them A LOT) and the Victoria's Secrets and anyone else who puts out objectifying images, tries to sell shit that will kill you, exploits their workers for minimum wage and no health insurance, manipulates the market and sends us into a recession and then runs off with a $30 million bonus, etc etc.

Because in the long run, making fun of the product doesn't do anything...but buying your batteries somewhere else does.

2008-11-02T22:03:00.009-05:00

Election Day bonus!
Notes from making calls for Obama (now get out there and vote)

"Hi, I'm ___ and I'm a volunteer with moveon.org. Is this Rose?"
"Yes, it is."
"Hi Rose. Well, as you know, the last weekend before the election is coming up, and so I'm trying to get people to come out to volunteer."
"Oh, yes, well, I can't come out and volunteer because I'm teaching a class over the weekend."
"Oh, that's --"
"But I have been working for Obama and talking to people -- I've been talking to the press a lot. You see, I live with a Republican."
"Really?"
"Yes. And I've got two interviews coming out this weekend, I can't remember where the reporters are from. But they're all very interested in us. We're in the I4 corridor, you know. We typically go Republican but not this year!"
"Wow, well, that's --"
"Now where are you from?"
"Um, I'm from Brooklyn."
"Oh, I'm from Brooklyn! Flatbush! It was not a good neighborhood when I was growing up there."
"Yeah, I don't know if it's a good neighborhood now…"
"And two of my daughters got their PhDs at Columbia. The third one's an MBA. Now what do you do?"
"I'm a filmmaker."
"Really, a filmmaker! So I should look for you! I see on the caller ID that your name is _____ _____. Is that what your name is?"
"Er, well, yes."
"Well, I'll have to Google you!"

"Hi, I --"
(suspicious) "Who is this?"
"My name is _____ and I'm a volunteer for Moveon.org. And, um, on my list here I have that I'm either calling for 'B' or 'G.'"
"Well…I guess you'll have to talk to B."
"Okay, so is this B?"
(long pause) "This is B."
"Okay, great. Um, we're looking for people to come out and volunteer for Obama this weekend."
"Well...I cannot. You see, I'd very much like to volunteer. But my job precludes me."
"Oh." (Beat, while I wait for him to tell me what his job is. He doesn't.) "So you can't volunteer."
"No, I'd like to very much. But my job precludes me."
"Okay."
"All I am able to do at this juncture is vote."
"Well…thanks for voting!"

"Hi, I'm a volunteer with Moveon.org, how are you doing?"
"I'm all right I guess."
"Well, great. I'm trying to get people to come out to volunteer for Obama this weekend."
"Oh, I'm sorry. It's not a good time."
"Oh. Okay."
"You see my dad just died."
"Oh, I'm so sorry…"
"And I have all of my family here at my house right now for a memorial service."
"Oh, well, I'm sorry, then I'll --"
"I am voting for Obama. In North Carolina."
"Well…thank you."
"I really wish I could help, I would like to. But it's -- it's not a good time."
"No, no, of course not. Thank you for taking my call. And again, I'm so sorry."
"Well...everybody dies."

"Hi, I got a call from this number?"
"Oh. Hi. Yes, um, I called you because I'm a volunteer with Moveon.org and we're trying to get people to come out and volunteer."
"Oh. But this number says New York, are you calling from New York?"
"Yes, we're in New York."
"So…you want me to come up to New York?"
"Oh, no, no, we have a campaign headquarters in Ocala."
"Oh. Great!"

"My weekend is booked solid."

"I'm going out of town for Halloween."

"Oh, yes, I'm already going to do that."
"Oh, great! So which time would you like to come out, Saturday at 10 am or --"
"Oh, no. I can't do that."
"Oh."
"I'm going to vote for Obama but I can't volunteer. I'm an old lady."

"Oh, yes!" (off the phone) "She's calling from Moveon." (on the phone) "When are you looking for volunteers?"
"Saturday and Sunday."
(off the phone) "She says Saturday and Sunday…." (on the phone) "What would we be doing?"
"Well, you'd be talking to voters, so either making calls or knocking on doors."
(off the phone) "She says making calls or knocking on doors…" (on the phone) "Hold on a second."
(a few moments go by, the she returns to the phone)
"Well, I guess we're not."
"Oh, that's too bad."
"Yeah...But we did vote! We voted today!"
"Oh, that's great. We don't have early voting here in New York so we have to vote on election day."
"Oh, well, you know we're in Florida, so we're special."
"Yes, well...yes. Well, if you decide you do want to volunteer you can always check out the Moveon website. If your husband changes his mind --"
"Well, we'll fight over it and if I win, we'll do it."

2008-10-29T21:37:00.012-04:00

Needy

I was working on a commercial recently with a lot of actors. I mean, a lot of actors. Probably over 200. It was the kind of job where the first AD requests his own PA system to talk to all of them, which we call "the voice of God."

We all know that first ADs love anything that lets them be more like God. They have the illusion of control and world (read: set) domination, because they get to do all the talking and shouting and giving of orders, and yet they are under so many thumbs -- director, producer, agency, client --- that the backs of their heads must be permanently stamped with the prints. And they're also somewhat at the mercy of the people they're supposed to be ordering around. The AD needs the help of the crew to make his day, so he still has to be nice to us, or at least pretend to be nice to us.

And the AD is also at the mercy of the actors, which is what he (or she, but I have yet to meet a female commercial AD) hates more than anything. Because at least most crew members are rational. Sure, there's the gaffer who loves to fuck with sound people and hide their comteks just for fun, sending them scrambling for one right when we're supposed to shoot (not that this has ever happened to me). And there's the prop person who will NOT be rushed when wiping down the color-corrected, hero soda can and spraying it with just the right amount of glycerin water to get it to glisten perfectly in the shot (it's not his fault, some client from Fresca made his life hell for a week once and he's been scarred ever since). But at least crew people deep down really only care about going home, and so will generally suck up their sonofabitchiness or neuroses when the time comes and just do their jobs -- and only their jobs, because this is the union, and if there's one thing I know, it's what is and is not my job. And it's the actor's job to express those neuroses and marshal them to the cause of selling Shakespeare or Fixident, whatever the case may be. And none of us can go home until they do it right.

As with a normal job, how long this takes generally has to do with the work itself (Faust or One Life to Live?), their co-workers (Sir Ian or Scott Bakula?) and their boss (Busby Berkeley or Ingmar Bergman?) -- as well as, like with any normal person, whether they're having a good day or a bad day. But unlike with a normal person, the difference between a good day and a bad day is the difference between joy and despair, and that difference can be made by a call from their agent or a hangnail or how you (yes, you) said "Good morning" to them when you showed up on set half asleep at 5 am.

Basically, actors are the neediest people you will ever meet. This is what comes of being in a profession where your emotions are your bread and butter -- only, when you're an actor, it's like you're the bread, and the butter is melted, and you soak it all up like a sponge and then you're supposed to ooze or squirt it back out on cue (oozing or squirting depending on the genre of course). It's like being a top athlete in terms of the total control you need, only more so, because if you're a tennis player, or a pitcher, or a gymnast, the idea is to keep your head in the game and take your emotions out. Whereas as an actor, your emotions are the game. Without them, it's just a book of instructions bound together with three holes and two 1.5-inch brads (not three, aspiring screenwriters, two), and somebody's got to make it real. And all of those mixed metaphors I've just described -- the buttery, spongy balance beam routine where you have to stick the dismount or get a 6 from the Ukrainian judge -- that's your job. Every day. No pressure.

Some actors, who are masters of their craft (Catherine Keener, Cynthia Nixon, David Strathairn, Michael Imperioli, to name a few I've worked with), make this look easy. At "Action!" they can cry, and mean it, while saying half a page of dialogue and pausing to pick up and put down their fork on the same mark with the same hand on the same line on every take -- no matter how many takes it takes. Then there are the actors (Frank Whaley, Vince D'Onofrio) who often need to actually get themselves emotionally and/or physically worked up to do a scene. A lot of people say, "Oh, they're just 'method.'" But the truth is, any actor working today worth his or her salt is a method actor, and that's been true ever since people like Lee Strasberg and Sanford Meisner started teaching people how to have a method. And the idea behind having a method is that you can get in and out of character without having to make everyone else crazy by actually becoming that serial killer or neo-Nazi asshole 24-7. Still, these methody pains in the ass generally turn in a good enough performance that people hire them for their work even if they're a little -- sometimes more than a little -- extra trouble. The line between genius and jerk is pretty fine, especially when some producer's smelling Oscar. Then there are those (no names on this one, sorry) who take the fact that they think they are ACTORS, with a capital A, as a license to commit bad behavior, without actually doing any very good acting -- or, often, any acting at all. It's the fact that they can't act, and they know it, or that they used to be able to and now they're not, is what makes them such a nightmare. These are the people I have absolutely no respect for, because they make everyone else's lives difficult, and for what? So that they can coast on the pathetic skateboard that is their ego and hide their lack of talent from the world just a teeny bit longer. I also know a number of bad actors who get by on charm, and I have no problem with them, as long as they stay sober enough to remember their lines. Hell, be bad, just don't give me guff when I try to mic you, or boom you, or look at you (yes, sometimes we mere mortals actually need to look at you, not because we like it, but in order to do our jobs). And never, ever, extend the length of my day.

This is why we all need the director. The director's supposed to provide the outside guidance, discipline and honest perspective to get the actors to knock it out of the park, or at least not double-fault. This does not, in my mind, mean that directors need to find some insidious means of wringing a good performance out of an actor -- although we all know the stories. How Steven Spielberg, when trying to get the little boy to give his expressions of delight and wonder when the spaceship was trying to beam him up in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, had a pile of Christmas presents that he slowly unwrapped, one at a time. How when Barbara Streisand got so frustrated because she couldn't cry in The Way We Were, Sydney Pollack just went over and gave her a hug, and the tears came flooding. Every director, deep down, wants to play puppetmaster in that critical moment that pulls the film together -- although the truth is, if you cast well, generally all you'll have to do is tell them they're swell and ask them to dial it up or down a little as needed.

Well, a lot of commercial directors don't even know how to do that. Why would they need to learn? Most actors are never going to get genuinely orgasmic when opening a bag of steaming microwave popcorn, or not to the extent that the client wants them to -- and oh, I've seen them ask for it: "Can they be even more excited?" No, the actor's going to have to fake it anyway, so why would a director bother? Not to mention that he or she is focused on way more important things than the performance, like the precise angle of the pizza box that shows the logo to fullest advantage, or the degree of drip of the mayo that's been food-styled within an inch of its life. These are the moments of genius -- GENIUS! -- in a commercial. (See, and you wonder why the prop people are neurotic). Not to mention that commercial actors are generally nobodies, which really makes them less important than the Redi-Wip (yes, that is how you spell it). Everyone caters to big actors. If they don't know how to direct them, they will at least pretend to talk their preferred brand of psychobabble and make sure that they have a never-ending supply of their drug of choice, be it coke or Diet Coke, and lunch from Nobu waiting in their trailer. But with actors who aren't important, if the director has, say, scrubbing bubbles to worry about, those thespians had better just crank out the facial expressions right quick and ask for nothing, or be labeled difficult.

This is how I often end up in the weird position of helpmate. Really, it is in fact my job to watch actors -- to make sure that the mic is pointing at them and moves when they move, etc. So in between shots, it's often just me and them, standing there, waiting on The Word (from the AD, who gets it from the director who gets it from the agency who gets it from the client). Often there's nothing to do but make conversation, along the lines of,

Handsome and charming actor who knows that he's handsome and charming: So that thing must be pretty heavy, huh?
Me: Naah, you get used to it.
Handsome and charming (feeling my arms): You must have some muscles, huh?
Me (blushing -- exactly the desired reaction): I guess.
Handsome and charming (now gently stroking my arm and looking deeply into my eyes): Hey. Do you know how I could get a water?

Actress who has to do a jogging scene in a tank top and short shorts on a suburban street in the middle of January (shivering): Hey, it's a little brisk out here, isn't it?
Me: Do you want your coat?
Actress: CLACKCLACKCLACKCLACK (that's her teeth chattering) Oh, me? No, no, I'm good, I'm great.
Me (to the 2nd AD): Hey, is wardrobe around? She's starting to turn blue.

And then, sometimes, I have to play cheerleader. Like on the set with the 200 extras. We were doing a scene where the main actor had to act as if he was a coach psyching up a football team for a game. It didn't help that he was wearing a red spandex suit and a football helmet that he couldn't really see out of and that he had to walk at high speed over dolly track. It didn't help that he had a whole bunch of fairly technical lines to do in a short space of time because the spot was 30 seconds. Or that he had to walk past a long line of all the other actors, who were all also wearing brightly-colored spandex, and whose job it was to stare at him. Or that, after four days, the director had completely lost any interest he had ever had in the spot -- and most of his interest to begin with had been focused on the exact placement of the sea of 200 bodies in spandex.

The red actor tripped over the dolly track on the first take, and of course he wasn't wearing any shoes over his spandex booties, so that hurt. On the second take, he flubbed his lines. And the third take. The director and the first AD were focused on getting the dolly move right and didn't even come over to talk to him, and didn't seem to care that he was limping. He caught my eye.

Actor: You know, it's just once you trip over it, it's kind of hard to forget it's there. Then you start spending all your time thinking about not tripping over it. And I know, it's just a few sentences --
Me: I know, look, what you're doing is not easy.
Actor: I'm gonna get it.
Me: You're gonna get it.

He did the scene again -- and blew his lines, and almost crashed into the dolly, which still wasn't in the right place. People were tired, it had been a long day -- it was the third spot and it was the martini, and everyone just wanted to go home.

Actor: Boy, everybody's just waiting on me, huh?
Me: No, no. Well, partly. But the dolly move --
Actor: It's the fourth quarter, gotta pull it out, you know? We're in the end zone, 4th down --
(he was a little methody)
Me: Er, I'm not too good with the football analogies.
Actor: All right, what would you say it's like?
Me: Well, I'd say…it's just like when everyone's staring at me and I trip over the dolly track and ruin the shot.
Actor: Yes! Exactly!

He got it right on the next one, but then the AD called out that we were going again.

Actor: What did I screw up this time?
Me: It's not you, it's them, they always do a million takes.
Actor: Right, right…

He did it again, and this time they were happy. Everyone applauded, he gave me a high five, and we were out of there.

Maybe I shortened my day a little. And he had a cute butt -- which looked especially good in red. And look, I can't say I don't enjoy talking to the actors, doing what the director should be doing -- even if nobody's going to hire me to do it, and nobody can actually know I did anything, because if they did, I'd get in trouble.

But it's more than that. Sure, actors can sometimes drive you nuts. And some of them are vampires of love and adoration who will suck you dry if you let them (which is why you should never date one). But when they do what they do and they do it well, that strange and incredible alchemy inside of them that I don't understand, that's one of the wonders of making movies -- or sometimes even lowly commercials.

Sometimes you have to stop and remember that being part of that is what makes it more than a paycheck, that what we do is a team sport where everyone needs an assist or a forward pass -- or maybe even a little sugar. And maybe that makes us needy, but I think, really, it just makes us a part of something. So sometimes, you've just got to give it up -- even if it isn't, technically, your job.

2008-09-30T22:15:00.006-04:00

Prop List From Something I Worked on Recently

(Copied from the call sheet)

Sc.1: Jim's guitar, roughly drawn friend graph (transparency), letter addressed to "Sally," overhead projector, ruler/fine point sharpie
Sc.2: Dale's briefcase
Sc.12: copy of "Scotland" news, overhead projector, roughly drawn friend graph (transparency), ruler/fine point sharpie, Dale's intercom
Sc.21: animatronic monkey, Andrew's arm in a sling, jewelry box
Sc.A3: treadmill, teeth, dreams letters, Sally's bike, chaise lounge, giant bike wheel, big hammers, belly rig, dolls, bandages

2008-09-20T18:03:00.014-04:00

There's a spot

I went to work the other day on a commercial and noticed that there was a spot on my shirt. Typical day, typical occurrence. What we were shooting was actually a weepy PSA to raise money for colon cancer research, but in spite of that, it managed to feel just as crass as any other commercial; the production was just as ridiculously cavalier (they somehow forgot to tell us it was a night job until two days before -- oops!), the agency and clients were just as self-absorbed (one attempted to return a Comtek while keeping the headphones in her bag -- "Oh, did it come with those?"), my boss was just as psychotically stressed out ("DID YOU FIND THE GAFFERS TAPE?? WELL, GIVE IT TO ME, JESUS!" I've discovered after many years of experience that the best way to deal with this behavior is to stand where he can see me but out of the range of flying fur and expletives, nodding and looking concerned) -- all, in other words, as usual. And me finding a spot on my shirt is something that seems to happen every day of my working life. I'm always eating in a hurry, shoving a guacamoled chip in my face or slurping tea out of my Super-8 travel mug, and whatever I'm trying to get into my mouth inevitably ends up a badge of slovenliness prominently displayed on my chest. Thank God for Ecover stain remover, that shit works.

The spot I discovered on myself this time, however, was different. It was a small red dot that I noticed, actually, when I put on the shirt in the morning, but I was in a hurry and didn't want to change. Plus, sometimes you just want to wear a certain outfit because you know you look good in it, and you know people will notice you look good in it, especially when you've recently been dumped and you feel the need to have people flirt with you to make you feel attractive again…But I digress. When I saw the spot, it wasn't like all of the other spots that I usually see and can't tie back to the particular job or glob of grease that instigated them. I knew exactly where this one had come from.

It was a couple of weeks ago, the last weekend we were shooting in Vegas for the documentary, the last shooting trip of the film, in fact. We were with a family that we've gotten pretty close to over the past year or so, and who have braved some tough times. Not to be or cliché or sound like I'm talking about CATS, but we've laughed with them, we've cried with them, we've listened to wireless mic-captured conversation as varied as,

"You shut up!"
"No, you shut up!"

when shopping at the grocery store and

"Mom, don't be sad."
"What is there to be happy about?"
"That we're alive!"

when visiting the grave of a son who passed away two years ago, at the age of 23. On this particular trip, the whole family -- mom, six remaining kids, two spouses, two grandsons, four friends of the family who spent the weekend in the family's trailer, a very tolerant dog named Blue and a coop full of chickens whose clucking is now an indelible part of the film's soundtrack -- assembled for the birthday of the son who had died, to yell at each other, eat, swim, make tamales, and exorcise some demons, or at least take them out for a spin in the 100-plus degree desert heat. And we came out to film it all happening, not exactly knowing what "it" would be, but knowing we had to be there.

It's odd to stand by and watch other people's lives unspool. While you're shooting, a lot of the time, you have no idea what the hell you're getting. You're strung out and your back and arms are sore from wearing the mixer around your midriff and booming while you're rolling rolling rolling for eight hours a day with only quick breaks to talk with our subjects off-camera for a few minutes while eating or drinking whatever they offer us and trying to figure out, Should we be rolling on all this insanity and if so, which part?? (or at least, um, that's our method, such as it is). But sometimes, you have a moment of clarity, where you see their story -- or stories, because usually there are many to choose from -- and how time is shaping it, and them. You know that it's transitory, because their lives will continue, as I've said before, and take new turns, as real lives, unpredictably, maddeningly, tend to do. But for a moment, you can make sense of them in a way that you can never make sense of your own life. It's the privilege and also the burden that we have as mostly-mute observers.

Sometimes, it's more of a burden than at others. The last night that we were in Vegas, we went to a dinner with a bunch of the people we'd met there over the course of making the film, and it only then became truly apparent, because they were now so comfortable with us and the camera wasn't there, that every single one of them was right-wing -- we're talking Rush Limbaugh territory. But of course we couldn't tell them what we really thought about immigration reform, or the war, or the Bridge to Nowhere. Lauren and I have joked from the beginning of this film that we'd like, someday, to go on the "re-education tour" where we can tell everybody we've met in our travels what we really think, and try to challenge a few misconceptions we've heard along the way -- like that "Sean Hennessey" is an impartial newsman, or that Giuliani was a terrific mayor, or that torture is perfectly okay if it's what we need to do to keep our country safe, or that "those kids are taught to hate us over there so why should we be rebuilding their country?"

But we know we never will, even when the film is done and people have seen it (hopefully, some day) and we've moved on to other projects. Because we have, somehow, come to like these people, and even care about them, in some cases deeply, and want them to continue to like and care about us. So we just smile and laugh and watch, amazed, as the rhetoric that we don't entirely understand, probably because it comes straight from Bill O'Reilly, flies ("I could never vote for somebody who hasn't served his country and is ashamed of half of his heritage" Huh???). I gave the woman who approves of torture a big old kiss on the cheek when she left, and it wasn't just because I'd had four glasses of wine. She'd driven all the way down from her new house in Utah to see "her girls." How can you let that kind of affection go unreturned? More importantly, why would you want to? Not to get all existential on your ass, but what's the point of it all if you do?

That may be the bigger burden of being observers. There are moments when someone you're filming is crying, or doing something really cute, like showing you a missing tooth or just smiling and gurgling on your shoes (mind you, I'm talking about individuals under the age of 4), when you really want to step out from behind the camera. Generally, you can't. You have to keep rolling, not think about how you want to participate, and instead try to enjoy watching the movie you're making play out while you concentrate on trying to make it the movie you want it to be.

But stolen between shots, or before, or after, there are moments. On our last day of shooting we went four-wheeling way up into the mountains, ostensibly to film a couple of the kids at a spot where there was a small cross they had dedicated to their brother. I nearly bit it several times on the way up, and still have the scar to prove it. None of us three New Yorquinas had ever ridden four-wheelers before, much less in challenging terrain, at high-speed, led by a daredevil 14-year-old with no fear of death. But we made it to the top and looked down from beside that cross to see an incredible spread of pink and puce desert stretching all the way to Arizona, and it was terrifying and exhilarating and wonderful and worth it, and it made us remember that we were, indeed, alive.

And the spot on my shirt -- it was from a hug. It was the hug that the mom of the seven kids (one gone) gave me when she welcomed us into her house for that weekend-long visit, the last one we might ever make there. It came from a blouse she was wearing that was studded with giant, bright red sequins, that apparently were not color-fast. It was no ordinary hug either, it was the kind of strong hug you give someone when you hold on and you mean it. That's why its left its spray of small red dots behind of which, yesterday, only one remained, and that one will be gone the next time I do laundry. But even then, it'll still have left its mark on me.

2008-09-03T11:04:00.004-04:00

How You Know It's All Going to Go Horribly Wrong – Reprise

When you're on the second day of a two-week shoot and at lunchtime you miss the crew van, and you end up in the agency van, and you overhear this conversation:

Client: I just don't get why we're doing this. I hate everything we've done today.
Agency Creative 1: Well, we're not all that happy with it either…
Client: I mean, it's supposed to be about moms being creative and all she's doing is dumping out a bowl of Cheez-Its.
Agency Creative 2: We wanted to do something with the popcorn too, but the Reddenbacher people would only let us do it if we showed the whole thing with her taking it out of the microwave and smelling the popcorn --
Client: But how did we end up with this? How did this get decided?
Agency Creative 1: Well, you were on vacation.

Agency Creative 1 does not appear for the rest of the job.

They add an extra day to reshoot day two, and you spend the next five days plus one waiting around, wondering why you're waiting around -- until you realize it's always for agency approval, on everything from how the Powerade bottles are positioned to how the bag of Ruffles is placed/dropped/tossed into the shopping cart. Which is not that different from a normal commercial, actually…except that they somehow manage to spend half an hour on it, as opposed to ten minutes.

But you learn a lot about the new iPhone applications from the camera dept. Shazzam is pretty cool. So's that thing where you get to watch the beer fill up the screen.

You start to think that if the rest of your working life is going to consist of days like this, maybe you really do need an iPhone.

2008-08-03T18:37:00.017-04:00

The View From Up There

There are a lot of odd things about my day job. Hell, what's not odd about my day job? I'm holding a pole that extends to 25 feet and trying to swing it around without whacking people in the head, or knocking pictures off the walls, or letting my hands make too much noise -- which they do when I move them, or sometimes even when I don't, because believe it or not, when you're tense, the stress rumbles out through your knuckles.

Sometimes, my job requires me to walk backwards for long distances; sometimes it requires me to run backwards for longer. Frequently it involves doing these things while not tripping over sandbags, metal dolly track, and one hefty guy who's pulling the dolly and a skinny one who's pulling focus -- and not elbowing the director in the ear (I have given many a director the elbow. Not hard and not intentionally, of course, although there are many I would like to bodyslam, if it wouldn't cost me my livelihood. But with a gentle nudge they tend to be either understanding or too distracted to notice).

Then there's making sure that the long pole and the microphone on the end don't end up in the shot, or cause a shadow or reflection, or at least a noticeable, boom-shaped shadow or reflection. Which means that in addition to the running-and- walking-backwards-without-tripping-or-elbowing skill set, I have others which are also somewhat wide-ranging and not altogether applicable in other areas of life. I have to know a certain amount about lighting, in terms of what light from what direction is causing what shadow and how to work around it, if it can be fixed, or is soft enough that maybe the DP won't see it if it doesn't move; and about lenses and camera angles -- 16 and 35, how wide they are and how they shape the frame as you move further from camera, and what can be seen when the camera looks up or down or in a mirror or window or chrome-finish toaster oven.

Which often requires that I spend a lot of my days -- the ones when I am not running backwards -- on top of a ladder. There are times when the camera is high up, and so no matter how high I hold the mic, the pole itself is still going to cut through the frame. And as many, many people like to point out to me (or suggest, in their extremely subtle ways), I'm not the tallest boom operator who ever lived (though neither am I the shortest), and so I just basically have to get taller. Sometimes, if I don't have to get real tall, I can stand on an applebox. For the uninitiated, that's a very sturdy wooden box, with holes for handles carved into the ends, that runs a standard 12" by 20" by 8". They're made to put pretty much anything on -- dolly track, wooden platforms, lights on pigeons, the director's cappuccino, teeny tiny actors, and, yes, substandard-sized boom ops. When they're flat, that's position one. When they're sideways, that's position two. I tend to go for position two -- not as stable as position one, but it can raise me a much-needed 12 inches off the ground. But sometimes, that's just not enough.

Ladders also come in standard sizes: the four-step, the six-step, and the eight-step. I try to go with the shortest one I can because, A) you never want to be reaching down -- talk about creating future problems for you and your chiropractor, and B) the higher a ladder gets, the wider it gets, and the harder it is to place it without getting in the way on the set. Which, incidentally, is a whole other skill set: staying out the way, not just of that dolly, but of electricians and grips trying to light, of actors' eyelines and extras doing crosses -- I mean, there's a lot going on. Although part of staying out of the way is knowing when to step in and claim some space. When I do it too early, it often ends with the gaffer deciding to put a light where I'm standing. Do they do it because I just happen to have chosen the exact best spot for said light? To annoy me? To prove that they can, because they're lighting and I'm sound? I'd say all of the above. But if I do it too late, then I don't have enough time to figure out where the shadows are or if I'm actually in a spot where I can see and reach all the actors whose lines I need to cover, get a frameline from the DP, and just generally let everyone know that I exist, so they won't be surprised when we roll camera and the boom suddenly appears on the edge of the frame. Which can freak out, say, your inexperienced young music video DPs no end.

But so I like to start by seeing if a four-step will suffice, then work my way up. Most often, I'd say I end up with the trusty six-step. It’s not too wide at the base, and it will get me over pretty much as wide a frame as the director can dream up in an interior (exteriors -- that's a whole other ball of wax, and if you're getting that wide on a New York City street, you might as well just throw in the towel and go straight to wireless). In general, the only time I resort to an eight-step is when I have to reach over a wall of a constructed set -- which, like I said, is a killer on your back, not to mention that it's really hard to figure out who's talking and how close you are to them when all you can see are the tops of people's heads, so I try to avoid that as much as possible.

But when it's the right height, there are a number of things I like about working from the top of a ladder. For one thing, I can let the boom lean against it and perch on it fairly comfortably. I know this sounds minor, but when you're standing for most of 16 hours on asphalt or concrete, large portions of that supporting the long pole, the value of being able to take a load off for a couple of minutes in between shots in your own private spot that nobody else can steal is not to be underestimated (although they do try. No sooner do I walk away from a ladder I've planted on the set than it disappears because some neat-freaky grip clears it away, or the second AC puts the slate on it, or the second AD puts his clipboard on it...you get it, I'm possessive about my shit). Plus, it gets you noticed. It's like, "Hey everyone, look at me! My job's pretty tough, eh?" 'Cause sometimes they do forget. But on the days I'm on a ladder, I get a lot more people coming up to me and asking me,

"Don't your arms get tired?"

"Isn't that thing heavy?"

or simply, "How do you do that?"

Or they'll come over to make jokes:

"Hey, how's the view from up there?"

or, covering their eye, "Aaah! Ow! Ow!"

Yeah, that's funny.

And then there are the classic singing jokes,

"I'm being followed by a boom shadow, Boom shadow, boom shadow."
(sung to Cat Stevens)

"Boom operator…Boom…operator…"
(sung to Sade)

Or, since I'm suddenly some sort of focus point, they just want to make my acquaintance -- and then I'm even more the focus point. It's a little weird how easy it is to become a celebrity if you're suddenly up on display on a six-foot pedestal in a room of 100 extras. Although if each and every one suddenly feels the need to talk to you, this can get a bit tedious. But in general, it's a major sock to my ego.

And then, yes, it does make me tall. Not that I mind being not so tall so much, but…maybe I mind it a little. It's just that when you're a female in a sea of masculinity, you always get underestimated -- and if you're a short female, it's that much worse. It's not that I feel any need to butch up, not that I really could if I tried. But I like being eye-to-eye with people, or better yet, with some of them, looking down. Namely the agency, the clients, the executive producer who shows up for an hour of handshaking in his Porsche and his leather jacket -- those who normally spend their days looking over my head. I don't know if you've noticed this, tall people (although I think you have judging by the way you like to come over and stand right next to me and stare down. You know who you are), but there's something about that vantage point that gives you power. Power that is generally not my purview.

But it also gives you perspective. You get to see the whole scene play out -- and I'm not just talking about the scripted one. You see the first AD go through his little man histrionics; you see the agency producer scuttle back and forth, ant-like, between the client and the set; you see the big egos reduced to bald spots and dark roots. And you can take that step back, or up, and really grasp your part in the big machine that grinds out product at 24 frames per second. It all looks just a tiny bit smaller and sillier from up there, and it helps you remember that it's just a job, just a day that will eventually end, just a lot of money for a little bit of celluloid that will hopefully make somebody buy aftershave.

And one more thing about being up there, if you slip or lean too far, you could fall on your head. And I guess that's the last key aspect of my day job, and also my non-day-job, perhaps the choices I've made in general: the element of risk. There are stakes, and they can range from making a fool out of myself, which happens almost daily, to never having my own house and two-point-five kids, or even a car that doesn't have the engine light perpetually on -- which are not unlikely outcomes at this point in time -- and still ending up with a career in which I don't finish a single film that 100 people outside of my family and friends will ever see. Or, I could get paid to make films I care about for the rest of my life. Which would be pretty great. But even if it doesn't happen, there's something about the risk, about standing on that ladder, and the way your heart beats a little faster when you reach out over the edge.

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?