Stardate 07182003
[The following column will be delivered with two distinct narrative strands. The text and the photos. The are not thematically inter-related, but the photographs are of people and events I experience concurrent to events that gave rise to the following commentary. As a whole, it represents a lot of what was happening around me the past few weeks.]
Vanilla Ice, 3 Corpses and the Taming of the Runaway Craft Services
I got a call from the Unit Production Manager of the low budge to come and do Craft Services for the last week of their shoot. The first set call is at 5 pm and they shoot until about 5 am. I start around 4 pm and finish at 4 am.
When you break it down I’m making about two dollars an hour, but its the kind of experience I want right now. It's a fairly professional and experienced set and that makes a huge difference but the crew is kind of testy about food because they aren't getting paid much. So while I have to watch the budget and portion control and all that, the crew feels like food is part of their pay.
And they just fucking eat constantly! I mean, people normally do not eat constantly for 12 hours. They come around looking for food and I’m like, "You've been stuffing your face with nuts, crackers and candy for the last 5 hours, how can you POSSIBLY be hungry?
So I've already learned some of the important lessons for doing this very simple job that lots of people for some reason just can't do right. If you have hosted a lot of parties and had to keep the food and the fun going at the same time, then you have the right experience to do Craft Services right since it's like hosting a day long cocktail party.
So all those hours I've clocked in the party department are really coming in handy now.
And I’m also here to tell you that there is no big mystery or special experience necessary to be something like “First Assistant Director.”
I'm not a Production Assistant which is good because it means lots of things "aren't my job," like keeping the craft services area clean, moving boxes, making runs for ice or water, etc. However, the PAs on this shoot are all lazy. Maybe it’s a just a young person thing. You aren’t really good at anything yet, even though you think you are the bomb because you just finished film school. So while you think your job is stand around and look cool and act elite because you are working on a movie, your real job is to pick up garbage on the set. Maybe because I’m old and I have no shame anymore, I don’t mind if people see me hauling a load of garbage out to the dumpster. If I didn’t do it, it just wasn’t going to get done.
So my crash course in producing was worth the effort. See, I’m trying to move towards writing/producing for television and film so I figure I’ll take any job I can get to get the real world experience. Their craft services was more like crap services before I showed up and they now all think that I am some kind of miracle. And I don’t mind them thinking that. “You are some kind of lucky charm, everything has been going so well since you got here and it was crazy before,” said one of the producers.
My first night on the job I left the catering out on the table, thinking that everyone already knew the pecking order and how much to take and when. So that night was lesson number one.
Luckily, nobody got mad at me for that. Since their craft services has been totally chaotic and inconsistent for most the shoot it's not just organizing I have to do, but I also have to encourage some behavior change and I have to change the expectations of the cast and crew about how Craft Services will serve them and how to get me to feed them.
It was easy to establish some authority though. On a set, everyone has a job and it's important that everyone stick to their job in order for the machine to run smoothly. One guy who had been around from the beginning was looking in one of the coolers for food and I told him to ask me if he wants something and I’ll get it for him, but he got all attitudey with me and I was like, "Are you going to support this production or just be an asshole?" It turns out I'm now supposed to let him do what he wants to do. I just don't want it to set a bad example while I get Craft Services back under control.
Anyway, I'm kind of excited. It's not a huge production but it's my first real set-job. And the movie is funny. It's a spoof of THE MATRIX called THE HELIX and Vanilla Ice is in it, but everyone calls him Rob. He’s covered in tattoos now and we had a little show and tell. I kept trying to treat him like a star, bigger portions, special requests, priority deference, etc, but outside of having his own dressing room, he just fell in line like everyone else. Whereas a couple of the actresses, who you’ve never heard of, acted like they were getting paid 20 million to do the picture. “Excuse me, but I’m the STAR of this movie. Lick my ass-crack, slave.”
On a weirder, more macabre note, three bodies were found in a lot across the street my first night and the coroner and the police and EMT personnel were out there all night taking photographs and notes.
Rob (Vanilla Ice) went over with some people to look at the bodies and the one he saw had his throat cut. They were found right in the middle of a homeless shanty encampment.
The night I started there was a freak electrical storm so I kept telling people that the sky split open and I appeared at their hour of need. One of the actors, who plays the lead agent told me, “You had good timing.” I began to spread propaganda around the set like, “A movie is only as good as its craft services. You guys just might win an Oscar now.”
Jamie Lee Curtis Likes You Better Than Me
“You’re Jamie’s favorite,” said the journalist next to me in a tone of voice that had me looking for my brown paper lunch sack with my name and room number written on it with a big, black marker. Thom Fowler – Grade 4. Jamie Lee Curtis had just singled me out because I wasn’t asking her any questions at the recent press junket for FREAKY FRIDAY.
“You have been very quiet,” said Jamie. (We’re on a first-name basis now since I’m her favorite.) We had been talking about the problems of motherhood and raising teenagers and especially Mother/Teen Daughter relationships – because that’s what FREAKY FRIDAY is about – and I said, “A friend of mine often tells me that there isn’t enough inter-generational communication in our culture and that we suffer because of it.” (Although TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE was an enormously popular best-seller - thank you Oprah Winfrey – but I’m not sure if too many 13-years-olds were reading it.) This sent Jamie (see “familiarity because I’m her favorite” above) into a long and interesting exposition on raising her daughter, let alone a generation, her thoughts about motherhood and how to deal with teenage exploration and desire.
“Dude,” (because I often call people, “Dude”), “Dude, when that door closed behind her, she forgot all about us.” And then I said, “Where’s your bike helmet, tard? Did you leave it on the short bus?” Kids like him got to leave class to take their Ritalin. The drug companies will make a buck off anyone, even invented childhood maladies like, what do they call it now, ADD – Attention Deficit Disorder.
When is there going to be a drug for BSS – Boring School Syndrome. Or MMFMTMSS – My Mom Feeds Me Too Much Sugar Syndrome. My Aunt is a kindergarten teacher and I asked her how she manages to corral the wide range of energy and temperaments among her tiny charges. “You just have to learn what they need to hear to stay inside whatever activity we’re doing.” When I was in Kindergarten, I don’t remember feeling “small.” I felt like a powerless grown-up. But I was glad I wasn’t the kid who cried after getting yelled at for coloring on the carpet. Although that was a stupid thing to do. Even a 5 year old knows that you are at least supposed to TRY to stay in the lines and not spill out into the world-at-large. Unless you are Harold, and then you can take that purple crayon and draw a sky big enough to hold your wings.
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“Give them what they need to make good choices and then let them make their choices – that’s my mantra, “MAKE GOOD CHOICES,” said Ms. Curtis. “That’s why college Freshman explode – they are so controlled that when they look around and notice that nobody is telling them what to do, they don’t know what to do and they just explode with the binge drinking. That’s why college Freshman are committing suicide and why college campus psychiatrist offices are packed with Freshman. They don’t know what to do with themselves because nobody has ever let them make any choices or helped them make good choices.”
And then she said, and this is how I became her favorite, “See, you’ve been sitting there quiet this whole time and you end up saying the most important thing.”
Validation doesn’t come cheap in this town. I literally took a little bow, which I thought was more gracious than saying, “DUH!” Although important is a relative term. To some 12 year old girl, it is a matter of life and death to know if Lindsay Lohan (who plays the daughter, Anna) dated Aaron Carter, when she dated him, and if she *expletive*’d (translation – made sweet consensual love to) him. And if she did, did she use “condom sense.” But they don’t invite 12-year-old girls to these press junkets. Just adults who think like 12 year old girls.
We also got into an interesting discussion, or started to anyway, about the invention of the teenager. The marketing folks swooped in and said, “That’s enough, Mr. Red Pill.”
FREAKY FRIDAY was directed by Mark Waters who also directed that other Family film, The House of Yes. Mark’s Brother wrote Heathers if that tells you anything about HIS family. Under Waters’ direction, what could have been a clueless, outdated 1950s-era sensibility in 21st century clothes becomes a more realistic, more believable film about how complicated being a person can be. Anna is in a girl punk band, and they really feel like (the Disney version of) rebel youth but also teenagers who are trying to have fun, find themselves and navigate their complex social and home worlds.
I wasn’t being “quiet” necessarily. I’m just the kind of guy who likes to take a long, wide assessment before coming in with some meaningful contribution. I’ll see how other people are playing the table and decide if I need to massage it around a corner to make it interesting to me or help it flow smoothly in the direction it’s taking. I’m a Taoist - I just make the most out of what’s there - but I also realize that I have the power to create the shared story. As we all do. It’s something I put to good use when I was doing Improv – which I highly recommend for people who want to feel more spontaneous and connected to their environment.
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I like to let everyone get their stupid “So when exactly were you dating Aaron Carter” questions out of the way. They are the stock in trade and bread and butter of most of what people want out of celebrity reportage but to me they are a major snoozefest. I mean, if you are going to ask, cut the innuendo and just say, “What did it feel like when Aaron Carter gave you the hot beef injection? Did you think, “Oh my God, I’ve arrived. I’m getting banged by Aaron Carter?” But since this was a Disney event, what Lindsay Lohan (who plays the daughter in said remake) said instead was, “I’m a virgin.”
And then I looked at her like, “Do I look stupid?” And she looked back at me with a sheepish, hiding under her bangs kind of look, and I’m surprised nobody else noticed all this amidst the G-Rated romp around the roundtable, that said, “I hate this part of the job.”
LINDSAY LOHAN IS OSTENSIBLY A VIRGIN WHO DATED AARON CARTER – read all about it in Teen People and Young Miss.
“Yeah, I hate that you have to lie and create fictions and not be honest with the public, too.” I mean, why can’t you just say, “I’m gay.” “I have sex.” “I’m a teenage boozehound.” Those are real things that real people do and are. Instead, you get, “I’m a virgin.” “I am an actress who works in Hollywood, a business not known for it’s restraint, and I live in Los Angeles, and I just made a Disney movie co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis – who is as dyed-in-the-wool showbiz as Carrie Fisher or Liza Minelli and I say ‘no – I’m on the Promise™ program.’”
And how stupid was it that there was a press announcement that Britney Spears is no longer a virgin? Who popped her cherry and when did it happen, that’s what I want to know. How come that wasn’t in the press release? America deserves to know the truth. When was the exact moment, and whose willy was it and how did she feel while it was happening? Is that news or pornography?
Speaking of pornography, one of the journalists, a heavy-breathing kind of guy, was struggling to not leer at Lindsay’s boobs. I was watching the saliva drip down his chin. He was sitting right next to her too and felt really bad for her. It was almost like he was waiting for the lap dance, “Isn’t that part of my goodie bag?” And during that whole episode of the “You’re Jamie’s Favorite” journalist’s barrage of questions about “when exactly where you dating …” I could see the blood rise up into his face and wondered where else his blood was going.
These are people who would never be a foreign correspondent or have anything relevant to say about Latin American politics, but damn, they sure do know when someone was replaced mid-season in a TV show that just took a dip in the ratings and exactly how much to start the bidding for a TERMINATOR 3 press-exclusive jacket. There’s a huge market for this stuff, I’m learning. People will collect anything.
I collect souls. I want yours.
Sharon Osbourne, Dolly Parton and Hunting Bambi
I’ve been stalking Sharon Osbourne. After Ozzfest, I bumped Dolly Parton off the top rung of my hero ladder and put Sharon up there. So now I want to go work for her, or near her. The Double-U-B has been taping Sharon’s new talk show (which begins airing in September) and I went to a few screenings to bug the exec prod to let me sweep, or pull cables or wrangle talent. They don’t like when you do that, but you gotta take advantage of the precious few windows of opportunity that you get when you are trying to break into The Business. But I also went the legit route and had an acquaintance who works for Warner Brothers forward my resume to the producers of the show so I would look less like a stalky-fan and more like a legitimate job-seeker. But you gotta hit ‘em on all fronts. That’s my A-Number One Advice for Maximum Impact. Come at them from all directions simultaneously. How you make that happen is the test of your skill, your creativity, your ingenuity and your bravery.
One of the tapings featured the guy who created the Hunting Bambi game in Las Vegas where guys pay thousands of dollars to hunt naked girls with paint-ball guns. If you tag her, you have the option of doing her. Sharon, like many reasonable people, was outraged, so she did a show about the controversy. And then a few days later, the whole business was revealed as a hoax. So I don’t think that episode will air.
Another friend of mine said to me, “Why do you want to work for the Sharon Osbourne Show? It’s just going to get cancelled.” He’s more pragmatic than I am. He’s in it for the career. I just want to meet interesting people and create media around them. I know it’s a novelty concept and who knows if Sharon really wants to become the next Jenny Jones, and maybe her brand of home-spun rock and roll advice is a concept that doesn’t translate to obscure show-biz guests and maybe she’s in danger of becoming tired daytime television, but you can’t blame Sharon who isn’t producing her own show. Jay Leno and Oprah Winfrey produce their own shows, so you can blame the on-air talent if things go wonky. (or more importantly, if the ratings share isn’t up to snuff).
The audiences were great though. The Associate Producer responsible for keeping the seats packed only said, “dress nice, you will be on TV.” And I loved how nice was interpreted as “clean” by some people and as “trendy” by others. I think the shows I went to were just test tapings anyway while they iron out the creative bugs. Hollywood is a town full of people who follow previously successful models so the show was like a lingering trail of pixie-dust from The Osbournes (the dogs were all over the set and the set itself is built to look like The Osbourne House in the MTV skein (VARIETY talk for “show”). But then they have to put guests into the mix and develop around a target demo (because the show has to deliver an audience/ratings share and it is those numbers that are used to determine how much it will cost to advertise during that show – which is one of the big profit centers for the TV business) and that takes you away from The Osbournes family and into something like if Marilyn Munster suddenly spun off into her own sit-com.
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I think Sharon should get Dolly Parton on the show. That would be epic television. The two days I went to tapings, the show seemed geared more towards young teenage girls than anyone. Come September, we’ll see how the show fares and what happens to it over the long term. It’ll be a syndicated show so they are trying to make it friendly for as many markets as possible. The other taping I went to had teenage counselors from a nudist camp for kids. THAT’S what I call good television. Normally, when guests like that appear on broad-demo daytime TV talk shows, they are treated as the corrupting weirdos who must defend their decadent and lascivious lifestyle in the court of Pat Robertson, but Sharon was all about being fair-minded about alternative lifestyles and the ensuing discussion of attitudes about sex, sexuality, nudity and body-image was definitely one for the Social Studies classroom.
And in between takes, she would make stick out her tongue and make the sign of horns with her hands. A screenwriter (the kind with actual credits and a pay-check from a major studio) told me to “Don’t start at the beginning. Write the scene you want to see first and write about the stuff you would never tell anyone, that’s the stuff that other people are going to be interested in.” Which is what the Sharon Osbourne show is on the verge of doing. It graciously resisted pandering to the Jerry Springer mentality. She is the ennobling influence for blue-collar folks who have been disgraced, de-humanized and humiliated by trash day-time talk shows. (Granted, the audience and guests willingly participated in their own degradation but if someone doesn’t know any better, you don’t say, “here, smear excrement on your face, people will like you. You’ll be on TV.” That’s something you do to your little brother when you are in 3rd grade. Not something adults should be doing to each other. However, if a paid actor smears dyed mashed potatoes on their face – then that’s entertainment.)
If I stick around long enough, and honestly, I don’t know what else I’m well equipped to do, I’ll lose my romantic aspirations about being a “culture worker” and become another grudging gear in the machine before too long – amused at the constant waves of newcomers out to stake their claim in the never-ending entertainment industry gold-rush. Eventually I too will see the profit margin in low-production costs/ high ratings reality TV shows and realize that BMW’s and a house in the Hollywood Hills is the REALLY important thing. And I too will turn my bitterness upon the desperate and cast half-naked girls as “extras” in scenes that never get aired and were never even scripted. For 50 bucks, you can get a Sunset Strip Wannabe to pole-dance for SAG credit ALL DAY.
I’ve been dragging you along for 2500 words already and I just got started. There isn’t enough time to tell all the stories, unfortunately. Burning Man preparations have consumed my time. There’s a lot of thoughtful design that goes into building a shower in the middle of the desert with one of the constraints being that you can’t spill any gray water on the playa. Everything has to be contained, reused, fed back into the machine or depleted through natural means. Leave no Trace isn’t just a dictum, it’s a religion and a practice that could do our world a lot of good. (And one that keeps the savviest hackers out of prison.)
Daryl Hannah, who has been everywhere lately, was on THE TONIGHT SHOW with Jay Leno talking about vegetable oil combustion engines. “Grassoline,” she called it. Earth Day isn’t just for hippies. It’s just unfortunate that the cultural values of those who practice and advocate ecological sustainability is at odds with the slash-and-burn profit-over-all mentality of the Guns and Butter set. It’s like there are two completely different cultures living side by side. The movie SMALL SOLDIERS is an excellent fable for the dichotomy between patriarchal militaristic command-and-control social structures and consensus based, co-operation with Nature, humanistic social structures. I always want to just blame Christianity, but it’s just as easy to blame greed and the lust for power, which is used not to enlighten and liberate but to enslave. Capitalism is sadistic. Starhawk, leftist political activist and author of the The Spiral Dance – A Rebirth of the Ancient
Religion of the Goddess calls it “Power over” versus “Power from within.”
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At Comic-Con San Diego someone stopped by the booth and asked me if I was communist after seeing the ring of red stars tattooed around my wrist. (Because if anyone was going to have a discussion about the relationship between government and the economy in a democracy at a comic book convention, it would be me.) I told her that I think the idea of a communist revolution is romantic and foolhardy and fuels fanaticism and bigotry but I do like the idea of a highly socialized democracy and the benefits of a wide reaching social safety net enjoyed by many European countries and Canada. I should have also said, because I was sitting under the View Askew banner, that “the views expressed herein are solely those of the participants and do not reflect the opinion of View Askew Productions or any of its subsidiaries, principals or affiliates.”
But I also like the idea of saying something extreme to balance out the extreme opposite opinion in order to create discussion and dialectic around issues. So for instance, if someone says, “You must repent”, I say, “Hail Satan!” It’s totally juvenile but sometimes you just have to go jump up on the down on the other side of the scale so we don’t all turn into Donald Rumsfeld/Pat Buchanon Mongoloid Lobotimized Zombie Slaves.
When Jessica Lynch finally returned to the U.S. they gave her a hero’s parade even though it’s already been widely reported that the rescue was no rescue at all. Jessica Lynch was in a car accident. She was found by Iraqi doctors and taken to an Iraqi hospital. The US authorities were notified, AND THEY DIDN’T GO GET HER! They just left her there. Finally, the Iraqi doctors called the US authorities and said, “We are abandoning this hospital. If you want Private Lynch, come get her. We aren’t taking her with us.” So they left and she just sat there, having no idea what was happening and finally “The dramatic rescue” took place. I have no idea why she didn’t just quietly sneak back into her civilian life. I wonder what kinds of papers the government made her sign to shut her up about the whole incident.
You know, most people who join the military are not idealists. They are desperate people looking for a way to take care of themselves for a few years. Most of those kids never make the ranks of officer, if you look at the skin color and genitalia of all the retired military personnel used as commentators on crap cable news shows.
At Comic-Con San Diego, I also chatted with a guy who was in the Navy and I asked him if he was going to be sent to overseas, Iraq, Liberia, wherever our militaries Works Progress Administration style “make work” policies take them next. Gotta justify all those deadbeat military planners sucking off the nation’s tax base somehow. He said, “eventually.” And then I asked him how he felt about it, given the reports of “low morale” in the lowest front-line ranks (translation – cannon fodder) of the current war for control over Iraqi oil fields and a shake up of the board of execs of World Capital Inc. ©
“I know, you aren’t allowed to have a contrary opinion of current foreign policy so if you don’t want to answer that’s fine.” He said, “No, it’s okay, we are allowed to talk about how we feel.” He took his hat off, scratched his newly shorn hair, shrugged his shoulders and said, “It’s a job.” And since I was handing out advice for a nickel and he paid me a nickel for advice, I told him, “Just do your job then, but don’t forget your own ideas about people and how they should be treated and try to put that into how you do your job.” I’m sure his commanding officer would have loved to put a bullet through my skull right about then. But he wasn’t around while I was running my personal covert hearts-and-minds campaign.
I’m just the kind of guy who likes to take a long, wide assessment before coming in with some meaningful contribution. I’ll see how other people are playing the table and decide if I need to massage it around a corner to make it interesting to me or help it flow smoothly in the direction it’s taking. I’m a Taoist - I just make the most out of what’s there - but I also realize that I have the power to create the shared story. As we all do.
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