Elvis is not dead

Quick note for today, besides it being very miserable out, was my short elevator ride with two pretty cool people. One of which is the lead actor in the film (everyone should know this guy by now) and the other was Elvis but the one with a last name that goes with Abbot & _____.

They talked about Fig Newtons and the parallel snack food found in England.

The new Elvis, by the way, was very cool.

I should probably get some sleep now.

What's the matter?? Rookie f*&^wad can't take a joke!?

As this is becoming a contant theme in the first 9 days, another person chose not to come to work today. I say "chose" because at least this one quit. Right now the fired/quit toll is at 4:

2 Director's Assistants (both fired)

1 Sound operator (fired)

Production Assistant in charge of paperwork (quit).

As you might expect, I was a little worried to hear about the latest quitter when I arrived to set 45 minutes late after my truck had it's battery drained over the weekend by the light thatw as left on in thge back (by yours truly).

Thankfully I need not worry since they were going to give me all of her responsibilities until they hired a new PA that will start next Monday. I think my job is safe for now.

Next time, when someone asks you if you are a God, you say YES!

Welcome to "The Suck"

I’m guessing this is going to be a regular thing for the next few weeks. A “regular thing” meaning waiting until the weekend to write new blog entries since I’m a little too out of it during the week.

This past week started out fairly well but went a little haywire on Wednesday. Monday and Tuesday we were on sound stages filming a fake reality show and it was the first days for the new actress I mentioned in my previous post. To sum up her on both days in a few words: SHE S-U-C-K-S. Seriously, she is a terrible person and a major diva for someone whose career never really took off. Basically, everyone thinks that she should just do some straight-to-DVD movies form now on and get over herself.

Ok, ok, so moving on to Wednesday. Wednesday turned out to be one hell of a day. First, the woman who was supposed to unlock the location for us overslept. With this making everything late and consequently pushing our day behind by two hours, it really sucked. Luckily, when you have Grips (the guys on set who build things) and Gaffers (The people who make all the lights work), they can make things like…say…take the door of the location off its hinges so we can access the inside. Took_the_door_off_its_hinges. Yeah, I didn’t know that until later in the day. And the woman didn’t even care. That alone would make the production staff pissed off but then we had more problems with the actors. A second headache was controlling 40 extras for the fake fundraiser/cocktail party we were shooting. This being my department, I was a little overwhelmed having to deal with that many people. (The most I dealt with before was about 15). Overall they weren’t too bitchy but some of them basically had to have a stern talking to by myself before they tried to take over the place. The production also had to deal with a fender bender around the corner from set, which set back the Production Supervisors’ day by about two hours.

Thursday the production was in Queens which was my second time in the borough. The house we were at was nice, but nothing special. The biggest thing that happened was a small revolt by the Grips, Gaffers, and the Prop departments. Basically, the “deal” that was told to these departments regarding pay, meal penalties, and union stuff was not the “deal” that is written in stone right now. Money is at the heart of it, and the departments involved were getting and maybe still are getting…screwed. From what I could ascertain through pieces of several conversations is that the VP of the their union may decide to have them all walk off the job in protest. I don’t know where they are with that now, but I’ll keep you updated. One of the people from the film who had to deal with all of this at 1am Thursday night was not looking too happy after it happened.

Friday. Friday we were filming in Brooklyn right around the Manhattan bridge. It was a pretty standard day until one of the actors decided to tell the director that he didn’t want to do something. Basically, it went like that: (D)“Ok, now we are going to do a close up on ______.” (A)“I don’t think we should do a close up on me.” (D) “Listen, I make the decisions on what we shoot and what we don’t shoot, not you.” This all happened in a room full of about 40 people. Not good, not good at all. The actor then proceeds to walk off set, around the corner, until one of the producers chases after him. Kind of a spectacle.

Amid all this tension our second official week ends. 8 days down, 17 more to go. Tomorrow we are filming a music video with the lead female actress. Should be pretty fun and low key hopefully. The song is REALLY catchy, so I’m sure I won’t be able to get it out of my head tomorrow night.

In normal news, I had a great weekend, at an awesome wedding, and at a not so cool football game in great seats.

Cheers to the married couple. I wish you all the happiness in the world.

Observations from Week 1

Yes, I know, I’m sorry I haven’t written anything in awhile. This week we started filming and the days preceding the first day on Wednesday were very hectic. The office was buzzing with many things to do and little time to get them done, and I was thankfully going to be out of there soon enough.

Tuesday was my last day in the office and it couldn’t have come a day sooner. The girl who replaced me is very nice and cool, but I already feel bad for her since she now has to deal with the constant phone calls and micromanaging of the office. Such is life, what can you do.

Wednesday was our first day and the city suddenly had a chill in the air. We were shooting on the upper east side near the 60’s which wasn’t too bad, and the side street we were on wasn’t too busy. Luckily we had traffic control police to close the street for any extended period of shooting. The day went mostly well as far as first days can go with a new crew. People are still getting accustomed to each other and some are in charge of things that they have never gotten to do before (like me) and so it has been quite an adaptive process.

Here are some of the highlights of the past two days.

Thursday

We shot all day in Chinatown which can be a tiresome prospect unto itself. Getting people, mostly people who can speak about the words of English, to understand you when you tell them to hold on the corner for a shot, is nearly impossible. Providing what we call a “lock up” is hard enough with any city dweller mainly because no one wants to be told what to do. Everyone is late for something. Everyone wants to walk around ten orange cones stacked neatly across from each other blocking the way. This is the life of a Production Assistant. Sit, wait for the cameras to roll, and try and hold people from walking directly into the frame. People hate us when we do it, no matter how nice we are, and unfortunately, things happen that are out of a PA’s control.

Take, for instance, one piece of Thursday night. A woman was approaching a corner of the street which I had my back to. The PA standing there asked the woman if she could please wait for thirty seconds and then she could cross. We needed the street to look empty like it was in the middle of the night. This meant no one could pass through any part of the 6-point intersection (it sucked to deal with). This woman was on her cell phone. This woman did not want to stop. This woman decided to cross the street in the middle of the road.

At this exact point, a man driving a black Acura was driving down the main cross street, probably rubber necking to see the film being made (and how you could you miss us with a huge spotlight on a crane suspended 50 feet in the air), going about 30 mph. He looked at us, and then he looked at her hitting his car…She never knew what hit her. All I heard was a loud thump and screaming…enough screaming to make your body shake. The woman was hit dead on at full speed and the man didn’t skid. He hit her and she flipped onto the hood of his car and then fell back on the ground. It was an ugly scene and I’m glad I didn’t actually see her get hit. Other PA’s did though, and they said they were afraid of nightmares from the images.

Friday

Nothing terrible happened with pedestrians. Overall nothing bad happened at all really. It was a mostly chilly day with a lot of wind during the afternoon but it died down a bit late at night. We were in the meatpacking district for the day and night which was cool. Friday night in the meatpacking district wasn’t exactly quiet, but it worked out well. I did get to pick up a new actress to our film so she could come to set and meet everyone. Most guys would know her from the film where she starred as the girlfriend to the girl who was in “Let it Ride.” If you can follow those pieces, than you can figure out who she is. She was nice enough, but from a few choice things she said in the car, I can tell she is going to be a handful, and possibly might be a prima donna. We’ll see soon enough. She starts her scenes on Monday.

One other fun thing that happened last night was that we went to one of the main actor’s girlfriends bar that she works at. If you have been following my stories, he was the one who invited me to hang out at his place a few weeks ago. Pretty fun to drink with a cool actor. He didn’t drink though. He says he doesn’t have any drinks while he is working. So I guess we won’t see him drunk for a month or so.

Whew! That was a lot to write. Sorry it was so long, but when I don’t post, things accumulate. Week 1 is done. Now, we move along…

Two things I could be doing in 7 days

In the past 24 hours, I was told about two things I COULD be doing in the next 7 days. Here they are in order of arrival:

1. Offered work on an Adam Sandler movie for Friday and Saturday. This was turned down by the Production Coordinator because she couldn't "lose" me for Friday.

2. Offered work at a CBS runway show for Victoria Secret next Wednesday. As this is the first day of shooting for the film, I had to turn it down.

Just some of the fun stuff going around right now. I'm sure I'll work with Adam one day.

Oh, and I happened to be at the NYC Screen Actors Guild office today. The girl at the front desk was seated behind 3 inch thick plexi-glass. So...umm...are they that concerned with disgruntled actors coming after the receptionist? W-o-w.

Debunking the Myth

Every week it seems, a few films enter the Cineplex with big stars and big budgets and they look AWFUL. You know that feeling when you see the trailer and you just know, deep down inside, that it is going to be incredibly bad, but you don’t know why a studio would drop 50 million dollars on a sci-fi comedy love drama with Will Ferrell and Christina Ricci. The whole process boggles the mind especially when so many films are being made and you one going into thousands of theaters that obviously has no chance of making the money back.

When seeing these films, I begin to wonder: A) Did the stars in this film think it was going to be great and something happened along the way to make it bad (marketing, editing, the director was crazy), or B) They did it just for the paycheck.

Now, I have only quizzed one actress on this so far, and I’ll be sure to try and probe others with it, but the one answer I got back was pretty funny. On the last film I worked on, one unnamed actress told me about one film that she did where this exact conundrum applies. On one of the rides home that I was giving her, I asked the very same question. Do actors know the film is going to suck BEFORE it comes out, or do they just do it for the money?

In answering, she said that some do it for the money, some others have to do the bad films because they have contracts with the big studios (you can’t make the oscar-worthy film without making some crap ones), and some, like her, had a feeling the film would be terrible but they weren’t completely sure. When she started to discuss the film that went in the wrong direction (I asked the name and she didn’t really hold back), I initially was like “oh, I’ve never heard of that film before.” But, the more she discussed the premise, when it came out, and who starred in it, it all started to sound familiar. I decided to ask again what the name was, and in fact, I misunderstood what she originally said. I had heard of the film she was talking about, and I even SAW IT IN THE THEATER.

After she laughed about that for a good five minutes she says “well I think you were one of the ten people that did see it.”

Hopefully in the future, I’ll have more statistics to add to this list, but right now I only have one. Thankfully, that one was one I’d actually heard of and seen.