Repercussions

Hey gang! Sorry this post is a day late, I was on-set for 16 HOURS yesterday. 8:30 AM to, like, one in the morning or something. The movie I was working on was called "Repercussions", and this blog is to tell you a little bit about the experience.

I found the gig on craigslist. If you ever go to the LA craigslist and start looking in the jobs section, you'll notice that everyone's making a movie and wants people to work on it for no money. Unfortunately, most of these people are idiots or liars or both. Michael came across as a pretty smart guy in his ad, plus he said he was shooting Yakuza gun battles, so I decided to apply for a PA job. PA stands for Production Assistant, and it's pretty much the lowest job on the set. PA's the guy you send for coffee or whatever. Fortunately, Michael realized I was a sharp cookie and gave me the job of 1st Assistant Director, which is a much more important-sounding title.

I was there for three shoots. There's a few more things to be shot, but it's all fairly simple stuff of the main character driving around feeling conflicted and standing in some scenic spot feeling conflicted, also his wife getting killed. All of the pictures on this blog are from day 1, which was last Sunday. We were in a small office in El Monte shooting a scene where the main character is in the office of his import-export business with his partner and also a scary Yakuza guy who he's sort of friends with shows up. Pictured below, left to right, are the main character, the business partner, and the scary Yakuza guy.





Day two was a game of cat-and-mouse in a parking garage, and yesterday we shot in a much larger, cooler office which belonged to the Yakuza boss. My job as 1st Assistant Director was to help plan the day, make sure everyone is doing what they're supposed to be doing, and make sure things keep moving forward. So basically, it was about 1/5 of what I'm used to doing as a director on Pier 1 shows.

So it was a pretty cool experience. I met some really cool people and learned the following things:

-In the film industry, extension cords are called stingers. I have no idea why, but everyone calls them that.

-I'm very well-prepared for directing an independent movie in LA. I kind of assumed there would be this huge wake-up call about how much I didn't know and I would be all confused, but it turns out the only real difference between this and what I'm used to is that the equipment is more complicated. One thing I've learned from theatre is that you don't need to understand complicated equipment to be able to direct. So it's game on! I've got two shorts and a feature I want to do, now I just need to find some way to get some money.

Orange Thieves

Hey everyone! I am now satisfied that people are reading this, and will no longer post entreaties for comments or say that anybody can suck eggs. It's so nice to get those comments, though. In the past week I've suffered a few minor pangs of homesickness, and of course I miss Juney terribly. Also, my morale took a huge blow when I figured out how much money I owed the IRS and realized that things are not going to be easy for me at all for the next year or so. This passed, however, and I remain undaunted. I have a few different projects brewing, hopefully I'll eventually be able to talk myself into a paying gig. I think I'm going to embrace horrible poverty for a while so I'll have some time to develop some stuff.

So this week, I'd like to tell you about my new favorite hobby. I would like to preface this by saying that I do not approve of stealing in most instances, and that none of you should ever steal, because it is illegal and wrong.

That doesn't stop me though! You see, my friend Rudy who I've been staying with lives in a small house at the base of the Hollywood Hills. We don't have to walk very far at all before we get up into the rich neighborhoods where it's all winding streets, interesting landscaping, and amazingly cool houses. At first, Rudy and I took to walking around up there to enjoy the quiet and gaze jealously at the homes of the rich. It began innocently enough.

Then, the other night, after I had completed my taxes and was feeling downtrodden, Rudy and I went for our customary jaunt into the hills and stumbled across a house that had an orange tree in its yard. There was no fence, plenty of low-hanging oranges, and the street was very dark. On a lark, Rudy grabbed an orange off the tree. We were going to eat it, but it was split open so we rolled it down the hill instead.

Once we got to the bottom of the hill, I found the orange and picked it up again. Out of curiosity, we tore it in half and observed that part of the orange appeared to be in pristine condition. Rudy sampled its juices, and looked up at me with feverish light in his eyes. "It's soooo good!" he proclaimed.

I tried it too, and it was, indeed, amazing. We stood in the middle of the street in a pool of light, digging the sweet pulp out of the rind with our teeth and laughing like hyenas. We emerged from the hills changed men. It was the best orange we'd ever eaten; organic and fresh off the tree. Who were these ungrateful bourgeois that kept such delicious fruit on the property? Why did they not pick the tree clean as soon as the fruit ripened? How could they leave the oranges hanging on the tree for so long that they burst open with ripeness? Here was a wrong that must be righted.

Two nights later, we once more ventured forth into the hills. This time we walked a wider path and kept our eyes open for citrus trees. There were plenty more orange trees, and some lemons as well. Many were behind fences, some were easily accessible. We returned home with a single orange and an unripe lemon, and hatched a plan.

Over the next few weeks, we'll make a complete catalogue of all of the yards that have orange trees, and implement a systematic plan that will allow us to pilfer a few oranges here and there. The rich people aren't even eating them! Once we've charted the whereabouts of this ambrosia and learned the movements of the Bel-Air Patrol, who watches the neighborhood, we will be able to ensure that we never lack for free, delicious citrus fruit. I am confident that these purloined delicacies, and the cathartic act of stealing them from the super-rich, will go a long way towards seeing me through the dark times that are ahead.

I would like to reiterate that stealing is not okay, unless you are stealing oranges from rich people who never eat them anyway.

A Week of Firsts; Reality Intrudes

Hey, Ruby and Leeza! How are you guys doing? You may be the only two people reading this blog, and you know what? That's enough for me! You guys were pretty much my two favorite Homer kids anyway, so everyone else can go suck eggs.

So, I've now been in Los Angeles for over a week, and I've been looking around for work. It's pretty much like everyone said it would be; almost impossible to get work if you don't already have a track record doing the job HERE, or a buddy who can hook you up. So I've decided that I'm going to need to make my own luck here, and find some way to pay the bills in the meantime. I'll let ya know how that goes.

So anyway, I've got a few firsts to report on from the past week;

FIRST PROJECT
I found this guy on craigslist named Michael Shu. He's making a short involving a Yakuza gun battle, which I'm going to be working on as a Production Assistant. That basically means I'll be standing around holding a boom or whatever, but it'll be a good opportunity to get a look at how things run on a properly organzied shoot. Also, Shu seems like a really cool guy and I can probably learn a lot from him, as he specializes in the areas of filmmaking I don't know as much about. You can check out the trailer for his award-winning short "War of the Wolves" at this link:
CLICK HERE FOR "WAR OF THE WOLVES" TRAILER!!!!

FIRST PERSONALITY CHANGE
I'm starting to realize that everyone here has a lot of bravado, so I'm thinking I may need to become a little cocky. I guess you guys are used to that, though. Ha ha! Here's an example: I've been wearing this year's DDF shirt around, and I've gotten some complements on it. At first I was all "Oh, yeah, one of the students on the DDF team I coached designed it, it's really neat, huh?" and the lady smiled patronizingly at me and said something like "isn't that nice." So the next time I got a complement on it I loftily informed the person complementing me that it was a "Kelsey Waldorf original" and the person just sort of nodded.

FIRST HOLLYWOOD CELEB SIGHTING
I was at this old-school Hollywood bar called "The Dresden Room" with some friends and we saw Adrian Grenier from "Entourage". I was excited that my first celebrity sighting was a celebrity who plays a bigger celebrity on TV, and he was there with his real-life entourage instead of his pretend Entourage from the show. It was all wonderfully recursive. The best part; Adrian Grenier called my buddy Rudy a dork. I wasn't at the table at the time, but apparently he identified Rudy as a dork then claimed that he was the "OD", or Original Dork. This resulted in several members of our party discussing what a jerk he was for the rest of the night, but it just seemed to me like a doofy, half-drunk guy blabbing at a bar and getting judged way too harshly for it since he was a TV actor. But whatever.


Well, that's all for this week. I'll get that virtual drive up eventually, but I can't promise it'll be soon. I'm having a really good time, I had forgotten what it was like to live in a place where I had friends. I mean, you guys were all my friends, but not the call-up-and-hang-out-whenever type of friends, you know? All my best buddies are here, and it's awesome living amongst them!

Los Angeles: Initial Impressions

Hey guys! I know I promised a virtual drive this week, but that project's going to take a little more preparation than I expected, and obviously my time has been pretty much taken up with hanging out with my friends and stuff. So I'll aim to have that thing up next week, and this week I'll just talk about arriving in LA.

I was kind of bummin' when I was on my way up past Grapevine. About an hour and a half out from LA, and I was missing Juney, you guys, my parents, and Alaska in a big way for the first time on the trip. Then, as I started to hit LA, I started to get really, really excited. By the time I was rolling down Sunset on the way to my buddy's place, I had a huge grin plastered across my face. I turned the dial to the world-famous KROQ, LA's big rock station, and they were playing a bunch of '90s hits. Then I got together with three of my best friends in the whole world and was very happy to be here.

The whole trip down, I wasn't sure how I'd react when I finally got to LA. Turned out I got really pumped. There's so much going on here and the whole city's like a giant theme park. I stopped by a gas station earlier today and it was decorated more elaborately than any building in Anchorage that I can think of offhand. A gas station.

Me and my friends went and saw "I Love You, Man" today. It was awesome. Anyway, we saw it at the Grove, which is some kind of outdoor mall with a big farmer's market and a crazy food court, I haven't figured out exactly what the deal is. Anyway, there was a scene in the movie that took place right outside the movie theatre. Like, if I had stepped outside, I would've been standing right in one of the shots. It was awesome. When you see the movie, look for the scene where Peter asks Sydney to be his best man, and they hug by the fountain. That's where I saw it.

So, bottom line: LA's really cool so far.

By the way, is anyone reading this?