Tenspeed & Brownshoe

Monday, June 19, 2006

Done at last with another production gig on someone elses film.
Struggling with the fact that I am tired of making other peoples films. But it beats working.
What strikes me when on set though, is what a cool small (incorporated) army a production is.
There is really very little a film crew cannot do provided of course they have permission.
They are a fully loaded team of electricians and carpenters and decorators that rolls up with its own power and lots of snacks.
We were in a duplex loft with no power in it and built a bathroom with running water and lit and shot and basically lived independently there for three days.
It's like summer camp only in hell.
Cool though if you think about it.
We can take down doors put up walls, power up enough lights to make it look like day time at three in the morning and serve a catered lunch out on the sidewalk.
By my calculations we generated one bag of trash every forty five minutes.

All month I am one step ahead of Spiderman III. Finally on Sunday I am relaxing in Mad Sq park and they are shooting on Madison Ave. Huge huge production, blocks and blocks of "four bangers"(God how I hate film lingo) and trucks and more grip stands that they are ever going to need for a car shot which is what they were doing and a craft table and honey wagons (Please already) galore.
It is awe inspiring and glamorous there is no getting around it.
And then there sitting on a bench next to me is a guy from the crew. Middle aged, big belly Teamster type. His little walkie chirping away, his cool badge around his next.
And I look at him and I think for a minute that it must be pretty cool to work on such a huge studio film, even though I am not a starfucker type and think Hollywood more than ever is synonomous with excrement - still are we not all whores to it?
And I realize that this guy could care less what the film is couldn't tell you what the scene is or even if any interesting stars are just a block away eating some kind of nut meat sandwich.
He's just a blue collar guy, probably an electrician whos' job it was to plug in some light and in a little while he will unplug it.
In the mean time he CAN tell you exactly how many minutes til meal penalty.

Brownshoe standing by to be flown in by first team PA.