My Fifteen Minutes - Daniel Will-Harris

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My Fifteen Minutes - It's all who you know

July 2004:

Jeanne C. Davis, known to all who know her as one of the loveliest (in the truest sense of the word) people in the word, emailed to tell me that she wrote parts for myself and my wife in her lovely script, The Uniform Motion of Folly.

I'm not sure what I've done to warrant this. I have acted in films in the past (movies, too--like what's the difference other than a "film" somehow sounds classier), and Jeanne and I met in a writing workshop lead by Beth Sullivan. But apparently I am enough of a character all on my own for Jeanne to think of putting me in the script. Either that, or I am dillusional. Or both. Or neither, you never know about these things.

Of course, in Hollywood, it's all who you know. Obviously.

RightsAgent Verification

August 3, 2004 - Motels & Nerves

I've just set up this site, after finishing travel arrangements to Santa Barbara, where the film starts shooting the middle of this month.

This is peak season in Santa Barbara, so finding a room in Santa Barbara was like trying to find a room in Santa Barbara during peak season. I savvily managed to avoid (wait, is "savvily" a word? No, I don't think it is, well it is now) a motel that reviewers said looked as if it was managed by Norman Bates, and found a very nice place.

I've stayed at a Bates motel. Twice. Two different Bates motels, you know, he had a chain for a while there. Both were in central California on the way from San Diego to San Francisco. One was a weird little house on the grounds of a motel--"It's the only room we have, most people don't like it because they think it's haunted." Oh, nice. So of course, I took the chance, and spent all night dreaming that the walls were bleeding.

The next night-at-the-Bates was this dive attached to a place that called itself a restaurant but really seemed to only be a bar. It was 15 miles off the freeway, but we were running out of gas and didn't have much of a choice. The room had a window--but there was no glass in it. It had a bed, but I wouldn't call what it had a mattress--it was more like sheets strung between the frame, so when my wife and I were on it we both fell into the center. It had a shower but it was green--not green tile mind you, but green mold, top to bottom. And all night people ran up and down the hall, screaming, which caused us to slide a bulky chest of drawers in front of the door--though nothing was protecting us from what might have come through the window, not even curtains.

But I was young, I was stupid, and now I'm older and less stupid, so I avoided the motel from hell and instead found a really nice place. I don't know if I should tell you where we're staying, lest you mob the hotel (yes, that's likely, or not). Nor will I tell you what room. Just look for a couple that look like Brad and Jennifer and that won't be us.

I'm excited--and a little nervous, but my wife has informed me that if I say one word about being nervous she will do something unspeakable (and therefore automatically unmentionable), since she knows I'm a ham and will love it so just shut up already.

She can say this because she has all the funny lines in our scenes. I'm not sure how I ended up being George Burns to her Gracie Allen, or why I am using a reference that makes me seem like I'm 87 years old, but who can explain these things?

August 4, 2004 - Motivation

I'm already trying to figure out what to wear. Yes, my costumes will come from my closet. I don't feel bad about this because I remember seeing the credits on Barbra Striesand's dreadful yet still big-budget "A Star Is Born" and it said something like, "Ms. Striesand's Wardrobe... her own closet," which I thought was oddly tacky, but then here I am doing it--though I doubt I will have such a credit.

I have actually been thinking about my character, who, it turns out, is a lot like me, which isn't surprising, since Jeanne wrote it for me. But it is surprising that I'd run any kind of restaurant since this is actually one of my irrational fears in life--the fear of owning a restaurant. The whole idea makes me want to take a long nap. Perishable products. Picky Patrons. And even things that don't begin with the letter "P."

And yet, I will have to overcome my own fears and do my own stunts, which will involve making coffee, something else I don't do, though in one scene I make tea, which I do believe in, so it balances it out.

I had to figure out why on earth my character would want to have a coffee house, because I, myself, could never dream of it. I came up with many different reasons, all of which work for the character if not for me. The character (coincidentally named DANIEL) sold his house in the Silicon Valley for a ridiculous sum and bought half a block of a tiny little town (very possible). He and his lovely wife (whose character name my own lovely wife may want to change), live upstairs in one of the large, loft-like spaces, and they had all this space downstairs.

Not wanting to be landlords (Why not? Well, that's a long story, something akin to my personally not wanting to own a restaurant), they still want to use the space, so they tried many things, and since people were always dropping by for coffee and tea and the Mrs.'s famous low-carb muffins, we figured would should start charging for them (not our friends, we don't charge them, and you'll notice in the movie we never make anyone pay for anything, which is really the only way I'd want to run a restaurant).

Anyway, I figure that some day the space will be a combination coffee house, gallery, and performance space, since I'd like to start a local theater company there, (or at least my character would), but I just haven't gotten around to it yet (or my character hasn't), because I'm just too mellow a fellow and am happy to keep a blog, which is what I'm doing now, and what I do in the movie, which kind of makes the universes fold in on themselves, which is a little scary, especially because this is precisely the kind of thing that can lead to rifts in the time-space continuum, or so I've been told.

I guess it is a kind of time travel to make a movie, then the time you spent in front of the camera is magically frozen in time (or at least on tape), and can be repeated endlessly, so you can watch yourself over and over and think, "My butt looks big in those pants," until the end of freaking time.

The truth is Actors only watch themselves in movies. They can't help it. And then they mostly only see how they looked. "I look fat," is the normal response to any and every scene, followed closely by, "My hair looks like crap," and the ever-popular, "What am I doing with my face? I look like I smelled something bad."

More about my acting process, wardrobe, and other vital items of interest will come when I feel like writing them, or when I have nothing else to do on the set, or both.

August 5, 2004 - Acting Challenges

I should elaborate on the above "acting" challenges, i.e. only seeing yourself and thinking you look fat.

My last major motion picture role was in a terrible movie called "Saturday the 14th Strikes Back" (you can look it up on IMDB.com - I'm not giving you a link because it only got one star and some reviewers who didn't understand the whole mise-en-scene and the obvious ironic nature of the intrinsic cheapness of the proceedings, well, these unknowing, unseeing and uncaring people calling themselves critics called it a bomb).

I have to admit the film is not "Gone with the Wind" (and, given my previous entry, might not even count as a "film" as it's really more of a "movie"), but I got to work for the famous Roger Corman at his equally famous "Lumber Yard" (his movie studio in Venice, California, which, not surprisingly, used to be a lumber yard and still retains the old signage to keep away the thronging fans--it sure worked for me--not a single thronging fan got to me the entire shoot).

There are several pivotal moments in an actor's life, or even someone pretending to be an actor who may not actually be able to act but hopefully can do a convincing version of themselves. See, that's the key to what most actors do in movies--convincing versions of themselves. I'm not talking real actors like Meryl Streep, who can do anything, be anyone, and is truly acting, but the kind of acting that most other people do. Remember, there is one Meryl, there are thousands if not millions of "actors."

Hitchcock famously said that "all actors are cattle," but I think he was just Jones-ing for a burger when he said that, though he might have meant that they are all fat, which isn't true, even though they all think they're fat.

Where was I? Oh, let me jump back in time a little bit (since I've already disturbed the fabric of the time-space continuum I don't see how a little flashback/backstory could really hurt, in fact, maybe it help, you never know with this time-travel conundrum stuff which is famously tricky to pull off).

OK--so one pivotal moment for an actor is the audition, where you convince the people with the temporary money and power (or "TMP" for short--see, people in the movie biz rarely have the money and power for very long before someone yanks it away from them for abusing it, or abusing the viewing public, or abusing themselves, but this isn't the time or place to get into that now).

The trick to the audition (write this down, you will need it later), is not to show up and be brilliant. Being brilliant often only confuses those with the temporary money and power. They can confuse this for insanity, which, while common among actors (and even those with temporary money and power), suggests instability that can make producers and directors wonder how much of a pain in the ass you are going to be on the set.

Back to the trick--the trick is to arrive in character and stay in character the whole time. Don't show up as you, auditioning for the part, show up as the character. Period. It's vital that you dress like the character because the people with TMP often have no imagination outside the one they use to imagine that they will always have M&P so they can afford the house they just bought and the car they are leasing.

So for my audition as "Uncle Bert," I arrived dressed in an outfit that was dated and just a tad too small. Polyester ruled the day. My secret weapon--I came armed with a giant-size bag of M&Ms to hand out to anyone and everyone.

I arrived in character, I stayed in character, and when I entered Roger Corman's office, a time-warp to the 1970s with its long white shag carpeting and orange bubble-chairs, I was ready. I went around the room and poured M&Ms into everyone's hands, and proceeded to charm them, or at least creep them out a little bit, since that's what the character would do.

I left, slightly sticky in polyester (though I should add that absolutely nothing melted in my hands), but pretty sure I would have them talking about my after I left. Nice, or not-so, having PWTMP talking about you is always good. A few days later I got a call and got the part, and a few weeks after that I was at the lumberyard, bright and early, ready for my close-up.

I've now completely forgotten where I was going with all this. Let me take a moment to read back to what I wrote a few minutes ago, which I have absolutely no recollection of whatsoever, and no, I'm not drinking, I don't drink. I did just have a big piece of chocolate, but that's supposed to be good for the old noggin.

Ah, yes, Pivotal Moments. Originally I was going to write about two moments, the audition and the dailies, but luckily I wrote "several" because there are more than that, and they include (but are not limited to):

• Waiting
• Eating
• Napping
• Shooting briefly
• Obsessing about the shot you just did
• Worrying about being fired
• Shooting again for just a minute or two
• Close-ups (always traumatic--always)
• Dailies
• Waiting
• Eating
• Napping
• Worrying
• Driving home and getting up early to repeat it all the next day.

Some actors (not me) would add

• Drinking
  
• Getting stoned
  
• Vomiting
  
• Sleeping with anything that moves
  

For right now, I'll concentrate on "The Dailies" because that relates to the whole "I look fat," thing I'd written about yesterday then basically forgot about until just now.

"The Dailies" are when cast and crew sit down to watch the film they shot the day below. Some directors allow the cast to watch them, the smart ones probably don't. Our director, who was a very sweet man named Howard Cohen, who specialized in low-budget films (don't call them "dreck" even if he might have), let us all watch.

If paying audiences responded the way the cast and crew did, then every movie would be a blockbuster. Everyone sits there laughing their asses off, as if this was the funniest thing ever captured on film. Except if it's a drama, in which case they cry their eyes off. Should you be filming a comedy and everyone cries, you know you have a problem. Likewise with a drama that's a laughing stock.

But that doesn't happen at dailies, because everyone is working so hard and so involved they naturally want this to be the greatest thing ever put on film, so they respond as if it is. Everyone and everything is brilliant, no matter what.

That's publicly. Privately, everybody hates everything. The director wonders why he chose that angle. The camera man sees everything he did wrong. The lighting guy is seeing nothing but shadows. And the actors, as I said, are seeing nothing but themselves, and their wrinkles and asses.

This is just how it works for most actors. Maybe Meryl is different, maybe she can see the subtly of the way her lips twitched, or a certain something in her eyes that spoke volumes. But I'll bet every actor around her is looking at their ass.

Acting is hard. It looks easy but it's hard. Not hard like ditch-digging or school-teaching, but hard in that you are forced to look at yourself in an unavoidable way that most people are able to avoid. Maybe "hard" was the wrong word, maybe "painful" is the right word. Not painful like putting your back out, but painful in a emotional way, like putting your ego out.

Come on and think about it for a moment--do you really want a lot of people to be looking too closely at you? Sure, you may work in a job where people see you, but they probably don't look at you. Or do I mean it the other way around, they look at your but they don't see you. I think that's it.

In case I've made no sense, which, with me, is always a distinct possibility, I mean that in service-related jobs where you're around other people, the people who are paying rarely really notice you. You are arms and legs, doing and bringing. You might even have a face they look at briefly to make sure you understood you wanted your salad dressing on the side (a nod will suffice).

But unless you have gone out of your way to do something to make people see you (tattoo and piercings seem to the most popular way to do it now), most people don't.

Remember, most people are the stars of their own films. Everyone else around them, including you, are just extras, filling space, carrying plates. You are the same way with your life/film--you are the star, everyone else is just there.

OK, so maybe not you, the third one on the right, in the Birkenstock sandals (trim your nails, please), maybe you are selfless to a fault (which is why you're a vegan and look a little pasty). Maybe you think of others first (though if you did, you'd trim those nails and pop a tic-tac), but even the best of us only manage to be selfless for short periods of time, and at considerable effort.

So as an actor, people are not just looking at you, they're seeing you. More than that, they're inspecting you. They're comparing themselves to you, trying to figure out all the ways they are better. They're younger, have fewer wrinkles, and, of course, a smaller ass. Or so they like to tell themselves.

Or, if you are lucky, they're wondering if they could possibly ever sleep with you if they ran into you by chance at the Piggly Wiggly (which for those of you not in the southern part of the US, is a grocery story with a very funny name, which is why I used it rather than "Safeway").

As an actor, it's not good to think about the fact that people will eventually be looking at you. If you do that, you start to obsess about your ass, and make faces that look like you smelled something bad. I don't know the science behind this phenomenon, but I know it's true.

So back to the dailies--imagine you're an actor, you're watching yourself, and you are confronted with the fact that you're fat and can't act. I've heard Meryl talk and even she has times when she doesn't think she can act (she didn't say she thought she looked fat, but this is probably because she's so classy). Despite her brilliance, Meryl is, after all, an actress which means she's is inherently unstable, otherwise she would have become a school teacher or nun.

And then it hits you that other people will see what you've just unwittingly put on film and it won't be long before the general public realizes the truth about you and you will never work again. And now you have to go back on the set today to have your fat, no-talent ass captured forever on film.

And that, my friend, is hard.

Even so-called actors such as Steven Segal (who around my house is known as "Little Stevie Seagal" because that's what his cousin used to call him) who are so egomaniacal that they think their asses look great and their acting rivals Streep's have these same feelings, deep down, only they'd never be so foolish or honest as to come right and out tell anyone, much less in a blog that 12 or 13 wonderful people like you read.

Well, it's naptime. I know this because I'm yawning and my train of thought has derailed (there were no casualties, except perhaps for coherence). More soon...

August 6, 2004--Casting Cough

I had meant to title this "Casting Couch," but I typed a "g" instead of a "c" and the resulting phrase is somehow oddly right, as if casting is some kind of infectious disease. It's certainly not a science. Well, that just went nowhere, didn't it?

But casting is the issue of the day, as one of the cast members has dropped out, not unexpectedly, at least not to me. That cast member is my lovely wife, who doesn't like her name mentioned, so it would only figure that she wouldn't want to be caught on film, either. I know there are those who might ask whether her image can even be caught on film, but to those people I just clear my throat, then I cough.

My friend Karen, who may replace her, said she thought it was just "pre-filming jitters." I've seen Meryl on TV talk about how she gets them, too. A week before shooting she calls her agent and begs him to get Julianne Moore to replace her. And Julianne says she calls her agent and tells him to get Meryl to replace her. It's true, it was on Oprah. So it's only natural, only in this case, it's also terminal.

"I don't even like still cameras," my wife said, poignant yet with conviction, not to mention timing--a very good line reading, actually. But that was that. "I can't even say the lines," she added, reading one line from the script and sounding remarkably like Madonna trying to act--instead of being natural suddenly she had a slight British accent and was over en-un-ci-at-ing everything as if she was married to an English di-rect-or.

According to her, the only line she was even passable at was "Obviously," and she didn't even feel comfortable with that.

But the real reason is simple--my wife doesn't like people looking at her. That's the bottom line. Just yesterday I was writing about how acting was hard because people are going to look at you. I don't have a problem with this for some reason, and I never have.

In fact, her attitude is totally alien to me, a person who basically jumps around screaming, "Look at me, LOOK at ME!!!"

Why am I like this? I was just born this way. It's not that I'm not the best-looking man on the planet and I somehow think people want to see me, but I'm also not the worst looking, children and dogs do not run screaming (or barking) from the room when I enter (always a good sign).

Maybe it's because I've always had a fear of being "normal," so I wanted to stand out. I don't know exactly what "normal" is, but whatever it is, I didn't used to want to be it, because it meant that I'd be like everybody else. I wanted to be unique. But the older I get the more I see that even the most unique people aren't unique. We all want basically the same things, we just have different ways of going about getting them.

And the universal joke is, of course, that everybody is like really pretty much everybody else, and so everybody is normal yet normal means having a lot of issues that make you feel abnormal, unless you're an egotist, in which case you're still normal you only think you're special while simultaneously suffering from low-self-esteem, which makes you more likely to be an actor.

I've now confused even myself.

Oh, looks. Well, actors and looks. That's an ugly business.

It's all about looks--See, in the movie business, your face is your business. No matter what you may do to it, it's still mostly what you were born with. As Cybill Shepherd once said, "Thank my parents--I was just born this way," (or something like that, I can't be bothered to find the real quote. Famous model/so-called-gap-toothed-actress what's her name, oh, what is it... Lauren Hutton, says basically the same thing).

I long ago came up with what I now called my "Theory of Relativity" which is, "There's always someone prettier than you, uglier than you. Richer than you, poorer than you. More talented, less talented. Nicer, meaner. Smarter, dumber. Happier, sadder.

So 80% of getting in the door as an actor is how you look, and despite advances in plastic surgery, your genetic makeup is at least 80% of that (I say 80% because you can have 20% of your nose and chin removed, as Jennifer Aniston did to change her Greek face, and Marlo Thomas did before that, to change her Lebanese face).

There's the whole other element of "it's all who you know" which sometimes can be 100% of the reason you get in the door, but it's too confusing to mix these two things and while I'm sure that some mathematician could create a formula showing the confluence of connections with expressions, I don't really care enough to bother trying to make it up myself, and if I did, it would just look good and not really mean anything, the story of my life right there.

Oh, wait, I'll create one of the famous "Matrix" charts which seem to be the only thing people learn to make after spending $120,000 on an MBA at places like Harvard and Stanford. Here it is:

As you can see, there are four paths to fame. You can have "Actual God-given talent," (this is very rare and unfortunately impossible to buy, which is why so few people have it). Or... you can have sold your soul to the devil. Since that involves a commercial transaction not unlike shopping, it's very popular, which is why you see so many people on TV and wonder, "Why am I watching this person and how the hell did they get on TV?" "how the hell" being the operative word.

The music business is jam-packed with these people, just as they say there isn't enough room in Hell to hold everyone who has to go there, which to make makes hell sound like a small elevator full of large people, stuck between fiery floors. Not my idea of a good time which is one reason I have so far successfully avoided selling my soul. I have lent it to a good cause from time to time, but always with the understanding that I get it back, washed if not waxed.

The other two paths are, "Who you know" which is on the top because as we've discussed, it really is the single most important thing in the entertainment industry. It can trump all the other paths combined. And finally, there's "How you look," which isn't enough by itself, since beautiful people in Hollywood are literally a dime a dozen (perhaps cheaper), which is why if you go to LA you might wonder why there are so many gorgeous waiters, waitresses, bartenders and valet parking attendants. These are beautiful people who 1) don't know anybody, or 2) haven't sold their soul, or 3) Have no talent--probably all three.

The "who you know" part can involve any kind of relationship. Nepotism is always good, because it means you have a hopefully DNA-tested long-term relationship that isn't usually severed by lawyers.

But any relationship will do, including sleeping with someone who knows someone. (Why do they call it "sleeping with" when sleeping isn't actually involved? Just another mystery of the universe, I guess.)

In case you don't know, here's how casting works--there's a "casting director," a person who's job it is to find actors to play the parts. Casting directors have rooms full of 8x10 glossy photos sent to them by agents. These photos are usually sorted by "Type," such as "young leading man," or "teenage nerd," or "Ingenue," or "wisecracking best friend," or "fat bald scary old guy," and "bag lady," types like that.

That's because, in Hollywood, you aren't a person, you're a type. It's that simple. Most actors have a variety of head shots showing them as different types. All have at least one gaggy photo of them looking goofy, or smiling like they'd just won the lottery. All have one that tries to make them look beautiful/handsome/glamorous, just in case. But they'll gladly fall back on the goofy/nerdy/hillbilly look if that will get them in the right pile.

So when the casting director gets a script, they start going through stacks of photos. Most casting directors have favorite actors they've cast, people are reliable and have done a good job on previous pictures, people that won't make them look bad, and people they've slept with. These people get called right away--if they're anywhere near the type or can make themselves look like a model or a hillbilly.

Now--you can see right here how important appearances are--because if your photo doesn't "look" like the part they're casting, then they don't even call you in for an audition, even if you have slept with them. I do not know this from actual experience, but I have friends who have told me this, and in this case I am not using the word "friends" as a euphemism for myself, probably because I didn't think anyone would be interested.

The problem with this genetic caste system is obvious--you have to look perfect for the part. You can't look too young, or too old, or too fat, or too thin, or God-forbid too ugly (unless they want someone ugly, which they very rarely do and even then they tend to hire someone pretty like Charlize and make them ugly because you don't really want real ugly people on screen, do you?).

So it's no wonder that so many actors are nuts. No matter how good-looking you are, there's always someone better looking--if not now, then in a year (if not three months). And--you can be too good looking too, so you're not taken seriously (this is not a subject I know anything about).

And, as I said at the start, it really all boils down to who you know. I got my part the old fashioned way--I know the director (though the REAL old-fashioned way would have been to have slept with her, I should have been so lucky).

And now my friend Karen, who'll be playing the part of my wife, wouldn't be in this movie if she didn't know me. And my wife would be in this movie if she didn't know herself so well.

August 10, 2004--Backstory & Costumes

I'm sitting here thinking of something to say, but it's 1:17 and I'm trying to get work done before I go off into the wonderful make-believe world of movie-making. The little animated dog that comes with Word is distracting me. You probably have a horrible animated paper-clip thing, but if you know what you're doing, you can turn it into a cute dog, cat, Einstein or robot. Just right click on the "assistant" and select "Choose Assistant" and scroll through your choices. Personally, I like the dog, except right now when he's distracting me and I may have to turn him off. No, he just wagged his tail, which is cute, I can't turn him off, that would be too mean. It's 1:19 already? Time flies.

Now he's sniffing my toolbar, as if another animated dog has been here, marking territory. I don't even want to know how an digital animated dog marks territory. The old-fashioned way, I presume, yet they only leave little pools of zeros and ones behind. I don't know, it's 1:20am and I only have two days to select my wardrobe, pack the car, and possibly get some paying work done.

I had a long conversation today with my "co-star" Karen. I call her that despite the fact that we aren't really starring in any sense of the word. We are, in fact, more like co-conspirators, trying to figure out amusing business to add to our parts without it seeming like we're in the wrong movie, something that could lead all our scenes to be left on the cutting room floor. Since this movie's being shot digitally, the only way it could be on the cutting room floor would be like the digital dog's doo--zeros and ones, so it's just a movie-biz figure of speech.

My favorite movie-biz figure of speech is "MOS" which stands for "Mit Out Sound," which means the take is shot silently. It comes from the early days of movie making when there were many German directors, and they instead of saying "With" they said "Mit," and the term just stuck. There's lots of odd film jargon but it's too late for me to think of anything.

Oh, so my co-star and I were mostly talking about our "backstory" (what happened to our characters before the movie started)--stuff that you, as the audience, will never know, but which will fill our performances with the kind of nuances that DiNero can only dream of or have nightmares about, take your pick.

She said we should have met as cabaret dancers--since, in fact, we do both have dance backgrounds and, in fact, we did meet as dancers in a summer stock production of Cabaret. I was an anonymous German, sometimes Sailor, sometimes Nazi, sometimes Cabaret patron. She was a sometimes waitress, sometimes Nazi, sometimes Cabaret performer, most notably, "Miss Pretzel," (or was she "Miss Beer," or "Miss Sausage," I don't really remember, I just remember her costume was funny).

But I thought the whole cabaret dancing backstory was actual a good cover--the story we our characters told other people, when in reality, our characters' real backstory was that we met making a porno. This is amusing to me, given my personal dimensions. A porno starring me would have to feature a macro lens.

But most of our discussion involved costume, since, being "performers" rather than "ac-tors," we tend to act from the outside in, rather than the more "serious" "Method Actor" types, the kinds who get so into their parts they even play them off-screen and drive everyone else insane. I'm with actors like, oh, what was his name, that famous English actor who everyone thinks is so brilliant even though he started out on stage known in the biz as "the giggler" because he'd burst into giggles onstage when working with Noel Coward. Oh, what is his name. He was in Wuthering Heights... That's right, Laurence Olivier (known to his friends as "Larry"--and what does "Wuthering" mean?)

Anyway, Larry once famously said he could play cards right before a shot, then during the take he'd turn into the character. When the camera was turned off, the character was, too. He once supposedly told Dustin Hoffman (an ac-tor who never knew when to turn it off), "It's called acting, my boy, you should try it!"

This may or may not be true, but it doesn't matter because it's amusing. It's 1:38. My eyes are feeling sticky now. I think I got a mosquito bite on my stomach. How is this possible. It's not like I'm wearing a bear-midrif Britney-kind of outfit. I have on a t-shirt. It covers my midrif (probably more accurately called either a "tummy" or a "belly" but it's not so protruded as to really qualify as a "belly" and I prefer "tummy rubs," so I'll call it that, even though it makes me sound like either a puppy or a teddy bear, but that's OK, I do sometimes resemble both, both physically and in terms of IQ).

Oh, so we're talking about what to wear. This makes perfect sense for Karen, who is a professional costumer as well as an actress, dancer and producer. Her business is "Costumes for Caterers" and she's designed and built costumes for events like big movie premieres, such as Star Wars, Harry Potter, Men in Black, Mission Impossible, etc, etc, and so forth.

So her characters start at the hairstyle and end at the shoes. She was deeply concerned about the script which originally described her character as an "Earth Mother," something she didn't feel she had the right outfit for, despite her having at least 2,000 outfits in her collection. Probably more like 20,000 actually.

What we decided for her character (now named Olivia), are ethnic outfits, such as a dashiki over jeans, a Chinese brocade dress with chop sticks in the hair, and perhaps a tango outfit for the start of our third scene, where we have, unbeknownst to the director, inserted a short dance sequence. The scene has to start somewhere so it might as well involve a tango and dip.

Personally, I'm leaning towards loud, but not too distracting Hawaiian shirts and cargo pants. I have some really interesting shirts, like one with American flags, Washington from the dollar bill, and daisies. Or one that looks like a Formica pattern from the 50s. One that's like a map of the Hawaiian Islands. All very cool. I will certainly bring too many and choose from them on the set.

Oh--and here's something I learned from working on a movie with Christopher Reeves. It was the last movie before his tragic accident, and the movie itself was a pretty tragic accident called Village of the Damned, which shot out near my small town. It was a remake of a famous British film, and this one starred Reeves and the irrepressible (even when she didn't need to be), Kirstie Alley who was at least good for gossip at lunch about Michael Jackson and his then wife Elvis's daughter, I can't-remember-her-name-Prestley. I will convey this gossip later when I'm at a loss for something more pertinent to write. Lisa Marie, that's it.

Reeves was amazing. First, he was incredibly nice to everyone, even us lowly extras (and extras are like the very bottom of the film production caste, or at least that's how they're usually treated. You can read my account of being an extra on "Halloween Part II" here).

Reeve's acting was so absolutely and totally real that all the extras just believed he was there, doing what his character was doing. It was brilliant to watch.

Between takes he did something I'll always remember--a wonderful little "star trick" I intend to use myself. Between takes, he'd pull out a hairdryer and dry his underarms, so he wouldn't have this big dark wet circles under them. So in every take, he just looked perfect. I'd worked on many movies and never saw anyone do this before--it was something only a true star would know to do.

That's not to say I'll be a true star because I'll know enough to blow dry my underarms, just that you hopefully will not see any underarm wetness in my performance.

What you will see are a lot of hats. I could say my character favors hats because they're stylish and he's crying out for attention. The real reason is because I'm bald, and crying out for attention. It's interesting how when my hair fell out I started to look good in hats. Before that, with a full head of hair, I looked like an idiot in hats. Maybe I still look like an idiot, but just think I look better because you can't see my big shiny head.

I don't mind my bald head anymore--I really don't. I've made peace with it, so I don't even think about getting a "piece." But I do think that under the bright, hot lights of a movie set, my head will either reflect too much light and appear on film like landing lights for a 747, or it'll start to get wet and un-star-like.

Instead, I will distract with unusual headgear, partly because I like it and, as I said before, it covers the acres of baldness, and, because I long ago learned from director Garry Marshall (Happy Days, LaVerne & Shirley, ad. Nauseum), that hats are funny, at least funny ones are.

So I have a pith helmet (which I actually wear in real life, it's a tremendously useful hat and I highly recommend them--at least the woven breathable ones), and some exotic little pillbox hats which aren't called pillbox hats on men but I don't remember the masculine name for them because I just call them hats), and even a few berets, one of which I bought at Francis Ford Coppola's Niebaum-Coppola winery (which, if you're ever in Napa, is the best one to visit because it's the most dramatic--like a giant film set, rather than the real wineries which are just too real and therefore boring).

It's 2:17. How did it get to be 2:17. I don't know. I'm having a hard time blinking. I'd better stop writing and go to bed if I can find it.

August 11, 2004--Rental Cars & Salty Marie

Packing and renting. Renting and packing. Somehow this has taken all day. I thought I had figured out my costumes and packed yesterday but it still took me four hours tonight and I've brought enough to costume the entire cast of "Grumpier old men IV go to Hawaii." Only in this case I'm the only grumpy old man, and I'm not really all that old, though I am grumpy.

I rented the car online last week through the auto club. I checked all around--spent days comparing rates and all that. I always do this, then I rent something and wonder if I could or should have gotten something better. I did finally stop obsessing about it when I realized it didn't matter, they were mostly the same, so I got the same price but from Hertz, which should mean fewer problems.

I've had more rental cars nightmares than I care to mention because it just makes me look stupid, but maybe it's not me, maybe it's them. I like to tell myself that about a lot of things.

But here's why I think it probably is them. One time lawyers for a rental car company came to me to be an expert witness in a court trial. They wanted me to claim that their rental agreement clearly stated all the pertinent facts. But their rental agreement was not only set in tiny type, it was set in type, narrow, slanted type. If they'd asked me, "How can we set this to make it so hard to read that nobody will read it," I would say, "Set it in tiny, narrow, slanted type."

Now they wanted me to say that their impossible-to-read-typesetting was really easy-to-read, and, being too stupid to accept a large sum of money for something I don't believe, I refused. I told them I'd be happy to tell them how to actually make it easy to read, and surprise, surprise, they were not interested.

My first rental car nightmare was renting a car that had a crack on windshield that I didn't notice until I'd driven off the lot. I drove a block, turned around and brought it back. When I pointed out the crack, the rental agent accused me of having done it in my two minutes on the mean streets near LAX.

My most memorable rental car (and I don't mean that in a good way) came complete with a mini-spare installed on the rear passenger side. I didn't notice the temporary spare you're only supposed to drive less than 50 miles at less than 50 miles per hour. So I drive drove 400 miles at 90 miles on it. Then I stopped for gas and finally saw it, thinking, "That doesn't look right." I made this discovering on a Friday at 5:30, in the middle of nowhere and when I called the rental car company... which group of idiots was that... I can't recall.

You'd have thought I'd learned, but no. On a recent 48-hour trip to LA, I spent four hours waiting for my rent car at Dollar. That's right, Dollar rent-a-car. The Rent-a-car company that sucks. Remember that.

First, while I kept seeing vans from Hertz and National taking people to the off-site rental places, it took 45 minutes to flag one down for Dollar. When I got there, I found a huge line, like I was trying to get on the Matterhorn at Disneyland. And the line wasn't moving. I asked people how long they had waited, and they said, "Two hours," and I thought, "That's not right."

Then I waited two hours. By which time I was on the phone trying to find another rental car, but they were all booked up. Apparently Dollar, that's right, Dollar, the company that sucks, had booked a lot of cars without bothering to have them there for people to actually rent.

After a few more hours during which time if I could have stolen a car I would have, I went up to the business desk and said, "I'm only in town for 48 hours. I've now wasted four here in line. I've missed one appointment and am late for another. So you have two choices. Choice #1 is that you can give me a car, right this very second. Choice #2 is that I can take this chair and throw it through that plate glass window," I said, while lifting and aiming a chrome chair.

I'm not making this up. The woman behind the counter handed me a set of keys, instantly. "Here you are, sir," she said, as if this was the most normal thing in the world. I asked her, "Why did you have a car for me instantly when I threatened to break a window, but people who got here before me are still waiting?" She just smiled and I stopped asking questions and unobtrusively drifted out to my car in such a way as to be invisible to the angry horde still in line. And did I mention that Dollar rent-a-car sucks? It can't be repeated too often.

But today's rental was pretty easy. It just meant driving 40 minutes to the rental place and finding that the car I'd requested wasn't there. Luckily, they did have a bigger, better car (a Ford Crown Victoria, an ugly car with a pretentious name but very big, comfortable leather seats) which they gave me for the same price, so I can't really complain. And Hertz's rental guy, Reggie, was so nice and patient at explaining what mysterious red lights on the dash meant that I also can't complain. It's hard to come up with comedy when people are nice and things are fine. Damn them!

OK, so we're On the road. I'm typing on my Handspring Treo (a little Palm computer with a keyboard) as my wife drives at 100 miles per hour. I personally do not drive 100 miles per hour because I'm afraid of being arrested and sent to jail because I'd end up somebody's bitch, so I set the cruise control to 65 and just cruise along like I'm 80 years old, the average age of people who drive the "Ford Crown Vic," (as my wife calls it, like she's been in the police force for years, since that's what they drive and what they call it, too).

This car is like driving a dark cave. Inside it's all dark gray, which is more accurately called "anthracite" and would be called that if the target buyers in Ohio could pronounce it. Instead, it's called "Dark Gray." Everything's dark, the dash, seats, carpet, even the headliner/ceiling. It makes everything outside seem unnaturally bright, like I'd just had my eyes dilated.

Driving in this car is like sitting in the dark looking out at the light--it makes the road look like a movie. That's not a bad thing, but it feels somehow unreal.

Now I feel like I've lost the hearing in my right ear. I'm hoping its just the crappy stereo. The sound system has an aquatic quality, as if the music is emanating from an aquarium. If I didn't know better I'd think the sound was specifically tuned for goldfish.

And driving through endless nothingness makes it even more like an Andy Warhol movie.

Now I'm driving (don't worry, I'm not typing while driving, I wrote this while sitting at Marie Callendar's, the place we mistakenly went for lunch). Back to the car--there are many buttons on steering wheel. They all look and feel the same--like a bad Sony remote control. I wanted to turn down the aqua stereo and we nearly froze to death. Why couldn't they have different textures so you could feel the difference? Instead, you have to look down and endanger your life to change the channel. It's no better than fiddling with knobs on the dash.

And I don't get the dash. Why is it so ugly? Why are most car dashboards so ugly. They're what you see all the time, so they should spend more time on them than, say, the taillights, which you rarely if ever see. But they don't.

I would think car companies would have to go out of their way to make them this ugly, with all these needless curves and lines and boxes and indents and who knows what that thing is called, it's like a dark gray goiter. Wouldn't simple and elegant be easier than complex and cheesy? I guess not. Or maybe, once again, this is what the target market likes.

I'm clearly not the target market

Not for this car. Not for Marie Callendar's. We used to go to Marie's when they first opened in San Diego. It was very exciting back then for some unknown reason. You had to wait a long time to get what was almost always a very salty dinner. But there were a lot fewer restaurants back then--really. When I was growing up there were something like two restaurants within 10 miles. Three if you counted the Taco Bell, which charged 17 cents for every item when it opened. Then there was the excitement of Kentucky Fried Chicken (now called "KFC" in order to sound more hip and eliminate the need to say three clearly tiring syllables.)

So we remembered Marie's fondly and thought we'd start our vacation with a bang of pie. We got there and were the only ones there, which we should have taken as a sign. It was 100 degrees outside and about 45 inside and the air conditioning was designed to blow directly on you, causing your muscles to seize up, presumably making it harder to taste the food.

Wear my jacket, eat my lunch... I went out to the car and got my jacket, an insane thing to do in 100 degree heat, but otherwise I risked frostbite. My wife immediately took my jacket. And ordered what I wanted to order.

The menu was about 17 pages long and consistent of a wide range of products that had been previously frozen and would shortly be fried.

I chose the chicken pot pie, because I love chicken pot pies and I used to have Marie's frozen ones and they weren't bad. I didn't realize that I'd be getting one of her frozen ones, but that's what I got. So it wasn't bad, but I don't like my entrees to have recently been defrosted. My wife ordered a chicken Caesar sandwich that also miraculously managed to taste defrosted.

From frostbite to defrosted. I sensed a theme.

Another theme at Maries was all around bad design. The menu itself was set in tiny type, rivaling the rental-car agreement for readability. Since the average age of their customers has to be 60 or older (much the average age of ford crown Victoria drivers--we were getting the whole senior experience that could only be complete if the 16 year old waitress offered us the senior discount), so it means most customers can't read read the menu without a guide dog, or at least very strong reading glasses. Why? Just make the type bigger. So the menu would go from 17 pages to 19 pages, no one would count.

After squinting to read a badly designed menu, we're eating the in the breeze of badly designed air-conditioning which seemed to be trying to re-freeze my only recently defrosted entree, and finding ourselves looking to the faces of the only other couple in the restaurant, because the ill-advised booth dividers were "designed" with an opening only an eye level. So instead of actually dividing, they just managed to make it impossible not to have eye contact with strangers. I guess the point was so you didn't have to see their mouths, because sometimes there are few things more nauseating than watching strangers eat, especially strangers with dentures. But I digress.

Then there was the music--weird 70's music once again so age-inappropriate and loud that the people at next table were complaining at almost the exact same time we were complaining. I've heard that bad "Muzak" is programmed to make people buy, so maybe this was programmed to bring the restaurant patrons together in anger, but that didn't really seem good for business. It was probably more to get people to leave, thereby increasing turnover.

To try to reward ourselves for getting through the meal despite howling winds and psyche-shattering Muzak, we decided to order pie. I ordered banana and my wife ordered coconut. They both tasted the same--very sweet. Other than that, if you'd blindfolded they wouldn't have been able to tell them apart--well, except maybe that there was something resembling banana in mine, and some sawdust shavings in my wife's.

So I spoke to the manager whose name was Charity. She was sitting in a booth next to the bathroom with her WiFi laptop and a cell phone headset (because they didn't give her an office), and I explained the problems of the frozen air and painful music and she said she take care of it immediately. Nothing changed. We left, happy to get back into the dark cave of the car where we could control the air conditioning and only occasionally froze when we tried to change channels on the radio.

I didn't realize my tastes were so off middle-American center. I know my politics are but I guess I've become a real San Francisco Bay Area Liberal Fresh-food Gay-loving stereotype. That's certainly better than the alternative.

August 12, 2004--Will we acheive liftoff?

On the road again... Well, maybe soon. It's 1pm. We were supposed to leave at 10am. We had all day yesterday to pack my prodigious wardrobe, enough to run away from home for at least a year, for just six real days and three shooting days. I can't explain these things. It's the time-space continuum again, I just know it is. That's the only way to to explain having more than will fit in the trunk of a boat-like rented Ford Crown Victoria, specifically designed to hold at least three bodies. Comes in handy in New Jersey.

We were up until 4am. That's 4 and A.M. packing. Are we going to the moon? If we were we'd have to take less, otherwise we wouldn't acheive lift-off. As it is, I'm not sure when we're going to lift-off. At 10, my guess was 1pm, because I know how we are. But given that it's 1 now, I say 2. If we're lucky. But a lot of things can happen between 1 and 2. We can realize we neglected to take something like, say, our "bloop bloop" machine (also known as a Chinese low-frequency qi-gong massager). We haven't packed it. We have packed a more traditional massager, always useful when away from home. But I'm pretty sure we'll miss the "bloop bloop" should we fail to take it, so my guess is that it'll end up in the trunk.

I did want to take our stuffed black sheep, Selsdon, who lives in our living room. He's one of the things that filled our car when we had to evacuate because of a huge fire in the area which destroyed 43 homes and came right up to the top of the hill behind our house. Yes, we drove around with a life-sized black sheep in the back of the car, and I'd do it again!

Only this time, my wife insists that we have room to lol around in the large, leather back seat, a back seat which I imagine could seat the entire population of a village of small people--petite Philippinos.

For us, the actual travel part of the trip is rarely the problem--it's the getting ready part which is an ordeal. Ours started weeks ago and we still left important things until the last minute. I have an entire bag of technology--notebook computer, charger, cell phone charger, Handspring Treo/Palm charger (why can't they all charge from the same thing?), USB-flash drive, voice recorder, two digital cameras... I've forgotten what else.

I've forwarded my email to my web-based mailblocks.com account, but only this morning realized I'd neglected to copy my email address book, so I wouldn't be able to send emails to people without them emailing me first.

I know this is boring, I apologize. I only got five hours of sleep and I packed all the chocolate so I don't have any to inject directly into my mouth.

The car seems fine, except of the of the car keys is bent and doesn't work, but the other does, and besides, it has this electronic key fob thing to lock the doors and unlock and trunk and frequently set the car alarm off by mistake.

We had reserved a smaller car, but by the time we arrived at 5:30 (we were supposed to be there at 4, they closed at 6, so we cut it just about as close as we could), they had to upgrade us, which I guess we'll appreciate after 7 hours in the car, especially since this car has pneumatically adjustable lumbar supports, but it also uses more gas.

I tried to rent a Prius (this is riveting, I know), but they wanted $50 a day for that, so it would have cost almost $200 more, including the gas savings, and while I think they're very cool I also think they're more for cities than highways. I drove one on the highway and it got up to 55 miles per hour but I'd actually rather drive a big car on a long trip. I'm a bad person, I know. But I make up for it by not commuting to work and not driving much otherwise. Plus, we have no air-conditioning in our home, so we're not sucking up lots of electricity the way so many other people do this time of year. So lay off.

1:30pm. That's one. Thirty. P. and M. I called the B&B we're staying at to make sure it was OK if we arrived at 9pm. They said it was fine. I should have said, "Is it OK if we arrive at 1am," because I'm pretty sure they would not have been so cheerful, but I'm going to hope for the best, that we arrive there before they are asleep, or at an undisclosed location.

Speaking of which, Dick Cheney has to be one of the most repugnant people in the entire history of the world, and I know there have been a lot of horrible, evil people, but he ranks right up there with them. Just looking at him gives me the creeps.

And I have to say I find the whole Republican strategy sicking, too. They have no positive accomplishments, no positive plans for the future, so all they can do is try to muddle everything. They lie like they don't even know what the truth is (and at this point I'm not sure they do anymore, they're so totally dellusional). Kerry goes to Iowa--they go to Iowa. Kerry goes to California, they go to California. What are they, 6 years old? It's infantile.

And attacking Kerry's record--the man served honorably. He saved lives. He won metals. Bush, meanwhile, rarely managed to show up and never saw active duty. Even so, Republican slimes are running commercials saying Kerry "didn't deserve" his metals. Uh, excuse me--he was wounded, he saved lives. Where was your commander in chief? Napping? Chipping golf balls? Getting plastered. Snorting coke. And they have a "pattern of deception," as they called Clinton's every move, but in this case, it's true. They have no smeared three war veterens, including what's his name from Arizona, the prisoner of war who I thought was a good guy, but he, too, seems to have sold his soul to this group. They smeared him and now he's on their side? They smeared Max Cleland who lost two legs for his country. What kind of people are these?

And I don't understand who would be stupid enough to support them in any way, shape or form (much less vote for them) because they will turn on anyone, they will eat their own. If you support them there's no guarantee they will not destroy you next. Supporters either have to be insanely stupid, or totally self-destructive and think they deserve to be robbed and abused and have their children killed for no reason. There's no logical reason to support these immoral, evil people.

This administration is such a thoroughly 1984, fascist, un-American and anti-American regime that doesn't have the most basic understanding of democracy, or a shred of respect for the constitution that it makes me want to puke, which I would do, except we're so late and that would make me later and leave a bad taste in my mouth all day.

I'm sorry to off on a political rant, but these people must be stopped. Booted out of office. Installed in chain-mail suits at Guantanimo bay.

Whew. I'm glad I got that out of my system. Now I should probably get dressed. My wife is downstairs and says she's "almost ready' which means we will leave in about 30 minutes. Maybe 60.

I figure we'll finally get out of here sometime today. If not that, then tomorrow...

Friday the 13th, 2004--Santa Barbara, here we is

Woke at 8. I never wake at 8. I consider 8 the middle of the night. I like to wake at the crack of noon. We were staying at a B&B, Being a B&B, and the B not surprisingly stands for "breakfast." The B also often involves a lot of stuff you wouldn't eat at home, like quiche, but even more, like sweet rolls and scones and French toast, whatever you want. It's hard to resist "anything you want" kinds of meals, and I'm sure if I went on a cruise I could gain 100 pounds in a week.

OK, so we're in Santa Barbara--do we go to the beach? Oh, no. Do we take a tour. Uh, no. We go to a thrift store! Now, don't misunderstand me, I love thrift stores, they have such interesting stuff, and the fact that other people didn't want the clothes makes me feel sorry for them and want to take them home.

But today I didn't feel particularly sorry for any item of clothing, and escaped with my wallet unscatched. My wife found three items that called her name, including a fleece jacket which was actually useful because despite having brought 200 cubic feet of clothing and toiletries, she managed to neglect to bring a jacket, and also left all her jewelry on the dining room table.

Then we continued up State street, which, if you read the tourist material is the only street in Santa Barbara. Something's either on State, or it doesn't exist. Except there's a whole city with other streets, yet somehow they don't count.

I do like the Spanish style of everything, it's very cute. All cities should look like this, or, if not Spanish, then some other cute style. I think cute architecture is very important. I like cute. People like cute. Think Disneyland. It's cute and people love it, hence, everything should look like Disneyland, and, interestingly, everything increasingly does.

Not that you care how I spent my casual day in town, but I'll tell you anyway on the off chance you come here and are wondering what to do. 1) go to the thrift stores, which are very good but tend to be more expensive than other thrift stores, I guess because the tourists think that $9 for a shirt is a great deal when real thrift-shop junkies think $2 is a good price.

2) Go to the art museum--which is small but elegant and was having a show about artists of the Americas, and a special exhibit by Bo Bartlett-- he has spectacular technique and stunning, even unnerving compositions. My favorite item in the museum, though, was this unbelievable black lacquer kimono box with gold shells on bottom--so mind-bogglingly beautiful it made my eyes hurt.

Another thrift store--very hot but my wife felt nothing due to the "anesthetic effects of shopping." I went to the "As seen on TV" store and bought headrests for the car and a suction cup window sun block.

Went to the manuscript museum and saw Napoleon's resignation letter--his actual writing and signature, a real person once wrote this... it makes history more personal.

Here's something odd about Santa Barbara--Everybody so nice. Everybody. It's almost weird, but I could get used to it.

My wife wasn't sure she wanted to sit through the whole script reading tonight, and I said, "you can just say you're not feeling well and leave." She said, "If I said I wasn't feeling well, Jeanne would jump up, get me a cold compress, massage my feet, make me tea and see if there wasn't something else she could do." And she's right, that's how Jeanne is, and that's one of the reason everyone has jumped at the chance to work with her.

Drive to Jeanne's brother, J.O.'s house. His son, Oliver is on E.R. We talk and laugh and the read through sounds really good, even with me having to read Ben's part.

My scenes are deemed hilarious--lots of laughs, though I gave the biggest laughs to Karen and suddenly I'm the straight man!

Met Jeanne's fascinating sister Jan, and J.O.'s very sweet wife Maggie who is also a professional reflexologist. We had BBQ chicken and salad.

My wife talked about her chocolate volcano cupcakes and J.O. came up with a pun tagline, "Igneous is bliss."

It's not just Santa Barbara--on this movie everybody is so nice. Oliver, the kid in the movie (and on E.R.), is charming and smart and funny and talks easily and intelligently with adults. Morgan is pretty and nice and funny, too. J.O. and Maggie are as sweet as Jeanne. It's like a Twilight Zone of niceness--but genuine, deep down niceness that's too hard to fake, which sometimes is the best I can manage. I am just not that nice a lot of the time, but when confronted with truly nice people like this, I am shamed into true niceness--and it's as genuine as I get, but it still seems like Formica niceness compared to their solid heartwood.

August 14, 2094 - Action! Almost!

No, 90 years haven't magically passed since my previous entry, I just mistyped it.

After another unnecessarily large and varied breakfast, we went to the Natural History Museum. They had a special exhibit of butterflies you could walk through and have them land on you if you were wearing bright colors. I was mistakenly wearing earth tones, so the butterflies looked at me like I was dirt.

We only had about an hour and were thinking of skipping the museum entirely and going to a garage sale down the street, but I found one of the tags you get when you buy admission and I put it on and voila--instant access.

So, we experienced being a butterfly outcast, then drove to the set. We arrived a half hour late, but that was really a half hour early since I wanted to be there early to run lines with the women formerly known as my co-star but I'm getting tired of explaining how we aren't starring.

The first half hour was spent once again in serious costume deliberations. I had brought what I thought I would wear (a shirt with a very big pattern of fragments of American flags, daisies and the portrait of George Washington from the dollar), but it didn't "go with" anything Karen had brought, so she'd cleverly brought a gold satin pirate-style shirt for me, that would, cleverly, match the leopard skin top she'd also brought (along with enough costumes to clad the extras in Gone With The Wind if they'd wanted to look like hippies and gypsies.

It was very hot, and I was wearing my costume pants, which are red cargo pants that should look great but were too warm, so finally I just had to take off my pants. Luckily, I was wearing attractive new boxer-briefs I just bought at the Territory Ahead outlet store last night. I am not immodest but like I said this is attractive underwear, and further more, no one wants to look anyway.

Then we practiced our tango move with it's big ending and matching head-snaps, and ran our lines and ate some prop cookies which, happily, were real cookies, otherwise swallowing might have been difficult and digestion questionable.

Then Lovely Jeanne, the producer, director and crafts services manager, called to say they were running at least two hours late and we should go to lunch. So we got in the car, tried to find our way down the winding hills, then tried to find my hotel so I could get my shorts so I didn't have to continue to make appearances in my underwear, especially in front of people I had just met, as this might make a bad impression and make them exclaim, "My eyes, My eyes!"

It took forever to find the hotel as many of the charming streets are dead-ends, but we finally found it and I had to ask the proprietor for another key to the room. I wondered what he'd think when he say my attractive co-star and me without my wife asking for the key to my room but I'm sure he's seem worse.

The joke is my wife came back to the hotel a bit later and wanted to ask the proprietor for a key (because she didn't notice the key was on the same key ring as the car keys in her hand), and if she'd done it when Karen and I were in the room, can you imagine what the poor man would have to do? Would he open the door for her or tell her he didn't have a key and try to get her to leave without finding me in the room with another woman?

So I got my shorts and asked the proprietor (who probably wondered why I was so quick with my co-star, except, as I said, he might have seen some of my character's mini-porn which would explain it) where he suggested we eat. He hated Mexican food, so he couldn't recommend that, but he did recommend a pizza place where it would be easy to park, and after driving endlessly to find the hotel, this seemed like a good idea.

Karen, my co-star, who, as I've said before isn't really a co-star since we aren't starring but calling her a co-supporting-player doesn't have the same ring and besides, I think the word "player" has taken on an unseemly tone I want to keep out of this.

Oh, to finish the previous sentence, after the meal of burnt pizza, my co-star went around saying, "Have you ever been to Dino's pizza on Cliff? No? Good--don't go there." And everyone else said, "But they have the best pizza in town!"

OK, so the director has arrived. We're only about three hours late, which is good considering the fact that they had to shoot three outdoor scenes this morning. Now the action is fast and furious. I've met Trent, the Ozzie cinematographer, and the real star, or co-star of the movie, who's name I don't remember which only reflects badly on me, because she's a memorable woman and I'm just very bad at names. Rita! How could I forget? She really is a fantastic actress. My mind is just mush at the moment, which must be clear from this entry.

I've put on my costume, which is the gold silk shirt/blouse with a tie-up front that would normally expose the lush carpet that is my chest hair, but I'm wearing a t-shirt because I neglected to bring a hair dryer so am unable to do the Christopher Reeves Star Hairdryer Underarm maneuver.

I also put on some base makeup to cover my birthmark. I have a birthmark on my forehead kind of like Gorbechov's, only mine is in the shape of California with the Catalina Islands, and then it runs down my nose as if it was left out in the rain.

So I put on the makeup and look a little unnatural like Michael Jackson if he had a nose, and then Karen gives me a sponge to remove most of it so now I just look like California had been hidden under flesh-colored fog.

OK, we're almost ready for the set. We did a quick run through of our tango. Karen is taunting me for typing rather than acting, so I must go.

Action!

Now the magic happens. Or so we like to believe. It's all about believing. Believing you are who you are pretending to be, or that you can appear to believe you are who you are pretending to be, or, at the very least, believing that you don't stink so badly that the director is going to replace you with his or her brother-in-law, or, in this case, the associate producer/production designer, a man who bears an uncanny likeness to you, as if he's there solely to make you believe "You can be replaced!"

Jeanne is too nice to replace me, I think. No, I know she's too nice. But, just as Karen has gone around saying, "I don't want to ruin Jeanne's movie," I don't want to ruin it either.

Before we drove down here I read something about basic student movie-making clichés. And I was really sorry I did, because one of the clichés was "eyebrow acting," acting that was far too big for the screen and involved a lot of eyebrow movement.

Now, I understand how "real" cinema acting works (OK, so now we have film, movies, and cinema, and I assume that "cinema" is the more European-ish of the three, and therefore the most chi-chi. I would like to say it's the jejune because that word always sounds so classy and European-ish, but I don't know what it means. Wait, I just used my computer thesaurus and it means "sophomoric" or "juvenile" so it's not the right word at all and it's a good thing I didn't use it or everyone would realize that my vocabulary was woefully incomplete).

Oh, so "real" cinema, even movie acting is supposed to be very subtle. Since your nose is enlarged to the height of a 3 story building, every little movement of your face is similarly magnified, so even normal facial expressions could appear gigantic and grotesque.

In my case it's difficult to not do eyebrow acting because I have very large eyebrows, we're talking Peter... why can't I remember anyone's name, he's the guy on the O.C. who's done a million movies, each one was supposed to make him a big star yet none never did and he has real talent and has been on Broadway. You know surely who I mean. Lord. It's an Irishy name. I'll think of it later. Gallagher. That's it.

So my face features very large eyebrows and despite the gray in my hair and beard they're still dark brown as if I color them, which I don't, because that would be stupid and perhaps even dangerous. It would be like when Madonna had platinum blonde hair and black eyebrows--it would make no sense, but in my case it's natural and I'm not going to bleach them to make them more gray, so they are the way they are, and they are a major component of my face.

The only way I could avoid acting with them would be a generous shot of botox right in the middle of my head, which I can't abide because I've had a life long fear of botulism which is a highly deadly poison--just a spec of it can kill you. It's "anaerobic" which means it only grows where there's no air--like in canned foods, and if the can if puffy, it can have botulism and if you don't boil it for something like 15 minutes you will be as dead as the acting on Madonna's face.

I don't know why I've always been afraid of botulism but I just have. Maybe I died of it in a previous life. Or maybe I've just always known that someday some brilliant marketing mind would say, "Hey, let's take one of the world's most deadly toxins and inject it right into people's faces!" To me this is utter lunacy, if not idiocy, and paying someone to fill you with deadly toxins is even more stupid. So that's not going to happen to my face, which means my eyebrows will continue to be uncontrollably mobile.

It's like our chinchilla, who likes to get inside my shirt and make this odd-looking lump, and when he moves around I call him my "mobile goiter" which my wife and I still find hilarious after many years, despite the fact that normal people will probably recoil in horror when they read this.

So back to eyebrow acting--I read that thing and thought, "I'm doomed. I can't say anything without my eyebrows moving, so unless I can act telepathically, and say nothing, just think the words... no, then my eyebrows would move, too.

It's like this military thing I saw at a geek fest, where all you have to do is think about a word and your larynx or vocal cords unconsciously form those words. So a machine could have a camera trained, not on your face or mouth, but on your neck, and it could "read your mind" because as you were thinking words, it could read the them by the subtle changes on the skin of your neck. Or something. It seemed too sci-fi, too unreal, and yet there were geeky guys from some NASA lab demonstrating it, though it could all easily have been fake and perhaps they were just trying to get sponsors to pay for their research, but whatever, I believed it, even though it was unbelievable.

And we're back to believing.

So first we do some run-throughs, and oddly, none of us can remember the lines and there are these gaps where we can't quite figure out why it's going the way it's going or how we can remember what your line is because it doesn't seem to follow the previous one, which is the way conversations are in real life, but even so, it's hard to remember.

I'm actually the worst, and it's pretty embarrassing, because I'd changed a few of the lines and I should have remembered them, but I didn't. For me it's hard to memorize lines without blocking (blocking is the "staging," like, "Enter stage right, doing the tango. Do a big dip, look at each other, then look front simultaneously and say your first line. Then move behind that counter and make her some tea, then touch her hand, then make tea, then wince as your screen wife flicks you on the ear.")

The blocking makes it easier to remember lines, because it creates a progression of events. So I'd practiced my lines and seemed to know them while sitting down, but I couldn't remember them all standing up.

The director directed us and it started to get better and we went over the lines faster, because in movies you really need to talk fast.

I didn't know this but it's something I learned from Howard Cohen. He said, "Watch 'His Girl Friday,' see how fast they talk." I did and they did--they talk almost impossibly fast, and yet it just seems normal. That's really hard. Who knew that all this movie making stuff was actually pretty hard when with reality shows today it looks like any idiot with a face can get on TV and make entertainment.

So we run the scenes faster and faster. The only negative comment the director makes is that my earring (a clip on Karen gave me because it matched my shirt and went with the kind of Spanish Pirate motif of the shirt) was too much. "It's all I can see," she said as I ripped it off, not wanting to be upstaged by an earring.

It's getting better. The tango is very sharp--well, we're acting as if we're bad dancers but the look, snap, look part is slick and funny. Now the lights are on and it's very, very hot. We do a take, and it seems to go fine.

I think something has gone fine if I can't remember it. That means I've been working unconsciously rather than thinking about what I was doing. If I can remember what I'm doing, then I've done something wrong, like said a line wrong or something.

Most of the takes are fine. I stop thinking and just feel it. I'm actually worried about the lead character, Ella, because the actress, Rita, is so good that all I have to do is react. She looks like she's going to cry, she's welling right up and it's because of a little joke I make, and I feel really badly about it. I just do.

I try not to look at the monitor, which displays the high-res, wide-screen playback, and it's a mistake when I notice and see this is a closeup, because of course then I cannot spit out my lines. I am the only one who screws up their lines and it makes me feel like an amateur idiot. No one seems to mind and we just go on but then I'm not sure what I've done and whether it makes any sense or is at all believable or real. But if I'm not sure it's probably OK, but I don't know why I have trouble spitting out some very simple lines, a few that I've written myself. But I do.

Our scene is three pages long, yet it will probably be about 45 seconds, tops. It requires about 24 separate takes. There's the "master shot" which is a wide shot (the camera is far back so everyone in the scene can be seen at the same time). Then there are close ups of each actor throughout the scene, in case the director wants to insert close-ups at any time.

I think I blow my close ups. I do flub a line, but then we keep going. I think the take is terrible and want to do it again but they all think it's fine, which either means I don't know what I'm talking about or they don't care they just want to move on, or I am really brilliant and just working so intuitively and subconsciously that I can't recognize it. As much as I'd like to  believe the later, the truth is that I just think I wasn't very good, but decide not to dwell on it, because actors are have notoriously low self-esteem, so the others probably feel this and just don't want to say it. I wouldn't say it except I'm writing it here tellking far more than I should.

Then there are different angles of the scene--this angle highlights me and Karen, that angle highlights Rita and Oliver, and another shot looks over my shoulder at Ella. Shoulder acting is tricky--you have to be able to communicate your emotions using nothing but the back side of your shoulder--and you have to do all this without moving. Cary Grant could do this. Katherine Hepburn was a master of the "back acting," where you could tell, just from seeing her back, how she felt--look for it in "Desk Set," the scene in her apartment with Spencer Tracey--watch her body language, her neck, hands--and yes, even her back. And Meryl can act from any side, the soles of her feet can act, even in pitch blackness.

But I am not nearly that advanced, so I'm pretty sure my shoulder will look brain dead.

After three hours, and 24 takes, we are done for the night. Now--if you think three hours for 45 seconds of film is slow, then you don't know movie making. A 45 second scene can take days or even weeks on big-budget films. It can take half a day to light each different take, which means that 24 takes could take 12 work days--if everything went right.

So three hours for 24 takes is like supersonic filmmaking. Our cinematographer is really a cinematographer for Australian TV, so he has to be fast (since the news rarely allows for retakes). He set the lighting, manned the digital camera, and even moved the camera.

Everyone tells everyone else how good they were. Rita tells me that Karen and I are so full of life and energy. I think this is a very sweet thing to say, since "energy" is what I want to convey, but I also think she's just being nice. But I'm not just being nice when I say she's so good it makes re-acting (and some say "acting is reacting") easy.

The crew compliments us, they love the dance and think we're funny. I tell them they made it easy. But I know how it is on the set, and everyone tends to think everyone else is wonderful--partly because they really are, and partly because this is what extreme fatigue does--you can think everyone is wonderful or think they are all idiots, and on a movie set it can go either way, but on good movie sets everyone is always wonderful, as they were today.

August 15, 2004--Frada and Fascists

August 15, 2004

This morning at breakfast a woman had what was clearly a fake Prada handbag. It occurred to me that this should be called a "Frauda."

Another unreasonably large breakfast--cottage cheese, scrambled eggs, maple sausage, bacon quiche, toast (its very so long since I've had toast to me toast and butter are better than the Danish pastries) then some granola with banana and a taste of maple scone which is so large and distressingly dry it could choke King Kong.

Had breakfast with a gaggles of republicans and managed to remain civil and not call them brain dead nazi idiots. I consider this a major accomplishment.

I knew they were idiots because their 19' long Ford Expedition had a bumper sticker that read re-re-re-elect Bush which is so stupid that reasonable minds take a while to figure out it means bush sr. and jr.

Yesterday they drove the thing off road, presumably to trample native flora and the occasional fauna.

I am thinking of letting the air out of their $800 19" fascist tires.

One of the highlights of the trip has been the marzipan coffee cakey thing from Andersons--I am not afraid to say its the best bakery-made baked good I have ever eaten. Its orgasmic. So good I went back to get another slice and came away with pan full.

Originally we went into the bakery just to look. They gave us drop-dead fantastic samples and then we felt compelled to buy something we'd later not regret. Ill say just one more thing on the subject--this is the kind of food that should be the last thing you eat before you drop dead so you'll leave with a good taste in your mouth.

I think I've discovered why their baked goods are so addictive--they add a tiny touch of crack cocaine to everything they bake. Or not, but it tastes better than any drug could make a person feel.

We shot at a local school--we were the audience and it took most of the day, then we shot some scenes outside with Ben Murphy, famous for the TV series "Alias Smith & Jones." Ben's a very nice guy but one of these annoying men who get even better looking as they get older.

I told Rita that I hoped if I lived long enough I, too, would look better. She said, "There are more important things," which was sweet, and she's surely right, though I wouldn't mind being handsome as well as brilliant :)

August 16, 2004 - Action and Re-Action in Real Time

Got to the set at 10am. It's 11:30 and we're starting to block, or set where we move during the scene. I can't type now, we're working...

OK, now the rest of this was typed directly on the set. I haven't edited it other than to fix typos. Numbers like 24/10/1234 mean "scene 24, take 10, with the camera at 1234."

To warm up, the ozzie associate producer, Rahni, who's also a TV journalist for Australian TV, channel 10 (her boyfriend is the cinematographer who works for Channel 7 and has just returned from Cuba and the democratic convention and has to go to the republican convention next week, which he isn't looking forward to) had us do this thing called the "Rubber Chicken," where you shake one arm eight times, then the other, then one leg, then the next, then you repeat it but only shake four times, then you repeat and only shake twice, then you throw your hands in the air and scream "Rubber Chicken!" I don't know what this means or why anyone over the age of eight would do it, but we all enjoyed it and found it stimulating. What does that say about us?

Before we shot, Ella/Rita and I sang Irving Berlin's, Counting Your Blessings, from the movie "White Christmas" which is one of my favorites despite it not being a great movie. The song is sung by Bing and one of my favorite singers, Rosemary Clooney. Later we're going to sing "Sisters" from the same film. My cousin Herb Vigran was in that movie--he played the Florida club owner where the girls (you could call them "girls" at the time) were playing and then had to escape. Herb was also in many episodes of "Superman" with Steve Reeves, playing a villain, and several of I Love Lucy, including the famous "Martian Women on the empire state building" episode.

We are shooting and I am typing as part of the scene. Pretty cool, huh? And the take was cut, the blocking isn't working for the camera. We're reversed it all for the camera. I have a new line about having freshly ground coffee I'm pretty sure to forget.

OK, we're trying another first take. And I'm typing. We've added a new line that I ad-libbed, "we're changing her medication soon." I just said it as a joke. We'll see if it stays. It won't.

My bracelet is making too much noise on the keyboard. We've been slated, scene 24, take three. It's really take one, the first two were rehearsals, without a slate, so they're not counting them.

I'm very excited to be here, really I am. This is a lot of fun and I'm happy to be running a coffee shop and meeting (I misspelled "meeting" so badly that when I spell checked it, the program suggested "Man-eating," instead of "meeting") people.

I said my first line, we stopped not because of me but because of camera blocking again. I don't know how the sound woman can keep her arms up for so long--she's rested on her head and needs a hairstyle that can support it.

And I'm in the groove and we'll see how long the groove last and I'm moving my head in a Rosalind Russell kind of way (Ms. Russel was a wonderful actress who also had an almost uncanny ability to steal scenes and attract your attention by constantly moving her head--it was actually pretty subtle, yet unmissable--you had to look at her) and I'm excited this is going to be online and it's another take stopped, this time because we can see the boom mike, which is a common problem.

It's very weird to be on a set writing things that will be online, but like I said, this typing is part of my character, and it gives you some idea of how much time there is between takes. SCENE 24 TAKE 13, 0111, yes I actually typed it right before my first line in the film, "I was in the zone, sorry, make yourself at home," and then we cut again.

Once we get going it'll be fine, but sometimes getting going can be hard. Of course, it's noon, we're supposed to be done at 1, and we haven't started the first scene, so chances are we'll be done at 4, and I don't know what that will do to the schedule for the rest of the day.

More boom manipulation--it's a hard job, really. I'm wearing a wireless mic so they don't have to boom me. I guess they don't have enough wireless mics for everyone, but I'm not a sound expert (which would make me an unsound expert),

First take, bunchy blocking. I don't feel good because I'm thinking about what I'm doing not just doing 24/5 0355. Action! Start again because of car noise. Keeping the roll. Action again!

Now a shadow in the background has stopped a really good take, maybe they'll use some of it. I hope. 24/6 518. Action! And I'm typing in my blog in the scene and in real life. Outside noise, another spoiled take, just as well since I blew the words "Palimino Pony" by saying "Palimony Pony," which is funny but unfortunately makes no sense in this scene.

More noise--maybe they should just pretend this is cinema verite, then the outside noise adds to the realism of the moment--we meant for there to be these noises 24/7... incoming plane, another delay. You can just hear it, so we're holding. Isn't this thrilling, that's what movie making it all about, waiting for technical perfection to the point where it then causes everyone else involved to screw up.

There's a saw working down the hill, in a house remodel, so we're pretending the store nest door is renovating. And he's rolling again 27/7 658, Karen could come in covered with plaster dust, that'd be funny. Welrejfcj. That last word-sentence is something I typed right before jumping up to start the scene with the line, "Sorry, I was in the zone, make yourself at home."

Ok, we got through the first master at this angle. Now we're doing some pickups. Some close-ups. Director goes to the bathroom. Oh, it's my close-up, I hate knowing that, I tend to get nervous.

UPS truck is coming back up the road.

I have to forget it's my closeup and just do it. I want to be happier, like this wonderfully happy artist named Jim Koorey I met yesterday. He loved what he was making (feather necklaces and earrings--I bought a necklace which I'm wearing in the scenes, as a kind of talisman). He loved talking to people. I want my character to be like him--energetic and joyful! I'm happy we have customers for a change, I really am. A lot of locals are boring, so we like new people.

That went OK, but we're doing another that's cleaner. I did a good job ignoring that it was a closeup, and we're doing it again--at my request, but also the request of the cinematographer.

We're rolling again, it's scene 24 take 9, 1104. And action. And they've entered and I'm typing about how... camera blocking stop again 24/10 1126.

And we're starting over and I love new people in town, fresh blood to find new friends who aren't rednecks.

"COVER THE MUFFIN" is a bad euphemism I've just made up from the prop person wanting to cover the muffin before it gets stale. But it's a great line, "Let's play 'cover the muffin!'" Very suggestive. I'm going to claim it's Australian, like the "Tall poppy syndrome."

My closeup is over--I don't remember what I did so I'm assuming it was good. I like being in the moment, which means you can't remember the moment, because if you can remember it, then you were out of it, because remembering takes time, and even a millisecond late means you're out,.

Hair and makeup for the muffins. Then Karen doing Carol Merrill model hands to display how lovely they are. Closeup on the muffins.

Muffin insert shot. I wonder if the muffins get nervous during their closeups. Even I doubt it, and I talk to inanimate objects, I enter a room and just feel compelled to say "hi" to things like chairs, and especially lamps. Outside I say "hello" to trees but at least they're alive, so I don't feel embarrassed about it, but I do think I should stop talking to furniture as it has the rude habit of never talking back.

Camera move, behind my head. Now I have to do "top of the head acting," and be able to relay all my deepest emotions using only my scalp, but in this case I'm wearing an African mud cloth hat that covers my scalp, so I have to act through two layers of fabric which is a real challenge.

We just sang "Sisters" but we don't have the choreography or harmony but this was just the first time. Another take from the start. I'm going to be very spontaneous since I'm not at all ready.

Taping a curtain... you didn't realized just how exciting and glamorous movie making was. As Avery Schreiber used to ironically say about Hollywood, "Tinsel, glamour, excitement!"

Have the blackamoor hold the boom for a touch of un-PC irony.

Scene 24, take 14. Wooh, that's a lot o takes isn't it? I'm rolling, at 1545, action!

And they're entering and I'm blogging.

Short break for camera move. I eat a brownie and three chocolate chip cookies

That take went well, but there may be some technical issues, so we're doing another one. They don't always want to start from the top, but I think it's good to do that to make it more consistent, and we, the actors, don't mind, actual acting in the scenes gives us something to do.

Charlene asks me what I'm doing, I say I'm blogging even as we speak. I read her the previous paragraph. I'm thinking about keeping all the typing and spelling errors I'm making since I'm doing this fatw, but no, because I typed "fast" and fatw and no one will understand what that means.

24/16 1901, action!

Now in tdola;sldjkf;asd. I don't know what I was thinking when I typed that last sentence. Sorry.

Trent, the cinematographer, says we'll have to start all over. I tell Rita it's because Trent forgot to put tape in the camera. She looks horrified--she believes me. Maybe that's why she's such a good actress, she seems to believe everything you tell her. Or maybe she's just like this on the set. I tell her it's a joke and she looks more relieved than annoyed which is good, because I bruise easily.

One more shot, jump up;.

"I think we're getting some," Trent, the cinematographer said, we all laugh. We hope so since we've been filming for 90 minutes now.

This screen may be on camera! Aren't you excited! I know the computer is, it's little hard disk just came on, whining like I do when my blood sugar is low. And 24/17/2192, my Handspring Treo just beeped, ruining a take or it would have it the tape had started

I was brilliant. But we cut and are trying it again. My wife thinks it's hilarious when people pop up into the frame, so she should find this amusing if it's edited correctly, which actors have no control over.

Another bite of chocolate bookies (I meant "cookies"). Rita and Morgan both say they didn't know what blogging was. This concerns me as Morgan is 15 and should know. Will nobody get this, despite the fact that I really did think everyone knew what a blog was, just like it says in the script, "He never introduces himself because he thinks everyone knows him from his b log" but everybody on the movie's going to get a blog if they want one.

Just sang, "Cabaret" with Jeanne. I've known her for 25 years. That makes me sound like I'm 80. I'm considerably less than 80. OK, ready?

24/20/2249

Action. We're not in Kansas anymore. Rolling. 20/21/... another bloody plane.

24/21/2317

action! Jmnowndlk (I jus typed that while in the scene, and when I'm "in the moment" apparently I'm unable to type, which would take me out of the moment).

I say "eat in here" instead of "drink it here." But we finish the shot, then decide to do it again because us actors aren't in the right place for the camera.

And this is really fun. I can't help it. I like working with these people. I wish I was shooting for a week, but today is the final day.

More retakes for camera angles. 24/23/2515

Action!

OK, we're done with that. I've said it differently each time, like Christopher Walken says he does. Some actors do the exact same thing every take--on the stage that's pretty much what you need to do--though you want to make it seem like it's the first time you've done it.

But I heard Walken say he did each take differently to give the director more choice in editing. He'll do one big, one small, one faster, one slower, one broader, one more subtle. I try not to think when I'm doing the scenes, I just try to do it and however it comes out it comes out, and hopefully that will introduce enough variety.

I make coffee, pour in too much water and the filter falls into the bottom of the glass. It's a minor mess.

Another angle. We think it's kind of a mess. We're out of frame. We're doing it again. This when it's important to keep your energy up--so as soon as the scene starts you have to be able to turn it back on.

I need some protein.

I know this is taking a long time but I don't want it to end. Hopefully my desire for endless shooting won't subconsciously cause me to screw up so they run late. I want to be fine and natural and just have them run late so I can enjoy the day of acting. This doesn't happen nearly enough, like every few years, if you define "few" as "many."

My closeup, why are close-ups at the end when you're tired? I don't know how I did, so I assume it was OK. It's good to be able to think that.

Karen's close up and then a two shot of us because cinematographer says we're a duo and are good seen together. I wonder which one of us is meat and which is potatoes. Or are we seaweed and rice--well, in this scene that's more like it. Vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. Laurel and Hardy. OK, I'll stop now.

At the end of the scene Karen and I froze--like theater people would before a blackout (when the lights go down fast) or like soap people freezing before a commercial. It was idiotic. We should have just kept moving as if life was going on and the director just cut, but, like I say, we are idiots.

We're nearing the end of the scene, we have, in fact, reached it, but we need more angles. We're all getting hungry and tired, so I wonder if, at the start of the scene we'll be all energetic and at the end we'll look hungry. But it's kind of OK if we look hungery, since we've been gabbing a lot and maybe really are hungry and we want them to eat muffins. Maybe that's our secret.

Oy, it's 2:15. Blood sugar seriously low, or would be if I hadn't eaten a bunch more cookies and another half a brownie. This is more sweet stuff than I've eaten in about two years, so perhaps I'll just go into sugar shock and start reading all my lines at supersonic speed, which could be quite interesting and not totally out of character. We'll see.

Now we're "feeding the lines" which means we aren't in the shot but are saying the lines . Now the director, Rita and I were all singing "sisters" to generate some more energy. It's odd with two women and one man, but maybe that makes it very post-modern.

We're ready! Waiting for a bloody cameraman! Scene 24, take 78, 3753.

Lunch break. Cold pizza. Chips. Trader Joe's Sushi. Costco Cashews.

If I was on a movie set more often I might weigh 300 pounds. I've been so good for so long but today I've had more cookies than I've had in a year. And, I can say this because I don't think my wife will ever read down this far, but I had a bag of Doritos, the Nacho Cheese kind with nothing natural added. They were pretty good and have completed my junk food foray for the week. Don't tell my wife.

I've changed costumes for the next scene. I'm wearing a fantastic vintage shirt (read thrift-shop) that has a pattern like 1950's Formica, over a light yellow t-shirt that perfectly matches a color in the shirt. And I'm still wearing Jim's feather necklace, which has become my talisman.

I also had to pee really bad after the scene. You may not want to read about this if you find the discussion of bodily functions distasteful, but since if you're reading this, you too probably pee, once if not more a day, then it shouldn't be shocking.

So after the scene my pee was very yellow, as it if after you've done a lot of exercise. We haven't done much exercise but mental exercise is a lot more tiring than people think. Thinking, writing--these are all highly mental activities that can turn your pee yellow.

I think I've written more than enough, OK, too much on that subject, I was just thinking of it.

OK, back on the set!

Chuck the muffin... That's the new catch-phrase we've come up with because of a certain piece of business in the scene where Karen/Olivia throws a muffin to me. The Australian cinematographer has dubbed it "Chuck the muffin" and we like the sound of it.

"That really chuck's the muffin," or "That's so bad I think I'm going to chuck the muffin." Something like that. Slip it into conversation sometime and see what happens!

Afternoon: since my computer isn't in the scene, I have no excuse to sit and type in the blog while we're trying to get the scene done. I'm now too tired to think, much less type, so I'll have to go back and see if I can remember anything that happened during the filming of the second scene.

I did come up with a movie-making "blues" song

I done lost my key light,
now I'm in the dark.

I done lost my key light,
now I'm in the dark.

My close-up's so damn ugly
looks like I should bark

. . . . . . . .

Boom shadow's in my eye line
You can't see my eyes...

Boom shadow's in my eye line
You can't see my eyes...

The lighting guy he hates me
but that's no surprise...

. . . . . . . . .

We were over around 6:30. It was a long day. I am exhausted, but that's really good, because it means that I've projected a lot of energy today, and hopefully it will be caught on tape.

The honest truth is that I don't know how I've done. I have no idea. I don't remember what I did. I didn't plan on how to say things, or what faces to make. I just tried to make it real--and what I remember most from the second scene was that I felt like I was there, saying those things for real, to a new friend who needed help.

My wife was watching the video playback monitor and later said, "You two looked like best friends." That's how it should have looked, so we'll see if it still looks like that when it's all pieced together.

Speaking of which, Trent did a great job capturing the scenes from as many angles as possible. It takes time to do that, but then the director has much more to choose from during editing. Have I said this already? Probably, I am tired and keep repeating myself, which is annoying my wife.

But this shoot is over for me, and the dream world evaporates quickly.

The dream world of the set is usually a very pleasant one. You have little contact with the outside world. You don't watch TV news or read the newspaper or even read your e-mail. People are nice to you and offer you drinks for free, without you even asking. Where else do you find that?

Yet, when it's over, and you have to return to reality you feel the way you do after a bath--you're floating--the as the water goes down the drain you feel yourself sinking, you feel gravity returning, you feel heavy and weighted back down to reality.

Getting back on your feet can be a hard and slippery business.

I was so into the moment, the long day seemed like a few short minutes--yet so much happened it also feels like a highly compressed week. A happy time warp.

I meant to take a bath to try to float again, but instead passed out in bed, with my clothes on.

The Morning After

The end of shooting involved a lot of hugging and picture taking. A lot of writing down of phone numbers and e-mail addresses. A lot of promises to "keep in touch," something that usually turns out to be a lot of lies.

I don't know how it'll be in this case, because you always think people will stay in touch, even if you know they probably won't. I know I'll e-mail everybody and tell them again how great they were and they may or may not e-mail back or they'll change their e-mail addresses to avoid me.

Out of all the people I worked with on Saturday the 14th Strikes Back, I keep in touch with one of them, Rhonda Aldrich, my "co-star" in the same sense that we weren't stars but let's not get into that again.

In fact, Rhonda was almost in this movie--if Karen hadn't taken the part, Rhonda would have had it. So I still e-mail her and get an Xmas card and we keep in touch.

The reason we keep in touch, besides the fact that we liked each other, is that neither of us have become successful in the entertainment biz. Rhonda did a lot more than I did--including a recurring part on Star Trek the Next Generation in a holodeck sequence as a Chandler-esque, film noir, gum-chewing secretary. She was very good and this reminds me of Gene Roddenberry, so you can expect a very long aside very shortly.

But it's not like either of us ended up on Friends or Frasier, so we, like most out of work people in the "entertainment biz" keep in touch, just in case.

My most memorable example of this is the year Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, came to my Christmas party. I met Gene through a man I was working and sometimes ghost-writing for. Gene needed a computer consultant (of all things, I mean, doesn't it seem like he invented computers? I have a Palm Treo computer that looks almost exactly like a "communicator" from the original Star Trek, it even snaps open the same way and then becomes a cell phone, it's like a sci-fi prop).

So I went over to Gene's house to help him learn how to use his new KayPro computer, one of the first "portable" computers that weighed a mere 35 pounds. That's right, it was super-portable because it weighed only slightly more than a sewing machine and was in a magnesium case only slightly smaller than a small-block Chevy V8 and didn't have batteries so it had to be plugged in to work. What made it portable was the fact that it had a handle. They didn't mention it could also be used for weight-training.

I actually took mine everywhere, at the time it was the most amazing machine I'd ever seen. It had a big keyboard that snapped over a little green screen and two big slots for floppy diskettes (as they were called at the time) that were 1) really floppy, and 2) able to hold the astounding total of 160K. Not megabytes, but K. The digital photos you take with your cell phone probably wouldn't fit on one of these disks, which was bigger than your cell phone.

But at the time, it was a big step up from the dedicated word processor Gene was using, and he needed someone to teach him how to use WordStar (convenient that it had the word "Star" in it), and I jumped at the chance.

I went to Gene's house on the other side of Beverly Hills (the valley side) and was greeted by Majel, his wife, also known as Nurse Chapel, the voice of the computer, and later Lawaxana, or something like that (the mother of the one on the Next Generation who was supposed to be psychic but only managed to look constipated).

So there she is, welcoming me into her home, which looked a little like a left over set from the original TV show, all 1960's interior design, all avocado green and burnt orange (at least that's how I remember it). She offered me a drink and the glass was one they used on the TV show. It was pretty cool.

This is more detail than I intended to write or that you probably care about, but I'm a roll and he's famous so you might be interested and if not, I can't imagine you'd have read this far so just keep reading and all your questions will be answered eventually.

Gene was a very nice man. I enjoyed helping him learn this new contraption and he picked it up quickly. He was even kind enough to read a screenplay I'd written which was a parody of Star Trek called "Spaced Out" which I still think is a funny script if anyone's looking for something funny set in space. And he was nice enough to send me a letter, which I have somewhere with the script, saying how much he enjoyed it. I thought maybe he was just being nice, but it was thoughtful and I appreciated it even if I didn't have enough sense to try to get some writing work out of him.

Of course, his recommendation at the time didn't count for much. The first Star Trek movie hadn't yet come out, so even though he was a cult hero around the world, movie studios not only didn't return his phone calls, if they thought he was calling they didn't even pick up the phone.

See, this is what happens. When you're hot, you're hot. When you're not, you might as well be dead, in fact, you could probably get more work dead, because at least then they had a chance of licensing your likeness for use on novelty items.

So, the reason I mention all this other than to drop a big name and say "Hey, I knew Gene Roddenberry and went to this house and drank from Star Trek Glasses and he gave me an 16mm "outtake reel" which I still have with this business card on it and it must be worth of fortune on eBay," is that I invited Gene to our annual Christmas party.

Now, our party was famous in LA, at least among people who knew us. It took us two weeks of preparation--a week of which was housecleaning--and a week of cooking--and then it lasted from around 6pm until 4am, and then it took two days to clean up after and six months to recover from and while it was great fun we finally reached the point where we couldn't force ourselves to do it again so all our friends presumably went hungry for the holidays.

So I invited Gene. I never expected him to come, but I thought he might like some of our justifiably famous fondue bread, ham slaw, and other delicacies.

So the night of the party comes, and many friends have arrived early, as they often did to ensure they got the food before others had eaten the best bits, and the doorbells rings and there's Gene, and his lovely wife, Majel, both dressed like they were going to the Opera, both in black, her with a large feather boa (the feather boa part may or may not be true, but that's how I remember it).

Of course we ask them to come in (I mean, I invited them after all) and all my friends are pulling me into the kitchen (which is the hotbed of activity anyway because food could be had there even before it made it out to the living room), and they're saying, "Why didn't you tell me Gene Roddenberry was coming?" like 1) I knew, and 2) they would have dressed better if they they'd known?

Gene and Majel were both as charming as humanly possible, talked to everyone like the real people they were, weren't afraid to eat the food and even commented on the ham slaw (of course, everybody did, including one woman who said she was a vegan 364 days a year but let that slide on the day of our party because of the ham slaw and would we please give her the recipe, to which we said "no, because we don't want you to fall off the wagon," and she thanked us for it and then I think she went on to win some big BBQ competition with her recipe for baby back ribs).

Gene and Majel stayed at the part for several hours, then there was a phone call from their son, Rod (that's right, Rod Roddenberry). Did I mention that I was also teaching Rod how to use his computer? He was a very nice kid, maybe 12 or 13 and that was in the 80s when an adult didn't have to worry about being along with a 12 year old in his bedroom, though this reminds me of another story, so please excuse this aside within an aside, we will return to our normally scheduled programming shortly.

After I invited Gene and Majel to my party, Rod invited me to his 13th birthday party. I thought was that was very. So I arrive and the party's going in the back yard by the pool and I look around and notice I'm the only adult invited to the party. That's OK, I can talk with kids, I'm childish. So I'm talking to the kids, and I notice there are other adults, all inside. All watching me. One of them signals for me to come inside, and I do, thinking maybe they want to offer me a part in a sitcom or something (I never said I was realistic).

So this guy asks me, "Are you apparent?" And I think, "No one has ever asked me this before. I think I am apparent, I mean, I'm visible, you can see me, I'm rather wide for my height so it's not like I become invisible if I turn sideways, what on earth are you talking about" but I just say what I always say when I'm not sure what someone said, "Yes."

I see there's a better grade of food inside for the adults and this keeps me inside (I've never been a fan of cupcakes with sprinkles and inside there's something that looks like chocolate cake and I try to make my way towards it).

One by one people stop me and ask, "Are you apparent," and now I'm getting a little freaked out. Maybe, just maybe, I'm not apparent. Maybe Gene hasn't been writing sci-fi all these years, but, in fact, lives in some kind of black hole where some people simply aren't apparent and I've been revealed to be one of those people. I am not sure what this means for my future, but I can imagine there must be some kind of opportunities to be had in being imperceptible. I'm thinking this would make me a very good spy, when yet another adult manages to see me, despite my unapparent nature, and asks the same question to which I once again answer "Yes."

Then they ask me, "Which one is yours?"

OK, now I'm really thrown for a loop because I can't answer, "Yes," and hope to make any sense at all. They look at me, then look outside and I look at them and look outside. Then I look at the chocolate cake and wonder if I can make a run for it, and suddenly it hits me!

"Are you apparent," has actually meant, "Are you a parent?" They've all been asking if I was a parent of one of those kids outside.

And it dawns on me that I have two choices--I can either be "a parent" or I can be an adult male who's somehow crashed a 13 year old boy's birthday party clearly for some nefarious purpose. I mean, why else would a grown man be at a boy's birthday party, other than the fact that he was a parent or a pervert.

I felt really embarrassed that people could even imagine that I was a pervert, so I pointed randomly at one of the kids and said the only word that would come out of my mouth, the ever-popular, "Yes," as if I had been a hippie and thought naming my child "Yes" would have some positive karmic effect.

I left the party shortly thereafter, after 9 more concerned adults asked me, "Are you a parent?" and looked at me as if they were really saying, "Are you a pervert?"

OK, so back to my Christmas party with Gene Roddenberry in attendance. The same kid who invited me to his birthday party was now calling from Hollywood (about two miles away)--collect!

I accepted the charge and put his dad (who was both "a parent" and "apparent") on the phone and they tell me they have to leave to go pick him up, which seems like the "good parent" thing to do, though really, I would think he could have gotten home somehow, I mean, a 13 year old boy in Hollywood, you do the math).

So they leave, and everyone's mad at us for not telling them Gene was coming and I'm like, "Here's some more ham slaw," and they all shut up about it and the party goes on until 4am by which time it was so foggy the fog was literally coming into the windows like something from a sci-fi movie (which once again makes me wonder about my place in the universe or at least my sanity) and some people had to sleep in the living room since they went downstairs but couldn't see their feet and decided it would be wise not to drive.

Again, I have managed to skip merrily around the point of Gene and my Christmas party, but the point is, when you're down in the entertainment biz, anyone can be your friend. And Gene was down, and I was his friend. Temporarily.

While I was helping him he was working on the "bible" (a detailed concept) for a new show called "Star Trek, the Next Generation." He gave me a copy. I read it.

I felt sorry for him. He had characters with stupid names like Jean Luc Picard. How could a captain be French? How could he have a name like a Parisian waiter? The bible talked about how the lead character was split in two, with Picard being the elder statesmen, the brains. And then there was Lt. Riker (another bad name) who was the brawny one who could take off his shirt and fall in love with alien women who would then be doomed to die right before the end of the episode so he could continue to "seek out new life and new civilizations."

I thought all the character names were embarrassingly bad. Jordie La Forge? A blind French guy? Oh please. Dr. Crusher. Are you shitting me? And then the psychic one who could never quite figure out anything (the fact that she looked constipated wasn't stipulated in the script, it must have been something the actress brought to the part).

I never told Gene I thought his new series sounded pathetically bad, because he was excited about it, and I was at least smart enough to keep my mouth shut. So the show was bought, and I didn't even think of asking if I could write for it because, like I said, it was clearly so stupid it would never run, though still, I could have written one episode, but I was never good at making use of my connections which is why my Hollywood career went nowhere. If I'd been really smart I would have slept with him.

OK, so Star Trek the Next Generation is a huge international hit and next year, guess what, Gene doesn't come to my Christmas party. I don't blame him, now he's really busy, and I am nobody, but I hope the busy part was the reason he couldn't come, even though I suspect it was a combination of the two.

So my point, if you are still reading and there's really no reason why you should be, is that, oh who am I fooling, I don't even remember where I was going with all this. Let me stop for a moment and read back before all this Gene name dropping and see what I was trying to say...

Hold on...

Still reading...

Oh, yes, staying in touch with people you worked with. So if the people you work with don't hit the big times, they may very well stay in touch with you. Then again, they may not, as some of my previous co-stars didn't, either because they didn't like me or they changed phone numbers and forgot to tell me, because they didn't like me, or they were just forgetful. I think Patty McCormack, famous for being "The Bad Seed" was just forgetful because she seemed to like me and we had fun together.

The two biggest names in my first film foray were Ray Walston (famous for "My Favorite Martian" and "Damn Yankees") never stayed in touch, probably because I never got him to give me his phone number. And Avery Shreiber (famous for "Car 54 where are you" and the first "Doritos" commercials) also never kept in touch, because he died, which I had nothing to do with, and also means he wasn't just trying to avoid me, or, if he was, that was an awfully long way to go.

So--I've e-mailed people I worked with on this movie and so far one of them has e-mailed back, Rita, who was so nice I expected her to, though I don't know if I ever will again, because it's possible she doesn't like me, either, but then I just kind of assume that about people, which doesn't say much for my self esteem.

I guess that makes me an egotist with low self-esteem. I wonder if that's a new category or yet another clichéd aspect of my personality.

Oh, Rita just e-mailed again. That's good. But it's late, and I'm not happy with this blog entry. I don't come out of it sounding very good. Tomorrow I'll write something more positive. I think I'm just tired because of allergies and that always makes my energy and self-esteem drop. Tomorrow I will realize that when people die I can't possibly expect them to return my calls or take it personally when they don't.

Back to Frigging Reality

It doesn't take long for the magic to wear off, and you find yourself taking out the trash.

There's a reason actors go from one movie to another, no matter how bad, and that's because they want to be in that lovely little moviemaking bubble.

Reality is boring.

I read somewhere that the great Christopher Walken will accept any role just so he can be on the set with other actors. And why not. You're around interesting people. You're catered to. There's always food around, including normally taboo stuff like donuts which is inexplicably acceptable on "Craft Services" tables. There's so much time between shots you can basically sleep most of the day. What's not to like?

Yet here I am, back at home, dragging a trash can down the driveway. I'll bet Tom Cruise doesn't do this (though Katie probably does). It's not like I want to be like Tom Cruise, perish the thought. I don't mind being crazy but I don't want to be nuts.

I don't need to be a star. I don't even need to be treated like a star.

I just want people to be nice to me all the time while I sit near a table covered in dessert. Is that too much to ask? I think not. But the world seems to think so.

Movie Premiere

Cut to...

The big movie premiere at the Santa Barbara Film Festival!

It's all very exciting because the festival is touting the disarmingly charming and talented George Clooney and intense Heath Ledger, both as hot as people can be in Hollywood without spontaneously combusting. Genius actor Philip Seymour Hoffman and "I'm king of the world, woo woo" director James Cameron rounded out the cavalcade of stars.

This made the whole thing way more exciting than it had any business being, even if our chances of actually seeing any of those white hot celebs was about as high as their wanting to see us.

But that didn't stop me from making this my e-mail autoresponder message:

Hello:

I'm in Southern California this week to attend the Santa Barbara Film Festival premiere of a film I appear in called "The Uniform Motion of Folly," (http://www.uniformmotion.com). I know that was a long sentence and I apologize.

As I'm sure you'll understand, spending time with Clooney and Ledger and Watts means I'll have less time for e-mail.

I will be back in the office on the 15th unless I find myself at George's villa in Lake Como. Hmm, let's see, Villa on lake Como with Clooney or ansering e-mail... Don't worry, I have a feeling it will be the e-mail, but that's OK, I love email from *you*

So thanks for your patience and if you haven't heard from me by the 15th feel free to e-mail me again, just to make sure Hell hasn't frozen over and I have found myself in Lake Como.

Respectfully (while trying to keep my head from expanding to Macy's baloon size)

]) /\ |\| | (- |_

Should I keep you in suspence? Am I writing this from Clooney's crib or from the crackerbarrel? What does "crackerbarrel mean" It's hip hop slang, get with the program, dog.

I won't tell you yet, but I will say that Clooney's collaborator, Grant Heslov, got in line right behind me (yes, I was in line, the short "we are special" line vs. the "we are waiting to see the special people" long line that wrapped around the corner.)

I said "Hello" which was big for me, since I tend to just kind of stammer when faced with "special" people (so I end up seeing "special" in the wrong way), and he asks if this is the line for some movie I've never heard. If I had been thinking I'd have said, "Yes, yes it is, you can get right in front of me in line here..." then fooled him into seeing our film.

But I didn't have a chance because some woman with bright purple hair blurted out, "No, it's the Motion of Uniformity or something!" to which Grant scowled and shuffled off as if he might accidentally get sucked into our swirling vortex of schlock. So much for our second-hand brush with Clooney. Wait! It could still happen...

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

First, we had to get to Santa Barbara, which of course meant renting a car again, as my wife refuses to step onto an aircraft without being either heavily sedated or in a coma or both. I tried to sedate her but she noticed the large lump in her ice cream and coughed it up. So we rented a car. A Dodge Charger which is basically a Chrysler 300 with hips. Nice comfortable seats. Good accelaration and handling. Totally dead steering. Enough about that.

We drove down to LA in record time, partially because when I take my nap my wife takes it as an excuse to drive as fast as the car will take us, in this case 110 miles per hour, or so she says.

In LA we stay with friends, because being a big movie star now I don't have to stay at hotels, I stay with friends who have a guest house, or in this case, a guest "suite" which has two whole rooms and is perched at the top of Beverly  Glen, which if you know anything about LA real estate, you know is "Beverly Hills Adjacent" and prime real estate.

We love staying with our friends because 1) they have cool kids, and 2) it's free and they don't mind us freeloading off them because we bring a lot of deli meats and baked goods as all freeloading guests should do.

We eschewed spending the night in Santa Barbara because 1) we love the word "eschew" and otherwise might not have been able to use it, and 2) it was a weekend and even horrible hotels charge $200 a night, which is far more than, say a half pound of extra lean corned beef and some cookies, the price of our pad in LA. And I oddly enjoy taking a shower in a tub that's also home to a waterlogged Barbie and a gaggle of plastic dinosaurs.

The day of the premiere we drive up to Santa Barbara, which takes about an hour and a half in traffic that reminds me of the only problem with Santa Barbara--it's too close to LA.

Parking's a challenge, but we manage with enough time to first do what all film luminaries do before their big premieres--discount shopping. I found nothing, but my wife came out with three pairs of shoes, including suede boots with a leopard print. Somehow I don't think Health Ledger was buying his new wife Michelle shoes before his big premiere, but who knows, I could be wrong, afterall he's tapped into his feminine side with  Brokeback Mountain.

Speaking of my feminine side, I had fretted over what to wear to the big premiere. I couldn't be too formal, as it was afternoon, and although February, it was very warm, around 85 degrees, so I had to dress as if it was a summer. If you're too formal in California, especially in summer, it's just kind of sad, like you didn't know better. So I tried for casually chic or chicly casual or in other words, dressed slightly better than attendees in hopes I would stand out. In case you really want to know, I wore nice black cargo pants, a black t-shirt and a colorful striped shirt with flowers.

We got to the theater and I was stunned to see people lined up around the block. To see the movie I was in. Wait, I have photos to prove it!

Naturally my first thought was, "This is the wrong theater," but no, it was the right one. My next thought was, "All these people are in the wrong line," but no, they were waiting to see "The Uniform Motion of Folly."

...

The premiere went well, the movie turned out better than I hoped it would --the new editing and especially the soundtrack with it's songs written to precisely fit the situations made it come together. I laughed. I cried. What more could you want? Grant Heslov doesn't know what he missed!

I'm not sure about my acting, people said I was very natural, which is what I was going for, but I still think my eyebrows are like coked-up caterpillars.

One guy came up to me and said, "You were awesome!" which I thought was interesting coming from a guy who looked like he watched a lot of Star Wars. I would have thought I'd bore him, but perhaps I resembled a space alien. Or at least my eyebrows did. Maybe he saw it as a slow sci-fi parable where some space parasite attached itself to my face in lieu of eyebrows. That must be it.

It really is very strange watching yourself being someone else who looks like you and is kind of like you only different but not that much. I loved doing it but was a little uncomfortable watching myself! Apparently this is not uncommon, Johnny Depp never watches himself. So, wow, I'm kind of like Depp, only not as talented!

Next... It's not easy being famous, and especially not staying famous. Not that I would know.