Two in One Day

I read a story in the LA Times this morning about a blog called, Totally Unauthorized. It's written by a female juicer and done quite well. At least it's got me all misty and nostalgic for the 14-17 hour days (and nights) of pain and suffering.

In truth, I liked working on a film crew. There's something about it that's exciting and fun and you can, though not always, get paid pretty well for it. I always loved it when we blew stuff up and did big stunts, stuff like that - stuff you just don't see in everyday life (unless you live in Iraq.) It's funny too, how the horror stories, the stories of freezing cold, or blazing heat always seem to get me nostalgic. I made great friends and even got one of two on screen credits (though not many.)

But it's been a while and I'm on to other things (the last real show I worked on, other than commercials, was Lizzie McGuire and it was a wonderful way to go out. Great crew, great cast, everyone was friendly and nice and we had KILLER hours. I would actually be home by dinner most nights.) As I mentioned in my earlier post, I'm out of the union and officially done ACing. It was a tough decision for me to make, because getting in was an accomplishment that I was proud of and I put 10 years into it, but I can't go back to crew work now. It's too hard on family life and it's too hard on a directing career. I thought that working on crew, working your way up from the factory floor, as a mentor of mine once said, would give you some credibility (I actually know HOW to make a film) but it doesn't. I started to get a lot more responses to my directing resume once I took my camera assisting work off of it.

The problem is I love the business and I'm good at what I do (pardon the tiny ego trip.) In fact I've become kind of an idiot savant about film making and I feel it's what I was meant to be doing. The trick is I'm not very good at promoting myself and pushing myself (in spite of my mini ego trip only a couple of sentences back,) and in Hollywood that's 98% of the job. Looking back on it, I think it would have been a lot better had I been good at say, real estate or law or finance, but alas...

It's slow

My world has slowed down. Not my actual world, but my film world. I have so many things going on, so many ways I'm trying to actually make money that my film world has taken a back seat. Well, until now. I've started writing again in earnest and I intend to make something happen soon.

It seems, Grande Con Carne, the film, has died on the vine. One of my principal actors has moved to another state and although that shouldn't stop me, I may let it. The idea of writing a film as I went along and shooting it as I went along, seemed like a lot of fun, but it actually drove me NUTS. It wasn't right and although there were shining moments - and I discovered some very happy things about friends - the overall experience wasn't my cup of tea. Given the way I like to direct, given how I want to know everything there is to know about a story, inside and out - this just wasn't the way to do it.

THOUGH - my crew and cast were fantastic and I think I can easily make a film with them - with the technical limitations that we had - I just need it to be the right film.

In other news, I'm officially out of the camera union. Thank God.