Diary Friday

This is something I began in my old blog: Diary Fridays. Because I am insane, I have about three boxes of old journals lying around, dating back to tortured adolescence. Every Friday, I post something randomly from one of these journals. There is no rhyme or reason to it, I don’t care about chronology. One of the reasons why I started sifting through my journals again (something I rarely do) is because now that I am writing more, the journals act as potential lightning rods. I will read something, some event, long-forgotten, and it will set off a spark in my brain: That’s a starting point, that’s an interesting story … write about that.

The following entry is a list of impressions I had after wrapping my first film.

June 30, 1997 2 a.m.

We just wrapped. Mercury’s in retrograde.

Images from the shoot:

I fell in love with all of the tech guys. Their hard work. Their no-nonsense practical humorous personalities.

It was so hot that our makeup staying on became a group crisis. Mike Z., one of the production assistants, was given the assignment to FAN me and Jen. He was like our very own Roman slave.

Jen and I sat out on the fire escape, catching the breeze.

The lighting and sound people just kill me. Their toolbelts, clothespins clipped to their shirts, drenched in sweat, trouble-shooting, solving problems left and right.

Very intense.

Me to Jen: “We are wearing a lot of makeup right now.”

Acting in a film was so new. At first it didn’t feel like acting to me. The lack of continuity, shooting out of sequence, shooting the same two seconds over and over. But … I think I have taken to it. The DP called me a “pro” which meant the world to me because he really is a pro.

Ian, holding the light meter up to my face. Tears were streaming down my cheeks, in preparation for the next shot. He was in darkness, I was standing in the shaft of light (which it had taken them three hours to set up). I whispered to him, “Am I in the right place?” He said, in a low voice, that light meter by my cheek, he in total darkness, “You’re in the right place.” Now: he just meant that I hit my mark and I just meant Have I hit my mark? But – suddenly – there was a deeper meaning attached to the exchange, having to do with my life. Am I in the right place? Have I got here in time? Am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing? And suddenly, after he said, “You’re in the right place”, I was in tears for real. I mean, I already had been in tears for real, but they were tears I had worked and prepared for. Professional actress tears. The second tears were of a very different kind. They were real, and NO WORK AT ALL had to be done to keep them going.

But that low voice of his, and the words he said, it was really all I needed from then on, in take after take after take after take. Makeup touchups, light adjustments, etc. I’d have to get involved with something technical – move left, move right, hold the jacket this way – Then I’d get back to myself, I’d hear his soft voice, “You’re in the right place”, and all of the feeling would come up again.

In retrospect, I’m not even positive that it really happened. It seems like a dream … Ian’s voice, what he said.

So many funny impressions from the shoot. Jen and I playing our intense little scene on the bed with TEN PEOPLE clustered around us, the boom dangling, everyone just RIGHT THERE WITH US in our scene.

Ian rigged the lights for a specific shot in such a hilarious and creative way. It was like Apollo 13. Everybody rushing around trying to solve problems, and the solutions people came up with! Ian finished his contraption, stood back from it, and yelled out to the entire room: “NOBODY TOUCH THIS.”

There was a shot of my hands holding the diary, and tears had to drip down onto the page, blurring the ink. So Neil and Kristen huddled together, feverishly trying to come up with a solution that, when drippd onto the page, would look like a mascara-filled teardrop. They were like mad scientists, and everything was deadly serious.

There were too many blank pages in the prop diary so Cheryl feverishly filled in blank pages, writing down heartfelt entries SO FAST — they needed the journal for the next shot — I read them later and it was so damn FUNNY. “Today down at the gazebo, I think I learned what love really is.” Cheryl!

And then Neil, hovering over my head from behind, dripping his teardrop solution down onto the page. The camera right behind me, everyone standing around watching. The way the first drop fell, it was as though I had cried a teardrop the size of a dinner platter. Everyone ROARED with laughter. John, our British DP, murmured, “Oh, blimey, look at that.”

Then for the shot where I show the tattoo on my stomach. I was lying on the bed, holding up my shirt, lights blaring downon me — Neil was to apply the tattoo. He and Mike Z. had tested how the tattoos looked on themselves, so the two of them were basically covered in random fake tattoos. I was so charmed by that. These two big jocky guys wearing goof-ball tattoos on their biceps. So everyone was waiting, and watching. Neil put the tattoo on my stomach. “Blow your stomach out.” Which I did. Ian then dashed over and held the light meter next to my stomach. Click. Mark dashed over with his tape measure, held one end on my rib cage and pulled it back to the camera. All while Neil was holding the sponge down on me, applying the tattoo. I was starting to get the giggles.

Then he peeled it off and BLEW ON IT – frantically — like a madman — to dry it in time for the shot. I barely know this man. He’s Rebecca’s boyfriendand here he is blowing on my stomach.

Shelagh, the director, to Barbara, the PA: “Barbara, you can go get the babylegs and highhat, yes?”
Barbara: “Well, I — ah — um, I have no idea what those are, but yes, I can get them.”

Shelagh, to me and Jen, after seeing dailies: “You guys are not you!”

Neil, right before a shot, literally right before John called out “Action”, said: “Wait, stop!” — raced out onto the set to grab his cup which he had raccidentally left behind on the bureau. The cup was clearly labeled: NEIL

Neil, standing on top of a ladder, keeping himself awake by blinking hard.

Shelagh at one point went into hysterical laughter and threw herself down onto one of the beds, in hysterics. Marco, fiddling with the camera, said, without turning around, “Everybody has to calm down.”

Jen and I, in our over-the-top rave-chick makeup, staggered home to Hoboken every night at 3, 4 in the morning. We called ourselves “Hoboken Whores”.

Marco, racing around with five tools in his hand, doing 10 things at once, suddenly stopped and confessed to me, “I have had way too much sugar.”

John, Marco, and Neil bustled about with equipment like Oompa Loompas.

Mike Z. started as a lowly production assistant and by the end of the shoot was a full-blown gaffer.
“Mike, grab me that black wrap–”
“Mike, do we have another C stand?”
“Mike, tear off some opal for us–”

I still can’t get over Cheryl, Neil, and Kristen FRANTICALLY working to get the smudges in the diary, Cheryl FRANTICALLY whipping out lovelorn passages to be then immediately smudged by Neil.

Cheryl also played the old crone who we knock down in the street. We were shooting over on 27th Street, and Cheryl had her dress hiked up to her neck, getting a pillow duct-taped to her underwear, in full-view on the street.

We shot on Orchard Street and crowds gathered to watch. One drunken man came up to me as I was standing around waiting, he was drunk and it was 10 in the morning, and he blithered at me, “You look like that girl in FiahStahtah.”

Uh … Do you mean Firestarter? And that was Drew Barrymore in Firestarter … Drew Barrymore was 7 years old in FiahStahtah. I look 7?

Everyone has their specific job to do on a set. Every job is valued. Barbara setting up the craft services table. Making coffee. So essential.

Matt, the sound guy, a Libra, total sweetheart. Had been to two wrap parties in two days. He had big black circles around his eyes as though he had been receiving electroshock therapy.

Jen and I helped each other through it all. Checking in, keeping focused. The fire escape, the breeze, the billowing flag, the hazy view of World Trade, the beautiful light in the air.

Calling upon the muses. The acting muses. It is amazing how reliable this work can be, how it allows you to drop into different realities truthfully.

At one point, one TINY piece of hair was sticking up out of my head. Ian said it would look huge, so suddenly, all at once, Ian, Marco, and John, all reached out, 3 hands coming at me, and they all touched my hair, smoothing down the stray strand.

We lost our makeup person on the second half of the third day, and MARCO, the first AD did our touchups. This little tough-guy, holding a powder puff.

It was so hot that first day. We shot in a stairwell the entire day. Ian and Paul were so sweaty that I feared for their health. Ian told Marco: “I drank two gallons of water and I peed ONCE.” Glanced at me shyly. “Sorry.” (Deference to the Hoboken Whore’s delicate sensibilities.)

The pizzaria guy let us use his bathroom on Orchard. The shoe store guy let us in to use the mirror. The fat Hasidic man told us not to block his store, he was very rude. People took pictures of us. Everyone loves the movies.

During Jen’s last shot, where she dissolves, I was watching — and instead of watching her I watched everyone else watching her. Let me try to explain what I saw, because to me, it is the thrill of movie-making. Everything was so vivid, so over-exposed, over-magnified. The quiet, the seriousness, the intentness. Marco watching her. But he wasn’t a spectator, like an audience-member. He wasn’t watching her acting. He was watching a million things at once – the lights, the shadows, if she hit her marks, how it all looks — then John says “Cut”, and Marco goes right back to being a bustling Oompa Loompa, fiddling with the camera again.

The same goes for everyone else. Everyone has their domain. Me and Jen have the acting domain. We are all a team, we all need each other. It was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life.

I loved Matt, the beleaguered sound guy. I said, “So tell me about being a sound guy.” There was a long pause and he then confessed, with wry humor, “It’s a shit life.” I can see what he’s talking about. The sound guy has to wait and wait and wait, holding that huge boom … he conceivably could ruin everything if a truck goes by while the scene happens and he doesn’t catch it … Nobody appreciates the sound guy. So on our last night of filming, poor Matt: He had been waiting around for two, three hours, to record the wild lines. Just as we sat down to begin, an enormous fireworks display started going off literally at the end of the block. The black circles deepened under Matt’s eyes.

Right before we shot one of the scenes on the bed, I said to Neil, sort of shyly, not wanting to be a pain in the ass actress, “Is there a wallet for the money?” He looked at me with a blank and yet totally alert expression. “A wallet?” Shelagh, nearby, nodded. “We need a wallet.” Neil nodded briefly, a can-do man, and dashed off, in a complete panic. Literally 30 seconds later he came back with the perfect wallet. I have no idea where he got it. He conjured it out of thin air.

The filming of the fight scene was awesome. “Just go bonkers,” John said, because he was doing the whole thing hand-held. So we did. We went bonkers. Finally, there was room for some chaos, for happy accidents, like when I fell on the floor and grabbed onto her leg, and she spun me around, laughing maniacally. After three days of hitting marks, and doing only snippets of scenes, it was so freeing to go nuts. And know that John was catching it all.

The last shot of the shoot was a close-up of the black velvet bag, propped up on my green fur blanket, lit gorgeously. It was 1:30 in the morning, everyone was breaking stuff down, only Shelagh and John stayed by the camera filming the bag for about four minutes, so the credits can roll over it when the film is complete. It was beautifully arranged, but the whole thing suddenly felt so random. Like: What in the world are we all doing?? And then John and Shelagh walked away, when they were done, but no one turned off the special lights, and the room was empty. And in the center of the empty room, with nobody around, was this glowing beautiful random bag with a movie camera pointed at it.

Why is that image just so damn beautiful to me? So symbolic? It seems to me that that image alone says everything you need to know about the life of an artist.

Am I in the right place?
You’re in the right place.

This entry was posted in Diary Friday. Bookmark the permalink.

1 Response to Diary Friday

  1. Nicole says:

    I thought about doing that but found all of my old paper diary entries are mortifyingly embarrassing! *grin*

Comments are closed.