Movie Shoot – Day 11
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We’re in the flats. The desert stretches out in front of me, shimmery with heat – the hottest of hot. Little yellow pinprick buds are flowering on the cacti. Tiny springtime delights. Other than that, sparse bushes, dry, dry sand, even dryer distant rock mountains.
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…Actor-Man is back on a Greyhound bus to L.A. And I’m getting some much needed me time. Today will be a pretty laid back day, doing catch-up scenes and transitions. The DP catches a great shot of me where I walk into the shot in a closeup and then walk off. Real gritty cowgirl desert renegade look. Like John Wayne – if John Wayne was Italian-Latin looking and a girl. A tough as rocks expression with the underlying pained angst of someone who’s ridden the desert sands too long and lived through hairy stuff.
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I think of how lucky I am to have acting. It’s brought me closer to my own humanity, just the working of it day to day, year to year, discovering what makes me tick as a human, what are my griefs, triumphs, failures, what gets me, what angers me or drives me crazy, even – sometimes – what makes me kind. Right now I get to explore all that humanity in this movie I’ve written and created. Sometimes that gives me a lump in my throat and a fear in my belly. Can I live up to this?
I mean, what if the film sucks? What if the thing I’ve dreamt of forever, worked on forever, put all my blood, sweat, and tears into, all my own money into – my dreams and passion into – what if it just sucks? It’s a possibility. But you gotta risk sucking even for the smallest chance of being great. Play in the mud puddle, make ugly mudpies, get real dirty. Maybe fail a hundred times or a thousand times or a million times before the one success. Yeah, it’s worth it. I breathe deeply and dive back in.
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On to a little monologue on top of a hill. We end up doing it right by the place the gunslingers were shooting the other day. Today, the only sound is the wind. And a crow once in a while. Well, and the planes. I swear our movie shoot could have been done in half the time if you don’t count all the seconds, minutes, and hours we waited for a wind gust to die down or a plane to go through. Out in nowhereland, planes have zoomed through every movie location we’ve been on, no matter how remote.
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There’s no more Tony the caterer. He kept raising the rates every day or two. When I pointed it out, he went all Mafioso on me. So today we have Lou driving somewhere to find a place to buy lunch. She’s late – very late – two hours late. Where is she? Phones don’t work out here.
Almost three hours later, she drives back, breathless with stress. She got lost – three times. No navigation. She found a little Mexican restaurant somewhere. The quality of the food is kinda low – the bill is kinda high.
Then a sunset mini scene of me at a campfire eating my first gutted rattlesnake. I actually have to eat some of this liquid-latex-jello I’ve shaped into pale snake-chunk hunks. It tastes like I am poisoning myself. I swallow. Yes, I have to swallow. The camera is watching. At the very end of the bite, a sweet industrial little after-taste. Yum.
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We are now done, except for one last day off. And then – the very last day of our principal shoot. It will be a doozy so I’d better rest up. But I can’t.
I’m headed back to L.A. I leave my crew nested at a new motel near the abandoned animal shelter we will use as our hospital. With Lou in charge of one of my credit cards for crew meals. Oh, I hope she is frugal as Scrooge.
I’m picking up medical equipment rentals – privacy screen, vital signs monitor, IV drip machine, other medical looking things, just because well, they look medical. Also, hospital gowns, trays, oxygen nose pieces, medical bracelets – the medical knick knacks that make a film look real. All this for about four hundred bucks, thanks to the poor filmmaker discount.
A nighttime drive in misty rain, back to the motel. For the first time in our shoot, us desert rats are going to be inside, filming in a civilized, though decrepit, building. It’s a tall order to fill – to turn this abandoned animal shelter into a hospital…
I’m supposed to get back in time to get the place ready tonight. But as the rain stops and I arrive, ready to unload equipment, I remember… pick up Actor-Man at the Greyhound Bus Station – for – the – last – time.
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