1:00 AM Santa Monica part 2

… There’s something going on outside, I said, and we both went out the front door and to the edge of the drive way. The cops were crowded around something  or someone just down the block, but a fear kept us from straying past our own driveway even on to the sidewalk.  In your own driveway curiosity is a right, bought and paid for, but an officer saw us and gave us a stern look and took one step in our direction that sent us scurrying   -rights be damned- back into the safety of inside. We went straight  to the office where we could see the scene pretty well through a high window but we needed to stand on our toes.  Our view was some what obscured by a tree. I opened one of the windows so at least we could  hear.

You fucking bitch!
Hey! if you yell at her again then our whole attitude here is going to change! You get me?
I love you!  He moaned without irony

And then they walked him away from the corner and made him sit down in the neighbors drive way. He was close to us now, the whole scene only twenty feet away.  One corner of the window had the better view and Sarah Jane and I traded off standing in the sweet spot, and the one always whispered commentary to the other.

They have a man sitting on the ground now.
Really?
What kind of man?
It’s hard to say.

About ten feet  away from the man a cop was going through clothes in a trash bag.  The cop wore rubber gloves and took each garment out carefully, inspected  it  thoroughly and then tossed it to the ground.  The man watched and then after a while he hugged his knees into his chest and put his head down.

The switching off  was getting old and their seemed to be a lull in the action, so we took time away from the scene and together we moved the desk that was in the way  so we could both see if we crammed our faces together into the corner of the window.

Shit! Something had gone on in our absence, and  I felt foolish for ever having let my attention wander. An officer was holding up a sweatshirt and after a moment the man took it and put it on.

Maybe, at the time of the crime the criminal was wearing a hoodie, and they found it in his stuff and  they want to see if it fits him, you know to see if he’s their guy.
Like Cinderella.
Yeah, only instead of a virgin girl who went to a ball that outclassed her, he’s a criminal just after having committed a terrible crime.

The Perp again sat on the ground hugging his knees, now wearing a sweatshirt.

Maybe he was cold and he complained so they gave him one of his own hoodies to wear.
Maybe.

The cops shuttled back and fourth from the corner where it seemed that they were talking to someone else, maybe the victim, or another perp, an accomplice  or the woman from earlier  the one both scorned and loved.

By and by, all the cops came to the neighbor’s driveway and they stood in a circle around the man. Eight of them, and they stood mostly fists on hips, legs spread slightly, arms akimbo and for a moment it looked as if they were getting ready to do a Rodney King on the man.

Tomorrow… how it all ended.

1:00 AM in Santa Monica

1:00 AM

It was about one AM when it happened. Sarah Jane and I had just come home from a dinner at a friend’s house. We had spent the evening listening to a long story about a movie he was working on but quit after a couple of weeks. He had been abused, humiliated,  and treated as if he were less than  he is. We listened to his story with rapt attention because parts of it were funny and outrageous not only in the contempt his torturers showed him but that which they showed everyone around them. As a whole though the story was sad.  He was glad to be home where he was respected and loved and, although he did not say it, I’m sure he was also worried about money. The job had meant a lot of money to him and not having it meant that he would struggle. Quitting could not have been an easy choice.

Sarah Jane and I  talked about his story on the way home and when we got home I was in the office and the shade was not yet drawn and I was checking my email because I can’t stop, because I am desperate for somebody to acknowledge my hard work and email is the most likely form that acknowledgement would take. It did not really matter that it was One AM on a Sunday morning,  I am an optimist, it could come, after all it was not one AM everywhere and we had been out since six.

My in box was empty.

I checked again, just to be sure and was just about to draw the shade when the police cars drove up and stopped in front of my house. Cherries blazing but silent, they came from both directions. Four cruisers. Cops poured out from the cars and they all ran toward the corner of Lincoln and Pacific.

I’ll tell you what happened tomorrow…

Barak Obama

I spent the time I was supposed to dedicate to writing my blog watching election coverage on CNN. It wasn’t exactly breaking news, but i did get the feeling that history was unfolding in front of me. While I guess that is always true, rarely do we feel it. Having done little more than bear witness, I felt proud and in awe.

Sarah Jane Drummey’s reel

Below is Sarah Jane Drummey’s reel. Sarah Jane recently moved to LA from London. For the most part she has worked in Irish and British theater, often appearing at the National Theater in London as well as the Abbey Theater in Dublin. She came to LA because she wanted to do more film and TV, and in the spirit of full disclosure, to live with… me. (yep she’s my wife to be). Within a couple months of landing on our fair shores she scored a guest starring role on ER. Although she has great representation now, at the time she was represented by no one but herself. Talk about brass.
This fall US audiences will be able to catch Sarah Jane on stage as Pegeen Mike in the US tour of the Druid Theater’s production of The Playboy of the Western World, directed by Garry Hynes. (Stay tuned for tour dates).

Her reel contains clips from ER, a film called Rory O’Shea Was Here, with James Mc Avoy and a clip from an Irish film titled Bloom. Although she had quite a few other clips to choose from she decided not to include them. She wanted a simple reel that shows her off, in three distinct types of roles. And I totally agree with her. Often more of the same is simply that, more of the same.

Have a secret….

Something about talking about the “things you are going to do” seems to diminish those very things. Talking about future plans, steals energy from those very plans
The same holds true for things you have already done. Real accomplishment can have its luster worn away by constant recounting.
However, knowing that you are going to do something, and not talking about it has a power that is hard to describe. It puts you one up like a poker player with pocket kings.

Also

Not touting your past accomplishments has that same power. Even better, pocket aces, and most likely to be tuned over by someone else, when they get curious enough.

How are we to live…. Part 2

I have noticed something about people lately. I have noticed that I am a attracted to people who appear to be in harmony with their own perception of themselves, just as I am repulsed by people who appear to be indisharmony. I can only assume that my experience is not unique.

Disharmony ( of this particular sort) is easier to describe so I will start there. A person in a state of disharmony sees themselves differently from the job they are doing on that day. The perception of disharmony is ( an this is the important bit) heightened by a attempts on their part, to bring you around to their way of seeing themselves.

For example: not long ago I was working on a commercial ( as an Art PA) and I met a woman who had been hired as a shopper. I had not known her one minute before she told me that generally she is not a shopper but an art director and that she only took the gig because she needed the money. I heard her repeat this three other times through out the day. And each time I wondered how we were supposed to receive this information. Should we treat her as an art director because that is what she is ( although as it happens on that day she was not)? Should we feel sorry for her that she has fallen on hard times?

The truth was as an art PA I understood her circumstance very well. I did not want to be working in the capacity that I was in either. I wanted to tell her, “I hear ya sister, I too have commanded more respect than I am getting today. I too see myself differently than I appear on this day. Others have seen me differently too. However, I kept my mouth shut. I do most of the time, although it is hard and some days are better than others. I kept my moth shut because saying you Are something ( like a writer or an actor) does not make it so. Wanting to be something does not make it so. Having been something at one time, or even many times in the past does not make it so. What you are on any given day is what you are!

No, I take it back… a day is too long. What you are in any given moment is what you are. If you are a grip by day but you are writing a screenplay at night, than at night at least you are a writer, no less a writer then George Bernard Shaw, or Ethan Cohen . It is after all the same animal involved in the very same noble act.

I think the way to move away from disharmony is to have a secret life, and a life that you live right next to it, one in which you make money however you can. However, mixing the two…

More on that tomorrow.

How do we live when we are not who we are?

In my country I am a doctor…
Really, I’m an actor….
I’ve written six features, I am just doing this until my agent gets off her ass and makes a deal…
I am a designer, I am just helping out here but really…
Visit any film set, out of one hundred people on the set, four of those people are referred to by the reverent  yet infantilizing word talent, there is the Director, the producers, and the other ninety are crew. OF those ninety somewhere around forty are who they are not. They are grips who are really actors. PA’s with screen plays, Electricians who are really directors, ect, ect, ect… As a matter of act I have to go to work myself ( art department). My next couple of  posts will be a discussion of the disconnect between how we see ourselves  and the reality of our days. I could use some help if anyone would like to chime in.

The loss of a reader

I was chided by my brother Cort who said that if I’m to have a successful a blog then I had a responsibility to post every day.
But I’ve been working fifteen hours a day. I protested.
I have a tendency to exaggerate under duress.
Well…okay, but you’re going to lose half your readers.
But I only have two readers!
Exactly, and you’ve already lost me.

The Value of Brass

I woke up this morning and for some reason I was thinking about Waleed Zuaiter. He played the part of Ashraf in Sixteen Wounded The part could be described as a one scene/leading role . The play pivots on his entrance and exit. He got the roll by pure persistence and brass. He had wanted to audition for the part of Mahmoud, the lead, but no auditions were ever held for the role because the part had simply been offered to Omar Metwally. Waleed didn’t care, he wanted to be seen anyway. He wanted us to know what we’d missed. He made a few phone calls to Binder Casting… nothing. So he picked up a bouquet of flowers and brought them to the receptionist. She was stunned.

As luck would have it, just as he was delivering the flowers who happed by but Jay Binder of Binder Casting. He explained to Jay his purpose. Jay happened to need a reader for the next day’s auditions.

The next day… we were looking at Women , casting the part of Nora. It was a long day of not finding what we were looking for, however Waleed was great, and he got to read for the part not one time but ten and he got better and better throughout the day, and at six o clock, it was unanimous, the only way to get any value out of the day was to cast Waleed as Omar’s understudy.

Waleed was thrilled, however that’s just were this story begins…

Tomorrow…. The rest.

No video today…but

I do have a movie recommendation. Son of Rambow What a great film. If you grew up in the eighties, if you had a rich fantasy life as a child… i know, I describe quite a few movies, right? yeah. But somehow this one managed a trick that in my mind separates art from the rest, it managed to avoid both easy sentimentality and easier still, cynicism, so as to deliver authenticity. It’s that simple, right? Move over ET, it’s The Son of Rambow’s turn at the wheel.