I decided I need to find something new to do with my life, which ended up being writing this blog. Sure, about 10 years late, but that's the story of my life. And I can't necessarily decide if I'm writing this in the hopes that other people will read it and at the very least be amused or if I'm writing it so hopefully I can figure out what exactly I'm doing in the film business.
I can say one thing there is no other business where the people involved will never cease to amaze me, whether it's shocking, ridiculous, moronic, or any one of a 1,000 emotions and reactions you can imagine. Each project gets more and more hyper surreal and visceral. The only thing I can ever manage to mutter in the face of human oddity is, "Wow?!." Somehow I've chosen to spend my life inside 'Clock Work Orange' and it's making me stronger and killing me all at the same time, I think it's called the Bossanova.
As not to bore myself with starting at the start and dragging through the trenches of the past to the oh so delicately balanced present, here's a quick how and why from the days of o'er a la warp speed. I went to college for fashion design at 18, found I enjoyed libations and men a lot, and left college, blah, blah, blah happened I got pregnant at 27, had a healthy baby boy and then went back to college in film, graduated, moved to a tax credit state and here I am after 13 years, in a small rental with my husband (also in the business) and several dogs, in a great city.
ONE WEEK EARLIER
I get a phone call from my professor from film school. She's having a seminar with young film students who are ready to enter the Bippity Boppity Business, and she was wondering if I would relay my many experiences and so on and so forth. The first thought I had was, "Do I lie?"
So I decide to do it, I'll be more than happy to speak with these young students who are ready to make their mark on the film industry as did the auteur's they've so fervently studied for the last four to eight years. So a week goes by and my professor calls and puts me on speaker phone, I could hear the breathing of all the next Steven Soderberghs in the room. The first question, "What do you do in the film industry?" A slight pause As I thought to myself, "What the hell do I do in this business....?"
ART DEPARTMENT
During the last year of film school I began planning my next move. What do I do after this? The grants and scholarships will be gone, there aren't really any movies being made in the small town that I'm from. I've studied all the great film works, learned how to work a 16mm bolex, HMI's and Kino's. I completed a Junior film and a Senior "film." How do I get a job? One day, and yes just like that one every day day, I get a phone call from a woman who had gone to my college, but she left before she graduated and moved North to a semi big city where they make commercials, and she was in IATSE, so clearly she was the shit! I'll call her Claire. Claire had come down to the small burb I was living in to Production Design a MOW (Movie of the Week) about incest, so real gritty stuff. And somehow she got my phone number as someone who would be interested in working on a movie in the art department. And the conversation went as follows:
Me: "hello?"
Claire: "Is this so and so?"
Me: "Yes"
Claire: "This is Claire, I'm working on a movie and need another person in art department. Are you interested?"
Me: "Sure"
Claire: "I hired some other dumb girl and it turns out she's allergic to cats. We're staying at my dad's house and he has cats. I sent her home, I can't work with someone who's allergic cats! Are you allergic to cats?"
Me: "No"
Claire: "You're hired! It's $100 a day, 6 days a week, you'll shop and paint and be on-set. You start tomorrow at 6 a.m. I'm sending that other girl home."
Me: "Okay!"
I spent the next six weeks cleaning raccoon and mouse feces out of an old house (you would have thought the house was abandoned but was actually occupied by four male students who attended the local bible college) in the middle of a cornfield, picking up tractor parts at a salvage yard and driving around a cube truck, among other things. The other helper, we'll call him MK, was a young good looking guy who Claire was very close with. He spent more time standing on the gate of the cube truck with his mirrored sunglasses and wife beater, picking up PAs than anything else. The last day of shooting he was late because his dog died and Claire fired him. It was more ritualistic than official.
And that's how I started in the art department. The MOW never came out and no one knows what happened to it. I found out years later the whole art department budget on that movie was $2,000.00.
Claire and I went on to do three more mid-range projects, I settled into the set decorator position and she into the Production Design, but actually it was just the two of us doing everything, on our own terms, creating our own sets. I was able to support my son, and I was happy. I wanted to make a career out of this art department thing, this is what I'm suppose to be doing with my life. And all it will take to succeed is hard work, integrity, sacrifice, and faith.
