Match Director's Blog
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
BACK IN THE CITY
(this post rated R for language)
At the end of February I returned to the city after a three month break in Richmond, VA. There were some highlights - Bucka Watson went a 55.66 in the 100 fly, I got to know my nieces, I got to visit with my brothers and my family. I got to see a number of old friends I hadn't seen in a while.
The hard part was that my brothers are doing great. Big houses, nice cars, loving spouses. While I was home I was living in my mom's basement (to the delight of some of the swimmers I coached) and was preparing to move back to New York without any job prospects.
But the big city is where the art is, so I went back, and now I'm here, and it's a good fit. My little production company has just enough clients that I can pay the rent, and I'm working hard.
One of the first things I did when I returned to the city was I called or emailed everyone I knew, trying to reconnect with old friends. I found a new place to live, my new roommates are great, and last week I was fortunate enough to have dinner in New Jersey with some good friends, and Ciaran Hinds was there. Ciaran played Julius Caesar in HBO's series, ROME. I am an enormous fan of the series, so I didn't say much during dinner (I listened). But after the evening was over, we were getting a ride back to New York from our gracious host, and I asked Mr. Hinds what the best part of being on the show was. I figured, I tell people I had dinner with Julius Caesar, I ought to have a story to tell.
His story was a good one. He was in the middle of this multimillion dollar production and during one scene, his character, Caesar, has a seizure.
CIARAN: The director said to me, 'do whatever you want, but stay in the light' because they had set up some lights for me that were supposed to be on me at all times. If they weren't on me, you couldn't see me, and the shot would be ruined.
DAVID: OK.
CIARAN: I said to the director, 'My eyes are closed.'
'I know,' the director said. 'Just stay in the light.' So I'm supposed to have do this with my eyes closed, and act, and be spontaneous, and HAVE A FUCKING SEIZURE, and at the same time, I'm supposed to stay in the light. A few inches this way or that and I'll ruin the shot.
DAVID: (breathlessly hanging onto every word) What did you do?
CIARAN: One of the actors I worked with, simply put out his hands, cradled my head, and said 'I've got you, guv.'
Ciaran worked on Rome for six months. 100 million dollars were spent capturing his portrayal of Caesar. And that was what he remembered: an act of kindness in the middle of all the craziness.
Pretty cool.
The next day, I got up at 4:30 a.m. to work on a McDonald's commercial, and I was proud to be in show business, a business with such a rich and historic heritage, where such moments of kindness can be found daily amongst the daily barbarity of life.
I say it was barbaric because I was working on a fucking McDonald's commercial, trying to get people to stop walking down the street in the middle of Chelsea. Now, you ask people nicely, and explain you're filming, and you're trying to get a shot off, and some of them will hear you out, and graciously slow down. But when they hear it's for McDonald's, they tell you to go fuck yourself and stomp you in the face with their steel-toed shitkickers.
If you've PA'd and tried to lock up a set before, you know what I'm talking about. Legally we are not allowed to stop anybody from walking down the sidewalk. It's a public sidewalk. Our job, however, is to persuade people, as politely as we are able, to please hold up for the next thirty seconds so we can get the shot off without a bunch of random people walking through the shot.
Go ahead. Try to convince an angry half-blind 80 year-old Polish woman to please not walk her dog through the middle of the McDonald's commercial. When you realize after repeating yourself six times that she doesn't speak English and wouldn't care even if she did, well, then you're in the club.
Conclusion: some days you're the king, some days you're the serf.
P.S. On set the next day I was in charge of ice. My job was to stop it from melting. Sweet. ¶ 4:16 PM 0 comments links to this post
At the end of February I returned to the city after a three month break in Richmond, VA. There were some highlights - Bucka Watson went a 55.66 in the 100 fly, I got to know my nieces, I got to visit with my brothers and my family. I got to see a number of old friends I hadn't seen in a while.
The hard part was that my brothers are doing great. Big houses, nice cars, loving spouses. While I was home I was living in my mom's basement (to the delight of some of the swimmers I coached) and was preparing to move back to New York without any job prospects.
But the big city is where the art is, so I went back, and now I'm here, and it's a good fit. My little production company has just enough clients that I can pay the rent, and I'm working hard.
One of the first things I did when I returned to the city was I called or emailed everyone I knew, trying to reconnect with old friends. I found a new place to live, my new roommates are great, and last week I was fortunate enough to have dinner in New Jersey with some good friends, and Ciaran Hinds was there. Ciaran played Julius Caesar in HBO's series, ROME. I am an enormous fan of the series, so I didn't say much during dinner (I listened). But after the evening was over, we were getting a ride back to New York from our gracious host, and I asked Mr. Hinds what the best part of being on the show was. I figured, I tell people I had dinner with Julius Caesar, I ought to have a story to tell.
His story was a good one. He was in the middle of this multimillion dollar production and during one scene, his character, Caesar, has a seizure.
CIARAN: The director said to me, 'do whatever you want, but stay in the light' because they had set up some lights for me that were supposed to be on me at all times. If they weren't on me, you couldn't see me, and the shot would be ruined.
DAVID: OK.
CIARAN: I said to the director, 'My eyes are closed.'
'I know,' the director said. 'Just stay in the light.' So I'm supposed to have do this with my eyes closed, and act, and be spontaneous, and HAVE A FUCKING SEIZURE, and at the same time, I'm supposed to stay in the light. A few inches this way or that and I'll ruin the shot.
DAVID: (breathlessly hanging onto every word) What did you do?
CIARAN: One of the actors I worked with, simply put out his hands, cradled my head, and said 'I've got you, guv.'
Ciaran worked on Rome for six months. 100 million dollars were spent capturing his portrayal of Caesar. And that was what he remembered: an act of kindness in the middle of all the craziness.
Pretty cool.
The next day, I got up at 4:30 a.m. to work on a McDonald's commercial, and I was proud to be in show business, a business with such a rich and historic heritage, where such moments of kindness can be found daily amongst the daily barbarity of life.
I say it was barbaric because I was working on a fucking McDonald's commercial, trying to get people to stop walking down the street in the middle of Chelsea. Now, you ask people nicely, and explain you're filming, and you're trying to get a shot off, and some of them will hear you out, and graciously slow down. But when they hear it's for McDonald's, they tell you to go fuck yourself and stomp you in the face with their steel-toed shitkickers.
If you've PA'd and tried to lock up a set before, you know what I'm talking about. Legally we are not allowed to stop anybody from walking down the sidewalk. It's a public sidewalk. Our job, however, is to persuade people, as politely as we are able, to please hold up for the next thirty seconds so we can get the shot off without a bunch of random people walking through the shot.
Go ahead. Try to convince an angry half-blind 80 year-old Polish woman to please not walk her dog through the middle of the McDonald's commercial. When you realize after repeating yourself six times that she doesn't speak English and wouldn't care even if she did, well, then you're in the club.
Conclusion: some days you're the king, some days you're the serf.
P.S. On set the next day I was in charge of ice. My job was to stop it from melting. Sweet. ¶ 4:16 PM 0 comments links to this post
