So full of promise in the morning, so full of shit in the evening

So full of promise in the morning, so full of shit in the evening

Today was a complete one-eighty from yesterday. We were outside filming in downtown Los Angeles and had to lockdown crowds of angry Los Angeleans from getting into our shot. Depending on what corner or nook one took, there would be a crowd of a pedestrians of a ratio of 30:1 to a PA. The instructions they give is be firm, but don't touch them or they could turn on you. Basically, that translates to: "You have no power, and they might kill you." Then they yell if someone gets through. Luckily that only happened once or twice to me, and neither really affected the shot.

We were at the center of an intersection, and we had to cordon off in a block in every direction for a 360° camera move. We had one PA for each sidewalk for an entire block. This was around 4 PM, and we had to make sure no one went on the streets or sidewalks at all while remaining out of sight ourselves. We all had alleyways within the block to deal with, too. That was just absurd. It was just an all around bad day. I worked sixteen hours doing bullshit work for less pay and worse food than my previous job, on which I only worked ten hours a day.

Anyway, I have more interesting things that I forgot to write in my post about yesterday. Perhaps some of you remember Todd's blog post about a certain commercial parody of a certain breakfast bar. One of our extras was the chubby black boss from said commercial, the one introduced holding lacy women's unmentionables. While I was bored with Blair Underwood after about five minutes (despite his kick ass shoes), I couldn't work up the courage to approach this other guy whose name I don't know because I didn't approach him. What do you say to a man like that?

"Hey man, I think you're the funniest man who ever lived except for God, and God's dead so it's pretty much just you."

I think that would get a little weird a little fast.

Also, I saw a homeless woman (and heard) cuss out a homeless man who was "stalking" her in a Rite-Aid drugstore on a run I made yesterday. Then she ran her cart hard into his shin. Then he threaten to break his not-yet-purchased fo'ty over her head. Then she began to wail that he killed her husband. Everyone around me was laughing.

I also ran into a homeless man today that said he was expecting to put out his first feature in late 2005 and another who said he had a Screen Actors' Guild membership card and he had just recently gotten a Writers' Guild membership. The first guy said he'd been in town for only a few weeks. The second guy had accomplished all that and worked with Lee Strasberg in some vague capacity after being here only three months.

And would any story of mine be complete without mentioning the older man--Roger in this case--who said I should be in porn? After all, there's 1) good money in it, 2) a lot of "fun" involved and 3) my parents being very proud of me afterwards. Oh, Roger. You silly, perverted "filmmaker".

I think that's pretty much it on my end. Shout out what happened on your weekend.

D