Hmm... I need eggs, cheese, green peppAAHH!--(tackled by cops)I just got a call from my
girlfriend who was at work and going to call when she finished. Her call, however, did not involve her wrapping up at work.
* * *HER
Hey.
ME
Howdy. You done?
HER
Turn on the news. There're all three news helicopters and a police chopper circling above us right now. There was some kind of high speed chase, and the guy's holed up in his car right now.ME flips on the TV and turns it to the news. There's some dude standing at his car.
ME
There's some dude just standing at his car. Where is this?
HER
Crenshaw.
ME
Crenshaw and what?
HER
Probably Olympic.[Side note: that's only a few miles away from my apartment.]
ME sits watching speechless.
ME
He's fucking walking.
HER
What?
ME
The guy's fucking walking away from the car into the backyard. Like slow walking. Fucking sauntering! The guy just walked through a gate--slowly--and now he's just strolling through this backyard!
HER
He's walking?
ME
Yeah! Slow! He's smoking a cigarette!
Police officers sneak up on the hapless fool. He's about to walk into a (presumably his own) house when the officers tackle him.
ME (cont'd)
Oop, he's down.
HER
I've gotta go. We're about to shoot. We're on the abby setup, by the way. [Another side note: the abby setup is the second to last camera setup (placement). There can be several shots within any given setup (lens changes, two shots to singles {two actors in frame to one}, etc.). The final setup and/or shot is the martini. Just so's ya know.]
ME
There're like six cops there. How're you not going to notice that?
HER
Going. Bye.
HER hangs up.
* * * I cannot emphasize enough how slow this guy was walking. Apparently cops and the media had been chasing him since Marina Del Rey, which is probably about twenty miles from where he eventually ended up near me. The cops and several are helicopters are chasing you for twenty miles of highway and land roads, you get home, light up a cigarette and saunter into your backyard? What? You're on drugs? You have a very bad hearing and vision problem? You're planning an especially elaborate weekend?
The great thing is that the story was built up so much before I tuned in. I come into the game expecting a shootout (and so does the media), and I get some dude getting tackled for wanting to go chill in his backyard. Hilarious.
How does the news follow up such an anti-climactic story? A story about a dognapped pomeranian from Boston that was safely returned to its owner. I so very much love that hard-hitting Los Angeles news coverage.
More on this story as it develops...(the dude, not the pomeranian).
[UPDATE: I just discovered that
KCRW--the local
NPR and the greatest radio station in LA (besides
KROQ and
Indie 103.1--has a
podcasting section. Now I can listen to the most intelligent and informative shows in LA on my iPod while I'm on-set doing nothing as background tomorrow. V for Victory, baby.)
D
