Yesterday I was on a film set from noon until 11 pm.
It doesn’t sound like much, perhaps, but it’s remarkable how exhausting it is to wait around until it’s your turn to do a scene. I was beat at the end of the day, and greedily ate two slices of the vegetable lasagna Sohee, the director’s wife, prepared for the cast and crew.
I’ve been posting up at craft services a lot.
Every day, like clockwork, there is a new vegetable crudites tray for the film crew and actors to eat. The kind of vegetable crudites tray Gustavo Fring, meth lord on Breaking Bad, always breaks out for meetings when the cartel comes to town. You know, the ones with the ranch dipping sauce in the middle.
Gustavo Fring knows that no one at his meetings will ever touch the vegetable crudites tray, but just ripping off the plastic film and having it out there on the table is enough of a statement.
Gustavo Fring is a boss. Pirooz Kalayeh, our director, is like the Gustavo Fring of the indie film scene.
Or the ‘post alt Kevin Smith,’ which I dubbed Pirooz at the Charles Bukowski bar in Hollywood during an interesting conversation about marketing and playing the art game. You gotta play the art game. The net art game.
Anyway, we’re still making a movie.
The story is a bunch of interweaving narratives. It’s like the Love, Actually of the digital age. But not as corny. Actually, I think the film we’re making is pretty important. Actually, love.
Pirooz wrote a poem about the movie. Here it is:
two brothers
a reggae musician
a publisher
writer
med student
director
and model
who question how to maintain
relationships
in the digital age
and other stuff too. 😉
I’m sitting and I’m ready to shoot. I think I’m getting picked up soon. Today I’m acting with Jayinee Basu.
Update: We had a really fun day. Actually, the entire movie-making process was really enjoyable, though the waiting around part was the most difficult (like the Tom Petty song). I’m back in the Bay and feel kind of empty now. Like, I just had this amazing prolonged experience where I was working and doing new things and feeling accomplished and now I’m back in my normal life working a terrible job with no benefits and I’m like, damn. I wish I could always be making movies. I wish I could live like that forever.
