This is Hollywood, we don't always get what we want"

“This is Hollywood, we don’t always get what we want”

That was the director’s motto.  I wonder if we ever get what we want in Hollywood.

I was getting tired and annoyed with my day job. Maybe it was just a way to calm my anxious feelings that I was going to get fired for taking off a whole week to be sick, i.e. make the movie. Whenever there was a problem with our detail computer entry work, I was like “whatever, I’ll leave these day jobs to the common people. Let them fester in their cubicles, I’m off to be a real movie producer.”

But I did want to go off in a big bang.  The office was part of a nationwide business and the emails connected us to all of them. Before I left I wanted to send out a mass email to everyone about the documentary I planned to make that summer on a big road trip with a friend from Minnesota. I figured I’d use the job to find some people to put us up for a night or two. Get something for all my pain and suffering, though they did pay well and provided a great schedule for me.  Maybe I wasn’t cut out for this kinda work, or any real work.

I actually took off an afternoon from work for a real doctor visit. Just an annual check up at the OB/GYN.  After the exam, I told him I was producing a movie. He then let out his movie stories. He had met some big stars and well known producers because his daughter dated their sons. He said they all have big egos. I thought “is this the way it is out here – it never ends!”  My little director had an ego already and the big guys had one. I was feeling more like I should just leave all these boys alone and make movies with only women.

The next day I also got to leave early from work. This time it was the movie world crashing into my real world. I had written down that my cousin from Canada would be arriving on Friday, but it was Thursday so one of the PA guys staying at my house paged me with a “911” code and I called back to realize my mistake. The manager let me go get him.  Sweet!  There was no traffic at that hour.

I thought Matthew would be mad at me, wandering aimlessly around LAX. But he had a big smile. Since the traffic returning home was impossible by that time, we walked around the beach. We talked about how we both got to the career decision of making movies.  But then I realized I was tired of talking about movies after months of studying and preparing to make one.

He did say that some people focus on their careers to avoid themselves inside. I wondered, is that me?  Am I so driven only to avoid the emptiness inside I still feel after the big breakup? Or because I need direction after my dream of marriage and babies were destroyed?

I enjoyed talking to Matthew and having family around. I hadn’t hung out with him since we were kids both visiting our grandparents on Long Island. But he was the little brother of Kim, the cousin my age, so we didn’t pay too much attention to him. Now he was all grown up, but just barely. In his early 20s.

That night there was a 10pm meeting for the movie. These late night meetings were bad for me. And I realized this movie was bad for me. At the meeting they said my duty would be to bring the film stock to the processors. I couldn’t believe it. I had written the script (before the director lied and gave it to another writer to rewrite), I had slaved away for 9 months to be a producer and all they are making me in the end is a PA!  I yelled that to them and they all said I was being crazy. Even the two PAs I was sheltering in my house and giving them the opportunity to be on a set right away (it took me months to get on an actual film set, remember) said I was “overreacting”.  At the other short film production, I got to do wardrobe, and props, not run around like a gopher.  I figured it was only next week, I’d survive and hopefully still keep my credit on screen as writer and producer but things weren’t looking hopeful.

On Friday I sent the email out to all the offices around the country and some people wrote back like, “why did I get this?” it was so out of the blue. Other co-workers were excited for my big email and big goodbye. I kept in touch and some helped out later in future films.

Sunday morning I was nervous. It was show time. The movie was starting. The day before we went to the set to prepare for the production. Now I had more of the crew I had “hired” (all volunteers and the Director promised them beer but like everything he promised, it never materialized.)

I had gotten all the people all this film to work for free. I didn’t get the DP but the other producer I got got him so in away I got him. The only people the director found were the drugged out sound guys who okayed sound as an old Mexican man walked by on the corner ringing the bell for his ice cream cart.  I even had two strangers from Santa Cruz who drove down in their minivans (good for lugging equipment and the food that another producer’s mom made but everyone ending up hating because it was exotic foreign food and too many vegis for the hard lifting work of the crew guys).  They were both middle aged but nice as could be.  And I had another cousin come out, a year after film school in Virginia, Brett, and his buddy. Plus a woman I had met in Ireland, also from Canada.  She read my fundraising letter and offered to help since she too wanted in on filmmaking.

The set was exciting to me. Not because it was a set but because I had written the first script. I had taken the idea and made it into dialogue and something real. Now I got to walk around the creation. Here was the house, looking like a general’s mansion. And the director had cousins in construction so they built a house, with no roof, for us to film everything from every angle and use sunlight.  I was walking around. It was real. It was exciting. My creation was alive!