"Nothing Special" Days (Law and Order, Funny Games, Here's the Story, and Accidental Husband)

Lately I've been just working a few days here and there on different projects.  Nothing really special, but I've learned that sometimes my "nothing special" days can seem interesting, like when I hurt my back one day at work this summer.  I was telling some one about it when I realized the fact that I hurt it moving a rocket ship made it sound a little bit cooler.

Anyway, as I mentioned in my last blog entry, I worked a couple of days on 'Law and Order' (the regular one, that is to say, the one without any letters after it).  The episode was about this guy who kills a guard and breaks out of police custody and ends up taking some schoolgirls hostage and shooting some of them before he gets caught.  I think the headline it's supposed to imitate is the Amish school shooting, but, of course, there are a bunch of twists near the end and it becomes less a story of forgiveness and more about revenge and justice.  Anyway, it was an OK couple of days of work.  I helped with first team (the main actors) the first day and locked up part of the street where we had a bunch of cop cars and ambulances outside of a Catholic school on the second day. Oh yeah, and I had to lock up a staircase when we filmed this scene in a projects building and I almost died because it reeked of piss so bad.

I've also been working a few days here and there on that "Funny Games" movie I mentioned in the last blog entry that's a shot for shot remake into english by a German director.  It's all inside Steiner Studios, so it's pretty dull days (no random people on the street to keep quiet in a studio), but at least I'm out of the cold.  They're supposed to finish filming next Tuesday, but I think most of the cast is done already.  I've heard there has been some tension on the set some days between the director and some of the actors.  Mainly I've heard that Michael Pitt (Last Days, Hedwig and the Angry Inch) and sometimes Tim Roth (Pulp Fiction, Resevoir Dogs) have gotten into some yelling matches with the director, but I think it's to be expected when you have somebody who is remaking something that they liked fine the first time and people who want to make something new that's their own as well.  And there is also the language barrier problem.  Sometimes the production meetings with the higher-ups sound like the United Nations with English, French, German, and who knows what else flying around in there.

  I did have one particularly good day on '"Funny Games" last week when I brought a few of my handmade Pothedz Couch DVDs and sold them to people on set.  I even got Tim Roth to buy one!  Although, I think he may have thought I was just giving it to him until I asked for the ten bucks.  But, oh well, I figured he's got the money and I'm sure he doesn't mind helping out a poor PA that needs it.

 The only other job that I've worked on was a couple of days on a TV Land show called 'Here's the Story...'.  It was a pretty easy gig and the pay was really good too (almost double my normal rate).  The first day was kind-of boring and was for a segment about the "history of the future".  We shot out at the old World's Fairgrounds in Queens in a museum.  At least I got to see that giant metal globe thing (the Unisphere, I'm told) and those old UFO's on sticks that were in "Men In Black".  The second day we were in Times Square at the Snapple Theater Center where we interviewed Wendy the Snapple Lady for a story about her.  She's the coolest lady and she really is the Snapple Lady, she's not just an actress.  I got a hug from her right before she left.

 Anyway, that's what's been going on in my life lately.  Tommorrow I'm supposed to work on some Uma Thurman film called "The Accidental Husband", but I know nothing about it.  Except that call is probably 6AM.  But it's not too bad because they're filming just one stop away from my apartment on the subway, so I don't have to add an hour travel time.  One good thing about working in this industry is that no matter where you live, you'll eventually get one day when you can walk to work.

Until next time...

New Jobs and Sick Daze

I finished working on that Nickelodeon show a week ago and spent the last week sick at home.  How convienient of my sickness to come right when I have time off :-(  But I haven't picked up new full time job anyway.  Tommorrow I'm going to work as an additional on 'Law and Order'.  My friend Soren is the key PA on it right now, so I can probably look for a few more additional days to come, hopefully.  I mean, I like having the time off, but with so many bills to pay right now, I can use all the work I can get right now.  I may end up working some more on this other film I did an additional day on a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday.  It's called 'Funny Games' and its a shot for shot remake of this German film of the same name by director Michael Hannekke (sp?).  I watched the original the other day and it's alright.  It's just very European and very independant.  Anyway I got to see Tim Roth (Reservoir Dogs) and Naomi Watts (King Kong, The Ring) during the one scene they shot for the day.  They spent the bulk of the day setting up and waiting for the tide to come in and the sun to come out so they could launch the boat in the scene.  Anyway, I need to go so that I can get up at 4AM for my 6:15 call downtown....

Blackouts and Breakdowns - Returning from the Ashes

It's been a little while since I've written anything, but for good reason. After we got pushed out of our apartment in midtown Manhattan by our scumbag landlord, we ended up in Astoria, Queens.  The good news is that our new place is bigger; the bad news is that it's still more than we can really afford.  Not long after we had settled in, we had to live through the infamous Queens blackout (the power was out for days during the hottest time of the year when a bunch of feeder cable failed).  The icing on the cake was when my computer died, trapping all of the website and show stuff in it.  Ugh.  So, I bought a new computer (on credit, of course) and I am currently working on totally remaking the site and all the graphics for the show.  Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes...  I swear, sometimes I have the hardest time figuring out what to take as an obstacle to be overcome and what to take as a sign to change direction. 

In other life news, right now I'm working with the Art Department on a Nickelodeon show called "The Naked Brothers Band".  It's a fake 'reality' show about these kids who have a band and are supposedly big rock stars.  Whatever.  It pays the bills... barely. 

Anyway, things are returning to normal now, for the most part.  Hopefully, we're on an upswing.  I'll try to be more consistent in writing in this, but it's tough with all the site redesign stuff.  'Til next time...

Slipping Through the Cracks

I just realized that when people talk about those members of society that fall through the cracks, that they're talking about me.  I've been having so many situations at work and at home where, in both places, I'm told there are various laws to protect me, but my lack of knowing them, plus not knowing how to get them enforced without costing me more in legal fees and lost work than it would be worth, prevents these laws from ever helping me.
    Example 1 - At Work- I worked on that movie 'The Babysitters' that I mentioned in the last blog entry, but only as an additional PA (which means I only worked about 3 days a week when they needed the extra manpower).  One of the reasons was that my work on the 'Survivor Finale' wasn't finished before the beginning of the movie, but the main reason was that I recognized the kind of grueling schedule I would be on if I took it.  You see, this was yet another movie with a suburban setting filming in New York.  While I appreciate the fact that they're shooting more films in New York, which means more work all around for everyone, what the suburban movie filming in New York City means is that every day the equipment and people have to come from the city to either upstate New York, Jersey, Long Island, Staten Island, etc.  So that means add a couple of hours to the 12 hour minimum work day for traveling to and from set.  So now your working a 14-hour day minimum.  But then you have to add on another hour or two if your a PA, because, odds are, you're driving people and/or equipment and you have to drop your vehicle at a parking lot and take the train home, making your day a MINIMUM of 16-hours, which means the most sleep you can get is eight hours, and that's if you go straight to bed when you get home.  The nail in the coffin, though, is that this is an independent movie.  Translation- they are going to go over twelve hours every day.
Therefore, even if you were to go right to bed when you got home, you would average about 3-5 hours of sleep every night. Doing that for one or two nights is no big deal, but after a week or two, that shit starts getting dangerous.  PA's start dozing off at traffic lights or weaving back and forth with a van full of crew.  Of course, that's the only time some producers start getting concerned.  When the union crew members start to be in danger.  I'm pretty sure that if a PA died in a fiery crash, their first question would be, "But is the equipment alright?"
    Supposedly there are labor laws to protect me from abuse, but somehow I end up perjuring myself to my own detriment weekly as I sign one timecard with my actual hours, and then another one with fake hours so that I can be paid the flat rate we all have to agree to without the government finding out about the often illegal, migrant-worker-type wages we're being paid.  A few weeks back I realized how bad it was when I saw some special on TV on the history of unions and sweat shop labor in New York City, and I thought to myself, "They didn't have it so bad.  Only 12-hour days? At least they got to sleep sometimes."  I heard recently that some director made a documentary on the the TV/Film Industry called "Who Needs Sleep?" that exposes just how bad it is and how many people have died because of it.
     And don't even get me started on unions.  In principle, a union seems a good idea; people banding together so that no one gets taken advantage of.  Protecting the little guy.  But that's not what the unions do.  They're actually more of an elite country club where you have to pay, literally, thousands of dollars just to take a test that even if you pass, you aren't assured of getting in.  It all has to do with whether you have a friend, or a brother, or cousin, or someone that will stand up for you in the meeting so that everyone will vote you in.  It's really just another broken and failing system that's been set up.  I just finished working on the second unit of a film shoot (I'll talk a little bit more about it after I finish my rant) that got shut down on it's last day of filming because of the union.  The shoot was supposedly non-union, but when the union reps found out we had some union guys on, they forced them to walk out, as well as recruiting some other crew members so that they would walk out as well, which totally shut down the picture.  It was ridiculous.  You know the system's messed up when even the union guys can't pick what they can or can't work on for themselves.  I've known union guys who get them to change their name on the call sheet so they don't get in trouble with the guild or the union for working when they need to.
    Example 2 - At Home - So here's the bullshit that's happening on the home front: we're being illegally pushed out of our building in Hell's Kitchen. It all started in February when our lease was up.  When we asked our landlord for a new lease, he told us he needed to figure out what we were going to be paying.  We thought that was a little weird, but a couple of weeks later he told us he was raising it from $1300 to $1400 a month.  We told him that that really sucked, but we'd find a way to make it work.  Well, after paying two months rent at $1400 and still waiting on a new lease to sign, he suddenly tells us that he's sold the building and we'll have to pay $1600! Well, there's no way we could pull that off, so we just decided we'd have to move.  At the time he told us we could have May for free if we moved out, but then a few weeks later he tried to make us sign a new lease for $1500 a month.  After talking to a few people about our situation, we found out that not only is our apartment rent stabilized (in fact all NYC apartments under $2000 are), which means he could only raise the rent a small percentage, but that the lease we had signed originally was total crap because it said it was for a non-rent controlled apartment.  By now, though, we're already in the mindset to move and don't want to deal with all the legal BS, plus our little crappy apartment isn't worth fighting for.  Yet again the legal system has failed us... So, we're moving out to Queens to a bigger place for less money, but with more travel time in our work days.  And you know what that means... now I'll only get 2 hours of sleep a night!
    Last year, when we were looking for a new place it was just as bad.  We even applied for low-income housing that was actually reasonably priced and a better apartment than any of the ones we've lived in here.  The only problem was that we made about $100 too much for the year to live there.  Once again, falling through the cracks...
    So that's the end of my rant for now.  On a good note, I have been working fairly regularly.  I finished the 'Survivor Finale', and then I worked on 'The Babysitters', which was a weird movie that is basically about a high school prostitution ring and stars John Leguizamo and Cynthia Nixon ('Sex and the City').  I got to actually meet Cynthia just a few days before she won her Tony.  Oh yeah, and Helen worked on the Tonys this year.  She was in charge of the area where Oprah Winfrey, Harry Connick, Jr., and Julie Andrews had their dressing rooms.  The movie I just finished working on was second unit on a  'Untitled Reggaeton Project' that starred that kid Omarion(sp?) who was in that boy band B2K and now has a solo album out.  Pras from the Fugees was in it too.  We only shot for five days (I guess four, actually), but it was crazy shooting in Harlem.  Every night we had these huge crowds of screaming girls that were impossible to control.  Next up, I'm starting Monday with Art department on some Nickelodian show for a few months that pays pretty well.
     As for the show, Episode 5 is almost done.  I've finished all the animation, graphics, and editing, but there's this one little skit on the subwy that needs to be reshot.  We'll probably get that done this weekend.  After that, it's finished!  And it's actually going to be pretty funny.  I was worried for a little while when I first stared editing that it was going to be complete crap, but it turned out to be pretty damn funny.  At least I think so.  Or maybe I'm just delirious because I only got 2 or 3 hours of sleep so that I could finish editing it...
    So the fun never stops here in NYC!  This weekend the show should be finished, next week I start a new job, and next weekend we move to Queens, with many days of packing and unpacking all around. I'll try to write in this thing more frequently so these posts will be shorter, but I can't promise anything. 
 Until next time,
 -Clarke

Train Wreck

So, I know I've been pretty slack in writing lately, as well as working on the show, but I've been pretty busy working on this film 'Train Wreck' that just wrapped on Friday.  It had Seann William Scott (Stifler from the 'American Pie' movies) and Gretchen Mol (from that new Betty Page movie) in it.  It was actually a pretty fun gig, but, as with working on any film, it took up every waking moment (12 hr Minimum days), so I've only been able to do so much on the weekends.  We've filmed a lot more on Episode 5 of Pothedz Couch, but we still have about 4 more scenes to film and then I've got to sit down and edit it and add the graphics and stuff like that to it, etc. etc.  Tommorrow I start work on the Survivor finale, which will last until a week from Tuesday, with only one day off in the middle of the week.  Then I'll probably end up working on this film called 'The Babysitter' with John Leguizamo without a break on that Wednesday.  I'm working way too much right now...  Oh well, guess I better take it while I can get it.  I just wished it paid better.  Anyway, on an up note, I got Seann William Scott to make a brief cameo in 'Bongo's Work Tape', a little segment I made at work with Mr. Bongo to explain what I've been doing while not working on the show.  I just put it up on Google Video as a short, but it will eventually get edited down and put in Episode 5.  I'll post the link as soon as the video gets approved by Google Video.  In the meantime, I gotta crash so that I can start the cycle of long work days over again tommorrow.  Until next time...

RockStar

So, it's been a little while since I last wrote something.  Well, here's a quick sum up of what I've been doing;  I had to go with Helen to Georgia to visit her cousins in Georgia for a 'cousins' weekend, but that's a whole story for a different time.  I've been working a lot on a new animation for the show.  It's a 'Weed Fairy Tale' called 'The Bong of Eternal Stench' that starts off with Pothed finding a bong on the porch and ends with a Heman/ThunderCats parody telling of it's origins.  I know it sounds weird, but trust me, it's gonna be pretty damn funny.
  Right now, I'm working three days on that show 'RockStar'.  It's the one like American Idol, but they're auditioning for a band.  Last year they were auditioning for INXS.  They won't tell us who it's for this year.  Yesterday we sat through about 250 people in the big cattle call and today we listened to about 80 people for the scheduled auditions.  Needless to say, today's auditions sounded a lot better than yesterdays. Although, there were really funny ones yesterday.  I think my favorite yesterday was this old guy that looked almost like a homeless dude who came in DRUNK Dammit.  I mean, this guy was barely standing.  And when he was onstage waiting for his turn, he started dancing and spinning around in the background while this other girl was singing and then he started humping the wall!  Then, when it was his turn to sing, he didn't say his name or anything, but just started in on some song about doing rails of coke and wouldn't stop when they tried to give him the cue!  I had to help escort him from the building afterward.  Well, he came back today also.  He told one person that he was there for his callback, and he told somebody else he was there for his audition and he didn't remember doing one yesterday!  I had to help escort him from the building today as well.  I have one more day on RockStar, and then they're going to some other city for more auditions.  I wonder what band it's for...  That would be funny if it were something lame like 'Hanson needs a new lead singer' or something like that.  I wonder if people ever drop out once they find out who the band is.  Oh well, whatever
  Well, that's all I got right now.  I hope I can find a time to film some more on 'Pothedz Couch'.  It's always hard to find a time we all have free since we all work weird and different hours, but I know we'll get it done eventually.  I just hope our new fans haven't given up on us by then.  Until next time...

Wrap Parties and Random Thoughts

So, this movie I'm working on right now is called 'Chapter 27' and it stars Jared Leto as the guy that shot John Lennon.  I don't get the name, though.  Maybe it has something to do with the whole 'Catcher in the Rye' business.  Beats me.  I was only on set for 3 days anyway.  It's not like I read the script or anything.  I was there for the Lennon shooting scene. Of course, being there for a big scene is not as exciting as watching it on the big screen.  Movie making is a pretty painstakingly slow process.  It usually only takes somebody new a day of watching the same 30 second scene over and over and over again to realize that filmmaking isn't the glamorous lifestyle they thought it was.
Jared Leto has kind-of chunked up for this role.  I saw him on-set before I realized who he was and thought to myself, 'Huh. That guy kind-of looks like a fat Jared Leto.' And he actually was.  Some of the guys were saying that Lindsay Lohan plays his girlfriend in the movie, but I wasn't around for that part anyway.  Not that I care, as evidence from the line I wrote for Nic in Episode 4 when Pothed turns the camera back on ("All I'm saying is, who gives a fuck about Lindsay Lohan, anyway").  I like coming up with those kind of lines, where you're just catching the tail end of a conversation and the comment sounds so random.
I have a wrap party tonight to go to in the meat packing district.  Some place called Level 5.  The cast rarely shows up for wrap parties, though.  Although Kevin Bacon and his wife Kyra Sedgewick partied down at our midway party for Loverboy, that movie I worked on that is never going to be released.  They're probably just waiting on the next crazy mom that kills her kids to be in the paper, since that's what the story's basically about.  It's all about timing...
So I'm probably going to this party, even though I don't know a whole lot of the crew members. Hey, free drinks, right?  I got one more day of wrap on Tuesday, but it doesn't look too bad.  Should be a pretty easy day. 
Guess that's all the news I've got right now.  I'm still having trouble scheduling times to finish shooting Episode 5 of Pothedz Couch.  I've got the whole episode mapped out now, but everybody has stuff to do at all sorts of conflicting times.  Oh well, I hope our fans haven't given up on us by the time we finish this one.  I've started writing on Ep. 6 already, too.  It's gonna be pretty damn funny if we can pull off everything that's in my head. 
Blogging is still a wierd experience for me.  It's sort of like, "Here you go world.  Have a look at the random stuff in my head today."  Not that the whole world cares what I'm thinking.  It's just that now they have access to that info, if they want it. Whatever. Until next time,...

Snow Daze & A New Job!

I finally got a call for a new job!  The pay isn't that great, and I'm only working 5 days from this Wednesday to next Tuesday, but at least it's something.  And now that I'm back in the freelance PA loop I'm sure they'll be more to follow.  I don't know yet what the project is... some indie movie.  I'm just working with the art dept. the last week of it over in Brooklyn.
So, you may have heard that we got a couple of feet of snow here in NYC yesterday, which I can assure you we took full advantage of by making snow ice cream and having snowball fights on the roof and down the street at the Hell's Kitchen park that they finally finished fixing up.  We tried  to film some snow stuff with the puppets, but all we really did was dump snow on them and then we went back to playing in the snow ourselves. Later last night, we ended up going to this bar down the street that had free drinks for a couple of hours because it was there 1-year anniversary or something.  All in all, it was a fun day, but I ended up a lot more sore today than I would have thought a day of snow ball fights and a night of drinking would have left me.

Fan Mail

Ok, so check this out.  I got some fan e-mail for the show from a Brazilian guy living in Switzerland!  WTF?? And from his e-mail, he doesn't even speak English all that well.  I hadn't even thought of the possibility that someone would end up watching our show in another country!  The Internet.  What an amazing invention... 

My Blog

So, uh... where to begin?  It still seems wierd to me that diary-type things like this have gone from being under lock and key to being broadcast to the world, but... whatever.  My thoughts right now...?  Well my main though is that I wish I had a job.  I kind-of got screwed over by the place I was working, Pyburn Films, when I came back from Christmas break.  It was pretty good money while it lasted, but I guess I was getting tired of working in an office.  Although I did enjoy taking advantage of their computers to help with our show (Pothedz Couch).  Oh, well.  Hopefully, I'll be back working on set soon.  Just have to wait on that elusive PA phonecall.  I like the wierd hours of being a freelance PA on film & TV stuff, but sometimes waiting on that phonecall for your next job can be murder.  I made some calls to some friends to try and drum up some more work, but so far... nada. At least I have stuff for the show to keep me occupied.  If only I could start making money off of it...  Soon, I think.  I want to put a few more episodes (at least one) on public access before I go commercial, because once we go commercial, we aren't allowed on public access anymore.  We'll probably sell T-shirts and shit like that, but we can't sell things like DVD's because of some of the songs and stuff we used in the show that we haven't gone through the process of clearing the rights (because we have no money).  I hope we'll be able to make rent (rent sucks in NYC, we have basically a closet in Hell's Kitchen that cost $1300 a month!).
    Changing gears from my personal life to politics and religion (HUGE jump), how about all the muslim rioting over those Danish cartoons. (To sum up, a Danish newpaper printed some political cartoons that had the muslim prophet Mohammed portrayed in them.  Islamic law forbids portrayal of the prophet in any way, an idea intended to keep from turning praise of the prophet into idol worship, much like they believe Christians often do with Jesus, by calling him Lord and God and all)  Wow.  Talk about a bunch of tight-asses.  Learn to take a joke.  The funny thing is, the Danish paper put out those cartoons as an exercise in not censoring themselves when it comes to muslim issues.  Well, I think that plan may have backfired.  I think we forget that freedom of speech is still a radically new concept in the world and not everybody agrees with it.  The main thing I don't get is why do these muslim countries think we're bound by their religious law?  And don't they understand that by taking the defacement of the image of their prophet so seriously, that it borders on the idol worship that Mohammed was trying to avoid.  Oh, irony abounds in the world and the joke is on all of us.