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MIRTH
IN YOUR MAILBOX! |
The girl I'm in love with doesn't even know I'm alive... The bullet just grazed me.
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LOOKS
SERIOUS TO ME...
July
20, 1998
Working
for free wasn't such a bad deal
after all. They bought me two and
a half meals a day, all the
snacks I could eat, let me hang
out in the company of beautiful
maidens, and between the hours of
7 and 10 p.m. yesterday evening,
they gave me all the booze I
could drink. It
is entirely possibly that the
booze was watered down, because I
was drinking them as fast as they
could put them in front of me,
and I still wasn't feeling the
effects, but it probably takes
more effort than it's worth to
water down a sealed bottle of
Rolling Rock. ("Rolling Rock: For
When You Want a Beer That Tastes
Like Soda Pop!") Not
that getting drunk was high on my
list of priorities, I just wanted
proof that I had, in fact, been
at a Hollywood wrap party.
Although, if you think about it,
a hangover is a pretty stupid way
of reminding yourself anything.
Most people just take pictures.
They last longer and have less
tendency to make you throw
up. Stupid
me, however, went and forgot to
bring the camera, thus thwarting
my chances of having my picture
taken with the bevy of babes at
the party. I finally get to hang
with movie stars, and now I have
no way to prove it. Let's just
hope that I have gullible
friends. Looks
like I'll have to settle for my
memories, and just hope that beer
didn't kill the brain cells with
the pertinent information.
Arriving at the party was
anti-climactic, to say the least.
The doorman at the front door
said the place was closed, and
that maybe we should go to the
club down the street to see the
Wu-Tang Clan perform. As my
current dress style could be best
described as "Wonder Bread," we
opted to try the rear
entrance. The
rear entrance was open, and my
companions and I wandered in. I
was there with Bob and Amber.
We're collectively known as "The
I Team," sort of like intern
outlaws moving from one location
to the next and correcting
injustices (if you consider
moving chairs and getting drinks
for the director to be serving
justice). The only other person
in the bar was Mark, one of the
producers. We sat and talked (and
drank) for about a half an hour,
and then people started to show
up. The
rest of the crew filtered in, and
I set about mingling. Most of the
conversations consisted of
listening to descriptions of
their next job, followed by ten
minutes of me trying to explain
that I was only an intern here
for the summer, and then another
ten minutes trying to explain
where Iowa is. I should have
brought a map. I
did finally have a sustained,
no-drool conversation with
Christine, who turned out to be
very nice, although the test
results may have been skewed
slightly by the six glasses of
wine she had ingested up to that
point. Our conversation mostly
consisted of drinking games we
were planning on having with our
friends once the film makes it to
video. Christine said that she
and Paget were going to have a
game wherein you have to take a
drink every time one of the props
in the car changes from shot to
shot. My
game is simply to take a drink
every time Bob or myself appear
as an extra, which would get you
good and stinking drunk by the
halfway mark. Notable scenes for
me include the scene where I am
in both angles at the same time,
and the scene where I am waiting
in line for a posh LA bar wearing
shorts. I'm not sure I'll be able
to handle seeing my bony white
legs on a movie
screen. Not
that I may have to. The talk from
Mark was that Desperate But
Not Serious (that's the
movie's title, in case you've
forgotten) has no distributor and
they're going to try to finish it
in time to enter it in the
Sundance festival. (Ever wonder
what it would be like had Redford
decided to name the festival
after the other character in that
movie? "The Butch Film Festival"
would probably attract an
entirely different
crowd...) The
party had other surprises. The
editor brought a rough cut of the
final sequence on video (the
infamous sequence shot at LAX),
which looked hilarious to me,
although I could barely hear it
over the barroom din. And the
band turned out to be none other
than Bow Wow Wow, of "I Want
Candy" fame, which they
graciously played after all the
drunks continually shouted the
title during their other numbers.
I also had a rather embarrassing
conversation with Paget, where I
basically handed her all the
showbiz cliches I swore would
never leave my lips ("I loved
working with you, baby! Have your
people call my people." etc.
etc.). But
before long, I was all Bow Wowed
out, and so my friends and I
departed. Along the way, we ran
across one of the other interns
who had been more successful than
I at taking advantage of the free
alcohol. She was reintroducing
herself to her breakfast. After
that refreshing sight, we hit
another bar, the Burgundy Room,
which actually resembles a
hallway more than an actual
"room" per se. A
large portion of the crew had
followed us, and proceeded to get
even drunker, resulting in a
number of hook-ups, both
successful and not-so. The dolly
grip and the script supervisor
just kind of jumped on each other
out of nowhere and started
necking right behind me. One of
the costume women proceeded to
hit on every man who came within
spitting distance. And so
on. The
evening probably would have given
a suitable close to the entire
experience if I wasn't just going
to see everyone on Tuesday for
more filming. Yep, the film has
wrapped, but we have a whole
'nother day of shooting. Ain't
Hollywood logic great? That
piece was (c) 1998 Patrick
Keller, Gern Blansten
Productions. Feel free to
distribute it as long as the
article is complete and contains
this notice. Questions, comments,
news tips, weird stories and
other minutia, no matter how
strange should be sent to
me.
Employees and their families are
not eligible and will be
flogged. |
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