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MIRTH
IN YOUR MAILBOX! |
Is it worse to be ignorant or apathetic? I don't know and I don't care.
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"When
you puke, try to
enunciate." Not
exactly words you expect to hear
on your first day on the job.
(And if you do expect that, you
need to rethink your career goals
or do some serious personal
introspection.) Not that I'm
complaining. I
was standing on a lawn, holding a
stray cat while I watched a guy
in a leather jacket blow chunks
of hot dogs into the bushes. The
cat was inexplicably drawn to the
front door of this house, and at
the moment, it was my job to
ensure that it didn't go there.
The only way to do that, as it
happens, is to hold the cat and
stroke it in a manner usually
associated with spy movie
villains. The
quote about puking came from the
sound guy, who was trying to
record, for the appreciation of
future generations, the sound of
a twenty-something actor spitting
out a mixture of Oreos, milk,
celery and, to top it all off,
half of a hot dog. In
many ways, I have come full
circle to last summer, where I
lucked into working as a
production assistant on a
low-budget movie in Los Angeles.
My mother, doing something that
she always used to criticize her
father for doing, clipped an
article about a Des Moines movie
producer and talent scout from
the newspaper and sent it to me.
I filed it away and didn't look
at it for nearly two years. (To
be honest, I don't even think I
looked at it when she sent it to
me.) Oddly
enough, I filed it with my taxes.
(Well, that's odd for normal
people, for me, it makes perfect
sense.) At tax time, I was
digging through my files, trying
to every possible receipt for
"business expenses" (read: beer
and donuts), when I found the
article on the producer. "Well,
golly shit," I said to myself,
hoping no one was around to hear,
"I wonder if she would critique
my script?" I called her, got her
answering machine and promptly
forgot about it for
months. Then,
out of the blue, she called me,
told me that she wouldn't read my
script just then, but maybe I'd
like to work on a movie in town.
That movie turned out to be
"Cutter," a $25,000 feature about
rival lawn mowing businesses.
(Hey, it was a step up from my
last film, "Desperate But Not
Serious," which, near as I could
tell, was a "Swingers" ripoff,
and not a very good one at that.)
Two guys had written it, and were
directing and producing it
together in the movie capital of
the midwest (not counting Omaha,
Chicago, Minneapolis and
Dubuque), Des Moines. Since
I've done nothing resembling a
job for almost six months, I
figured this was a brilliant way
to get my feet wet. Weeks came
and went, and I heard nothing
from the producer, and I had too
little information to track these
guys down myself. I left a bunch
of annoying messages on her
machine, but heard less than
nothing back. Then,
last Saturday, I received a phone
call. Well, to be exact, my
mother received it, and she
dutifully took down a note. Which
she forgot to give to me. "Pat -
Tom Harlow wants you to call him
on Saturday." Great! Except the
note was given to me on
Sunday. I
shouldn't be so hard on my
mother, though. At the time, she
had company coming out the wazoo,
which, though fun to watch, is
extremely painful and time
consuming. And it all worked out,
more or less. I
called the director several times
on each of the consecutive days.
In the meantime, two other
incredible events would take
place. In April, I had run across
an advertisement on the Internet
for a staff writer position at a
magazine in New York. Staff
writer positions almost never
open up, and are never
advertised. Even more incredible,
the ad said they were looking for
a recent college graduate (me)
with some writing experience (me)
and a sense of humor (well, two
out of three isn't
bad). I
applied literally the next day. I
sweat for hours over the cover
letter, perfecting every
syllable. I hand calligraphied
the resume. I had it hand
delivered by Moroccan boys on
bejeweled white horses. Well, not
exactly, but I put more effort
into that application than almost
anything I have ever done. (Maybe
that explains some of my current
problems...) One
hitch: The ad said "No calls or
e-mails, please." Which meant I
had no way of checking on the
status of the job search or even
knowing if the Moroccan boys had
made it to their offices. (I can
imagine that bejeweled horses
won't make it far on New York
streets.) Except the trusty
follow-up letter. And I sent
follow-up letter after follow-up
letter. After follow-up
letter. Three
months passed and I heard
nothing. I started composing what
I like to call the
Screw-You-Guys-Follow-Up-Letter-of-Destiny,
which basically detailed what I
thought of their hiring
practices, as well as their
mothers. Fortunately,
I never got a chance to send it,
as on Monday, I got a phone call
from the magazine's Managing
Editor. I was taking a nap when
the phone rang, and still a
little groggy, I proceeded to
bullshit my way through a
strenuous preliminary interview.
The call probably took 45
minutes, and by the end, I must
have been sweating, but I was too
dazed to notice. The
call concluded with the customary
"We'll be in touch." And if I'm
lucky, they'll fly me out to New
York for the real thing, which
includes a 2-hour grilling by the
senior staff, as well as a lunch
and a writing test. I think I'm
going to wear Depends, just in
case. The
second event was slightly less
incredible, but, nicely threw a
wrench into the works of the
first. (As my brother-in-law
Frank warned me, "When you get
one offer, you'll always have
another couple to complicate
it.") Yesterday, I got a call
from a video production company
that wanted me to drive in for an
interview. Their company was
literally the last resume I had
sent out, and I had only done it
because I'm desperate for
cashflow (as well as an excuse to
move out of my parents'
basement). It's in Fairfield,
which is known for two things:
more Transcendental Meditators
than you can shake a stick at
(though, I doubt they would even
notice the stick being waved at
them), and being so small that
there is no second thing. This
town is tiny, and, as an added
bonus, in the middle of
nowhere. I
have a deep hatred of small
towns, which stems from the time
that my sister Mari spent
teaching there. Upon one of my
visits to her classroom, one of
the students stopped the class to
ask me (with my sister right
there listening) "Hey, can you
buy?" (After an incredible
silence, all I could manage to
make myself say was, "Um, yes I
can, but not for you.")
And
that was one of the progressive
towns... It
doesn't help that the place I'm
going to be interviewed at
produces infomercials. As if I'm
not enough of a whore
now. The
magazine people said it would
take them a few weeks to decide
whether they want to fly me out,
while the video people, if they
want me, will probably want me
right away. Shit. Anyway,
eventually, I got in touch with
one of Tom, the director, and he
practically begged me to come
down and help them shoot. The
crew is so small that I get to do
a lot of the things that I
couldn't do on Desperate, like
set up lights, as the unions were
too constrictive in LA. I even am
learning the camera, a definite
no-no in LA. I was once told I
could be fired for looking in the
camera viewfinder by one of the
camera assistants. (He was lying.
Desperate was not a union shoot,
but on a union shoot in LA, you
can be fired for just
that.) All
in all, it's been a great
experience in ever manner except
the money. Remember how I said I
had come full circle working on
this movie? Well, that's good and
bad. The good part is, I'm
learning a lot and doing new
things, but the bad thing is,
like "Desperate," I'm not getting
paid. They can't pay me unless
this movie makes a profit. I'm
working for points -- that's
moviespeak for "a percentage of
the gross" -- so if this movie
ends up being an unsold $25,000
home movie, I get
nothing. Well,
maybe not nothing. I'll have
plenty of amusing stories to
tell. Not the least of which will
be about watching the sound guy
ask a complete stranger to
articulate when he vomits while I
did my Dr. Evil impression with a
stray cat. Patrick
Keller has the fresh scent of
pine. This article is ©1999
Patrick Keller, Gern Blansten
Productions. You may redistribute
this piece, provided the text is
unaltered and it contains this
notice. As always, if you know
someone sick and twisted who
might like this stuff, let me
know. Blah blah blah e-mail me at
blansten@iname.com
blah blah blah
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