Failure to Launch

[Bar Louis in the Hotel Fauchere in Milford, PA. Sushi pizza here is the ultimate comfort food for me, and it is a good thing. See below.]

I can't even tell you how upset I am. Or rather, was. At least I can see straight now. Couldn't do that for almost three days. Ahhh, so many lessons learned this week. And absolutely nothing else accomplished.

I am still in the Poconos, staring at a sinkful of dishes and a mountain of food, much of it that will go bad if I don't give it away. Less than a week ago I was so far ahead of the game! This was going to be the smoothest shoot ever! Only two actors, instead of my usual cast of thousands, only 10 pages, only three locations, but the majority of it taking place in one house. I had had two great rehearsals with the actors, including blocking, and they had it down pat. I had gone to Sam's Club and put $350 worth of groceries on my card, the only one that isn't maxed out. 3 of the 6 people that were going to be on the shoot are vegetarians, but two eat fish, so what I saved not buying meat I spent on crab cakes and shrimp scampi. Had my car packed to the roof with all of this food, plus props, computer, dogs, suitcase, me... Got up here Saturday night, unpacked all of it by myself, took me about an hour and a half. Eric arrived a couple hours after I did, he needed to shoot some B-roll of a little town up here for his movie. We did that on Sunday, I talked to the grip, Kit, while she was on her way up, and when she was only a few miles away, I got a call from Michelle's girlfriend that she was sick and was not coming up.

No DP.
No gear.
No movie.

No kidding.

I don't really even want to talk about it, but this blog is for you, to show you the downs with the ups. I'm not going to go into detail about how I feel about the whole thing because I haven't really sorted it all out in my head myself yet. People get sick, can't do much about that. Kit was a good sport and I took her sightseeing the next day before she headed home. I was able to reach the actors before they got on the road. They were disappointed, of course. Disappointed doesn't begin to describe how I felt.

Eric had his camera with him but no mic or lights. He would have made the 7-hour+ roundtrip home and back if I had asked him to, he's a good friend like that, to get the gear, but it really didn't matter without a DP, and he couldn't take the next 2 days off work.

After Kit left on Monday, I felt like I needed to stay up here another day just to calm down, regroup, maybe come up with an alternate plan. But after thinking about it, I really have no time to do this all over again before the "Smalltimore" screening on December 9th. It is just too much. The DVD release is the priority now and I can't take my eye off that ball.

I got some emails taken care of and some other stuff related to the screening done, including final confirmations of the musical line-up at the post-party. Details coming soon, I'll save that for when I am in a better mood and can give you the news with the excitement it deserves. I'm calm now but quite depressed about the whole thing, and at the prospect of reloading the car with all this food. Giant pain in my ass. And nothing to show for it. Absolutely nothing.

I haven't felt this terrible since I was in the early stages of pre-production for "Smalltimore". I had been talking to someone about producing the movie for a couple months, I thought we were on the same page, and then he asked for money - money that I didn't have, and even if I did, couldn't see paying for production work. Production is hard work, it is a pain, and takes organization, connections, and patience, but it is not brain surgery. I'm not saying that producers aren't worth paying, I am just saying that I am capable of doing it myself. I wasn't sure of that back then, though, and I was terribly depressed because I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me. I thought this person wanted to be a partner because he believed in what I was doing, but it was just a job to him. I had gotten myself into the mindset that I needed him to get this done, and some of that was because he made me feel that way, that I didn't know what I was doing.

But after I got over being depressed about the situation, I got pissed off about the situation, and I was determined to get it done and get it done well, so I would never have to be dependent on someone like that, and so no one would be able to tell me that something takes longer to do or costs more than it does because if I did it myself I would know. And now, I do, and other people are asking me to produce for them. I never wanted to produce, I wasn't really interested in that end of it. But here I am.

And where here is, is that I am still dependent, too dependent, on people who know how to operate a camera. That has to change. And it will.