Gitmo nutty

At one point last week, one member of our team started looking like the internees at Guantanamo Bay: Eyes fixed and dilated, uncommunicative, prone to fits of laughter and sobbing which comingled into a lurching howl that hung in the air like a plaintive wail, echoing far into the night...

And that was just the actress.



To quote the Eagles, I'm losing all my highs and lows.

We really got banged up last week-physically, emotionally, spiritually. I sorta melted down at the weekly meeting (held at the arsenic hour of 4 PM Friday) acting alternately petulant, morose, annoyed, annoying, and hungry.

Where was the creative, funny, good natured guy we all love? He can't make it, so I'll be filling in for him.

There's always next week. After all, tomorrow is another day..

Crank up the crazy

Here's what I learned last week: Cheap motels get really nervous when asked if a film crew can shoot there. I also figured out that a british accent is a hard thing to hide.
I think that "night manager" is a creepy job title. Also, perhaps not everyone needs to be regaled with amusing and interesting tales of my colorful past.

More enlightenment: In a perfunctory scientific experiment, it appears that hand-painted antique tables and hot Domino's pizza don't mix. (This experiment needs to be repeated with a kosher pizza as a control) Evidently, Georgetown isn't a great match for Spatanburg, South Carolina (who knew?)

In an interesting sidebar- It could be called Stephanopolustown, but that doesn't fit on a sign.

Old news: No-one knows anything; Don't trust anyone; Great literature and true-crime TV don't mix......

Thanks to jake, monalisa, all the moms of rodman place and especially tiki-free...

a perfect storm

The chance of everything going wrong usually perches just above our heads, whistling. For example, tomorrow's locations center around the lower georgetown, and the crew has no idea that I plan to shoot the "Excorcist Stairs" for purely personal reasons.

There are numerous red flags surrounding one location. We have a scene where a girl sits outside a house where a party goes on. The bong boys, as we've dubbed the residents, have decided to get a keg and have a real party. This spells trouble, with a capital T. Also, my associate identified herself to them as my "hot little assistant"
so they're whipped into a hormonal frenzy at the prospect of female attention.

So we've got that going for us. Throw in a Russian accountant who can't add or speak english, a stalinistic management team who never met a new set of procedural revisions they didn't like, and you've got us.

We're working in a dream factory...

Why the hell not?

The problem is with success- Last season our production team, Bentley, Chia and myself brought in our show, 13 episodes in all, on time and under budget.

So you'd think that would be a good thing right? You'd be wrong: this season we have a third less everything: no Bentley, two shooting days per episode instead of three and 2/3 of our previou$ budget.

But we have a secret weapon: Spunk. No seriously, we're fucked; the previous model was basically untenable, and this season we have a raft of new byzantine procedures and legal voodoo ceremonies to muddy the waters.

So crank up the crazy and laisse les bontemps roulette 'cuz MPU Drama (as they call us now, in a tip 'o the hat to the outcasts in high school who were always smoking and laughing outside the stage door) is in the house. And the yard. And the alley, where, unfortunately we have no permission to shoot.

Permits? We don't need no stinkin' permits!

aaaaaaaNNNNDDDDD ACTION!!!!