I get back from a loop around my neighborhood around nine at night, Monday night. I’m going crazy working on this edit of my new film, sitting at my desk at the machine all day. I needed to clear my head in the world for a change.
My buddy’s local bar is closed because my buddy keeled over on a shift at his third job last month and now he’s recovering at home after a twelve-hour heart surgery, getting nursed by his mysterious cousin from Japan. They had to move some veins up from his legs to his chest and so his legs are jacked up. Isn’t that freaky? So I went to an Irish bar instead, and it was twenty-soms minutes each way, cold and neon-streaked and industrial down toward the port, and even just twelve blocks away from my house I felt like a stranger.
The whole way there I was thinking of the next film, how to shoot cheaper, get realer, get punchier. The whole way back I was on the phone with one of my collaborators talking out how to make it happen. I wish I could shoot with Denzel Rust because I know he’s not afraid to commit to the project, to the art, being wild in public. They say bravery is rarer than genius.
I’m on the line, shivering, talking through phone rigs mounted in hats and AirPods for mics and all kinds of ridiculous schemes. What if you gave Cassavetes a GoPro and Meta glasses? Would he have been able to shoot without re-mortgaging his house for film stock, skating by, drinking himself to death? Would anyone know his name?
Then I get back home and Netflix is emailing me. I really wish this could have come a day or even just a few hours earlier, but my heart is leaping a little that it came at all. They want me at a gala for a film I worked on. It starts in about twenty hours. My Godzilla plans will have to wait, sorry Mom. I invite her to come to the gala instead, but she says it’s not her thing. She’s sticking with her favorite kaiju. I’m going to the Directors Guild theater.
West Hollywood is the only one of the various Hollywoods here that has beaten back and urban planned its way out of sidewalk anarchy. The gala spills out onto the street and the street does not feel apocalyptic. The movie is about surfing, kind of, and there’s a blue carpet and a blue step-and-repeat. They’re rushing people through the photo cycle and I know what that’s like because I’ve done it before but tonight I’m not on the photo list. That’s fine, it’s stressful.
They have to pick up a stanchion so I can get up the ramp, and the DGA staff in black get it done without complaining. “Have a nice time, sir.”
You can tell if someone’s a Francophone from their face. The sounds of the language build up the top and side muscles of the mouth more than English, and so they hold their lips slightly pursed at rest. Most people in this big guild lobby are like that, either standing around with pursed lips or murmuring in Parisian French. Technically, this is part of the American French Film Festival, although it really seems like Netflix just dropped into the space with an open wallet to use AFFF to promote our movie.