stressed tv bunny sings the blues

Can I even blog now, while everything explodes inside?
Loneliness of the oft-unoccupied associate producer. While we run four hours overtime or the monitor ceases to function or we’re faced with a subject who simply cannot answer an interview question in a complete sentence (and past tense, if you please) I’m castrated in the antechamber, surrounded by, in short order: three curling irons, two and a half untasted ice teas, some seventeen shades of foundation and mattifying powder, two grips, one PA, and an uncharged cell phone, on the other end of which likely exists the answers to all of our catastrophies.

My experience in production can be assembled and easily digested through a series of clichés (notably: hurry up and wait, don’t count your chickens, Murphy’s law, too good to be true… & c.) So far, MD season 8 has followed the latter- relatively engaging, well informed subjects, hospital PR the likes of which – ready for another cliché—dreams are made of, relatively exciting locations, relatively accommodating and livable hotel rooms. Keep the explosions to a minimum (dave, don’t pull the monitor off the bed by the cable!) and we’ll present thirteen to seventeen tapes at the end of each ordeal, which chronicle the gorgeous moments everything went right (no matter how many takes it took.)

Our last full shoot this season has been a perfect opposite perfect storm. Of course it’s in New Orleans, where everything runs opposite anyway. Before we left, Dave asked if we were up for the challenge. The morning of, my anxiety alarm clock essentially electrocuted me. But at that point, everything seemed marginally under control. Sure, two of our subjects were unintelligible, and the others were threatening legal action or changing flights the day of departure. But we had locations and had a hospital and more or less had a show, so it seemed.

And we do have a show, more or less. After a $135 lunch (why is my credit card being declined?) and a major monitor malfunction (of course you wanted to spend $500 more on equipment rental!) we’re more or less only an hour behind schedule- producer Dave seems almost satisfied (we’ll see, as the night progresses) and everyone had lunch! On time, no less! Less is more? The hotel is sad and old, the car’s too small, the location might be cramped, the hospital harried… but we’re making headway, making television, powering through, keeping our chins up, noses to the grindstone (cliché cliché cliché)

Today I did my first producerial thing (an interview, with a subject I preinterviewed and was entirely responsible for!) and didn’t fuck up too badly- Dave did have to chime in a few times, but considering it’s my second ever Legitimate Contribution To An Episode, I am glad to have had the opportunity and (cliché) am keeping my fingers crossed that some of my subject will make it onto the show.

I have to keep reminding myself of another cliché- it’s not brain surgery. We’re not saving lives, just making tv about people who do. But when you’re locked outside the action with a dead cell phone, trying to keep silent and watching the clock click towards overtime, it’s hard not to feel professionally impotent. It’s these moments that I am glad cigarettes cost $5 a pack anywhere outside of New York, that diet cokes are part of production costs, and, mostly- that I care enough about this show (MY JOB) to get so worked up over it. Get ready for the monster cliché- I’M TOO BLESSED TO BE STRESSED- but modified for the situation- I do what I love and it’s making me grey prematurely and I don’t think I could have it any other way.

tarnished goldfish

Took a week off work to sleep on the floor in Poughkeepsie, producing a short for a professor friend with a bunch of newly minted Vassar grads

Rather than make call sheets (oh, there's plenty of time for that, ladies&gents!) I wanna talk about FEEEEELINGS

(I ALWAYS want to talk about feelings. This is nothing new.)

It is a positive adrenaline shot to be back in production mode after almost exactly a year on hiatus. There's something wonderfully raw about academic indie film making, although The Fishbowl doesn't neatly fit into either category. Technically this isn't a film school movie, because it's not being done through the department and we've only 2 undergrads working with us. It's not quite independent, because we're still keeping our fingers crossed that the dean's office/department will reimburse some/all of the costs. But what is independent, and what I love most about independent film, is the spirit of all of the participants-- everyone's doing this out of the goodness of their hearts and the love of the medium.

James Roehl has written a modest, sincere script that reminds me what's hidden and lovely about being in your midtwenties and being able to appreciate that. He wrote The Fishbowl based on his weekend at RISD a few years ago and workshopped it in Kathleen (my one true professor love)'s class last fall. When it came time for picking narratives, his only got one vote, and it wasn't his own. As the year wound down Kathleen, still touched by sincerity in the face of student film's bombastic, bloody endings, resurrected the idea. James found his one remaining copy of the script, under his bed and muddied by footprints, and together they resurrected it and got eight of us together for a week to make a little movie that could.

My forever partner in crime Katie has been lassoed in as assistant camera, but has been acting as a phenomenal AD for the past 2 days. From day one (literally, freshman year when we both showed up as prospective film/psych double majors and discussed this in the elevator) I've always had Katie as my creative sounding board. Now it's double happiness to have her here to hang out and make art for a week, because emotionally we're on the same playing field-- we've already sorted out the post grad world, and gone through the emotional tumult of being freshly graduated and scared shitless and numb as a coping mechanism because the rug holding everything we knew had just been yanked out from under us. As the only two such folk for whom the rug pulling did not transpire THIS MORNING, it's nice to have a metered, reasonable ally whose company I can safely say I enjoy more than almost anyone else's.

Oh man, the day after graduation. I think I just cried a little bit for a solid week. I can't even imagine how the rest of the crew is even functioning well enough to MAKE AN EQUIPMENT LIST or CONTACT POUGHKEEPSIE PUBLIC TRANSPORT when they've moved 4 years of their lives into their cars for the night, postponing the uncertainty for just one more week to make this movie. There is comfort in the familiarity of production, it breathes a certain way and you get used to the rhythms. Hopefully we can keep everyone so busy that at the end of the week their heads fall off and they can just then remember that the world is mighty uncertain.

Kathleen deserves her own blog entry or an entire blog of adulation because she's such a person. I'm not even sure how i'm processing everything that's going on here but in the span of a year we've gone from an incredible professor-student relationship to something that's not as clearly defined but marvelous in its ambiguity. Such a person. such a person. Fascinating and endlessly impressive and definitely the type of woman I was praying for when she came to the Junior film screenings at the end of 2007-- I wanted to write her an email then and say- HI can you teach me how to do this as a lady? I learn from her every day, and the staying a lady part most of all.

I'm going off an emotional deep end, which means I should go back to menial tasks like finding suitable costumes and scheduling trainrides. My late night concern at this moment are our animal actors, the four goldfish we got today for the shoot that'll have to brave the metro north to come home with me on Friday. As yet unnamed, in the tank at the Petco they were brilliant, actually golden beans. Now they just look hungry and tarnished. We got 4 to have 2 backups/stunt doubles "should anything happen" over the week. I'm hoping they perk the fuck up before their star turn on wednesday.

MORE ON THAT LATER!

BOSSAY

SAM RYAN, YOU ARE ALL UP IN MY INTERNET GRILL

STEP OFF (but plz don't because I feel like this is the new tin can phone)

In other news, no one has made me cry today. But the night is young, the drinks will be aplenty (H won a free happy hour! If I actually get out of work at a normal person time, I can go there!) and I'm sure I will
1. propose marriage to Ali
2. text inappropriately
3. break a glass
4. leave an ancillary article of clothing somewhere
5. wish I'd eaten more before drinking

potentially fatal side effects

Okay. so I received HORRIBLE news at the boxdoc this weekend. Apologies for setting up what might appear to be an overshare, I promise the severity of this announcement has nothing to do with gynecological health.
We were discussing something and she asked me if I drink a lot of caffeine or diet soda. I drink a lot of caffeine IN my diet soda, and since I've left college I don't have coffee with the same frequency because I jitter, which reminds me of anxiety, which makes me worried that I'm having anxiety, which makes me concerned about the fact that I'm no longer being treated for anxiety, which generally brings me right to the precipice of an anxiety attack, which is fun for absolutely no one. In any case, I drink diet coke in the morning as a nice routine wakeup... I like exchanging pleasantries with the middle aged indian man in the 8th street subway stop with his giant diamond pinkie ring; he likes that I almost always have exact change. I have a few more during the day... maybe two more on a bad day. What can I say? I like artificial sweeteners, I like keeping my caffeine high, I love guilt free cola flavor.

But apparently, my body DOES NOT love these things.

So my doctor told me that I need to stop drinking diet coke.

This news has not actually sunk in yet. (Partially because I'm now drinking more diet coke just to be defiant.) Diet coke (and its special occasion niece, diet orange sunkist) are my lifeblood. I am defined by the silver can or the red topped 20 oz bottle. I love the way it feels in my hand. I love the way it tastes, warm or cold. I am fully addicted to diet soda. And now some bitch with an MD is telling me that I should gradually wean myself off over the course of the next month, "just to see" if it'll make a difference?

I'd rather not. I'd rather be irritated/uncomfortable/inconvenienced FO-EVAH than give up the chemical delights of my daily drink. Diet Coke's seen me through an epic spectrum of life alterations, and I just don't think it's fair to abandon it now. (spoken like a true addict.)

I quit smoking (pretty much once and for all, except "socially" about once a month) after I graduated. I got a job, then I got another one, and an apartment and all sorts of real life stress without a chemical crutch. Now things are going moderately well, I am decently happy. And then there's this bombshell.

I am going to miss you, diet coke. I really am.
But we'll have our day again sometime soon.