Sunday, January 22, 2012

It rains a lot in England...

Production has always been a bit of a mixed bag for me. I am not the most organized detail-oriented person ever, so I have to always be careful to not overlook the small things. Also film set lingo bugs the shit out of me! I want to become a HUGE Hollywood director just so I can ban all that bullshit from my set and never have to hear it again. Well maybe with the possible exception of gary colemans because that tickles me just right.

Things went going surprisingly smooth for me on set. My producer is super duper efficient and really knows what he’s doing. I was a little surprised when I met him because he’s not at all what I was expecting. Whenever I think of British guys (EVEN though I know this to be false!) I always imagine a guy sipping tea pinky up and discussing the latest cricket match while doing one of those super effeminate Hugh Grant stuttering numbers. This guy is so not even in any danger of ever being mistaken for the swishy British men that live in my imagination. He’s so macho it borders on comical, and if it’s possible, I am pretty sure he walks cock first! It’s hilarious! Still he’s smart, quick, and really knows how to get shit done; he’s turning out to be the 3rd best producer I have ever worked with EVER.

A few nights ago we went out to a proper pub and I got to meet all his friends. The drunker they got, the less I was able to understand their crazy british talk. British people need to take some elocution classes stat because after a couple hours in the bar, it was like they were speaking a completely different language. Once their ability to speak English took a turn for the awful, that’s when the rowdiness began.

It started off with a couple of harmless “Americans are pansies” comments and then progressed into some “I know you are but what am I’s” and then it naturally progressed to the “No, I am pretty sure I could kick your ass with little to no efforts”. Everybody knows that you can’t call a man’s ability to beat the shit out of another man into question, without expecting some serious repercussions. So obviously, then came the inevitable drunken fights in the park. It was actually a lot of fun and in the end, exactly what I needed to break up all the stress and monotony that comes with working on these sets in foreign lands. Plus it just felt really good to stand up and say, “How’s it feel to get your ass kicked by a guy that’s 15cm shorter, 4 stone lighter, and AMERICAN!? Yeah I know the metric system! What now!?” The next night we all went drinking again and it was even more fun!

So I finished production, threw together a rough cut, and even sat down with a sound engineer and worked through all the more extravagant fx I needed, but I am still only a third of the way done! This is when things start to get really tedious and I need to take frequent breaks. I have been doing a lot of skateboarding with some of my new friends, I found a cool place to practice some hapkido, and I am also planning a 4-day mini-vacation to Barcelona to get my fun on (if I can finish all my work in time… I need to incentivize this for me if it’s going to get done! Don’t judge me.).

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Acclimating and Venting...


As I have stated before, the idea of moving first came up days after Brad injured himself back in September. Bradley’s only concern about moving so much sooner was me. We’d agreed after I moved back to SD to NEVER live apart because that’s just no fun and all kinds of wrong.

These last few months everything has been on my shoulders. From finding our new place, to packing up the majority of our stuff, to picking out the new furniture to replace the pieces that were too much of a pain to ship; I have been insanely flustered and overwhelmed for a while now. But I am THE MAN, so I got it all done and I made it look easy.

OK FINE, we already had a place to stay and we had a moving company pack and ship all of our stuff to our house AND most of the furniture that we weren’t shipping was already in the house that we were moving into. We even had our cars shipped because between the 2 of us we have 4, besides with my bad back and all of Brad’s ailments there’s no way we could survive a cross country roadtrip!

Our future home is still being renovated and won’t be ready for us to live in until mid-February. The neighborhood that we are staying in currently isn’t really the kind of environment that either of us would choose. I don’t know how to describe this area without sounding like a stuck up richboy… ITS FUCKING SCARY! I am pretty sure that our cars are worth more than the house we are in and I am not entirely sure what meth looks like, but I am pretty sure this guy down the street is selling it!

Speaking of cars, when the car shipper guy was dropping off our cars, it was kind of awkward and terrible. In LA and SD extremely expensive cars are a dime a dozen. It's not uncommon to see a Maserati or Ferrari driving down the street, or see a Cayenne or G550 parked in a driveway. Things are a bit different where we are now, I am pretty sure the nicest car on this block is a 2004 Honda Accord. Brad got a new car when he graduated high school because his parents were psyched that he was saving them almost $200,000 in tuition with his scholarships. Then they got him a car when he graduated college because they knew he was going to need something bigger with all the driving he would be doing. Then I have my car that my dad and I restored together and then the "loaner" from the tylers. THE WHOLE NEIGHBORHOOD came out to see the mini autoshow as they unloaded the cars and I drove them into the driveway. First my Cayenne, then Brad's G550 (aka the nazi mobile, I don't know why, it just looks really menacing) then my carrera and lastly brad's TT coupe. I felt like a 300lb fat guy having a 1 man pie eating contest in front of a bunch of starving people. It was terrible!

I have this long business trip that I am about to go on and I am a little scared to leave Bradley alone. I know he’s 6’3 and solid muscle and pretty intimidating to look at, BUT he’s a rich white boy from Santa Barbara and I am a worried that he won’t be able to handle himself if something happens while I am gone. I mean, He has ABSOLUTELY NO street smarts, and this is the South AND the ghetto, AND he’s injured, there’s just too much to stress out about!

Things with Eddie and I have been tense for a while and they’re not getting any better. After we initially “made up” Eddie got really territorial and turned into a prick. At one point Eddie even suggested that there was no me in this business without him. It was all quite melodramatic and a bit immature for him. Especially since he was clearly trying to put me down because of how insecure our parting was making him! The truth is that whenever we collaborate the person that everybody always remembers the most, IS ME.

I don’t know why, but I needed for him to see that I have my own talent and reputation outside of his shadow. Eddie is definitely more talented than I am and he has a work ethic and desire to succeed that I just can’t touch, but I am charming and personable. When two guys have almost identical reels, the client is going to go for the man they like the most, and that’s always going to be me! So I bid on a couple of projects Eddie was currently submitting treatments on, I convinced my agent to get me face time with the clients, and wouldn’t you know it, I WON BIG TIME! In December I shot a music video for this band Eddie really wanted AND I got a $10,000 larger budget than he was offered! Now I am flying off to England in a couple days to direct 2 commercials for this very large company and I had my agent negotiate a much more enticing contract than Eddie has ever gotten.

I know this is immature and extremely vindictive, but all I want to do is rub all of this in Eddie’s face. Then I think about it for a little and I feel bad and petty and all I want to do is take it all back because the reality of the situation is that I don’t even care about this nonsense in the least! I can’t imagine myself still doing this 5 years down the road, actually I can’t even imagine myself doing this passed March. I just needed for him to know that if this all ended today, it ended on my terms for my reasons.

Sunday, January 08, 2012

Life in the south...

So Bradley and I have moved to New Orleans just in time to miss THE BEST SURFING OF THE YEAR back home! Fucking hell!! Being surrounded by water and not a surfable wave in sight. This is some straight up Alanis Morissette irony up in this bitch! I am totally being a whiny bitch about this because I was convalesced all last year and couldn’t surf! Then when I was finally functional enough to shred, the waves had been as flat as a Taiwanese lady boy! Now FINALLY we have WAVES! And guess what! I am in FUCKING New Orleans! UN-BUTTFUCKING-BELIEVABLE!

I feel like I have the worst case of blue balls since the beginning of time! I have spent my day smoking pot, having sex, jerking off, having more sex, and complaining so much that I wanted to punch myself in the face for being so fucking annoying!

We have been here 5 days and I am still not ready to call this place home. It’s kind of scary, the weather sucks, and the people talk weird. Seriously though, New Orleans is not what I expected. Not that I really had any clue what to expect coming here… What the shit does a surfer need to know anything about Louisiana besides the fact that you are 1000’s of miles from the nearest wave!

We’ve been planning this move since September when Bradley first got injured and decided that he wasn’t going to spend the next year sitting on his ass doing nothing. He actually wanted to start school right then and there! It took a while to actually get him to see reason and take the time he needed to recover properly! Who would’ve thought he’d be as crappy a patient as I am. I can’t help but feel like half a decade together has made all the worst qualities in myself rub off on poor innocent Bradley!

The neighborhood that we are living in isn’t really what I have ever experienced before. I have lived in big cities, small suburbs, and even what I considered “the ghetto”. Things are older here. I feel like everything has this weird worn down look to it, and I have no idea what half the people around here are saying! These next couple years are going to be very interesting… Here’s to hoping Bradley finds a school closer to an ocean when it’s time for his PhD.