Handing over from one job world to another today. The director of our doc is surrounded with people who care about spreadsheets. This is necessary, because he shoots out of a suitcase and a plastic bag. And then he hands his things to anyone who will take them. The lightwands, his reflector, filters… They were all nobody’s concern. He carried much of his crucial kit in a bag for life, much like all the food for the set. It came with him from his hotel room on the first day on set so didn’t get logged when I did the van pack the day before. I just assumed it was food so left it in the office until someone started losing their shit that they couldn’t find the reflector. Multiple workarounds available, totally not an issue. We never missed a beat on this set artistically despite all the howling. The producer was anticipating potential issues, sure. We got him his reflector.
He left bits with the gaffer whose job it was to light things. He rarely needed anything in that checkered bag for life, it was the bag of someone who isn’t used to filming with an actual team of dedicated lighting professionals. Sure we had two portable light wands in the van, and some basic stands in case there was nobody to hold them. I got them back. But the checkered bag… it was his crap in there. It was the bane of my life. And this morning, knowing he would be flying back soon, I had to try and reunite some of the scattered contents with him. I dropped it at reception at a hotel in Soho.
This morning I had a zoom meeting about some MC and charity auction work. Very much my skillset. Very happy to be involved. It’s an important charity but I don’t know how much I can say so I’ll say nothing.
Then this afternoon into evening I’ve been thinking about my artistic collaborations. It’s something I can’t overlook. I’m an artist as frequently as I’m an actor these days, working alongside all sorts of madness and bringing life to it.
Tomorrow I’m gonna spend one more morning helping with an unload and taking a van back. Then it is done and I’m gonna let some time pass. Time is a healer. I’m fucking proud of the ones I added to the roster in the end. Dan and the gaffer did great. Marco was totally pro as I knew. Mark showed up casual for driving work and it was like it was the end of the world. And I heard the comment that is at the heart of a lot of the shit I’ve had this week. “He’s a fucking actor. He thinks it’s all about him.” Basic ignorance, sadly. Directed at one of us who doesn’t double as an actor.
There are many different personality types drawn to the craft of acting. “Mummy look at me” is a tiny percentage, even if people assume it’s the only demographic. Sure I know how to be big, and when. I’m an extroverted introvert. It is my job to know when to walk into my size and when not to. I deliberately sent myself up with a big dumb funny pointless speech on my birthday.
I think someone got bitten by a rabid actor as a child.
By the look of it, a 16 year old boy took a chainsaw to this iconic sycamore tree at Hadrian’s Wall.
Something older and more nuanced than he will ever be has been destroyed forever by him. I wonder who planted it, and when.Was it blown there? What did it see?
We all know the tendency of the ignorant to break things that threaten their little worldview. My initial worry is that this is along those lines. All the environmental stuff. “I’m more better than this tree!” Felling a tree like that is not easy. Likely he would need a chainsaw, and maybe a generator… Even some skill or some help. Plus he would have had to get the kit up to the tree to fell it. It is all very very weird, and I find it upsetting because it speaks of both catastrophic ignorance, and planning.
How lovely though, for me to be able to wonder about such things instead of being spoken to like I’m a recalcitrant ten year old. I am OUT of the bubble. Hooray!!!
I dropped the substitute gaffer van off in Watford. Then I went home. Now I’m looking at the next gig. I’ve got a meeting online tomorrow morning. My various collaborations have started to click back in. I’ll have things to do between now and December…
Home has a friendly cat in it. I’ve been getting photos from Frank the whole time I’ve been up in Aberdeen being belittled and now I’m back I get to actually hang out with the cat and be treated like a normal human being.
He’s a beautiful heart, Boy. Frank and he are clearly already bonded, and now I’ve artived he seems delighted to have two slaves. I’m glad he’s had the time to get to know Frank before I came back. It seems like he might be with us a bit longer. He’s had quite a runaround, poor Boy. I think it’ll be good for him to have some peace, and it’s exceptionally chilled here these days.
It is so nice to be out of the bubble. I was entrusted a Pleo card last night to return to my manager and almost drove out of Aberdeen before I realised I still had it. Even that final interaction was a mire of passive aggressive fuckery. I’m really really disappointed. It’s a lovely thing damaged for no discernable advantage.
But this is what we do. For short term things we sometimes break long term things. I don’t know what that 16 year old thought as he chopped down that tree, no more than I know what my friend was thinking as they repeatedly talked to me like I was a moron. That beautiful ancient tree won’t grow back. That heavy handed idiot has ruined it forever. Short term foolishness.
Maybe my friendships will slowly grow back over time. I really hope so. Right now I am fed up and angry and don’t want to initiate conversation with them. But … tonight I get to sleep in my own bed and maybe get jumped by a friendly fluffy cat at some point.
God I’m strung out now. Happy but done. They are unloading the tech van in the rain up in Aberdeen. I’m not there.
This tiny wee crew and everyone is overlapping jobs. There’s way too much eye rolling and finger pointing for my taste, but it is all sharpening to a point and the footage is excellent. I’m sure I’m involved in something that will be a strong result. Artistically the team is really buzzing, and THE SLIDERS GOT USED TWICE. Today they even used the two little lighting stands that got slung in for the Godox light wands – “panels” as the Americans like to say. We had borrowed a little nubbin from the gaffer so nobody asked for them until I was off site and driving with the returned nubbin in the back. I was pleased I could remember their number and rough location. The job ended just as I was becoming a ninja. Not that you’d know it by the way people have been speaking to me.
Before I arrived in Aberdeen, a projector was delivered to the office. It was tidied up under a table and nobody worked out it was there when it was needed. The only person who had already seen it described it as huge. “Have you seen a huge thing?” “No.” They had to rent another one.
This morning I could feel the usual pointless blame game. They had found it under a table I didn’t set up, but that I had been using to charge the walkies. Blame first, solve second – that’s been the culture. Suddenly there was a pointed “somebody” who had tidied up the projector. It made me chuckle bitterly.
You know me, oh constant reader. When have I EVER tidied anything up?? Also, and yeah I’m in this question, how did nobody look under the tables?
I pretended not to notice that there was this pointless attribution of blame after the problem had arisen and been solved. It’s like the pointless release form posters that I didn’t know about and got hauled out for not bringing. Pressure does strange things to people, unfamiliar pressure doubly so. I don’t give a fuck who did anything or who forgot what or what this person’s job was or that person was supposed to have done. I give a fuck about the result, and honing a system that works under pressure without any eye rolling or status bullshit. Yes there was a very well known human involved, but they weren’t playing status. So why should anyone else?
I’ve enjoyed this. I thrive under pressure. But…
I rang Tristan today who has just come off a fortnight as Art Director elsewhere. “What the fuck are they getting mardy with you about batteries? How dare the gaffers track your speed in the van? You shouldn’t even be driving it! What sort of fucking outfit have you got yourself involved in? If they want you to drive slowly put in a fucking limiter… and they were on you for memory cards? And they talked to you like what? You actually should have walked mate. You should have got a taxi back to London on the company card…” was the beginning of a half hour conversation that ended with me having to persuade him not to fly up to Aberdeen to have a bloody word with someone. “You don’t take any shit from me whatsoever! You haul me out hard if I’m even slightly out of line. Why did you eat so much shit for them?” “Because if I try to hold my ground then we have to have a meeting about why I was wrong. I’ve got shit to do. Quicker and better to munch those turds.” “You need to have a word with them once it’s all over.” meh. It is what it is.
We’re all pulling in the same direction, and we all bring something different to the party. That’s the point. If we were all the same we wouldn’t need society. I’m a great big loud visible friendly clumsy Yang with an eidetic memory, no fear and an ease with making machinery move and with talking. I’m not pretending to be anything other than what I am. I have made friends on this job. Sound Matt is a sound guy. Ha ha but he is solid and started getting angry on my behalf cus he’s been on lots of sets and knows the roles. Wardrobe Olivia sees the me of me – she’s a northern Lou. I showed her JoybombLondon on Instagram. “I’m the panda. And most of the men.” “That woman is so fucking cool,” she says about Amy the artist. Yes she is. Twenty four years old and she gets my jam. Phew. I’ve artlessly liked everyone on this set and felt it reciprocated. Art dep. Producer. Even the chaperone mum. The hardest run I’ve had has been with my old mates. But ain’t that always the case? We can be very different creatures when we are at work. I’ve got old mates I know for absolute certain that I would NEVER want to work with. They’ll always be my mates though.
I just went to the local pub in Chorley for a terrible steak. They are playing eighties music. They just played Only You by Yazoo and it is it second time I’ve heard it in decades, the first time being 4 hours ago in the van. I’ve been in an eighties music hole. I’ve played through so much cheese as I’ve crawled home. I’ve eaten up the miles. I can’t wait to stop this though and get back home and then to Lou and to Boy and to friends and to no more eye-rolling. I’m going to miss it though. The early starts, everyone mucking in, working with old mates, life.
So yeah, in London I had Marlon, plus I was making sense of the kit. “We didn’t know what you were for in London,” says Page. “But you’ve been mister Aberdeen.” Phew But let’s see how they do tomorrow. It’ll be whatever. I’m ahead now. But weirdly I’ve been pulled off a job I could do.
One of my best friends has been having a terrible time in terms of internal monologue, and it peaked around the London dates of this job. I picked up her cat in the gaffer van to introduce to Frank. It’s fucked when your friends lose the plot. I’ve known it before. I’m waiting and hoping for balance again. I can’t talk about it without sadness or interpretation. But her cat just looks so ridiculously happy in temporary shelter with Frank. I’ve landed on a wonderful flatmate. And they have landed on an effortlessly delightful companion.
Little boyboy will be here a bit longer while my friend makes sense of the world. I am told by people I don’t know that she’s recovering. I hope she is.
I’m off to sleep. Sorry. can’t keep my eyes open
We are at a disused train station in the north of Scotland.. The lights I only just managed to get up here are in full use making things look pretty. The team is working tighter now and we are learning to anticipate one another’s ways. I was very very drunk last night. They kept buying me whisky on very little sleep. I noticed it this morning. My brain has been bleeding all day, but fortunately it hasn’t been a pressing long day at all. There were stormy teacups regarding batteries and cards, but we are all getting used to the occasional tornado. It is largely inevitable when we don’t know what the shots are.
Right now the moon is up and it’s peaceful here. The wind is in the trees. We are all getting excited at the possibility of some aurora activity this first night when the dark is longer than the light. Perhaps some of us will drive up and see it.
It’s a team of nice people making a thing. No dicks, unless it’s me. Some personality for sure. Occasionally temperatures run high but at no point is anyone being toxic. It’s hard work and long hours but I’ll miss it when it’s over. And the longer the team stays in place the better we get at anticipating each other.
My hangover has an effect on my memory though. This afternoon I gave the smoke machine to the gaffer and adjusted my runsheet to make note of the exchange. Then I completely and utterly forgot the whole exchange as if it had never happened and was utterly confused when the thing wasn’t in the Zarges. Must be getting old. “They’re on your head, grandad!” Well it WAS my birthday yesterday.
Everyone is looking at the stars. I’m gonna get out from under my little easy-up. I’m just sitting with the tech at the moment wondering if I’m gonna be needed, and writing this down now so I don’t have to hammer it out exhausted before bedtime.
—
Which is now. I had the mother and father of all bubble baths. Now I must sleep. Tomorrow morning it’ll all start again. Two venues. So long as the weather holds out we will be fine. Rain is a ruin. Nights like this are just a joy.
This morning we drove down a path to a cliff. The grass is high after a wet summer. No cars have gone that way this year but for Hannah and Fiona this morning. They are ahead of us in a light Range Rover.
I’m driving a transit van today, full of camera equipment. It’s heavy.
“The path is fine,” says Paul. A bit bumpy but fine. Keep a steady speed, stay in second gear.” He sends us off.
“Thanks mate,” I say, and then to Dan I say ; “Bless him, telling us all how to drive.” The truth is, with this van on this road, he’s right – it is better for us to go in fast but first gear manages the weight. We ride low. The grass will overheat or even bottom us. I’ve already lost one van on this job, through no fault of my own. I’m doing this properly, even though the grass fucks with us.
I push my momentum as instructed and as feels practical. I’m in driver head. My concern is for the vehicle. I’m driving very much to the needs of the situation.
The range rover ahead of us is floundering from driving too slow, I think. I have no ideas who is in it. It’s just an unusually hesitant bellwether. I push on, hoping my understanding in a trickier vehicle will help them gain the confidence they need in their offroader to stop risking swamping and get to the end of the field. This is uneven ground but it isn’t bad compared to Sardinia / Uruguay / Saudi and plenty of the other places I’ve had to throw around a front wheel drive when it is only 4×4 possible for these guys. Ha! You just need to understand momentum and know when to stop. To the cliffs is an easy drive if you are vigilant. You might get bogged or overheated, but you lower the chances massively if you use momentum.
But… suddenly the car ahead of us stops. I stop too, at the top of a downward slope so I can continue. There’s a good 40 foot between us – I’ve been trying to slow down so they can solve what I’m assuming must be a problem with their car which has been making them crawl.
Fiona gets out. She yomps up to us.
“She looks angry,” I say to Dan. “Nah mate, it’ll be logistics. She needs to give us a permit.” “Actually yeah, that’s likely it. It’s not like we’ve done anything.”
Fiona arrives at my window and she’s shouting and not breathing at all. The most incredible invective. Horrible. How does she do it and not fall over? This is my friend and my boss. Literally the nastiest anyone has ever spoken to me in my entire life. It was everything I had not to say “Go fuck yourself”. Absolutely gobsmacking unprovoked RAGE. Looking back on it I guess that’s the trust thing. I trust her, and I trust Hannah. We are friends. Friends can be cunts to each other.
How much damage have these Americans done that I can drive correctly and with experience over rough terrain and my friend can literally verbally assault me with everything they’ve got for no reason? Limmy told me years ago: ‘These Americans – you can’t let them hurt your friendships.”
“If that had been me I would have walked off the job,” says Dan. She is mum of two boys. So was my poor mum. She defaulted to a tone that sees results with them. But… it is only effective if it is your children who owe their freedom to you.
I’m trying to eat the poison. I’m the bottom of the hierarchy on purpose. I’m the whipping boy. That’s the hope. I’ve got no ambition to be mister whoopywooface. But just because I set myself up as the whipping boy does not mean that my friends are free to flail me like that. Nobody should ever speak to anyone like that.
I’m generally just trying to make things nice when I work. It’s something I’m extremely good at. It’s all I give a fuck about. I’ve got old friends on the shoot: Hannah, Fiona and Dan. Very different types but I care about them all very deeply and we have all pissed each other off on this job, but thankfully we all love each other. The material we were shooting will hopefully be lovely, even if it is getting harder by the day with the lack of a first AD. You have to tell people what you’re doing ahead of time or they’ll lose faith. Thank God we have a fantastically kind gaffer. I sent the drone guy to him as he was trying to balance interior to exterior. I’ve never seen anyone so amenable. Alongside that, I experimented when wardrobe and art were with me and I had the only walkie. “You have to ask Hannah if you want an answer. If I ask she’ll just be vague and slightly belittling.” “No she won’t,” said Dahlia and Olivia, and so we all shared my walkie and observed how they both got answers and I got fobbed off.
Friends, eh? That’s why some people pretend to be better than real. But I know she’s going though stress. And it is mostly glorious.
It’s a lovely lovely set. Tonight we managed to get everyone together in one place with the excuse of a late call tomorrow and my birthday. My heavily refined “Unthreatening Alien” routine allows everyone to be their best selves on jobs like this. I’ll go right out there and say that my special skill is to bring companies together without anyone realising I’m doing it. I know when to clown and when to shoot energy, and I give no fucks about your hierarchy nonsense.
Goodness me. It’s my birthday already. Midnight just happened.
It’s long hours. Too long when it keeps happening, particularly when I only slept an hour or two on the drive up. I’m not kicking off yet, but I’ve started standing in myself again.
Today was tight in terms of production. We overran but nothing to do with inefficiency. Just art. Art cares not for we nor time. Art be art. Alexis could just do it again forever but here, thankfully, we have multiple producers on set to tell him to hurry up.
I’ve been on some sets where a producer shows up just occasionally and everyone stands up straight. The day is slower and interrupted with ancient things that have been considered and pointed. Their individual taste might dominate an interpretation on a line or scene that happens to be underway. Then they leave and everything feels a little wider.
We have an abundance of producers on this shoot. It’s weird as we all have to be on our best behaviour. But… This evening one of them was with me after a long shoot where the location manager held up a short bit of wire and said, at half nine in the evening; “This is the length of the piano frame.” The keyboard is three times the length of it. “Nah mate you’ve measured the width,” I tell him. But the doubt is sewn. Suddenly I’m having to carry the piano frame with Tom, out of the van and into the office, where we build it and of course it’s fine. But it means I’m writing to you from the bath at half twelve, and because the hotel won’t reserve parking, we have to unload everything precious at the end of the day when their lot is full, and then load it all up again earlier than we want.
It’s my birthday. All I have to think about is logistics and production. There’s so much to do.
Last year I was pretending to be a bent town councillor. This time I’m ops. Next time? Who knows.
I’m knackered. This is all you’ll get from me. But it was beautiful today and efficient. If only I had the head to record it. We had to use a stately home to build a convincing tenement flat. With all the kit, and interiors only, we needed the space…
Two hours from location and my van’s temperature gage suddenly goes from cold to DANGER. Then without ceremony, up pops the engine light and an alarm goes off This is all in about a second. And then the power leaves the engine like running out of fuel, and my steering goes all 1970 and I’m at 50mph on a dual carriageway with no hard shoulder a 3 tonne dead bit of metal on wheels, hauling thousands of pounds worth of lights. Steam starts pumping up the side of my window. I instinctively have floored the clutch so now I’m coasting. And just in front of me is a little Shell garage with a shop outside. And my momentum takes me up the hill, out of the way of all the traffic and I come to a juddering halt perfectly parked and jump out onto grass through a cloud of stinking steam. My guardian angel is once more covered in bruises. I don’t know how she does it.
Still, fuck. I pop the bonnet. An RAC van drives up into the forecourt and asks me if I’m someone I’m not. No, but could you have a look when you’re done? He might. Lucky.
The coolant tank is totally empty. There’s liquid all over the engine. Hmm. I ring Dan first as I know he’s close behind me. Don’t want him to pass. I’ve been crawling. He’s been spanking it. I tell him the circumstances and then go and see what’s available in the Londis.
They sell coolant. Also oil etc etc. I go back to the van and it is clear nobody has ever unscrewed the top up hatch for coolant. There’s ancient pine cones. Bits of dead pigeon. Some of that will get in the engine. I clean it a bit and Dan rings me. “Is it a Shell garage? Hang on, I think I see you.”
Suddenly there’s two of us. He was very close behind me. Things are better already. I buy coolant. We pour it in and it vanishes. The RAC guy comes over and sounds the death knell. “Right. It’s cool now. Turn the engine on and see if it runs.” I do. It does. “Yeah these Citroens are known for it. The cooling system goes. Was it only blowing cold air?” “YES!” “Did you just put in coolant? Look it’s all on the floor now. Went straight through. You can drive it a little bit. But you stopped just in time. You’ll fuck the engine if you try and drive it properly. Thermostat is gone. Likely it went first. Did you get any alarms? Likely not. If the thermo goes first, the bang is all you know of it.”
Dan and I get on the phone simultaneously. Everyone is in airplanes right now but for Hannah and us. I ring her. Dan starts ringing recovery companies. I tell Hannah the situation. Dan finds a huge respected recovery firm an hour’s drive away. He asks me for my company card. I give it to him because my job is to get that van and the contents to the site. AA, RAC etc, all very well but they won’t tow it 2 hours to an obscure country house. Home or an approved garage like Mister Crook ahem Clutch. It’ll be almost 500 quid to tow but it’s Friday afternoon in North Scotland and the fact they can tow a 3 tonne lowloader 2 hours for us is a fucking miracle. “Don’t book him, wait there must be another solution! Wait!” says the phone and I don’t wait because we have to do this now and we can’t balance options because time is not on our side here just before the weekend.
It’s cool again. We put the key in. We park it in the Shell forecourt. Surrounded by CCTV it is safer than it would have been at any of those shit hotels I couldn’t sleep in last night. I lock and check. I give the key to the lady behind the counter to keep in the till. We already have a relationship cos her brother lives locally and has a tow truck, but it is too small. We’ve thought about it.
Tomorrow there have to be lights at the shoot. That is the entirety of my job today. Then the lights must be moved. These things are set in stone.
Aberdeen Enterprise closes at 5. It’s half two and it’s about a two hour drive. We know there’s a Luton there. The gaffer’s guys have booked it for us. We go.
“Someone needs to stay with the car,” we get. Dan has a full tech van. He can’t leave it in Aberdeen to drive a Luton. Everyone is flapping but the two us. No, scratch that, everyone is flapping but Dan.
I notice my impostor syndrome for the first time cos I love this work so surely I don’t deserve to do it, aye? I flush that out and it is replaced with a deep conviction that we have made the right calls here. Delay would have brought disaster. £500 to be able to shoot? The fucked van is safe. We need the unfucked van for tomorrow. Boom.
The gaffer tracks his van as it is full of GPS. Dan and I get to Aberdeen and rent the new van. We part ways. I beat the gaffer and the fucked van to site. The gaff comes next. Then the van, and a guy from the AA.
He’s gonna look at it. I feel a moment of churn. “The thermostat is gone, I think.” I say. He goes digging. If he says “You chose reverse instead of sixth” I’ll never live it down. “Fuck there’s a great big hole. A the thermostat is gone,” he says, and I walk away tall. It is exactly as I told them. I hand the van over to the gaff. Should’ve driven it to Aberdeen himself anyway. And just like that, he was unpacking the tech van.
I got the kit to the shoot. Tomorrow is sorted too. And it all happened pretty much on schedule. Half an hour later booking the tow and that driver might think of the Friday night home time and prefer to sack it off to watch the football, to say goodnight to the kids, get some rest.
Having backup with Dan was impossibly helpful as I might have been too nice and waited and got us all fucked if he hadn’t reminded me to hold my ground when I know I’m right. I’ve known him for decades. When he said he found a tow that can carry us, I gave him the Pleo card without even thinking. That was the division of labour. “One call the office, one call vehicle recovery” I’m not even sure which one I would have prioritised if I had been alone.
Then noise about masks and batteries and lists and things. Then bed in the most incredible huge vast bed. They’ve booked me a wonderful room here.
First, a hot bath. Which is where I have been all this time, and from whence all these paragraphs have sprung like little salmon, flapping into your pupils. Splot. There. Want some more?
I’m not the Virgin Mary, Joseph or baby Jesus. I’m the donkey. Definitely the donkey.
It all started to go wrong in Warrington. Only about ten past one in the morning, but I’ve been up since 4.30am and have mostly been run off my feet. I realised I was tired. “Time to stop,” I thought. “I’ve cracked the back of it.”
I’m driving a lowloader full of lights to Aberdeen. It’s cold and the van only blows cold air. I hadn’t left London until after 9pm as I was dealing with personal matters after work.
Holiday Inn Warrington is the nearest place. Cheap. I carefully reverse the van so it’s parked with the back against a wall in a well lit camera covered part of the car park. I open the door and a man with a torch is standing there. “Whole place booked,” he tells me. It isn’t. We go back and forth, but he’s adamant. So I drive 5 minutes to the Premier Inn. They let me in the door there, after I have once again painstakingly parked safely. “We can’t book you in. It’s too late. The system won’t let us. And there are no rooms ready.” I am aghast, but take it in my stride. She’s ok. It’s the man with his hard back to me on the computer. She makes me a latte. 2 sugars. It probably saves my life. “Try the ABYSS”, she advises me as I’m slumping back to the van. “The… the abyss?” I query. Yeah. There’s an Ibis in town. Ahh. Eye-biss. Not Ibb-iss. Common mistake. No room at the Ibis. Back to the abyss.
Driving through the dark now I shout at Google to call a number of hotels en-route. Some answer. Some are friendly. They’re all “full”. They all recommend another place just down the road that is also full. M6 on a Thursday. It’s where it is all happening. Liars. One place has rooms. I drive to the parking lot. It feels unsafe and my load is precious. I leave.
Hours pass and the coffee is fading. I’m crawling up north still though, and I find another Travelodge, and this one is in a service station. It comes with the name of the road. Travelodge Lancaster M6. I don’t bother parking until I know, I just leave it with the hazards on. Fucker won’t even let me in the door. By now it’s half 2. He tells me to go to Barrow through the intercom. On the way back to the van I start laughing crazily and then my whole face explodes with tears. I go and put diesel in sniveling like an idiot. I put more in than I need.
Ever the optimist I try one more time. Travelodge Burton Northbound. I’m recovered from my emotional thing. There’s a friendly Saffer at the desk and he’s clearly lived. No room at the inn though, but he gives me some tips about where to sleep in the van. “I’d do it but I’m SO COLD,” I tell him. “I just want a shower.” He shrugs.
Adrenaline kicks in. “Oh fuck it all I’ll just drive to Aberdeen,” I tell myself. And I go back into the abyss.
Thankfully the South African at Burton Travelodge has sewn a seed that germinates as I see a sign for a truck stop. I’m in Penrith. Junction 38 Truckstop. It’s lively at half 3, and friendly. I get advice about how to avoid the military vans and their noisy fridges. I’ve just heard about Putin cutting the fuel again so I top up diesel ahead of the run. Then to the cab. Actually, this is the safest option. This stuff is worth a lot of money. If I’m in the van it’s safe overnight.
No blanket. No pillow. I wrap myself as well as possible. I snatch a few hours of fitful something until the dawn wakes me. I’m writing this in the cab. All my muscles are tensed from cold but I’m not shivering. I have rested in some fashion. Tonight I’ll have to do it properly. I’ll make sure the radios are charging and I’ll have to supervise the tech van in, and I was wanting to draw up a new photo list as the kit has changed again. I can do these things. But will I ever be warm again?
If I had thought about it I could have brought a thermos and a blanket, even a wee pillow. It might have been an adventure. Next time. Next time.
I’m gonna wander back to the truckstop and see about that bacon and eggs. I’m so cold.
I thought yesterday would be peak tired. But no! Wow.
Up with dawn. Uber to production. Marlon is late again. So I get all boxes ready for loading and categorised. Load is smooth. Page wants the bedsheet. She doesn’t need it but she wants it. We get to venue two hours before anyone who knows what we need, so we unload the lot into Underworld at Camden.
The place we put it is the wrong place. I have to move it to another place, which also turns out to be the wrong place. Why the hell wasn’t I on location scout? It’s cost-cutting to the point of madness. The director is keeping some rented sliders that he will literally never use. He is pretty much entirely shooting on impulse and they take TIME to set up and balance. Mister “oh and now I’m going over here” will move on before they are set up. Could have had a person instead of them.
My concern today has been hugely for a young actress who is frequently being filmed with no sound for background shots. It’s her first gig and she’s literally a teenager. None of us realised that she’d had her suitcase filled with bricks yesterday and she had to carry it a long way. She’s a trooper. She’s one of us. But… she kept quiet until it gave her blisters. Yes, if you give an actor a suitcase, put some weight in it or they might carry it like it is nothing. But there’s weight and there’s weight.
Yesterday I said we need a first AD. We do. Today I felt maybe we want a combined first and second AD. A first, someone to call the shots… that would be great and helpful. It would save all the “are they filming” WhatsApp messages. “Ok silence on set, camera rolling and …” (the ghost of sound past shouts ‘SPEED’) “ACTION!” … something happens… then “Thank you that’s a cut…” “Ok set back we are going again, great job” etc etc. That’s helpful. It’s actually close to vital for logistics and morale. But added to that, for that poor young woman, the human who just takes the time and HAS the time because it is their job, to say: “Hey what you’re doing is great here just so you know. The director needs this from the next shot so how do you think that might be achieved? Ok interesting but maybe if you do it like x…?” “That was brilliant from your perspective but actually it would look nicer if you walked down this line here, as the light in the camera really picks up on that track, but what you’re doing really tells – remember you can swap hands mid shot with the suitcase, people do that in real life when something is heavy.” The poor thing was being given unplayable notes. Someone needs to translate that shit. This girl is bruised, disillusioned and knackered, simply because there’s nobody whose job it is to translate. First job, untrained, easy mistake to make. I know it. I did it. It’s why I trained. Lucky. I trained just before I broke my body and my voice by being obedient to people who don’t know what they are asking. Wendy Alnutt, Wyn Jones, Ken and Patsy and Peter taught me so well at Guildhall – in a golden age – how I had to take care of my longevity in this career. And I’m still here. Directors like ours today… he’s brilliant… but he will break your body by mistake because he forgets to think about you as a real person. It’s all the art the shot the feeling. Do it again again again again again.
You learn to be able to say “Mate, this suitcase is too heavy. I’m gonna get blisters.” But it takes time and confidence to be able to do that. So people have to say it for you first. And I wish I had noticed and done so.
End of the day we are in the rain, again with very bad comms, freezing cold, she’s still walking in the rain with that suitcase. The bricks aren’t in it anymore. “She couldn’t wash her hair in the shower last night for her fingers. They’re so strained they don’t work,” says her mum, conversationally, having noticed that I’m belatedly trying for some pastoral care, and just happy to find someone here who is talking to her daughter like she’s a human being who has needs.
But… I dumped this all haphazardly with Lou and Frank. I must sleep now. More madness incoming. All will be well. At the HEART of this job is an incredible graceful human being. Their kindness and fortitude will hopefully be the dominant force going forward, even if they are, inevitably, the last to arrive and the first to leave. My observation of them has been fleeting and distant, but has left me extremely impressed. I’ve met many very famous humans and rarely do they balance heart and earth so completely. And that makes everything brilliant really. These concerns are just detail. I’m involved in something beautiful.
AlBarclay 