AlBarclay

Off in the morning so early it’s late. My alarm woke me up at 4.20am. I didn’t manage to make coffee for myself.

It’s filming again, but this time I’m the dude in the stupid costume, rather than booking the dude, organising shit to make the dude look better, moving the dude, dealing with the dude’s problems or getting drunk with the dude after work.

The early hour has been chosen because it’s a public place. We start shooting at 7.30 in full costume. We are wrapped and clapped by 9. It was mostly walking and wiping, but the costumes are recognisable and visible.

By the time we wrap it’s getting harder to shoot without joggers plomping through shot. The first members of the public were starting to show up and merrily ask what it was we were shooting. The early morning made sense, but I’m terrible at early.

My car took me to the most remarkable hotel. I wish I’d overnighted there. Such high ceilings. Our Wardrobe mistress had a room in which to store the elaborate costumes. She’d been able to sleep in it too. It had the highest ceiling I’ve ever seen in a hotel room, with remote control shuttered windows at the top. I staggered around seeking coffee and found a sexy restaurant but it was too early.

The shape of the day was to get into that elaborate and fiercely impractical suit of armour that in reality wouldn’t stop a thrown pebble. Then I had walk in a straight line a few times and look angry. Thank you very much, happy humans, clap clap clap and then off for breakfast on my own at Cote Brasserie. French Breakfast with juice and coffee for £12.

Then I went home where I discovered that you can’t buy Oculus Rift headsets online at the moment as all the geeks are self isolating and have already bought them. Just as well, as the ticket price is too high for the use I’d likely get from it.

I booted up the laptop and plugged into a virtual world. The day’s money has already been earned so I had nothing plucking at my conscience. I played a load of games and the day flew to shadow and every few minutes I had to stifle the nagging suspicion that I should be somewhere else either working or in conversation.

All the conversation is about the virus though. It’s endless. We are shell-shocked. Things are getting cancelled as quickly and surprisingly as all the loopaper getting snatched up for a respiratory virus.

I could manage the self isolation thing. It’ll probably be loosely helpful for me to spend more enforced time at home. I can sort through piles of stuff, and make the flat much more pleasant to be in. It might be a good time to get on eBay as well and list some stuff, considering lots of potential buyers won’t be leaving the house. I’ve just got to hope it’s business as usual until Tuesday is finished, as that’s my last day of filming on the corporate gig that came up at last minute. Once that’s in the can I can rest easy, put my feet up and have a holiday at home. Sadly we just had the axe fall on the charity gig for kids, all the rest of the filming is in the can. One. Day. More…

There’s so much in the balance suddenly. Do we carry on with business as usual or do we isolate? I’ve got a memorial service this evening for an old friend of my father’s. A very dear friend of his. There’s no way I’m missing it. But I’m not feeling entirely comfortable about being in a room with lots of old people, in case I carry something in with me.

We were rehearsing this morning for Scene and Heard. We did it in costume and the kids watched it. The sword of Damocles is hanging over this show and all of us know it’s going to fall, but until it falls we are trying to carefully continue. Some actors are already isolated. One of the costume designers is locked in with all the costumes she’s designed. It seems almost certain that what is normally a pre-tech stagger through will be the one and only time we get to run through these sweet short pieces we’ve learnt.

Max and I are going to drive to the memorial, rather than getting on the train. His car is almost dead but hopefully it’ll make it up and back. With the feeling like it is, nobody wants to get on trains or on the tube. One of my friends saw a woman sneeze this morning by putting her entire head into her handbag. The spectre of plague hangs heavy over all of us.

I’m in an uber heading back from Mornington Crescent. I’d normally get a bus but I’m as bad as everybody else. It’s hard not to think about this virus even though I was fine with being hugged by lots of drooling alcoholics last night. I don’t really think of myself as being at risk, despite my bad bronchial tubes. My lungs have come out very well from past pneumonia and I know how to breathe. If I get it badly I’ll have to prop myself up in bed. I’ll have a shit time. I won’t get much sleep but I reckon I’m unlikely to kark it. My main concern is spreading it. I don’t want to give it to someone vulnerable.

My other concern is loss of revenue. Tomorrow I’m filming at 6am. I suspect that’ll go ahead. It’s a small scale shoot and only a few hours in the very early morning. Because of the costumes we are expecting to be flooded with curious people, so we will film before most people are awake and then vanish. It’ll likely happen.

I’ll be cramming lines for Tuesday, though, and it’s more likely that the Tuesday one will shut down. It’s as much to do with the personalities of the humans involved as it might be to do with potential government guidelines. If an actor who is already partly shot decides to isolate themselves then the whole shoot gets either binned or postponed. Ditto a crucial creative behind the camera.

It’s all so unprecedented and unusual. I’m in a standstill traffic jam now on Park Lane. People are laying on their horns. This is worse than I’ve ever seen it, angrier than I’ve ever known it. It’s crazy… I’m gonna get out and walk.

 

Just as I’m heading home I get a message. “Is it ok to have to couple of people back?” Normally, with another flatmate, I wouldn’t even bat an eyelid. But there’s precedent involved here. I’m fine with it though of course. She’s been to a funeral. People are mourning. I get it.

There are no boundaries set up anywhere in the flat when I get home. The whole place stinks of smoke and people are smoking AT me because “he doesn’t allow smoking”.

Everything is up for grabs apart from the Bandol that I specifically told her to make sacred and she succeeded.

“Shall we make a call?” says one of the guests, and I say “There are no drugs tonight here please.” One of the guests is already in a K-hole. Fuck knows what the rest are on already. The guy who suggests we make a call literally actually tries to neckpunch me after I say no. He’s hammered and angry with me for drawing a boundary so he literally neck chops me, (and connects as it’s so completely out of nowhere.) (“Make a call” usually means get cocaine, FYI)

The guy from blogs long past who was cooking in his pants is waiting in a car outside and doesn’t come in. They know him. “Why’s he but welcome?” I get, not knowing he’s outside. He knows he’s not welcome, but it’s not him that’s not welcome. It’s the culture of push until you find resistance and then push harder. It’s about the boundaries. People who are allowed to be disrespectful are not welcome. I’m very relaxed. But don’t fuck with me in my home. My home is my sacred place. This is not a student party house.

I’m witnessing the end result of a human being who draws no boundaries around themselves at all, while people flock to that lack of self confidence and see how far they can push.

I had a few conversations with guests who believed I was a lodger in her flat and had no right to start drawing limits. Fuck this so so much. I’ve had enough. I’m not here to fix her. This work will take years, and I need to be happy in my own home. I’ve got no reason to believe, if I wasn’t here, that the place wouldn’t have been completely trashed in the name of fun. There was one guy gearing up to fall on the TV, trying to organise wrestling matches near it so he could make it look like an accident. The same guy that actually punched my neck because he’s read it’s a kill punch. Ha ha ha cunt. Thank God I derailed him by not caring enough. If he’d seen me caring he’d have thrown his whole bodyweight into the telly and pretended it was an accident. Thank fuck he’s gone. He thinks he’s lost his tie, his favourite tie apparently, and he wasn’t leaving until he found it etc etc etc repeat until dead. The only comfort is he’ll be dead at 50.

I thought it might be nice to reconnect with my upbringing. I feel weird about jettisoning it as irrelevant. Society was important to me back then. Plus she reminds me of my mother, with her priorities and with the way she goes about her social life. But no. No no no.

My association of her with my mum has probably caused me to put up with an untenable situation for far too long. Every time she brings anybody to my flat it’s like the yahoos are out in full force. It’s crazy. And it’s no longer my home when they’re there. It’s untenable. I won’t do it…

I’ve been in a suit all day, filming a corporate video at short notice, involving massive cramming.

I think the most valuable note I got was “be less posh,” but it came after the first scene was in the can, and from the writer. Director should’ve asked me. There was a lot of back and forth about me hearing and repeating a Latin phrase. She says it and I repeat it.

Only now with the spirit of hindsight do I understand that what the director wanted to tell me was “Play it like you don’t know Latin.” Easy if you’re told and now too late I know how he wanted it. He just kept giving me unplayable line-readings.

I forgot to switch off my knowledge. The key with work on camera is usually innocence, but I’m the last minute replacement guy on this shoot. The original guy was an actual Spaniard speaking in his second language. The makers are trying to step away from middle class white dudes doing corporate videos, but frankly in the interests of diversity maybe it’s legit to have one of us still there? I am definitely the only one, if you don’t count the director.

There’s another day scheduled on Tuesday. It might not go ahead because of virus. I’ll find out. God it’s so weird. This unprecedented panic. About a flu. A bad flu. How many of you got swine Flu? Or SARS? Were you washing your hands obsessively? I bet you weren’t.

There’s more at play here, either in international isolationist paranoia, or ramping up the good old fashioned fear of other people that makes the state more powerful.

Either way, don’t take advantage of other people, and don’t let yourselves be manipulated by people who couldn’t give a fuck about you.

Last time she pulled shit like this she vanished for a month or more knowing I wanted to talk it through. I’m wiser now. Time will tell precisely how much wiser…

I dropped the rental car in Park Lane, back into that underground car park. The end of two very full-on jobs back to back. It was a beautiful day in Mayfair and suddenly I had nowhere to be. I slowly wandered through town, eventually stopping at Reblochon, a little deli opposite Green Park. I ordered a Leek and Potato soup and a glass of champagne, and I sat there fascinated by somebody’s grievance. He’s made over £700,000 for the company, it seems. But Pete has creamed most of it the bastard. He’s not a happy man, our employee.

The other person in the conversation is mostly quiet, unsure how to react, awkward. He is clearly from privilege, unlike the speaker, who has been working hard and knows it.

He comes under fire, this privileged fellow. He’s had a bit of the pie as well, clearly, at the speaker’s expense. Eventually: “I’m off. You can pay for it,” says the guy opposite me and he leaves in well displayed high dudgeon.

I greet the privileged man sitting next to me by name, even if it might be awkward for him, because I know him of old.

“Hello, T. That sounded tricky.”

To his credit, despite beard and glasses and over 20 years, T recognises me immediately. I’ve had a fair amount of time to piece him together so I’ve got advantage in this exchange.

His voice was familiar. But I needed to see his face to be sure, or so I thought, until I noticed his unmistakable name at the top right of the Excel sheet that he had open on his laptop.

He was at school with me and we shared a 3 person dorm when I was 13. He lay passively by while Harry pulled me out of bed when I was sleeping and stamped on my face. He overlooked whatever he could overlook and deflected whatever he could deflect. A thorough childhood coward. I recognised a throughline into his passivity in adulthood. He ain’t no Pete, our T. He’s Pete’s bitch, still stealing but only stealing a fraction of what big bully P-bomb is stealing. And stealing from a highly motivated guy that would thrive for everybody if he was adequately compensated, but didn’t grow up in a certain narrow frame that can be identified by accent nuance.

I greeted T. We swapped numbers and I was courteous. I’ve got no beef with these people from my dysfunctional young adulthood. He’s a nice, mild fellow. He just had too much for free. Like me. And his son is a drama scholar to Harrow…

So this old harrovian ended up handling a grievance next to me as I necked my bubbly at lunchtime. I listened to how he coped.

I’m done for a bit, productionwise. I’ve put away a challenging and satisfying few weeks where I’ve embezzled nothing, fucked nobody over, worked happily and hard, and been roundly congratulated for my positive spirit and how much I care about the people I’ve found work for whilst getting the job done. I think I might be considerably better at this production malarkey than I thought. But the acting always has to be primary.

Which is why I’ve accepted a corporate gig, filming tomorrow for a major company, playing an auditor who speaks in the elusive “Perfectspeak” and is proving a bitch to learn.

They lost an actor last minute as he’s isolating. I got sent pages and pages of jargon to learn. I’ve managed to push some of it into my head and now it’s sleep. Tomorrow I must be crisp and smart. I’ll be pretending to be the type of person I sat next to at lunch, but making a fraction of what he routinely steals from his workers every day. Sorry, not steals, there’s no theft, it’s all completely legal. It’s in the terms and conditions. Sorry mate. Nothing we can do. Fuck off.

I’ve got three rolls of loopaper left. It’ll last me a good amount of time so long as I don’t have one of those guests (I’d say edging towards 20% of the population) who voraciously consume the stuff, I’ll be able to wipe my bum. Everybody in my area is a fuckwit though.

You can still buy eggs, bread, milk, cereal, soap etc. But my local Tesco is devoid of loopaper and has been for a few days. It seems that the good people of Chelsea would sooner starve to death than get their hands dirty with running water. Squeamishness outweighs survival.

As a species we should’ve been extinct ages ago. Imagine how quickly most of London would die if even the water was cut off, now we have become so entitled and incompetent. And faced with the prospect of locking ourselves in our own homes for a few weeks, the prime concern of the majority of people seems to be to make sure they don’t get their own shit on their fingers while they starve. Good stuff you idiots.

The daily newspapers are cleaned out, and finally for the correct reason. If I managed the local Tesco I’d have been displaying the tabloids in the bogroll section for years. Now the tabloids have finally found their true mission in life : to service the unhappy bottoms of isolated people with naturally disapproving faces.

I think we instinctively know we are a spent species, redundant and slowly atrophying. Every time there’s an opportunity to panic about extinction we will. Impractical ignorant vain and useless bipeds sustaining each other through an economy based on promises based on nothing. This disease will thin the numbers. It’s not the one we need but maybe it’s the envoy. We can learn through this how badly everything is contained, how the bluster of government doesn’t match the action. And all across the nation people have filled their spare room with Andrex because they won’t be having guests for a while. Dirty.

It will also drive changes, some good, mostly bad.

Great, so people will get the habit of washing their hands. But also we will isolate ourselves even further. We are all in such bubbles anyway. Touch is getting rarer and more meaningful. We greet one another with elbows. We stand in bubbles in public, suspicious and afraid of those around us. And so many so selfish. So ignorant.

I reheated the Chinese meal I ordered the other day and Kitcat’s mum told her not to eat it for the disease. “That is exactly why I bought it,” I told her

I came within one click of ordering a DIY T-Shirt saying “I went to Wuhan and all I got was this stupid T-Shirt.” I stopped myself as it isn’t worth 25 quid for a momentary laugh and then some twit throwing a stone at me on the tube because they’re so blinkered and trusting of what they’re told that they think it’s a genuine tourist shirt and that they’re in danger.

A lab in Whitechapel is paying £3500 to infect you with the virus and test vaccines. That seems like genuinely the best option, as if we are all going to get it anyway we might as well do it where you get free meals surrounded by clever people who are seriously invested in making sure we don’t die. Plus we’d come out with either a vaccine or an immune system that has successfully fought it. Plus they’re likely to have lots of loopaper.

I’m also tempted to go on holiday, as flights will be cheap. I’d go to the valley of the kings but I don’t want to get quarantined somewhere where I don’t speak the language and it all seems likely right now. I’d go to a ski resort in France but I couldn’t afford a quarantine.

Fuck the government for providing for the people with regular income anyway in quarantine but not for the freelancers. I guess now this crazy fixing job is over I can afford to be shut up a while. But I don’t want to. There’s life out there.

Hex is around my neck, pulsing. I’m not sure what he’s getting from it so I’ll delude myself that it’s because he likes me. Even though he’s a reptile. I can comfort myself with the knowledge that many people exchange rings and vows with people who are as reptilian as hex. They even invite their long lost simple cousin because otherwise grandpa Brexit would have nobody to rant at.

I’m lonely though. I’m feeling it. I guess the need to braindump over the course of this job has made it more pointed. I find myself feeling simultaneously fully capable and totally lost. I turned in a hell of a final day, though. I’ve learnt the game now, and understood how I can make myself strong within it. I am now used to fighting three fires simultaneously and still moving myself from one place to another.

“I saw you in your element today,” someone says, and describes a moment of my behaviour, striding through a crowded car park detailing every idle hand onto a helpful thing before speeding back to the hotel room for a forgotten flagpole.

It was an extremely complete day. I made myself useful and improved things by being there and the only time it momentarily didn’t work was when one of the managers lacked the bigger picture and tried to isolate me onto driving one guy who would’ve been way too static. I knew the needs well enough to understand that I was being managed by someone less in touch but notionally superior in that moment. I basically just ignored him for the greater good, but sent him an official text to tell him so.

My self determined role today was Actor Transport and Emergency Wheels. The thing I hadn’t anticipated was the quantity of emergencies my active wheels would be needed for.

First thing, I dropped my actors and was immediately pulled off the job of looking after them. At the time they had nothing but a windswept gazebo and a pointedly indifferent location manager’s nonexistent efforts for shelter. This is the same guy who didn’t think the other day that my guy in a very visible costume might need a place to sit for his hours and hours, and then tried to make out to me last night that it was him “wandering around cos he was bored.” that caused the shoot to almost get shut down. What the fuck was he supposed to do at your location if you gave him no tiring area?

I didn’t even bother phoning the actor to ask his side of that bullshit. No need to confirm or deny it. The location man’s a twat. It’s his shit getting in the way… I still kinda like the human under the mask, but mostly he’s just too tedious, and this job is too stressful. I almost had to drive him home tonight and I didn’t have the energy to put up with his relentless insecure underscore. Plus he gives no fucks about actors. None. They can eat grass as far as he’s concerned and live in a wind tunnel.

My actors were consummate professionals all three, and I had to work to be get them taken off duty between shots. In absence of a 2nd AD, I put that hat halfway on.

It’s jarring to be on a set and witness how infantily some actors can be treated.

But I’m not employing those guys whilst they repeatedly walk into a wall for three hours unless someone rotates them ninety degrees.

I’m bringing extremely skillful humans to interesting jobs that they can do standing on their heads – literally if need be – because the money will be helpful in their unpredictable lives. “That’ll be a couple of cases of wine for my wedding,” says one friend, and YES! That’s ideal.

Here’s a snatched moment of cars full of balls.. One of the many strangenesses.

I’m terribly tired, and drunk enough that before I started writing this I was slurring and I overheard people feeling safe enough to say “Al is really drunk.”

Decompression, y’all. I’m doing it. I’ve got a loads of water, just about to get a codeine, and hopefully any insults can be safely overlooked as drunken ranting…

 

Last night, exhausted and a bit tipsy, I went to my kitchen sink and retrieved the defrosted dead mouse that I had put there in the morning. I ran the hot tap over the packet to warm the contents. I left it running at a good but warm temperature for a while. As I worked, the snake was round my neck, a smooth and pulsing living necklace, occasionally snuffling breath into my cheek.

I opened the packet in a way that I knew the crisp smell of mouse would hit the snuffly snake nose. It’s like opening the packet of coffee, I guess. You get a good strong hit of mouse. I wanted Hex to snuff his fill.

You never know what you’re gonna get in the packet. Mouse 1 had weird eyes and a bloody head. Mouse 2 had a prolapsed arsehole. I wouldn’t have eaten either of them, frankly. I was beginning to think that the missing 3% on the ingredients list (see blogs passim) was 3% ugly.

Mouse 3 blew that one out of the water. He was a higher quality of mouse altogether.  I found myself optimistic. Maybe this time the anorexic snake would feast.

I got stuck in to Puppetry accompanied by a bemused kitcat and a snake wrapping itself firmly round my head.

Hex thinks I’m a shit puppeteer. If he was reviewing me in War Mouse I’d never work again. In fact I found this review yesterday morning nailed to my door, written in parseltongue: “The director’s choice to cast a mouse with a prolapsed arsehole for the leading character in “Dance of the ‘Eat Me’ rodent” was ill advised at best, and insulting at worst. The dialog was atrocious. ‘Yummy yummy yummy I’m not dead, I’m alive ooh tasty tasty yum yum.’ That is a genuine quote from the script, and this atrocious and manipulative writing is compounded by an insulting delivery in a crude falsetto that would be triggering to not only mice, but the whole rodent population, barring capybara.”

I tried chopsticks. Flying mouse held with marigolds. Crawly mouse walking backwards by tail. I spent ages. At one point the doorbell rang and it was the delivery guy. I ordered Chinese takeaway from “Mister Chinese” because I figured they’d be happy for the business what with all the ignorance. I took receipt of it with him on my head. With recently shed skin I didn’t want to pull him around too much, as his new skin is evidently much more sensitive.

After about an hour and numerous epic stories about mortality and the need to be consumed, I gave up. Sleep is precious and rare right now. I needed some.

I warmed up the dead mouse again by tap, and I chucked it in to his tank. He didn’t look at it even though it was the DiCaprio of dead mice. Disappointed. I went to bed.

In the night though, an epic battle took place. The morning found Hex sitting in his warmplace, having trashed his newspaper and soaked everything and thrown water everywhere. It was clearly a huge fight, between the dead mouse and the snake. But the snake won. Hex has eaten. Well done Hex.

I’ve had another crazy day but now I don’t have to write about it. Because my friend’s lovely snake ate.

Here goes another 4 hours sleep maximum. Bring it.

Whatever difficulty there was, it’s vanished now. The bulk of my actors did their thing today in a variety of ridiculous costumes. There were some disruptive assholes at some locations, determined to make life as hard as possible for everybody shooting. It didn’t touch me or them. The infrastructure is in place now the shoot is live. In many ways, yesterday was the hardest day.

There was one actor who was aggressively told he was breaking all sorts of laws just for looking the way he looked, immediately on his arrival at location. Someone else dealt with it brilliantly. The same someone else who reminded me it wasn’t my money the other day when I was raging about expensive wiggie.

The someone else guy got driven over and he earned his keep right there. Amazing stuff. Nobody knows what conversation took place between the two of them. It ended with a cessation of hostilities, a few adjustments of my actor’s costume, and the shoot going ahead with very little lost in terms of look. Just detail.

The someone else man is a genius. He pissed me off with his backseat driving initially on the previous job. Now he’s a miracle worker and he can do no wrong. He doesn’t read this blog, so I can safely say I’d gladly get him all the beer. I might even do it anyway, if there was ever time to drink which there won’t be for personal consumption. I’m more about getting beer for other people at the moment.

My actors all smashed it today and it’s such a joy to understand that. Seeing them coming home in various stages of the work mode I recognise, still switched ON, still with the face on but frequently already popping with adrenaline and betraying that they enjoyed themselves at work.

The expensive wiggie also earned his keep. He rocks. He ran the options and made a call on his own about L, in a vacuum of decision-capable humans.

“I think the wig is too short,” said one good heart to the producer. The speaker is a good human cursed to be better at seeing problems than solutions. The longer wig didn’t work as well as the slightly shorter one did… it had been tested by expensive wiggie, the call was correct to my uneducated eyes. I saw the long one and immediately said “no”to it out of instinct.

The actor looked fab and worked superbly in his fake beard and wig. Physically and stylistically we couldn’t have had a better man for the job based on the photos I’ve seen of him working on location. My recommendation network really is intact. Fucking hell. Not only are my friends super talented, but also the friends of my friends. I love this game of finding the right human for the right pretend.

Now I just need to keep raising my game on the sort of work I am able to make possible for my huge list of talented friends and for myself. I’ve had showbiz freelancers acting, driving, organising transport, catering, running assisting and just standing by.

There were very few actors that I see more than twice a year involved in this shoot. A few I’d never met. I cast it impartially and just wish I’d been sent the mood board so I didn’t have to cancel actors who fitted my sense of the job but not the mood board. I’m hoping I’ll get to do more of this anon. Despite my tired rants I’ve enjoyed this so far. Although tonight it’s 1am and I’m wheels up at about 5am.

I even managed to get a flamingo for my friend. The perks of the job… I love the flamingo. But it just seemed totally correct to pass it to her. It was always hers…

Well then. Here we go go go.

Are you the Production Coordinator?” someone asks. I’m not. But I’m picking up a lot of slack here. “What are you doing on this shoot?” another asks. “I’m general dogsbody,” I respond, because then they won’t look at me too closely.

I’m a driver. That’s my explicit job. But…

I also cast parts of it and I’m running with changes in the casting that are happening live as we roll along. I’m also dealing with pastoral care to the actors, making sure they have information as soon as it becomes available, looking after their comfort. I send a call just now that means 4 hours sleep for me. “Is there breakfast,” is the response. Fair enough. But that’s another hour lost. I can do with 3.

I’m trying to look after the human beings I’ve found work for. I’m bringing different units together, sorting out HR issues before they become issues, fighting fires. Sending calltimes. Working out of things have been forgotten. Looking after people.. Mediating.

Not just the actors. Many of the drivers and PAs. Also some of the managers and core staff. Lots of wonderful humans. I still feel responsible for lots of them, which I’m unpicking. It is full on, and burden more than any previous job is falling on me. People “up high” rely on me for things. I’m making those things happen. It often involves splitting myself into three or four. I’m getting better at it.

My problem is still the growing war between art and production, because I sit in the middle. Past experience of other jobs makes Art dept expect better communication from production, leading them to angrily unconsciously start setting traps. “They haven’t thought of X. Let’s see how they cope when they haven’t got it. That’ll show them!”

I’m trying to place myself as someone who can disarm these should-traps as they’re hellish. But it’s relentless…

I had to call all the actors for 7am tomorrow. Costume assure me they can get everybody ready to leave by 7.30 but I’m half expecting them to fail on purpose and say “well, we ‘should’ have had more space to do it in…” I hope and trust they won’t fuck us over like that though… I’ve got one costume here at home. The actor is on my sofa tonight. We have to leave at crack of dawn with him in full costume. The location happens to be just near my flat. By having him stay I’ve fixed a problem where nobody from costume would have been in to get him ready at unit base.

There’s a lot that hasn’t been thought of that needs solutions outside of the expected like this, but it’s all fixable if people just get on with it and seek to fix. It’s just ego all this “should” and delineation of labour. Of course I “shouldn’t” have an actor on my sofa. What?

After a morning of driving I took production up to the roof of a big store to scout angles, talking with all the staff despite our guy being off site. Then I went and organised the flow for actors into fittings. All would’ve been fine for the exec showing despite constantly moving goalposts, had one of my actors not had a totally legit panic attack. It was another production trap, and one I missed.

Costume didn’t want a female in that role. I had a woman shaped woman booked and they put her in man trousers. They split in the fitting because men don’t have hips.

Imagine if you’re an actor, you trade by your look. You almost pull out of the job because, you say, “I’m not like my photo anymore. I’m tubby.” “Doesn’t matter,” Al responds, of course, being Al. “You can be whatever shape you are. I’m not taking you off the job because you think you’re tubby. I booked you for the you I know.” Still worried, you go into the fitting, and the trousers immediately split. It would never occur to you that it might be a weapon in an obscure war. You just go to your trigger and panic.

I get that. But no. You looked fab. Production loved you in the costume too.

Still, the timing was hell for me.

At the crucial moment of show and tell, having rushed all the execs to get there, I ended up with a panicking actor running around looking for a not lost phone causing the actor after them to not be ready. But again, there’s a “we should have more space” thing. THERE IS NO AFFORDABLE SPACE IN THE AREA WE’VE DONE THE BEST WE CAN TRUST US AND BACK THE FUCK DOWN ON THE ACTIVE SABOTAGE.

I walked around for three days looking for ground floor space in Waterloo for them. I tried everything and everybody. It’s Vault Festival time. They wanted more space, yes, but we couldn’t find it because there IS NO MORE SPACE here. Why can’t we all just pull together?

I’ve only got 3 hours sleep coming, tops. I’m off to sleep now. I am still processing this fuckery between Art and Costume and the production team so I might have overstated it. But it seems pretty clear to me. And utterly unnecessary. If you think you know how things should be done better than someone, prove it by doing it better within the constraints you have been given, not by leaning back, folding your arms and saying “I could’ve told them it’d explode.” Maybe I’m just tired. I’ve been doing quite a lot… … …

Night.

 

 

“Do you have the wig sorted,” I first ask the art director about ten days ago. I know my L actor hasn’t been asked head measurements yet. “It’s not my area, but someone is looking after it,” I’m told. “Great,” I say, and brake gently to let a pedestrian cross the road.

“Just checking the wig is in hand? Without the wig we don’t have a L and that’s going to fall on me,” I say again, five days ago. “Someone’s going to be on hair and make-up, it’s not my area.” “Cool, but someone’s on it?” “Of course someone’s on it.” “Great,” I finish, and the lights change to green.

The day before yesterday I check with costume department instead: “Have you got the wig in time for the fitting?” “Hair and make-up will have the wig.” “Ok, do you know who’s on hair and make-up?” “H will know.” “Oh great – so H has got someone?” “Yeah there’ll be someone.” “Fine then. H said someone was on it a few days ago. I’ll relax,” I say, as I check my mirrors and indicate left.

There are wiggies out there with a box full of wigs. They’ve got everything. They aren’t cheap but they’re incredible. I’ve met them. I’ve kissed one. She was a great kisser. H must have booked one of those wonderful wiggies, I think, knowing my actor still hasn’t been asked for head measurements. H hasn’t seemed concerned every time I’ve checked. It must be in hand. I ease forward gently, aware of the dangerous driver on my right.

Today. 4pm. The shops close in an hour until after the shoot. I’m talking to the Art Director – the one who has told me “someone” is on it for over a week now. This time I’m actually in the office, not on speakerphone. I’m standing in Art Department.

“I’m just sending the call time to the L for tomorrow to get into his wig,” I say. “I’m calling him an hour ahead of the others so we can get him fitted up. Can you give me the email of whoever is on hair and make-up?”

“I don’t know who that is. That’s not my area.”

… that’s weird, I think. Who is your someone if you don’t know their email …

I’m sent to M. M booked me. Must’ve booked the someone.

“Hi, I’m just doing the calls for the show and tell tomorrow and I don’t have an email for hair and makeup for L?” M looks confused. “Ask H?” … “H sent me to you.”

I go back to H. By now I’ve realised that “someone” means “not me” to H but I’m still hoping… hoping. But no.

The word “should” has gotten involved when I wasn’t looking. The most poisonous word in the dictionary.

Delineations in this chaos? Really?

“Not my area.”

Oh actual fuck. We need L tomorrow and we’ve got a bloke with a face. This has been my prime concern for over a week. “Someone”.

A knife of cold runs right through me. Art MUST KNOW that nobody is on this… The amount of times I’ve checked with them. I go to art department again.

“I gave M the numbers of two people I know,” Art shrugs. “They should have phoned and booked one of them.” Another shrug.

“not my area” dances around in my head like the acid sequence in a 70’s TV show spiralling in crazy patterns alongside ticking clocks and eyes held open with toothpicks. tickticktickticknotmyareasomeonesomeonetickticktick

SOMEONE has dug a hole and let someone else walk into it and it feels it’s because of a notion of delineation of labour. If I hadn’t caught it at the last second it would’ve been considerably worse. Just as well there’s a driver that doesn’t draw a line around himself. I wasn’t even supposed to be there for another 4 hours. I just got in early to make sure all the actors had information.

It’s like “someone” would sooner make a point than get the job done smoothly.

“Can you call one of these two people of yours?” I beg H.

“It’s not my job.”

“Well, I’m a fucking driver. Do you think it’s my job? Come on do me a solid and help me out here. We’re all pulling in the same direction aren’t we?” Is that another shrug?

“Ok. I’m on it.”

A friend of H comes in at short notice and wants enough to get an Oculus Rift every day for a just few hours work tomorrow and a slightly longer day Sunday. We’ve got no choice. It’d take me three days to afford an Oculus Rift, dammit. Last minute wigs. That’s where the real money’s at.

This all could’ve been avoided if “someone” had said ten days ago: “I’m drawing a circle around myself and what I’m supposed to be doing and anything outside of that isn’t mine to deal with or care about. Just so you know in case you need to pick up some slack.”

I know now. I’ve aged ten years.

Event shoots like this don’t work like major movie sets. This is a temporary team. The budget isn’t the same. And nobody is psychic. And lots of people are doing things for the first time.

You pull shit like that and it isn’t the big American company that loses, like it is in your imagination, it’s the little event company that’s won the big pitch. The one that’s paying your wage. The one that’s making this work possible for you and your team of friends.

A producer friend of mine catches me in the corridor just after it all explodes. I’m fuming. It’s palpable.

“It’s not your money Al,” he gently reminds me. “Let it go.” But it is my money because I’m so fucking angry I forget to renew my parking and I now I have a parking ticket.

And it’s also my time, because nobody else is going to drive to Slough and back to pick the fucking wig up. Three hours round trip in the worst of London traffic. Give credit where it’s due, the expensive wig guy found the wig in less than half an hour – although I think the company paid monopoly money figures for the rental too. And it was in fucking Slough.

Someone…

You live and learn. If you’re kind and willing, don’t assume everybody else is.

I don’t feel taken advantage of, by the way. I’m happy to be working hard – and actually if I ask for extra days for my extra work I will get paid extra days without question because they know me and trust me and that trust goes both ways.

I will ask too. They know that. They more or less told me to do it. Because they’re good people who know I won’t take the piss because I know they won’t.

This is why I’m baffled. I hope I’m wrong about it. Maybe it just seems like this whole shitstorm was intended as some passive aggressive object lesson.

Maybe I just prevented a massive drop at the last possible second by sheer chance. But I can’t help think that “someone” might have realised, considering my repeated concerns about it, that noone was actually on the job…