Umami!

I have to work backwards in time for a couple days here to catch up on the important things I haven't written about, namely the feature I worked on, Thanksgiving, and the movies I saw over Thanksgiving weekend. So to start, let's talk about the feature.

This was the first feature Will has shot, and I ended up gaffing it despite the fact that there are any number of other people he probably would have preferred to have gaff it. That aside, I think it turned out pretty well. It was directed by Philip Crippen, whom I was always afraid of in college. He was a grad student when I was at NU and graduated when I was a junior, I believe. I worked on his thesis project there, The Roaring Twenties, kind of randomely for a day or two as a 2nd AC. He was also the TA for 380 when I was taking 381, so I had labs with him and Adam Marshall, and he always seemed way cooler than me so I barely knew him at all before this shoot. Now, of course, I am a huge Philip Crippen fan, and I'm really glad I got to know him better ad got to work on this movie, because it was one of the best sets I've been on in a long time.

Not production-wise, necessarily- the crafty was scarce, the 1st AD was non-existent, and the crew was really small- but the crew that there was, along with the actors in the film, turned out to become some of the best people I've met on a set. It was my first experience with how working on a short for 5 days and working on a feature for two weeks (or more) can really make a difference in how you get to know people. I have never really become friends with actors on a set before, but these actors were so much fun, and it was such a small group of people working every day that we all became friends. That alone made the shoot a lot of fun. Sure, there were not so fun parts- like the fact that Philip and his girlfriend live in an apartmet complex basically on a stairstep street in Silverlake, which served as our set, and there were 87 steps just to get to their front door. But the good far outweighed the bad.

I've told both Will and Philip this, and a few others, but it was the first set I've worked on since being in LA on which I was virtually positive that the resulting film would be good. Working on student films is strange because they could end up great, or they could end up just so-so, and some of them end up horribly- you just never know. Umami! (a working title, I hope) is a romantic screwball comedy about an uptight hypnotist who moves into an apartment where a moonshiner has been squatting. The crazy landlord, a doting girl, a caffeine addict, and the police all get involved in one way or another, and in the end, of course, the hypnotist and the moonshiner fall in love. Don't worry, I haven't ruined anything- it's the sort of movie where you're rooting for them to fall in love from the beginning. It's the journey that matters. The script is absolutely hilarious, and the actors absolutely threw themselves into it. There were multiple takes that were unusable because one person or another started laughing halfway through- more often than not it was Will, and you could see the camera shaking (the camera work was largely handheld). It was awfully nice to be on a set where people laughed so much and didn't take themselves so goddamn seriously.

This is, technically, the "biggest" thing I've ever gaffed. I didn't gaff much in college outside of Wizzer, because I mostly did camera stuff. My first year at AFI I gaffed Chris Burgon's Cycle 1, which basically involved putting lights exactly where he told me to put them, and Mark Ingham's Cycle 3, which involved lots of hard backlight and not much else. Then I gaffed Richard's MOS for a day, but that's it, really. It was really exciting to be doing something on a larger scale, although we ultimately had less equipment than even a Cycle project. It didn't matter, though- we made it go far. It was a good exercise in fast, efficient but nice lighting. I think Will and I both ended up learning a fair bit about low-profile sets and how to work with them... which is good, because I'm about to shoot a VERY low profile NYFA thesis film, on which I have basically no crew.

I barely had any crew on Umami! either, but I had some... on most days at least one recent Northwestern grad would show up to grip for me. The producer just graduated from Northwestern, so she got a lot of her friends to help out. They basically knew what they were doing, but they really reminded me exactly how much we learned at Northwestern, and the answer is NOT MUCH. They all knew how a C-stand worked, and to put the knuckles on the right, for example, but they didn't know how to set one efficiently or so that it would take up the smallest possible area. I spent a lot of time re-setting C-stands so that the arms weren't poking out into the middle of the room, waiting to gouge someone's eye out, or re-wrangling cable, etc. The great thing about the Northwestern kids (Mark, Aziza, Malcolm and Bruce... Malcolm, Aziza and Bruce all worked on The Rhimers of Eldritch my senior year!) was how enthusiastic they were. I legitimately enjoyed hanging out with them, which was great. There were a lot of Northwestern kids on set in general, and that was really refreshing after being so immersed in the "professional" world of AFI. AFI sets are fun and all, but Northwestern sets always seemed to be a little more... joyous. People looked at it less as a job and more as WE ARE MAKING A MOVIE WOOOOOOOOO!!!! Which is a nice change of pace.

But like I said, the best thing about Umami! was the people I got to work with, and the fact that I got to spend Will's last two weeks in LA working with him. He moved to New York a couple days ago, for who knows how long, and I'm going to miss him like crazy. There are only so many people in the world who went to both Northwestern AND AFI... thank goodness I still have Kevin. Anyway, the crew all loved each other so much that we went out to a karaoke bar the night we wrapped, and tomorrow we're all going bowling. Dorky, but fun, and I'm really looking forward to it. I hope I end up keeping in touch with all these people.

And now, the requisite pictures:


me, Dan (Aki the landlord), Whitney (Win the moonshiner), Levi (Cal the hypnotist), and Will, shooting the Win hypnotism scene... check out the soft box I built to use as an eyelight! It was pretty killer if I do say so myself.


Win being hypnotized by Cal


Justin (the sound guy) and Philip


Levi and Will shooting a scene in the bathroom (and my softbox at work AGAIN... but it doesn't do as well with photo floods so that will take some tinkering)


Levi, Trevor, Dan, Whitney and Molly as Cal, Tommy, Aki, Win and Cookie


Philip being a French Guyanese drug lord


out of moonshine!


maybe my favorite picture... this was the last scene we shot, the "tofrab" scene


main actress, DP and director with Jack Daniels upon wrap

more on real things tomorrow...

I never thought I'd be happy to see a schmaltzy Christmas movie kick a vampire movie out of the #1 spot, but it looks like Twilight was only on top for a week.

In the words of Elizabeth Bennett, "I am sorry to be harsh on any of my sex, but..." BUT MAYBE YOU SHOULD GROW A BRAIN AND STOP SIMPERING ABOUT WAITING FOR DASHING VAMPIRES TO SWEEP YOU OFF YOU FEET.

but first, vampires

It started a couple months ago when Tim and I were on the phone, discussing the abysmally dull upcoming movie season. The film version of Twilight came up, and one or the other of us mentioned that we felt obligated to read the best-selling book before the movie came out- the other one agreed. And then I do believe it was me who suggested we both buy and read Twilight at the same time, so that we would have someone with whom to commiserate. The only thing I knew about the book at the time was that it was a best-seller for teens about vampires, and that Joey had hated it so much he had returned the book to the book store, claiming he didn't want to have it in his house. Nevertheless, we both went out and bought the book and hunkered down to read.

I read the first five chapters or so very quickly, admittedly intrigued by the book's premise. The writing was bad, and for the most part the day-to-day happenings were boring, but the concept was ok- girl moves to a new, small town and is suddenly admired by everyone at school, and eventually falls for the hot enigmatic guy in her biology class, who oh yeah, just happens to be a vampire. The teenaged girl in me recognized how romantic all that was, and so I, just like the scads of tweens and teens across the country, found myself sort of falling for Edward Cullen The Vampire. Nevermind that Bella, the main character, was a whiny little superior brat - I got the Edward thing, and why Bella was in love with him. Tim, on the other hand, mentioned that he could "actually feel the book sucking hormones out of him."

So things started out kinda meh but kinda ok, but then OH DEAR GOD the whole thing took a turn for the unbelievably sappy, with endless passages devoted to "oh, Edward is sooooooo pretty, I love him and his white skin and his topaz eys and oh my gosh, when he leaves I am SO SAD, I don't ever want to do anything in my whole life except moon about with Edward." I didn't try to count the number of times Bella claims she stopped breathing when Edward looked at her, but if I had, the result would be very pathetic indeed.

When I was a kid I read the Little House on the Prairie series with my dad, and in one of the later books there is an entire chapter about one brown poplin dress. I think the chapter may even be called "The Brown Poplin." It went into endless detail about this one damn dress, and was dreadfully dull. I couldn't have been more than 7 when we read that, but to this day brown poplin springs to mind whenever someone goes into unnecessary, overlong detail about any particular thing. I thought about the brown poplin a lot while I was reading Twilight. Not only are the chunks of drivel about how PRETTY and AWESOME and GORGEOUS Edward is very boring, they also combine to make the book just about the most anti-feminist text I have ever read. I didn't know that the book was written by a Mormon until AFTER I had read it, or I might have suspected the lack of feminisim, but as it was I was frankly appalled throughout the entire thing. It deeply saddens me that this is the sort of book young girls are embracing in this country. Can't someone get them a Babysitter's Club book and let them read about girls taking action?

What offended me perhaps even more than the giant step backwards the book takes is how, about 2/3 of the way through, it suddenly decided to have a plot. The last third of the book introduces a Bad Guy Vampire and suddenly there is a great deal of drama and running about and fighting and of course LOVING EDWARD EVER SO MUCH.

We agreed, wholeheartedly, that it would be really really hard for Twilight the movie to be as bad as Twilight the book... and we were right, although please don't take that to mean I'm saying the movie was good. When I first saw the trailer I was skeptical as to most of the casting choices, particularly the two leads, Kristin Stewart and Robert "Cedric Diggory" Pattinson. Turns out, I was right about one of them and not the other- Kristin Stewart is EXACTLY as annoying as she appears to be in the trailers, with little to no acting skills. Everything she says she says in the same sort of half-pained voice. Robert Pattinson, on the other hand, did a good job as Edward. He wasn't GREAT- indeed, the script was bad enough to make almost any actor bad- but I can't come up with a young, cute actor who would have been a better fit. There just aren't a whole lot of them out there- they can't cast singing, dancing Zac Efron, because he's not brooding enough, Jamie Bell is too twerpy looking no matter how cute he is, and Shia Labeouf- well, is Shia Labeouf. Who else is there? I'm legitimately asking! I would love to be able to ponder someone else in the role.

(EDIT: imdb tells me that Stephanie Meyers' first choice to play Edward was Henry Cavill, who is on The Tudors. I have never seen the show, but looking at the pictures, he sure would be cute enough. I guess they didn't go with him cause he's too old, which is valid, but kind of too bad. Still, I don't think Robert Pattinson was all that bad, and he had a great fake American accent to boot.)

The rest of the cast was fairly mediocre- Bella's dad, played by Billy Burke, was pretty good, but other than that, the movie seemed to be asking us to simply agree that the people they had cast LOOKED the part, rather than actually exuding the character. And with a couple exceptions (Peter Facinelli being chief among them), the cast DID look their parts, but that should never be enough. I feel like I could recast the entire movie right here and now and the resulting version would be scads better. I'd start with replacing Peter Facinelli with Michael Vartan and Kristen Stewart with Jenna Malone.

Oh lord, what else. I am aware that this "review" has little to no structure, and for that I apologize, but it is dificult to not rant about how bad this book/movie franchise is. One of the main things the movie does better than the book (and there are quite a few of them) is that it introduces the Bad Guy Vampire Clan way earlier than the book did, and thus lends the film some semblance of a plot. The main thing that the movie does WORSE than the book is that where the book lacked notable passion and chemistry between the two main characters, the movie is missing it entirely. You'd think that if you were handed this source novel and told "make this into a movie teenaged girls will swoon for," you'd try to instill at least a LITTLE bit of passion into the screenplay, wouldn't you? But no. The screenplay is, if possible, even more perplexingly boring than the original material, perhaps because a lot of the dialogue is lifted directly from the book. In my mind I could make it read with some sort of inflection, but on screen, the actors read it for me, and read it with zero emotion.

On a final note, the cinematography is simply boring. The DP, Elliot Davis, decided that everything should be very blue, so as to evoke the "cold" feeling of living in the Pacific Northwest and hanging out with vampires. Sure. Fine. Whatever. It sort of works in some ways. What DOESN'T work about it is that the BLUE BLUE BLUE is not offset by anything. Knowing the book as I do, the perfect scene in which to do this would be when Edward takes Bella into a mountain meadow to show her what happens to his skin when he is out in the sun (answer: he gets super sparkly! And Bella loves him MORE!). A scene showcasing sun when the rest of the movie takes place under a cover of clouds? What a great time to use warm, golden lighting to make a point of how special and romantic that moment is? But no. Not only is the scene re-set to be in the middle of a forest with mere shafts of light, the shafts of light themselves are pretty much still blue. How boring. That about sums up the cinematography in the film, if not the film itself.

The two best parts were a) the short scene when Edward drives Bella to school and is wearing sunglasses and puts his arm around her when everyone stares, and b) the massive frame full of graduation caps in the Cullen's house, accompanied by the line "We matriculate a lot." That was clever.

Other than that, you can probably skip both the book and the movie. What does it say about me, though, that I read the sequel to Twilight, New Moon? It says I am a sucker for serials in which I am already familiar with the characters and don't have to work at reading them at all. It's shameful, but true.

I have to copy Tim in his review and encourage everyone who wants to see a good quality vampire movie to go see Let The Right One In, which is everything a vampire movie should be and more.

Let The Right One In

I saw an awesome Swedish vampire movie a few weeks ago, and ever since I have been meaning to write a post on it, but of course I never got around to it, and now Tim has written an amazing review of it. I of course could never match Tim's writing on film (or, for that matter, his writing on anything), so I urge you to go read Tim's review of Let The Right One In, and then go see the movie. It's one of the most original movies I've seen in a long time.

a most excellent graphic

Eventually, I will stop writing about/gushing over the election and I will resume writing about my life. I don't really have much of a life, though, so for the time being, election it is.

Oh! But tonight I built a light. It's not fancy or anything but it's awesome. I will take pictures and put them up tomorrow or soon.

But anyway, until that happens, here is an excellent election-related illustration:

he would have superhuman strength and telekenesis

Barack Obama's Secret Service code name is "Renegade." How badass is that? It sounds like a new awesome member of the X-Men. Or a 1990's Gladiator.

remember, remember the 4th of November

As I noted somewhere in the rush of jittery posts I've made over the last few days, I spent Monday afternoon at an Obama phone bank in Culver City, calling identified Obama supporters to make sure they knew where to vote the next day. It was an interesting experience. I was really nervous to start out, because I don't particularly like talking to strangers, but it turned out that I was mostly leaving messages. People in battleground states or swing states, like those I was calling in Colorado and North Carolina, were either not home or so sick of campaign phone calls that they were no longer answering the phone. I got quite a few numbers that had been "temporarily disconnected" and even a couple people hanging up on me, but for the most part people were nice. I suppose that's the nice thing about calling pre-identified Obama supporters- you're less likely to get the raving Republican lunatics who just want to lecture you.

I ran into Zoe at the phone bank, and Andres and Jennifer Bash both happened to be working (on Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland, damn them) at the studio where the phone bank was held, so I got to see them briefly too. Anyway, Zoe and I set up our call lists at a table and went to it. For the most part, calling was uneventful. The funniest call was Zoe's- she got stuck on the phone with an old man "who sounded as though he didn't have his teeth in" for at least ten minutes, listening to him extoll Obama's virtues and also repeatedly complement Zoe on her speaking voice. I got some people who said they were voting for McCain, which was disconcerting given that, as I said, these were supposed to be Obama supporters. I had one woman who was undecided, and refused to let me help her decide. A few people really seemed happy to have the number I provided that they could call for a ride to the polls, and even more were glad to know their polling place. One woman answered the phone and, when I asked for her husband, told me he had recently passed away, but not to worry, because she was voting for Obama.

It was strange, sitting in a giant empty studio stage with a bunch of strangers on their cell phones, calling other strangers. I liked overhearing everyone's style of cold-calling- some people stuck to the script religiously, some gave it their own spin, some deviated completely and preached about how great Obama was. It was tempting to do that, sometimes, but I pretty much stuck to the script, because my nervous feeling never went COMPLETELY away. In the end I was glad I did it- I felt like I was actually helping, like I could possibly be making a difference in how Election Day went. And maybe I did, who knows.

I woke up Election Day morning, after about 2 anxious hours of sleep, at 5am. It was dark and somehow felt different than all other dark 5am mornings I've had in Los Angeles- and not just because it was raining. Everyone was still asleep, but something just felt like today would be monumental.

And was it ever!

I was up at 5am to get to Steve and Kirk's house by 6am and in turn make it to Brentwood by 6:30. We were heading out for a last-ditch effort to get people to vote NO on Proposition 8, a the ammendment to the California Constitution that would ban same-sex marriage in the state. I was almost more nervous about this than I was about Obama winning, because every single poll showed the Prop 8 race as extremely close. The stupid LDS Church poured boatloads of money into the Yes on 8 campaign, and it showed in the polls.

Steve and Kirk and I arrived at a Ralph's parking lot in Brentwood, and were assigned to hand out palm cards at a Christian Scientist Church, which turned out to be literally just across the street from the Ralph's. How convenient! We staked out the area- we weren't allowed within 100 feet of the polling place, and the area was marked by two yellow signs on posts. We sort of formed a triangle around the busy intersection where the church was and gave a palm card to everyone who walked towards it- "Good morning! Are you planning on voting today? Would you mind voting No on Proposition 8?" That was my spiel- I figured politeness was better than just bombarding them with "No on Prop 8! It's unfair and wrong!" The training we'd gone to on Saturday told us to do something in the middle of those two, but for whatever reason I went with my way. It seemed to work pretty well. It was a very anti-prop 8 area, which was encouraging, for the most part. The people who were pro-prop 8 were mostly polite as well. One guy exclaimed "I'm voting FOR it! Have a great day though!" when I asked him to vote no. How odd.

The weirdest thing that happened was around 8am, when a little old lady pulled into a parking spot right near where I was standing. She got out, and I approached her with my handy palm card.

ME: "Good morning, are you going to vote today?"
HER: "Yes."
ME: "Please vote no on Proposition 8." (I try to hand her the card.)
HER: "You know, there's such a thing as a sacrament."
ME: "Um, that's true."
HER: (pats me on the shoulder) "Next you'll want to have sex with animals and you'll put that on the ballot."
ME: (pause) I don't think I will, but thank you for your opinion and have a nice day!

We were supposed to do that- wish "the opposition" a nice day and disengage as quickly as possible. But it was REALLY HARD to disengage from this little two-faced kindly-looking GRANDMOTHER after the sacrament comment when the old witch was SMILING AND PATTING ME ON THE SHOULDER. EEWWW DON'T TOUCH ME YOU BIGOTED LITTLE CRETIN. She went into vote when I turned away from her, and I had half a mind to slash her tires or key her car or something, but I figured that would be less than productive.

For the most part, though, our little polling place was fairly uneventful. There were spans where hardly anyone would come by, and the 3 of us would just be standing around, bored, on our respective corners. We kind of all wished that we'd had somewhere with a little more foot traffic, but by the time our shift was over at 10am we had gotten to at least a couple hundred people, I'd say. And most of them seemed to be voting no on 8. Woo!

We left at ten because we all had to vote, and Steve had to get to work. I drove home from their house in Larchmont and went to vote at the elementary school on Wilton that was our polling place. I ran into Nausheen in line, which made the hour-long wait go a lot faster. And then I VOTED FOR BARACK OBAMA! It was an amazing feeling, after all these months of being behind him, after defending him against so many Hillary Clinton fans and following the news and the blogosphere as though my life depended on it, to actually VOTE for this amazing man. I'm sure I probably wasn't supposed to take that picture, but I couldn't help it.

I went home then and anxiously surfed the blogs, looking for updates and news that I knew didn't exist yet, and then I took a nap, because I was tired and all but mostly just to kill time before the election returns started coming in. When I woke up I made cookies and headed to Kevin, Lauren and Will Adashek's house in Santa Monica. I was stuck in traffic on Pico when Ohio and Pennsylvania were called for Obama, and I started squealing and bouncing around in my seat so that the guys in the truck next to me looked at me like I was insane. Which I am.

At Kevin's house were a bunch of 2nd year DPs (in Kevin's class, I am now a "3rd year") and I watched the returns. I had my laptop with me and pulled up a map of the United States so that Russell, who is Canadian, could follow along with the states that were going red or blue just like the rest of us- he wasn't forced to memorize them in 5th grade like everyone else.

Everything was looking good two minutes before 8pm- as Dan Adlerstein put it, "Barack Obama will be declared President in two minutes." It was true- he had 207 electoral votes and was obviously going to take California. As long as he took Oregon, Washington, he would win. But it was hard to believe, even then, with 120 seconds until the world changed. Kevin scoffed at me still being worried, and he had every right to- but it was just too good to be true...

CNN had a weird little pause, where nothing in particular happened and Wolf Blitzer looked as though he was about to pee in his pants. And then they called it- "Barack Obama is elected President of the United States", said the screen. I had expected this moment to be filled with screams and wild jubilation, but instead we all just sat there, stunned into silence at what had just happened, and then slowly started laughing, crying, etc. There was no wild celebration, just pure joy in the form of "I can't believe it." Low-key, yes, but it was still a moment I'll remember forever.

I would have given anything to be at Grant Park- I really, really missed Chicago, watching it on TV, and Chicago at a monumental time like this must have been incredible. People I know who were there could barely see Obama and could only barely hear the speech, but still, THEY WERE THERE. They will always have that. What an amazing thing to be able to say. I can only hope that someday I too will be able to stand in Obama's presence and hear him speak.

Eventually, people started to go home. I waited around for awhile, hoping they'd call one of the 5 crazy states that hadn't been called yet. But eventually I figured I'd go home and watch the internet for the Prop 8 returns. Peter came by for awhile when I got home, and told me about the Prop 8 protests that were already happening in West Hollywood, where he'd been watching the returns with Miguel and Mike. I told him about my encounter with Crazy Animal Sex Lady.

What a day. When I went to bed it was pretty clear that Prop 8 was going to pass, which is fucking ridiculous, but the rest of the California props went good ways. Even Prop 3, which I'd voted for (the children's hospitals bond) and which was defeated, I was ok with being defeated-- apparently there have been equally large bonds distributed to children's hospitals in recent years, and the money from those haven't been entirely used up yet. I think it's probably good, with the shitty economy, to use the money you have before asking for more.

Sadly, Arizona and Florida also voted to ban gay marriage. This is clearly going to become the equal rights cause of my generation- and I say, bring it on.

Just as sad is Arkansas Act 1, which passed, and which bans cohabitating couples from adopting or becoming foster parents. Subtext: gay couples living together cannot now adopt or foster children in Arkansas. I honestly don't know if this or Prop 8 is more fucked up-- it's just about a tie, but to deny a child a loving family and a secure home just because two people might be gay is absolutely absurd and does a lot more to HURT families than to "protect" them, as the Act's proponents say it will do.

On a happy note, both Colorado and South Dakota defeated bans on abortion. Most notably, Coloradans turned down a bizarrely written initiative which dictated that life begins at the MOMENT of conception, thus qualifying all pregnant women to be noted as "two people" on the US Census, and, as Will put it, allowing them to drive in the carpool lane.

So it was mostly a wonderful day, with a few major setbacks in terms of human rights. I stayed up late into the night reading blog posts and newspapers from around the world, watching youtube clips of people rejoicing in the streets of every major city I can think of. It was an incredible feelings, to be a part of history like this, a feeling I don't think anyone in my generation has felt. Sure, we were "a part of history" when September 11th happened, but that's hardly history one WANTS to be a part of. I can't remember the last time I was proud to be an American, but I was yesterday, more proud and ecstatic than I can put into words. I slept better last night than I have in a very, very long time.