A muffled debate had arisen over the wisdom of staging a mock shootout from the window of a downtown office building, adjacent a busy stretch of highway during daylight hours. Of course, with the idea hatched, the location acquired, and the (very real) firearms secured, the outcome seemed inevitable. So, as the young man manically pretended to fire into the street, hurling silent profanities at unseen victims, I stood far-left of the line of fire. At that moment I knew, above all else, that my presence served absolutely no purpose.
At just after one o’clock in the morning, I sat in my easy chair and flipped open my laptop—my day on a makeshift film set had finally come to an end. My friend Jason was working on a project in which contestants had 48 hours to produce and submit a short film. The bulk of the filming took place at the office of Jason’s girlfriend, Jane. Jane, as it happens, is a high school friend, whom I have known much longer than Jason (formerly known as, “Jane’s Boyfriend, Jason”). For a long time, Jason and I knew only of each other, and found ourselves fairly content to leave it at that. Recently, however, we have formed a friendship of our own, based primarily on video games and various other nerdy interests, which leaves me in the somewhat awkward position of being friends with Jane, friends with Jason, friends with “Jane and Jason,” and trying to give each of these three relationships its due. Jane and I go way back, and yet I cannot shake the feeling that growing closer to one draws me further from the other.
In any case, my (apparently complicated) connection to these two landed me at her office on a Saturday afternoon, at the set of his movie, serving in absolutely no useful capacity. When I arrived, Jason handed me a script to read as the crew prepared to film a scene while driving around the block. Already, a point of contention about the story had devolved into a general sense of disenchantment with the project. A plot twist revolving around explicit behavior with a household pet had sparked not so much a debate as a passive grumbling about both the event itself and the level of explicitness with which to treat the act. As the crew now found themselves on set, having spent the previous night writing the script, they proceeded with grudging acceptance of the circumstances, and a commitment to offset the flaws of the story with production value.
Personally, I found this all oddly interesting and yet mind-numbingly boring. Once filming began in earnest, the performances of the actors brought out much of the humor on the page, and revitalized hope for the production. As the afternoon wore on, however, a haze of repeated lines and “let’s try that again”s effectively killed any of the behind the scenes magic and morbid curiosity that had sustained my interest in the project. To me, the whole thing had deteriorated into an exercise in neurotic repetition, rendered as senseless as the obsessive-compulsive washing of hands, as meaningless as a parent’s empty praise for a child’s mediocre athletic performance.
This, of course, speaks mainly to my limited attention span and genuine disinterest in most things not pertaining directly to myself. Still, despite my supreme boredom, which, in a more professional setting, would find refuge in gawking at celebrities and gorging on free food, I remained for the entire shoot.
At just after one o’clock in the morning, I sat in my easy chair and flipped open my laptop—my day on a makeshift film set had finally come to an end. My friend Jason was working on a project in which contestants had 48 hours to produce and submit a short film. The bulk of the filming took place at the office of Jason’s girlfriend, Jane. Jane, as it happens, is a high school friend, whom I have known much longer than Jason (formerly known as, “Jane’s Boyfriend, Jason”). For a long time, Jason and I knew only of each other, and found ourselves fairly content to leave it at that. Recently, however, we have formed a friendship of our own, based primarily on video games and various other nerdy interests, which leaves me in the somewhat awkward position of being friends with Jane, friends with Jason, friends with “Jane and Jason,” and trying to give each of these three relationships its due. Jane and I go way back, and yet I cannot shake the feeling that growing closer to one draws me further from the other.
In any case, my (apparently complicated) connection to these two landed me at her office on a Saturday afternoon, at the set of his movie, serving in absolutely no useful capacity. When I arrived, Jason handed me a script to read as the crew prepared to film a scene while driving around the block. Already, a point of contention about the story had devolved into a general sense of disenchantment with the project. A plot twist revolving around explicit behavior with a household pet had sparked not so much a debate as a passive grumbling about both the event itself and the level of explicitness with which to treat the act. As the crew now found themselves on set, having spent the previous night writing the script, they proceeded with grudging acceptance of the circumstances, and a commitment to offset the flaws of the story with production value.
Personally, I found this all oddly interesting and yet mind-numbingly boring. Once filming began in earnest, the performances of the actors brought out much of the humor on the page, and revitalized hope for the production. As the afternoon wore on, however, a haze of repeated lines and “let’s try that again”s effectively killed any of the behind the scenes magic and morbid curiosity that had sustained my interest in the project. To me, the whole thing had deteriorated into an exercise in neurotic repetition, rendered as senseless as the obsessive-compulsive washing of hands, as meaningless as a parent’s empty praise for a child’s mediocre athletic performance.
This, of course, speaks mainly to my limited attention span and genuine disinterest in most things not pertaining directly to myself. Still, despite my supreme boredom, which, in a more professional setting, would find refuge in gawking at celebrities and gorging on free food, I remained for the entire shoot.
I can find many plausible explanations for my continuing to lurk in the shadows of this venture. Firstly, I really did have nothing better to do. My fiancée was out of town, an occurrence that renders me, for all intents and purposes, pointless. Secondly, minor amusements did pop-up, such as Jason spilling water on himself, causing him to resemble a lactating mother or a runner fallen victim to an errant nipple guard. Finally, the whole affair did offer an almost anthropologic study of sleep depravity, as when one of the actors repeated the troublesome character name Marzatti to herself at increasingly reduced speeds and clarity, eventually speaking in a passable—though entirely unintentional—impersonation of Jabba the Hut.
The most genuine entertainment of the evening, however, held no relation to the filming at all. Jane and I spent much of the time on the periphery of this dysfunction. When I arrived, she gave me a detailed tour of her office, the highlights of which included the sites of multiple pranks that she had once pulled on coworkers, and an office basement more aptly described as a scale model of an office basement. I had sat in the lobby of her building many times to meet her for lunch, but, because of the presence of people that actually belonged there, never saw anything beyond the front desk. Later, she helped me to alter my webpage to more accurately resemble a webpage, as opposed a primitive early-90’s attempt. We sang songs from Phantom of the Opera, though, to my disappointment, her computer collection did not include Gerard Butler’s pirate-inspired vocals. And, most of all, we talked.
We talked about the pranks that our fathers would play on Halloween, mine pretending to be a life-sized dummy and rising to scare too-old trick-or-treaters; hers presenting a bowl of actual pig snouts to children knocking on his door. We talked about employment, unemployment, our previous ambitions, the prospects for our futures, our age, and even (briefly) global warming. She showed me pictures of unintentionally creepy faces that she had plastered on people’s desktops and in other unsuspecting places throughout the office. As a mere footnote to the business of the day, I actually quite enjoyed myself.
The shoot had all the tedium and occasional bursts of energy of a mental ward, and I spent much of my time wandering the halls of the office like a catatonic patient, observing the action but not truly taking part in it. I felt as if I served no purpose on the set, and still contend that I in no way aided the production. Still, what started out as a chance to observe something odd and new became a time to reengage in something familiar and comforting. I may, at times, struggle to navigate between friendships, to measure the new with the old, but this night the truth of an old friendship pulled sharply into focus: unselfconscious, effortless, and pretty damned enjoyable. It’s nice to know that even in the tiresome monotony, frenetic squabbling, and prevailing frivolity of life, friendship can make sticking around not only passable, but worth it.
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(Update, 6/22/09: For the exciting conclusion of this film shoot, please read this awesome post by the woman behind the scenes, Jane.)
2 comments:
I must say, we do good work together.
True. I linked your post, so I really ought to get other people to start reading this nonsense.
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