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UNDONE: The #madwriting

I’m dragging this entry out from the drafts folder in large part because it’s been there since September of last year. It’s a madwriting blog entry about my being an extra in a movie called UNDONE: The Musical. The result was a pretty decent blog entry length-wise, but also incomplete and I never got around to finishing it—I ran out of steam after 30 minutes plus one paragraph. I’m not sure how many additional details I could recall after so long, so I figure I’ll just post it as is and it’ll make for some good reading. If it doesn’t make for some good reading… at least it’s out of the drafts folder.

As a side note, the producers posted the movie online so the cast and crew could see the final result a couple months ago. I downloaded it onto my computer and still haven’t watched it yet. I’ve only watched three episodes of The Big Bang Theory since a friend loaned it to me, so that might give you an idea of where the movie sits on my list of priorities. But onto the blog entry. I have no recollection of what I wrote and I’m not going to edit it 14 months later, so I imagine we’ll both be surprised at what we read when I hit the “Publish” button.
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This is one of those nights where… it’s like something’s churning just underneath the surface, saying “Hey, lemme out! It’s dark in here! And you smell funny! When’s the last time you took a shower?” And quite frankly, this isn’t the kind of blog entry for answering a question like that. Especially since you probably don’t want to know the answer.

But I’ve felt the urge to write something on here for the last couple days, but there’s been one problem: I ain’t got nothin’ to write about. Thus, Internet silence. Okay, technically, I suppose I could write about being an extra for a movie on Wednesday, but it wasn’t terribly eventful. Eh, I guess there were enough mini-events to make writing about the whole thing worthwhile.

Call time was 9:00am on a weekday. That in itself isn’t such a big deal, but given that I was running on about four hours of sleep and had a cold that started rearing its ugly head last weekend, part of me was tempted to call in sick. However, another part of me reminded myself that I made a commitment and the last time I heard from them, they were already running short. Even if I kicked the bucket on-site, they could at least flop me down on the table with a glass tipped over in my head like I passed out stinkin’ drunk.

It was a legitimate possibility, too. The scene was supposed to be a dance club—wear something formal, but something you can dance in. (I think that’s the wardrobe the e-mail was asking for.) Well, I knew what kind of clothes I’d bring to a dance club… sorta. I can count the number of times I’ve been to a dance club on a couple fingers, but if I did go to one, I knew what I could wear.

So there was a possibility of spending the whole day dancing. That would suck. Not that I mind dancing so much, though that’s not what a friend of mine would suggest. I was telling her about the shoot the night before and kept saying (technically, typing on Facebook) that I’m not automatically going to be dancing. If the director wants me to stand against the wall, I’ll do that. She insisted that I was saying that just because I didn’t want to dance, but I’m a practical extra: my job is to do what I’m told. Within reason. (Carrying a big metal door out of the building isn’t part of being an extra, but that was just being nice. The only down side was that the crew guy who asked for help said he’d buy me a drink later, but by the time “later” came around, he was gone. Shit.)

But as it turned out, “dance club” ended up being more of a bar with an acoustic guitar player in the background. At least that’s the only music that played the entire time I was there. And that was just during the last half hour. Nope, during the rest of that time, we had to create our own atmosphere of a club. With some help from a smoke machine. Did you know that breathing the fumes from a smoke machine off and on for 12 hours is bad when you have a cold? I do now.

That’s something else worth noting. The e-mail said the shoot could take up to 10 hours. The last of us left around 9:00pm, 12 hours later. One dude took off sometime around 3:30pm, which is totally uncool. He had made other plans, but here’s a note for anyone out there who wants to be a movie extra: if you’re gonna help out in a movie, expect to spend a lot of time there. If they say “It could take up to ten hours”, don’t schedule something halfway through. It pisses people off.

Anyway, I got there, then changed into a different shirt that they picked from the outfits I brought (and did it in front of everyone because I try to avoid being self-conscious if I can help it). Not to say that it’s a great view these days, but they all had plenty of time to shield their eyes and look in different directions to avoid dry heaving.

We were upstairs in a bar and the set was downstairs, so they brought us down once in a while for a scene. Honestly, it wasn’t that spectacular. It was a lot of standing, moving around, holding drinks… thankfully, we were usually allowed to whisper instead of “silent talk”—moving your lips without speaking—because I can’t read lips worth a damn. I have to stand there with the other person and flap lips… it’s doable, but it’s annoying. And if it’s necessary for the scene, I get to suck it up and deal. C’est la vie, I guess.

I think I get to do a victory dance for one thing: the director had us do something that I thought was a bad idea and he ended up changing it to what I would have done. Mwa ha ha haaaaa… The scene was that some guy and I got up from the bar to walk toward the bathroom (which was heading directly toward the camera). During the course of our stroll, he turned to look at me, then bumped into one of the main characters so that she spilled her drink. I got to hold my hands up and avoid the scene as much as I could, then cross the camera to where the bathroom was supposed to be.

Part of the fun of that scene was the actress getting bumped would pick various obscenities to blurt out when they collided. You never know when something will really resonate with the audience, so try a bunch of stuff and see what the director likes, right? But I remember the first time because as I was swinging around the actress and crossing in front of the camera, I tried to time it so that I was walking past between her sentences. I didn’t want to be between her and the camera when she was giving an important line, so… yeah, trying to time it over and over doesn’t work so well.

Eventually, the director did what I thought he should: the bathroom “moved” from the right side of the camera to the left side. Instead of crossing in front, we moved away off camera into the corner of the room. It felt a lot better for me, I know that much.

[Incidentally, this is the 30-minute mark, so I hit 1088 words during the official #madwriting surge.]

There was one downside, which was probably unrelated to the direction we walked away from the camera. The first time, the guy bumped her, she turned and yelled out, “DICK!” (He was actually a little shocked when it happened—it was the first non-generic obscenity and she yelled it at him specifically.) She was apparently satisfied with that response, because every time we ran the scene from that point on, that’s all she’d say: “DICK!” A couple different camera angles from just after the collision—the two of us were standing off to the side of the room—and it was always “DICK!” I was starting to think she was obsessing about the “DICK!”, but… okay, I think I’ve beaten the “DICK!” joke to death.

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What am I thankful for?

I’m thankful for Thanksgiving dinner with my family and the warmth of my home instead of sitting outside a store for two days in the cold, wind and snow, waiting for the opportunity to buy a cheap DVD player and/or get trampled by people who want to buy the same cheap DVD player. Because, you know, holiday spirit and all that. I hope you all found reasons to be thankful today as well.

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But I’m good at slouching!

The back pain that started on Monday wasn’t going away. I normally sleep on my side and at one point last night, I tried rolling from left to right and couldn’t. Well, I suppose I could have tried harder, but excruciating pain is not my preferred reason for waking up in the morning. Thus, I had to roll on the front using my elbows and knees instead of just rolling over on my back. Also thus, I paid a visit to my friendly neighborhood chiropractor this afternoon.

The problem is that my L4 vertebra (way down at the base of my lower back) and pelvis sometimes get out of alignment. That also means that at random times, I’ll feel pain on the right side of my right shin. Good stuff. The doc gave me an adjustment, then declared, “You’re all fixed!” Part of doctor’s orders: ice my back and only sit in hard chairs, nothing soft because soft encourages slouching. Unfortunately, I slouch naturally.

I’ve been doing it for many, many years. I blame it on being tall because everything is “down there”. When I was taking the midterm in class on Monday (also when my back was getting noticeably uncomfortable), I had to hunch over the table to write my answers. When I ate dinner this afternoon, I bent over the table so I wouldn’t spill soup all over my shirt. When I pee, well, that’s just being courteous—I want to make sure I’m aiming into the toilet bowl.

But my point is that I’m using to having my back bowed, stretched out, resting against something. I spent an hour or two using a hard chair before I started to get sore from the lack of support. Screw doctor’s orders: I went downstairs to lie back down on my bed. I’ve been resting here for a while and I’m starting to feel better. I should wait for another hour or two to ice my back again, though I could probably eat a little something and take some Advil to help relax the muscles as well. Regardless, until society finds a way to move stuff higher instead of keeping it all “down there”, screw doctor’s orders: I’m stuck slouching.

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Fifty Shades of Gay

“Fifty Shades of Gray” might have been a more appropriate title for this blog entry, but someone already used it. Crap. Still, either one seems like a decent lead-in to what I’m talking about.

It came up when I was at a birthday party at a bar and one married woman admitted doing something very scandalous recently: she made out with another woman. Not unheard of, but okay, it’s kinda scandalous. However, later in the evening, she pointed out that she wouldn’t kiss a man other than her husband because she’s “mostly straight”. Huh?

My thoughts about sexual identity: it’s a scale that goes from black to white, straight to gay—anyone who doesn’t sit on the extremes is bisexual. If a person has a preference for men or women, well, there are “fifty shades of gray”. (Thus, my analogical title that got swiped by some other writer.) According to her previous statement, she’s “mostly black”. Or “mostly white”. Either way, she’s placed herself firmly within that scale of gray.

Did I mention that “mostly straight” meant making out with other females isn’t cheating on her husband? She said that other men would be, but women are okay. Does that make sense to anyone else? Maybe I’m clinging to outdated standards of straight and gay in my old age, which would be really sad since I’m in my mid-30’s.

Incidentally, I mentioned that Chuck and I kissed on Beauty and the Geek and she wanted to see it. I told her how to find in on YouTube—I’m not including a link here, you’ll have to find it yourselves if you want to watch—and she gave me her critique afterward: it didn’t get her really excited, but she still liked it. (I didn’t say “That’s because we’re both dudes!”, but I thought it.)

After several months of trying to process it, all I can think of is that she likes kissing girls and “mostly straight” is a justification so she can do it without feeling like she’s cheating on her husband. If that’s not the case… my head is lost in a gray cloud of confusion. (What shade of confusion, I have no idea, but I’m definitely confused.)

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Demand relief and it shall be supplied

Maybe not for everyone, but certainly for our Economics group (“Team Awesome”) today. This last week has been a giant pile of suckage, but now a whole lot of weight has been lifted off our shoulders and we can coast through the rest of the course. Unless the prof decides to ignore the assigned curriculum again—he taught us material from Chapter 8 in our first class and Chapter 15 in the third.

The class started with our midterm exam. Up to this point, we’ve taken one online quiz that was open book and multiple choice. Today, we were told it was short answer and would be more analytical versus multiple choice-style questions. That’s all we knew. Consequently, most people in the class were ruing the experience. (As a side note, since it was short answer, we needed to write our answers with a pencil. I’m used to typing, so my hand was cramping and my handwriting kept getting worse over time.)

Many late hours, several nights with almost no sleep, multiple social obligations abandoned… very uncool. Right now, I think I’m functioning almost entirely because of a large-scale consumption of Mountain Dew. Doing the Dew, baby, yeah…

And did I mention that our group had to make our presentation today? We had an hour to finish the quiz—immediately after the time ran out, our group of six walked up to the front of the room and began presenting a slideshow to the class, discussing a case study that very few people had read. (Everyone is supposed to read every case before it’s presented, but given the midterm today… we asked how many people had read it and I could count the number of hands on two fingers. Three, if you include my middle finger for the professor.)

As part of our group project, of course, we had to write an 8-10 page paper. It ended up being more like 11 or 12, but I’d rather cover more material than accidentally miss something important and have the prof bitch about it later. That was due the day of the presentation, so in the course of a week, we wrote a paper and prepared a presentation along with studying for the midterm.

The best part is that while studying last night, I spent some time lying on my stomach to read, which led to me tweaking my back this afternoon. Thus, I had to stand in front of the room with my group, leaning against the whiteboard and having occasional back spasms. So maybe we’ve been supplied with some stress relief, but these muscle spasms… I don’t think they’ll care very much about my demands.