Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Blurbs I

            I’m going to do these from time to time.  They’re just blurbs; small stories, musings or quotes that can’t really make up their own post by themselves.  Well, I mean, they could, but that would be ripping off the five people who actually read this thing.  So without further ado…

-       One time I told my friend about what I do for a living, which is described pretty well here on this blog.  He responded that I was the quintessential LA Film Kid.  I’m still trying to decide if I should take offense to this or not.

-       If you’re a producer and you treat your crew like crap, they won’t like you very much.  If you don’t know if you treat your crew like crap, think about how much you yell.  If it’s “a lot” then you treat them poorly, at least in their eyes.  So then if something bad happens and you throw a hissy fit, or if something bad happens to you, the crew will actively root against you and laugh at your misery.  I’ve seen this happen repeatedly.    And if you cry it’s like solid gold for everyone.  Just saying.

-       Some friends of mine were on a set once where for some odd reason the sprinklers that were supposed to be shut off weren’t shut off.  Once they went off they caused puddles and hit lights.  One of the lights went off in the process and due to reasons I don’t understand (for I wasn’t there) the water became electrified, popping and cracking.  Since security in the area did not know how to shut off the lights the fire department was called, causing even more chaos.  This was made worse because it was at a school.  There is no moral of the story here, except that sprinklers and electricity are bad news and electrified water is about as dangerous as it gets.  Seriously, you just stay away from that shit.

-       Many film school teachers are actually great big film snobs.  Most are the friendly type of snob that will actually try to help your film tastes, for better or worse, to rise to their standards in the nicest way possible.  Yes, that’s right, there are actually nice bearable film snobs in the world.  Sometimes they are the obnoxious annoying asshole snobs you want to punch in the face.  I had a teacher I didn’t like at one point who was one of these people.  After putting up with him for months he accidentally admitted his favorite movie might be the animated Transformers movie, at which point he paused and then said “I should have admitted that.”  This did two things: It humanized him slightly and made it so all his other film snob bullshit could easily be excused for being hypocritical.  Optimus Prime wins again!  God I love Transformers.  And remember, Optimus Prime died for your sins.

-       I like working at places that have a good sense of humor about everything, especially what they do.  The place I worked at most recently was staffed full of great people that knew how to do their jobs.  I wish I could go back.  My biggest shock while working there was the fact that they had a dog walking around the office.  When I asked about the dog they responded that the dog was the President of the company.  I was taken aback before I realized that the office had actually tagged the name “President” to the front of the dog’s actual name, Rusty.  So the dog was officially, as far as the office was concerned, “President Rusty.”  They even had a picture of the dog on the staff picture wall with the picture labeled “President. Of the Company.”  The actual owner of the company thought this greatly amusing.  I knew right then I’d like working there.

Film Quote of the Day – “I think they thought ‘we’re both screenwriters, they’re both from the east coast and they are both white.  Fuck it, they HAVE to get along.” – A guy guessing on their school’s logic on why his roommate and him were actually roommates in the first place.  He probably wasn’t far off.

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