Adam Kurtz

You've seen movies in the movies, the sets, the grips, the best boys, the directors yelling, the camera dollies dollying, stars ignoring underlings, even ignoring make up girls as they dolly up their faces, lead underlings bossing around subordinate underlings, ceiling-less rooms, high chairs, headphones; you've heard it, too, the lingo, it's a wrap, run it again, roll sound, rolling, action, cut, lunch, martini; but until you experience it first hand, you don't know what it's really like, except that you do, because it's just like it is in the movies.

i mean, the only part about making movies that doesn't adequately come across in the movies themselves is the absolutely grueling schedule. We're talking a 12 hour day being an easy day, one you look forward to. We think actors have this glorious easy life, but when they're on set, they are running scenes 10-20 times, after having practiced a handful of times as well. They're exhausted, everyone's exhausted, cracked out, drinking coffee not because it'll help but because your instincts think it will, but the sensible part of your brain which you ignore knows it won't.

Everyone has a headset on, with their walkie talkie clipped to their pants somewhere, and someone somewhere is barking orders into everyone's ears. You can be having a perfectly nice conversation with one of the PA's and all of a sudden they, and the other PA's floating about, jump to action as if God himself has compelled "All underlings thrust thyselves over a cliff!" Off they go, probably to stand around at another location to await further godly instruction.

Meanwhile, lonely craft services me sits in my hard plastic chair, trying to pretend my tail bone doesn't throb, drinking coffee, and periodically re-checking the soup which has not been touched since last i needlessly re-checked it. I've now done 3 days, and the first day I set up on the first floor which was nice, a central locale near the outside fresh air, very well lit. Then for Day 2 I had to move to the 5th floor. I set up in a dark dusty corner, but near the set; too near it seems, and even though I had set up where I'd been instructed to, I was re-instructed to move to a further darker corner. No matter, others helped. Then Day 3 I'm psyched because I don't have to move my 2 tables, 8 crates, a half dozen 24-packs of water bottles and 2 1/2 gallon jugs of water, bags of groceries, coolers, trash bags, power cord, chair, and I'm set for the day and life on easy str... no wait, I have to move -everything- even further away, into an even darker, and dustier, and powerless nether region of the warehouse. Milton, we're gonna need to go ahead and move you downstairs into storage B. Terrific.

Also, one of the grips kept fucking with me. I knew he was doing it, too, but every once in a while something he said sort of potentially made sense, so I believed it (like when he told me it was the martini shot, meaning last shot, so I started packing things up and just when I was at a good spot, ready to split, a producer comes by and says, what, you packed up? Why? [I told him why]. And he says, never listen to the grips, now can you make up some fresh coffee? Sure, I can. I did. No one drank it. Because 10 minutes later it WAS martini.) He also told me my car had been hit, asked if a girl had ever spat on me, asked how many times a day someone says I look like John Ritter, asked if I could make a melted brie sandwich for him (which is actually a good idea), and generally tried to mess with me at every given opportunity. Now, I can take it and dish it, and got him confused when I told him he looked like Dave Attell, and he said, isn't that guy bald and fat, and I said yeah, he looks like you (zing), but as a rookie on a set, I couldn't always distill the bullshit from the other bullshit. Plus when it's 530 am and someone says "last shot" you believe him, no matter what.

Tomorrow's shoot (today is a day of rest) is at a haunted hospital called the Linda Vista. Google it, I did. In talking to folks who have filmed there previously, apparently it really is haunted, and it really is creepy, and there are strange smells and sounds, and no craft services guy has ever made it out.... ALIVE! So I'm pretty pumped for some solid ghost bustin'!

Today I slept from 9 am to 4 pm. Went for a run, and now it's sunset. I've talked about becoming a night owl, and here were are, full on night owl mode. Now, time to go drum up some breakfast!