The Incident with the Midget

First and foremost, I would like to offer a formal apology to my fabulous readers.  Last week, I spelled “implore” wrong as “emplore”.  I know this has caused mental anguish to at least one of you, and for that I am deeply, deeply sorry.  I only hope that, in time, you can forgive me for my egregious error in spell-check, and stop crying about it like a girl.

So our IMDB experiment from last week rocked, you guys!  Up 102%!  You love me, you really love me!  And I will now always have this little tidbit in my trivia section:

“Has been known to perform carefully orchestrated sleight-of-hand stunts on most sets as a way to break the ice between cast and crew, including many fancy card tricks, and a Houdiniesque escape from a straight jacket.”

Fantastic.  How did you know I’ve always wanted to own a straight jacket?  Oh you.  ::pinches your cheek lovingly::

I’m glad that made it through the IMDB censors though, I’ve been having trouble with some TRUE facts about myself, like “Has a deep seated fear of little people.”

Don’t laugh; I’m not even being funny.  When I was five, I went to my first sleepover at a girl in my ballet class’ house.  Why was I in ballet?  Because I was a huge tomboy growing up and my mom was afraid I would become a lesbian…  because painting your daughters like cheap little hookers is better than letting them climb a tree from time to time.  Guess what we watched that night though:  Child’s Play 2.  My life would never be the same.  To this day, seeing Chucky’s face or hearing his voice or anything related to him sets me off into a minor panic attack – it’s a debilitating phobia.

On Hollywood and Highland there is a guy that dresses like Chucky and walks up to people with a plastic machete.  If I’m heading over there, I have to drive past first to see if he’s there, because I know that if he comes near me, my animal instincts will take over, and I will punt him across the street before I even realize what I’m doing.  If he only knew the lengths I was going to, to make sure he doesn’t get dropkicked.  You’re welcome sir.

And it’s more than just the doll that gets me, I’m uneasy around little people and children – if it walks on 2 legs and operates out of my peripheral, I don’t trust it.  So you can imagine my horror upon getting to set for a short film I worked on called “The Grass Is Always Greener”…  and one of the four main characters was a midget.

I had to stand in for lighting his scene partner with him time and time again, had to take his dinner order, even helped him into one of his costumes - all the while making conversation and quelling the ever-rising tide of panic within myself.  At the end of the night of shooting, I drove home emotionally exhausted – I had given the performance of a lifetime, AND gotten his coffee order right.

A PA’s work is never done.

IMDBeeyotch

This week’s blog is going to be short ladies and gents, I’ve got a good writer friend in town for the weekend and we’ve decided we may shoot a short tomorrow!  If you’re nice, I may post a link when it’s done.  Her name is Angela Lovell, you should check her out over at http://www.tickingboxes.com, or just google her awesome stories and articles.

I love googling, almost as much as I love myself.  So you can imagine how often I google “Brandie Posey” on a weekly basis.  I promise I’m not full of myself, I’m just finally glad that the more exposure I get, the fewer Parker Posey links come up.  No.  We are not related (at least in any way I’ve found out).  Stop asking.  Oh, and just for the record, I am also NOT named after that song by Looking Glass, “Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl)”.  Do I look like a lonely bar wench?!  No.  Without fail though, at least once a week someone sings it to me.  I may be developing a twitch.  Or start carrying a knife.

Apparently several of you out there google me too though, because my IMDB % is way up this week…  cool.  Weird, but cool.

But you have been found out!  And I have a challenge for you…  it’s time for you to start entertaining ME, damnit!  Brandie Posey ain’t runnin’ no blogging soup kitchen up in this bitch.  Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to go to my IMDB page and submit the most outlandish trivia facts and biography information that you can think of.  DO IT!  It’ll be hilarious. Talk about how I was raised by wolves, or am half cyborg, or the fact that I can name 10 Brendan Fraser movies in less than 15 seconds (not kidding about that last one).

Or start a thread on my IMDB message board!  If you’ve never experienced the joy that is an IMDB message board battle, I emplore you, GO.  My personal favorite is the one for “Riding The Bus With My Sister”, this ATROCIOUS Made For TV movie with Rosie O’Donnell as a retarded woman who wears a lot of kitty cat shirts.  It’s God awful…  but people defend it because its about a mentally challenged woman.  A bad movie’s a bad movie, no matter what the content.

All I’m saying is that if Michael Bay made a shitty Holocaust movie, I’m not going to pretend to like it because I’m homies with a bunch of the children of Israel.  There’s only so many times you can swing a steadicam at full speed around Hitler.

You have your mission – Click the imdb link under my bio to the right… GO!

I’m Not Married & I’m 24: The Story of a Southern Faux Pas

So I have these two old, crazy, Italian Great Aunts.  For some reason, they have my cell number in their phone book as my parent’s house in Maryland…  and no matter how many times I have asked them to change it (approximately 57 million), they always seem to immediately forget, and then a month later they wake me up on a Saturday at 7am (10am EST) loudly yelling for my mother into the receiver.  It always turns into a shout off until they stop talking and I can fully convince them that I’m not actually the one they want…  I am three hours in the past and would really appreciate sleeping during my time travels to MY OWN 10am.

A new development occurred this past week though, I got a call asking for my mom from a second cousin I didn’t even know I had – she had gotten ahold of the crazy Italian’s phone book and was calling everyone in it – It’s coming up on  the SUPER AWESOME FUN 5 YEAR FAMILY REUNION!  WOO!

…I guess now should be where I tell you, I don’t really associate with that side of the family, I’ve always identified much stronger with my Dad’s…  maybe it’s my Mom’s uber conservative, southern Catholic upbringing that just rubs me the wrong way, but I’ve never felt comfortable around them, and for me, constantly censoring myself gets exhausting.  So you can imagine a family reunion is EXACTLY what I’m looking forward to.

After I explain the mix-up, there is an awkward moment where I obviously want to get off the phone, but my second cousin pressed on, wanting to know just where the heck I could possibly be, if I wasn’t living at home, or at least within hollerin’ distance of my momma.  I will call her Sally Jean, as her southern twang would lead you to believe would be an appropriate moniker…  don’t forget, I’m from Maryland.

“So.  Are you married yet?  Any kids?”

…I almost laughed out loud, but settled for smacking my head against the wall instead.  Good Lord, like I have enough time out here for myself, let alone someone else…  not to mention that I’m more of a dude than most guys in Hollywood.  (Come on fellas, you know its true.  I have never seen more manly mani-pedi’s in all my life).  Married…  but I AM getting older… after all, I AM 24.  24?!  Lands sakes alive, child!  In some parts of the South, you’re a filthy old nag, put out to pasture, waiting for the glue factory.  That’s all you’re good for anymore – lonely glue.  At least then you can hold two pieces of paper together, unlike any relationship in your more formidable years.

“No, Sally Jean, I’m not married.  I live in Hollywood.  I work for the film industry, on TV shows and movies.  I work 14 hour days, I don’t really have time for a relationship right now because I’m trying to do things that won’t hurt me or waste my time, like getting a manager or selling a script.”

“Oh mercy me!  My sons do that!  They make army videos in the backyard!”

Much like Sly Stallone in Demolition Man, I tried to “enhance my calm, John Spartan”.

“Well its good you let them play with a camera like that.”

“Yeah, I suppose.  But it doesn’t pay well does it?  Are you one of those ‘starving artist’ types?”

If this were a cartoon, I would have reached through the phone, dropped an anvil on her head, then a piano, then a safe.

“Actually Sally Jean, it pays pretty well, I’m making more than most of my friends who got business degrees.  Plus I hang out with movie stars”

“Huh.  Well if you say so.”

I’ll just stop here, the rest isn’t pretty, basically it turned into me giving the best pitch of my life – for her children to go to film school, study, create art, to follow their dreams, fulfill their DESTINIES, damnit!

We got off the phone twenty minutes later and she told me she knew there was a reason my crazy Aunts gave her my number.  I like to think that reason is so I could convince her kids to someday move to California, to NOT get married and never, EVER make her a grandmother, thus ending her specific contribution to the human gene pool.

PA Lesson of the week:  You’re one of the bottom rungs out here, the people at home barely know what “Director” means, let alone “Production Assistant”.  Get used to it.  Don’t expect them to get it.

I may not have time to pop out a few babies right now, but I sure as hell will ALWAYS make time for stealthily crushing the dreams of ignorant hicks.

Reel Big Fangirl: PA’ing a music video

This weekend in Los Angeles was Bamboozle Left, a punk/pop punk/some ska music festival. And I am a ska fanatic! I only went Saturday, because I have a stand up comedy workshop on Sundays, but whatever, because I got to see my favorite band play, Reel Big Fish. Never heard of them? How dare you! Immediately go to their myspace page and listen to their songs: http://www.myspace.com/reelbigfish. They’re funny and have great banter and their music is awesome and peppy and they are really great guys and just ack! I love everything about them, can you tell?

Anyway, the reason I bring it up is because 2 years ago, I got the chance to PA on one of their music videos, a lil’ ditty called “Don’t Start A Band”. The concept of the video was all the bad clichés that happen to you in the early years of a band: your tour van breaking down, playing on the street for change, playing in smoky bars where no one cares, and practicing in the garage. It was an ultra low budget video, which I actually like to work on more because you have a lot more to do and aren’t just sitting around watching doors and getting coffee.

I ended up working as an unofficial assistant art director and for the second day of the shoot, so I got to bring any crazy props I had to fill out the garage space… and I own a lot of crazy stuff. Seriously, my apartment looks like a prop shop that only specializes in weird, totally random, useless stuff. So, if you look closely in the garage scene, there is a glass turkey, a gold Abe Lincoln bust and a bright green wig head (I lovingly call her Long-Neck-Green-Face) scattered on the back wall.

There is also a mannequin in that scene that belongs to me too… her name is Roxanne, but because Matt Wong, their bass player, was in Hawaii for his sister’s wedding, we dressed her up like him, Gaff tape facial hair and all! (**Nerdy Reel Big Fish fact: Their last video, for “Where Have You Been” had mannequins in it, and they hated the whole experience, so having Roxanne in this one was their way of saying eff you to that director. Sooo lame that I know that, but whatever.**)

I didn’t get paid for the gig, but I didn’t care. I got to give something back to a band that I have loved for YEARS… they were my first concert ever back in 1998. And besides, when else do you get to hang out with 6 of your favorite people and do the job you love at the same time?? There are definitely other perks to this job besides the lavish paychecks (HA!). Because of that video, now I’m buddies with a few of the guys, and all I have to do is shoot them a text when I’m coming to a show and I’m in for free, chilling on the tour bus. Last year I took most of them around to the different Smithsonians in Washington DC before a show later that night.

And the video led to more gigs, too. The director of “Don’t Start A Band”, (Jonathan London, check out his podcast, Geekscape, for all your video game, comic book, movie news) got hired to direct their Live DVD too, the third disc on “Our Live Album Is Better Than Your Live Album”. Guess who got called in to PA?? And by PA, this time I meant hang out. But I’ve still got a credit listed on the DVD, and it’s my most cherished one yet:

Brandie Posey … Production Assistant (And Really Awesome Person)