The Complaint Department

 

Mind if I complain?  Before I start doing that, though, I want to thank Pete for his comments on last week’s blog.  I agree with your agreement, and the main thing I wish would change is the level of fear that seems to accompany me into “the humble room”.  Also thanks to Eric!

So why should I have anything to complain about when I’m about to start as standby painter on a great Harrison Ford feature and will be making very good money for the next few months?  First, I spent all weekend buying supplies that I might need, at a cost of almost exactly the amount of my first paycheck, so that dinero’s already gone.  I wasn’t paid to do the shopping, either.  Someone on the crew will probably say I should have asked to be paid for the day I went shopping, and I should invoice for the things I bought, but we may never need the things, so they must remain in limbo and they are still subtracted from my checking account right now, no matter what happens later.

I then had to reorganize the things, and if I had time to count how many of them there are, I would put their number at perhaps 2,000.  Yes, 2,000 little things that I might need to save my ass and keep the film crew going without stopping for the art department.  Here’s a random sampling of what those things are: different colors of contact paper rolls, window frosting paper, dulling spray, spray-on hair colors, clear flat and clear gloss paint, flat, ultra flat, semi-gloss and enamel black (we use a lot of black, for guns, microphones, cameras, and all sorts of things props handles that are black and get nicked or scratched), rope caulk (very useful—you just push it into a seam and paint it, then pull it out when you’re done), glue gun, razor blades, stainless steel cleaner, glycerin, scratch-cote, wood putty, plaster of Paris, colored chalk, acrylic paints, pastels, Sharpies of every possible color, sandblast paper, extension pole for rollers, ladder, compressor, spray guns, 25 kinds of tape, talcum powder, rulers, French curves, 30 types of glue…

Now picture all of these 2,000 items spread out on my living room floor at midnight last night.  I had to get them put into some semblance of order and had four tubs and a large footlocker to partition things into.  But after putting the spray primers and assorted spray colors in one tub and filling it, there were so many weird, odd assortments of unrelated things that I ended up (after 2:30 am) putting anything that would fit into the space into it.  But how to find a particular item when I have 20 seconds to do it and the crew is waiting at a combined cost of their salaries (and Harrison Ford’s) of many thousands of dollars per hour?

I will have to print up labels and lists for each tub and the footlocker, and the labels will be big.  I will have to do that tonight, if I’m still conscious after a ten hour day bathing in paint thinner and plaster in a mad crunch to get the sets ready for filming, which starts in a few days.

So I’m tired and cranky, and I can’t take a nap.  So the complaints keep welling up whenever I start to get into the painting zone and enter into a kind of meditation on all that is.

But the real reasons I am complaining are not so film-induced.

A few days ago, I had to say goodbye to a dear friend I’ve known for over eleven years, and I don’t know whether I’ll see him again.  We met when I fed him a piece of steak in apology for taking a spoiled chicken dinner away from him.  His name is Tennerin and he is a wild red tail hawk who stays with me every fall and winter, comes to his name, hangs out with me when I work on my laptop outside, follows my truck and sometimes meets me in the park down the street, flying above me as I ride my mountain bike through the woods.

I know he’s going to have fun on his long journey to his summer home, getting busy with his lovely mate, Sheba, and raising little Tennerins.  But I don’t know where he flies on his spring migration and it may be as far as Alaska.  The environment for him and his wild kinfolk is shrinking, and he faces unknown dangers along the way and when he’s hunting for his family.  So it’s always hard to say goodbye.  It always takes a couple of weeks to stop looking for him when I get up every morning, because during the winter months he usually sits in a tree outside my window, waiting for me to open the curtains and come out to see him.  Now when I open the curtains, the trees look empty.

The other reason to complain is my first rejection letter from an agent that read a couple of sample chapters from my nonfiction book about working with dolphins on interspecies communication (which I hope will be made into a film one day).  The agent said she “didn’t fall in love with the writing as much as we had hoped”.  This is very hard.  I feel like throwing the whole thing into the recycle bin and starting all over again, but then she said that another agent might like it, because this was only her subjective opinion, and I have won awards writing before this, so maybe she was just the wrong agent for me, or maybe I just don’t know how to write about this subject and never will because I’m too close too it and too emotional, and I was published, sure, but what if this whole dolphin book is nothing but a piece of—  Man, rejection is HARD.

And I will have to go through this hideous doubt, self-castigation, second-guessing and depression who knows how many more times before (and if) I find the agent who will want to represent me.

So there you have it.  Complaints on the eve of a great job.  I have a life outside of film, and it’s stumbling into a kind of a psychic mud bog right now.  I think I’ll feel better once I send out another query letter to this other agent I found who reps two authors I really like who write about the same kinds of subjects I do.  As for Tennerin, wherever you are, beautiful hawk friend, take care.  I will be thinking of you as I paint my heart out on the set.

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid

Be Afraid.  Be Very Afraid 

This should be a happy time, a wonderful life I’m living right now.  I’m finally on as the standby painter for several months on a Harrison Ford feature.   There are other big names, a good budget, a fine story, lots of hours, lots of overtime, no more self-paying my health insurance (which has skyrocketed by thousands of dollars a year and it makes me angry just thinking about the math), no more skirting along the limits of all my credit cards just to barely scrape by.

I know and like my painting crew and over half of the shooting and construction crew, thanks to the relatively tight-knit Oregon film scene.  The hideous, gray, cold darkness of winter is drifting away a bit more every day, and my seasonal affective disorder is retreating as the light gets longer and the sun climbs higher.

But folks, I am afraid.  I am very afraid.  Ever since I’ve been on this feature, I can’t sleep at night.  Last night I woke up in a cold sweat at 3:00 am by yelling out loud during a nightmare about work.  I feel like any minute I could be laid off, fired, or simply freak out and run from the stage screaming, “I’m clueless!  I don’t belong here!”  For this week I’m working as a regular set painter, and I feel like I can’t possibly get be ready for the standby part of my job in time.  All I have to do is pack my kit and buy a few new items—it’s not like I’m building a space station.  Yet I feel overwhelmed by the preparation ahead.  I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing and that I have never have known what I’m doing.  Why?  Why do I feel like I don’t know the first thing about painting when I have painted for years?

It comes to me that on every job without fail, I feel like I will fail.  Got that?  I was once a psychologist, and although I worked with animals, graduate school still trained me to look at the reasons behind behavior, or in my case, the reasons behind the behavior of my thoughts.

In the 1970’s a team of psychologists did a study of women on the fast track at Cal Tech, and found that many of them had similar thoughts that ran along the lines of: “I am often afraid that others will find out how much knowledge I lack.”; “I was successful because I got lucky this time.”; and of their work if complimented: “It’s no big deal.”  They felt as if they were frauds who might be discovered at any time.  This set of feelings was dubbed the “Imposter Syndrome”.

For a few years psychologists believed that only women felt this way, especially if they were in high-powered or socially-oriented careers.  Now we know that men feel the Imposter Syndrome as well.  Actors, CEO’s and people in positions of decision-making tend to feel the Imposter Syndrome most.  One line of thought suggests that the syndrome occurs when a person “fails to internalize their successes”.  But I think that perhaps the syndrome is related to existential angst, at least in my psyche.

It may be unfair and wrong to believe I’m an imposter.  After all, I’ve been doing this job for almost twenty years, and there have been some spectacular failures, but they happened almost two decades ago, with a couple of minor exceptions which I won’t go into—ever.  Anyhow, I am fairly certain I can do this job well.  BUT—because I secretly suspect that I don’t really know as much as “they” seem to think I do, I try harder and work longer (and faster, if there’s a deadline), and I constantly try to learn new things and attempt to get better in whatever skills I can, all in the name of the Imposter Syndrome.  And also in the name of, as Bob, the founder of the Church of the Subgenius calls it: “Life-Saving Paranoia”.

Am I so wrong?  Yesterday on the long drive home, fretting about whether I had done neatly enough on the brush marks for the trim in Brendan Fraser’s living room, I was listening to an interview with a wildly successful man, Tony Gilroy, writer and director (talk about your overachievers) of Michael Clayton, and now Duplicity, and screenwriter of the Jason Bourne series.  He had been nominated for an Academy Award for Michael Clayton, and in fact, all the hoopla and politicking during that time of the red carpet treatment had delayed the start of Duplicity.  What an accomplished person, I thought.  I wonder if he ever feels like an imposter?

And then at the very end of the interview he said something I will file away and remember whenever I am balancing my imposterism against my self-confidence.  He said now that all the excitement was over, it was time to go back to writing, to go into “the humble room”.

So maybe Imposters feel the need to learn, and feel humbled in the face of The Thing That Must Be Done, whatever it is, whether it’s a landmark court case, an engineering problem or just coming up with a vinyl decal on the fly for an art director at the next location.  There is always a need, I think, to be humbled by the job ahead of you.  It is part of the creative process.  It is, at its best, paying respect to the creating of something good.

I think.  But don’t quote me on that, because I really don’t know anything about anything.  There!  Now it’s out in the open.  Maybe I can get some sleep tonight. 

Cancel My Subscription

Cancel My Subscription: Or Job Hunting with Production Charts

This happened last year, and my subscription was finally cancelled one month ago, solely because my credit card expired and they could no longer siphon subscription fees from it.  Production charts are one way to find work, but I do not rely on the listings of this particular publication, which is not called MovieBatch or anything even close.  In fact the publication doesn’t even really exist and I made this all up, so don’t believe anything following this statement.  Except this: Before you buy a subscription, carefully and thoroughly check out those publications that claim they have listings of every film in production and pre-production, along with contact information.

 Hey, You There: Yes, You, Working in MovieBatch’s So-Called “Customer Care Center”:

I am forced to write to your Customer Care Center to cancel my subscription because the rest of your online magazine site is down every single time I try to access it.  I also found that the “film information for professionals” on your Production Follower was spotty and inaccurate, as I am in the business, and I need to know that information for my own job searches.  MovieBatch was of no help at all to me in this regard.  Additionally, I am at a critical point in seeking work on a film, and was not able to get the name of their production office from your site, much less their phone number.  You promised you had this information for job hunting professionals like me.  You promised.  But you lied.

As a result (or lack thereof), I couldn’t get my resume to the right person until late yesterday—and then only because I had a friend on the crew and called in a favor—so your magazine was useless.  This may have cost me the job.  Perhaps you can imagine how frustrated I am; someone else got their resume on the production designer’s desk, probably days before mine even arrived.  Because they were hiring in a hurry—which is standard procedure— I now have no chance to crew on a huge film with paid travel all over the US to vacation spots like Palm Springs and Yosemite at union rates and generous per diem, even on idle days.

I am also, by the way, quitting my subscription to the ShowBiz Statesman.  Neither of your rags even listed this movie on your production charts, in spite of the fact that it’s been mentioned in your very own news articles, and is a big budget, Sean Penn-directed epic with a cast of mega-watt stars.  Why don’t you guys list any of this stuff??

Actually, whoever you are, reading this, you couldn’t care less, could you?  Unless you have a script on the back burner or want to “direct” someday, you probably don’t know or even want to know this business.  So consider this an amusing way to blow some of your slavery time on the company’s clock.  I’m sure someone like you doesn’t own stock in MovieBatch.  You could get hundreds of letters just like this one, all of them writing in to cancel MovieBatch subscriptions, maybe threatening the company’s financial standings so much (all due to the incompetence of  MovieBatch, whoever and whatever they are) that  the stockholders will run like rats from a burning garbage barge, and it wouldn’t bother you in the least.

Of course, you will lose your job, which you no doubt hate, since you’re obviously stuck at the lowest tier of hell there if you’re handling customer complaint emails.  No more job—think of it.  Freedom from this oppressive, pointless, criminal waste of your time here on earth, which is so precious—it’s all we have, really, before we fade to black.   And to have to sell that time to some limping, clueless monster like MovieBatch five days a week, eight hours a day—really sixteen hours, with the freeway commute…  For the love of our dear Lord, how can you awaken every day to the hideous knowledge that you are financially dependent on the “good will” of something as stupidly high on itself as MovieBatch?

But the alternative is worse, isn’t it?  Without a job, you won’t be able to pay the rent or blab on your cell phone.  In two weeks, you’ll be homeless, unless you’re living with your parents…  But that itself is too horrible an existence to contemplate for real adults, who have a good job, not one like yours, which is on the fast track to the dangerously overburdened Santa Monica Bay sewage terminal.

You are smiling to yourself, now.  Surely, MovieBatch will go on existing and you will go on collecting your bi-weekly, tax-eaten living allowance.  Please. Stop lying to yourself, for once.  If you can read (and of course you can!) you are beginning to suspect that all is not well at MovieBatch.  I am probably not the first to complain about the blatant worthlessness of your employer.   Look around you, right now.  Who will be the first one to go when they downsize?  Can you guess?

One paycheck after the hammer falls, you’ll be living on the streets, where you’ll get addicted to crack, and then one day you will find yourself walking Santa Monica Boulevard in burgundy velour unisex hot pants, hoping for a rich “John” to supply you with a wad of dirty “cash” for your next “fix”.   You’ll spend every waking hour “jonesin’ for the pipe”.  All because the meager income you depended upon for your very sanity is gone—all of it gone, gone, gone! Thanks to the bloated incompetence of—that’s right:  MovieBatch.

But don’t let your bitterness toward them—toward The Man, so typified by the condescending attitude of MovieBatch toward the little people like you, living on the bottom, who are supposed to be happy for anything that trickles down— Don’t let your bitterness toward The Man destroy your life!  When they hand you that pink slip and padlock their doors because they’ve run out of shills who are stupid enough to pay for a subscription to a big, fat sack of nothing (MovieBatch), you run out into the smoggy sun-glare of LA and you Thank the Great Spirit that you’ve been given the priceless chance to live your life on your own terms.  Run away as fast as you can.

That’s right.  Run, my lower-echelon friend.  Run toward the sea!  But don’t go in the water, because of the sewage problems I mentioned, plus the hordes of used crack pipes and hypodermic needles floating on the oily waves of the Santa Monica Bay, every one of them carrying unspeakable pestilence.  Instead, stand proudly on the shore, and stare, unblinking, into the bright glory of the burning sun, and sing!  Yes, sing out your profound and grateful joy at finally being free, free FREE! Of MovieBatch.  Sing loud! Because now, now that your life is MovieBatch-free, you can truly begin to live as you were meant to live—as a man, or a woman, or whatever you happen to be.

I know that my life can—and will—begin again for me once I am sure that my subscription has been cancelled, even though I couldn’t do it through the recommended (and functionally non-existent) “Subscription Center”, shut out courtesy of the vainglorious apathetic ignorance of MovieBatch.

I would appreciate a confirmation of my request for a subscription cancellation at the earliest possible convenience.  You have my email address and my MovieBatch “Membership Number” (Membership of what? Of nothing, of no legitimate group or professional association, or gathering of any value).   I will be here, writing on my computer because I won’t be involved with any big rush to get my kit together for a flight to the Grand Canyon, which is the location where I would have started my exciting first day on the shoot of that movie I didn’t get on.

Instead, I’ll be at home, unemployed and living with my parents, racking up more of the credit card debt that was dramatically enhanced by my wastage of purchasing power on the repulsive idiocy of a subscription to MOVIEBATCH.

I suppose asking for a refund is out of the question.

Sincerely,

Renee Prince - Or, as MovieBatch refers to me, Order Number: 3524F2E0-537HC42-712-D5G6B 

The Old, Deserted Insane Asylum! Part 4

NOTE: Oooh yeah! We’re back with the standby painter DuBois and her all-female crew who are hard at work in the old, deserted insane asylum, unaware that they are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to the outer… no, that’s not right—I’m thinking of something else.  They’ll be experiencing mystery, but not awe, though there will be some terror involved, depending on who you ask.  So let’s see what’s been shaking since we left, and if you need to refresh your memory, check out the first parts, 1-3 of…

 

LOCATIONS OF THE DAMNED: Featuring the Old, Deserted Insane Asylum! Part 4

(A story of which a large percentage is true!)

It was late on a wind-scoured night in the rogue metropolis of the city, which some called “Los Angeles” with a distinct accent that did something different with the ‘g’, which was the right way to pronounce it, but which most people found affected and lame sounding, so that even if they wanted to say the name of the city correctly, they wouldn’t for fear of ridicule.  Let’s just call it “Los Angeles” and you can decide how to pronounce it.  Or better yet, just call it “LA”.

DuBois checked her watch, and decided it was time to get the rest of her truck unloaded so they could finish the hallway.  She walked out of the little pool of light that surrounded the girls’ work area and took her flashlight out of her pocket, shining it on the stairs as she carefully navigated her way to the first floor.  Once she reached the last step, her flashlight faltered and then went out.

“Damn!” she muttered. “No more buying batteries from the dollar store.”  But she could see the dim glow of the parking lot light shining through the small barred and frosted window of the main doors, so she knew it wasn’t much further.  As she was about to move toward the exit, she heard an odd sound.

SKRITCH!

It came from far down the pitch-black hallway, almost to the elevators.  She looked down there and saw a small flame flare up, then transform into an ember glowing in the darkness.

“Who’s there?” she demanded, knowing that nobody should be there.  It was, after all, the old, DESERTED insane asylum.  The small ember immediately dropped to the floor and went out.  She heard a shuffling step.

She asked something really stupid, then. “Is that you, Kippy?” even though she knew it couldn’t be Kippy, because Kippy and the others were all upstairs and because she, DuBois, was using the only stairway that went down to the first floor, because the elevators were broken because the power was off, because the building was deserted— “Shut up!” DuBois told herself.

Silence.  Another second of silence (i.e., a second second of silence).  And then, from far down the hall in the black, dank darkness where the flame had been, she heard breathing.  Big, heavy breathing, from someone big, and heavy.  Or some… thing big and heavy.

DuBois yelled up the stairs, “Girls!  Get down here RIGHT NOW!”  Various complaints could be heard, and Du Bois dearly wanted to go up there and grab the complainers and haul them out during mid-complaint, but she didn’t want to give up her proximity to the exit, or give who- or what-ever it was the opportunity to move closer without being seen, or at least heard.

“NOW!!!” DuBois yelled up again.  There was silence upstairs as the complaining stopped at the force of her panicky voice, and then she heard scrambling.   The “girls” came down the stairs slowly, Sol in the lead with the one other flashlight they had between the four of them.

DuBois was hopping from foot to foot with impatience, gesturing with both arms by pointing down the hall at the phantom menace and at the same time beckoning them to hurry toward her, which made her look like a deranged puppet.  “What the hell are you trying to signal, there, DuBois?” asked Sol.  “The bathrooms don’t work in here, ya know.”

“Just get down here and come out to the parking lot!” hissed DuBois.  She leapt over to the exit door in three giant steps, holding it open for the rest of them and whispering, “Hurry!”

They grouped by DuBois’ truck, demanding an explanation.  When she told them what had happened, there was a moment of silence while each woman thought about what it meant to her personally, the fact that someone unknown had lit a cigarette inside the deserted (well, it was supposed to be deserted) insane asylum, and then snuffed out the cigarette when they realized they’d been seen.  Hmmm… someone who didn’t want to be seen, inside a building which was normally locked and off-limits to everybody….

“Goddamnit! Those cheap sonzabitches didn’t want to pay for a security guard, and now we’re being stalked by a murderer!” (Sol)

“We need to find the base security guard so he can shoot this guy if he tries anything!”  (Kippy)

“I left my car keys in there!” (Neaninte)

“We are so screwed.  We’ll never finish this set tonight.” (DuBois)

Dubois noticed them all staring at her incredulously.  “Well, we are screwed!  The pre-rigging crew is coming in to lay cable at 5:30 am, and—”

“We could have all been stabbed to death by that guy in there, and you’re worried about the set?”  This question was asked by Sol, the most incredulous of those staring at DuBois.

DuBois was sufficiently mollified to volunteer her truck for the trip to the security guard’s building a quarter mile away, but nobody wanted her to leave them there by themselves. “Besides,” Kippy said, “My purse is in there!  With my keys!  My credit cards! My STUFF!”

Kippy stomped her feet for emphasis.  “You know what?  I’ve made a decision.  I’m going in there right now and I’m going to get my purse.”

“No, no!” squealed Neaninte, grabbing Kippy’s hand. “The person who goes back inside always gets killed in every single one of those crappy movies they filmed in there.

Now, this was true.  In almost every movie that had been filmed in the old, deserted insane asylum, the person, usually a young woman, who decided for whatever reason that she just had to go back into the dark, deserted place of evil always got killed, usually in bizarrely inventive and terrible ways.

But that was in the movies, and this was real life.  However, in real life people often got killed making just the kind of decision that Kippy made.  In fact these very thoughts in more or less the same order occurred to Kippy herself, lucky girl.

“Okay,” Kippy said. “I’ll stay out here.”

 

To Be Continued…

 

Dear Ignorant Movie Producer

Hi all!  I’m getting just a little bit tired of waiting to start on my next show, so instead of worrying about what happens when my health insurance runs out, I’ve decided to write a letter to one of those people in the Business who never seems to appreciate the value of my world—the world of the Art Department—in film:

 

Dear Ignorant Movie Producer:

Give me a job.  Yes, I am demanding that you, a person with financial power and creative ignorance, pay me money—as much as I can get—to make your film a visually stunning (in a good way, this time) cinematic masterpiece.  I’m also wondering, rhetorically, just how ignorant are you?  Apparently you still believe that yet another film featuring your trademarks: a poorly-executed rehash of dopey ideas punctuated with stunted bursts of asphyxiating dialogue eventually dragged to oblivion by the lack of any plot, is going to magically transform itself into something better than a criminally indecent waste of time.  Somehow, in spite of the abominable writing, and the complete lack of characterization that has marred every terrible film you’ve ever produced, you expect vast numbers of intelligent people to pay for sitting through the latest of your foul efforts, losing two hours of their lives which they will never get back unless they can somehow reverse the time-space continuum.

If you continue to do business as usual, then, yes, you are truly an ignorant buffoon.  Maybe you should ask yourself, “What can I, an ignorant producer, do to make a decent film in spite of myself?”  First, let’s face it—your script is probably a floundering remake of some 1970’s television show that plummeted into the bowels of the Nielsen ratings for most of its debauched run as soon as the average viewer realized that watching it regularly would completely destroy their quality of life.  What will make anything turn out differently this time around?

The answer is not in the rewrites.  You know that.  Those are just pit stops on a downward spiral of desperation through the blue pages, the pink pages, the “goldenrod” pages, until finally you’re into the ineffectual plaid pages.  And every rewrite only makes it worse, if such a thing is even possible.  Meanwhile you’re paying one, two, or fifteen different writers at least WGA minimum each time you try to fix what was, from the beginning, a stupefying clod of banal dreck.

What can stop this Bird Flu-like virus of failure from fulfilling its destiny: that of sucking all the possibilities of success and profit from your project into the vacuous, gaping black hole of its maw?

One word: “Art”.  You remember Art, don’t you?  It has a department named after it.  There are well-substantiated rumors, from reliable sources, that film is a “visual medium”.  Why won’t you pay me the kind of money you’ve obviously wasted on all those writers?  Imagine gigantic crystalline cities reflecting the rainbow hues of a cloud-swept sunset; Etruscan mosaics and gold-veined marble floors, and inspired architecture featuring extremely professional wood graining or vintage William Morris floral wallpaper.  Then imagine an American Hepplewhite chair grouping or a Biedermeir chaise lounge set that brilliantly showcases the actors’ asses seated upon them.   Aren’t these fantastic, heart-stopping images worth every bit as much as this piece of dialogue from something you’re probably going to produce, if you haven’t already?

Neethoff

                       “I didn’t kill Monique!  All that night I was at the chili cookoff.”

Detective Gripsack

                      “No.  I happen to know you took off from the cookoff, Neethoff.  You know how I know?”

Neethoff

                      “I know you don’t know.  So… no.”

Detective Gripsack

                      ”Your DNA told me, my friend.  And your individual genetic code consisting of two long

                       chains of nucleotides based around a double helix joined by hydrogen bonds doesn’t lie.”

Et cetera, et cetera.  This is the stuff of terminally boring nightmares: soulless drivel of the most pretentious kind.  Once again, you have managed to regurgitate TV movie pabulum fit for consumption only by the kind of people who are featured regularly on Cops; people without the financial means for an impulse purchase of a pepperoni meat stick at the Circle K.  Is this the consumer base you want for your product?

And if your latest contemptible film actually makes it to theatrical release without going straight to video hell, who, exactly, are you hoping will pay to see it? The eighteen to thirty-year-olds with money?  No, and no again, dweeb-clown.  They need more to set their seats on fire; they need VISUALS.  Yeah!  Neon-hued explosions of light!  Sets so large they fade into the distance and beyond the horizon, filled with giant reptiles to smash those sets into burning, whirling, radioactive smithereens.   And hopefully this time they will be giant reptiles with complex emotional issues and convictions that change color and chase across their skin like squids do, and with simply fabulous, scaly fins all aglow in chartreuse and magenta, flashing long, sharp fangs so fluorescent-white they might have come straight from the cosmetic dentist’s office.

Can’t you see it all now?  Since you’re a movie producer, probably not. Why not?  Because your eyes, just like your brain, have shriveled into mere vestigial organs, leaving you groping through eternal mental darkness without a clue.  So you will have to hear the truth from me: even though giant lizards may not be in your little pasty-faced script, your audience is still crying out for the Art Department’s talent.  They’re crying out, and not for more car chases, gunfights, or tortoise-speed bogus kung fu flailing that insults the law of gravity.  They are crying out for soaring backdrops; and venomous coloration that works as subtext and adds to the gestalt of the film; and walls that speak of the pain and wretched glory of the human condition; and set dressing that accents characterization with awesome poignancy and subtle layers of meaning embedded in the furniture.  If they see it, they will feel it.

So, what are they crying out for?  Can’t you even remember what I just told you?

ART!  You power-brokering, money-mongering, cretinous dunderhead, I’m talking ART!  Let me know if you have the guts to burst out of the blundering, addle-pated, fatuous confines of your wretched, bovine, insipid writer-controlled world.  Let me know when you will finally pay me a staggering sum of well-deserved money to make my visions—not yours, you ignorant fool! — come true.

PS. Sorry, sorry, sorry.  I’m forgetting where the money for my paycheck comes from.  Just forget I said anything about your being ignorant or not having any concept of the importance of the visuals in a film.  I’m sure your next project, that remake of the remake of that TV show that was a remake of a comic book remake will be GREAT!