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.