The Real Power of Acting

From the set on Wednesday, May 20, 2009.  I am typing this on the upper floor of a large metropolitan newspaper.  Nobody from the paper seems to be working here in the building, however. Is the paper still in business?  We have spread out over the entire building, and encounter room after room of beautiful ergonomically designed cubicles with stunning views of the Columbia River and the mountains to the west, and even Mt. Hood to the east.  But every one of them is empty.  With all the bad news about newspapers, I am somewhat relieved to learn that the paper is troubled, but not defunct.

This is Harrison’s last day on the set, and suddenly time is speeding up. The film wraps in just three weeks, now, and I can’t believe it’s all going to be over so fast.  When I began, it seemed as if this future day was a long, long way ahead. But looking back, it feels like maybe just two or three weeks have gone by since my first day on the job.  Does anyone else feel this time speeding up thing besides me?

There’s also an accompanying feeling of missed opportunities.  Could I have done more with my time than simply paint walls and answer the radio in a timely and professional manner? Just yesterday my mother told me some interesting news about Harrison Ford that I wish I had known earlier, when I could have asked him about it and compared notes.

In 2008, Raul Julia-Levy, the son of the late actor Raul Julia, asked some of his famous acquaintances if they would help with a cause close to his heart.  Harrison Ford, Johnny Depp, and Jean-Claude Van Damme, along with other celebrities put their names behind the Free Lolita campaign.  The Free Lolita campaign has been around for over a decade, but lately had languished in the netherworld of anonymity until the actors names got on the list.  Suddenly I noticed more stories about Lolita than ever before—even national news and magazines have covered it. The campaign has been gaining strength and momentum ever since.

Lolita is an orca who has spent the last 39 years in a tiny tank, illegal by the USDA’s current standards, in Florida’s Miami Seaquarium.  The actors, along with many other people, me included, want to have Lolita brought back to her home here in the Pacific Northwest.  To learn more about Lolita you can visit http://orcanetwork.org/captivity/Support.pdf  or Google Lolita with any of the above actors’ names.  She’s now easy to find, thanks to famous actors who cared.

I have a special interest in Lolita.  Her sole tank mate for over twenty years was a female white sided dolphin.  I don’t remember what Miami Seaquarium called this dolphin, but when I knew her, she had just been caught off the Southern California coast out of the freedom of the Pacific Ocean, and her captors had named her Shy.  Shy was one of the first dolphins I ever knew, and I was the very first human she ever knew.  Through working with her over a period of several months, I learned that dolphins are intelligent conscious beings, not mere animals.  Through her I learned that captivity for dolphins and whales is ethically and morally insupportable.

It was shortly before her death that I learned Shy was still alive, decades later, and that she shared Lolita’s tank as the orca’s sole companion for over twenty years.  At that time Shy was the oldest white sided dolphin in captivity.  Most of the dolphins of her species died less than five years after their capture, surviving for a mere fraction of their normal lifespan.  Lolita and Shy must have been friends—they had no others of their own kind to bond with.

When I learned that Lolita had been caught off the coast of Washington state as a young sub-adult, I realized, as did the people who want her freed, that Lolita has a real chance of retuning to her life and her family.  Orcas, or killer whales, have a matrilineal society, which means that all the offspring of an orca mother will stay with their mother in a family group for the rest of their lives.  These related matrilineal groups have distinctly different dialects from one another, and to this day Lolita vocalizes in her family’s dialect.

Lolita grew up in the wild and learned how to hunt for her own food, which is the salmon that run through the waters around Puget Sound and along the west coast.  If she lived in a sea pen, where the orca experts who want to bring her back propose, she will be able to see and speak to her own family for the first time in over thirty years.  She is only 40 to 45 years old.  Female orcas in the wild live to be at least 90 years old, and probably older, with their reproductive life continuing into their forties.  Lolita’s life could begin anew in the world she was born to, with the family who almost certainly remember her, as she almost certainly remembers them.  She may still be able to give birth to her own new family.

Harrison Ford had heard the story and he lent his name to the petition for Lolita’s release.  Furthermore, my mother informed me, Mr. Ford for over seventeen years has been an active force in Conservation International.  He is also a member of Riverkeepers, and uses his helicopter to patrol the Hudson River checking for pollution problems.   Unfortunately I never knew all this until the day before Harrison was leaving the show.

Folks, I hate to admit this, but I am not impressed by famous actors because they’re famous.  I’m more—how can I describe it? Intimidated, uncomfortable, slightly afraid to even look at them too hard or too long, let alone find myself getting in their eyeline, even during rehearsal.  Whatever the opposite of a stalker is, that’s me.  I would liken this attitude to… well, there’s nothing I can liken it to.  I would rather not deal with actors, lest they think I’m being intrusive and unprofessional.  After all these years on the job working in close quarters with a lot of famous faces I still get uncomfortable, but I don’t get impressed all that easily.

The last scene with Harrison finished, and the room began filling up with crew members, some of them asking to have their pictures taken with Harrison.  I didn’t, because I don’t do that—I don’t know if I’m embarrassed by the fakeness of it all or if I think the actors might be—it’s just plain not going to happen that I’ll ask for a photo or even hang around in the same room with photo ops.  However, as I was slinking quickly out of the set, Harrison said, “Renee, get over here, come on.” And who am I to refuse?

After we smiled at the camera, I managed to say, “Thanks for supporting Lolita.  I hope she gets home, too.”  Harrison looked surprised, and said something in response, grinning, but I didn’t catch it.  There were more pictures to be taken, and we on the crew had to get on to the next set, while Harrison had to get back home.

If I’d had more time I might have told him, “I meet a lot of famous actors, but not a lot of famous conservationists.  Now I’m impressed.”

 

The Sorry Syndrome

Yes, I did it again.  I’m posting this a day late, even though I wrote it last night.  You’ll see why if you read more.  And by the way, let me just say how sorry I am…

The Sorry Syndrome

 

One of my friends and I got to talking during a particularly demanding shoot and discovered that when we got fatigued, really tired, and sleep-deprived, an absolutely real physiological phenomenon occurred that was probably the result of changes in our brain chemistry.  We would begin to feel sorry for ourselves.  For no good reason.  However, our altered brains would make up any number of reasons to feel sorry for ourselves that seemed fitting, and after the reasons were made up, anger would follow.

It explained so much.

We dubbed it the Sorry Syndrome, and someday it will go down in medical history as a legitimate reaction to the stress of movie making or any kind of on set work.  I believe other professions may be at risk, as well, so do take heed and pay attention to this important medical advisory.

One example of the Sorry Syndrome occurred during the shooting of an abysmally low budget feature where I was the set decorator.  The prop master was a first-timer to the business, and was quickly sinking during the first day of shooting, so I helped her out, only to incur the wrath of the production designer, who yelled at me to get on to the next set and let the prop master do her job.

I hadn’t slept more than five hours a night for the entire two allotted weeks of preproduction (I told you this was low budget, right?), so I was at extreme risk of the Sorry Syndrome when the blow-up happened, and sure enough, on the drive to the next set, I got sorrier and sorrier for myself, thinking first that I was too good for this stupid production, and too experienced to take this kind of criticism (although I did take it and took great pains to appear unfazed at the moment of the yelling).

Next, I thought about how life was passing me by and nothing good ever happened to me, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get into the shape I was in just ten years ago, and what the hell was the point, anyway, because my life was on the downhill slide to obscurity and failure—I mean look at this hideous, shoddy feature I was working on.

Even this car I was driving was shoddy, a disintegrating rattletrap. I didn’t have the money to buy anything else, and this tottering old truck was nearly twenty years old, and what had I been doing with my life that twenty years could go by and my  truck was still running but I was stuck in Failureville forever, getting older and more beat up, just like my truck?

Yes, I was feeling so very, very sorry for myself.  At this point, tears seem like a good idea, but I feel anger is stronger, somehow, when the Sorry Syndrome hits, and I usually prefer to snarl enraged profanities at the top of my lungs into the empty air (as long as nobody else will hear me cursing, or even see me cursing, just in case they can read lips).  So I do that for awhile, finally coming to the conclusion that nothing I do will ever change the hell-bound, relentless treadmill of my life.

But then, eventually, I finally get to sleep for a blessed, uninterrupted-by-early-call-time, deep, dreamful twelve hours.  And lo and behold, all those reasons to feel sorry for myself that seemed so incredibly obvious the day before have melted away under the sunlight of the new day, and my sanity is restored.  Until the next time during that show or the next when once again I am sleep-deprived and unbearably exhausted.

Before I started working on set, with the shooting crew, I was a drone in a set shop, and occasionally the real people from whatever film we were servicing would come through to look over our work and would often discuss their show.  And often the discussions would erupt into yelling and screaming, and even crying.  All of us drones would look at each other, mortified.  What was wrong with these people?  They were cursing each other out over the draperies, for heaven’s sake!

Now I know what was wrong.  Those poor people had had little or no sleep for weeks or even months, and they had been taken over by the Sorry Syndrome.   They knew not what they did.  At least, not at the time.  But later, they would recall every single awful moment. 

The odd thing about the Sorry Syndrome is that you never see it coming or even realize what’s happening to you (again) until it’s over and you’ve had your sleep.  Then the shock of it hits you like a cold wet towel snap to the face: I succumbed to the Sorry Syndrome again, didn’t I?  It must be like looking back at a time when, say, you were possessed by demons. You tremble with shame and embarrassment, asking yourself: “What did I do this time?  Did I burn all my bridges?  Have I completely blown it?  What got into me?”

The Sorry Syndrome is what got into you.

Here’s why the recognition of this syndrome is so important: as I said before, it explains so much.  The howling with self-pity, the self-righteous anger, the need to put your sorry self out there by word and deed, in every way bemoaning, why me? Why, why, why me?  I believe that every human being, not just those in the film business, are being victimized (by themselves, ironically), overcome by the Sorry Syndrome when they don’t get enough sleep.  Get enough sleep—that’s all it takes to get rid of it.  Just get enough sleep everyone.

How many world leaders out there get enough sleep? How many right now are victims of the Sorry Syndrome?

How many crying jags, arguments, letters of ill will, blow-ups, road rage, cutting of diplomatic ties, killing sprees and declarations of war are simply the results of the Sorry Syndrome?  This syndrome, may, in fact, be the ubiquitous, unseen but deadly curse of mankind.  Who ever said we could and should get along on five or six hours of sleep?  Who has decided that we should man up and deal with life by running constantly on a sleep deficit?

I tell you, I am disgusted, I am sick of this demand by society or whoever, that we should put sleep at the bottom of the list of life’s priorities.  It’s just wrong and I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.  I can’t live like this, constantly zombified by my lack of REM sleep.  It’s making my life a hell on earth, I tell you!  Why can’t I just get a job that gives me a decent turnaround?  Why me? Why, why, why me?

Uh oh. Oh no.  This is week number six of five hours a night of sleep.  It’s happened again!  I’m getting sorrier by the keystroke as I type this.  I’m going to bed.  I may get a full six hours in if I fall asleep in the next three minutes…  

  

The Carnival Eternal

So sorry folks!  I missed my Monday deadline due to a night shoot followed immediately by a root canal followed immediately by twelve hours of long-overdue sleep.  But finally, here’s what I wrote and didn’t get around to uploading until today, Wednesday.

It’s close to midnight on a Sunday inside the beautiful, sprawling, architecturally futuristic, tree-and-lake-sprinkled, many-edifices-big corporate headquarters for a world player corporation that makes accessories for people who either do extreme sports or want to look like they do extreme sports.

Earlier, the surreal, fantastic landscape glimmered under the pure blue sky and sunshine of an Oregon spring day out to show off its finery: brilliant rhododendrons glowing florescent pink and purple, daffodils and narcissus in masses under huge oaks and evergreens, geese floating on lakes flanked by terraces of broad steps.  It could have been a Star Trek city on earth during some future stardate.

But it is here and now.  For once our crew, even swelled by the addition of fifty or so extras, was small against the buildings and backdrop of corporate elegance and success.  There was room for everyone to settle down with their carts and their chairs and their equipment and no need to worry about squeezing into the smallest footprint possible.  That was nice.  The beautiful spring day and the lovely landscape with the movie crew—it was all like a strange dream, or a delirious trip to Disneyland.

Adding to the unreality, the corporation was kind enough to let us use their golf carts to travel the winding roads from courtyard to lake to parking areas and to every wooded or fountained or statuary-draped clearing.  So we would take off on our errands in these little cars and I was jolted back into my childhood, recalling the thrill of doing the “Autopia” ride at Disneyland, where you drove your tiny version of a sports convertible on tiny freeways, pretending you were an adult and reveling in the power of being the Driver living your exciting grownup life.

I have lots of little things to do for the entire day and long night of shooting, with calm, dark starlit periods of time to reflect on this wonderfully bizarre job.  My living, compared to those working here in this gigantic corporate complex—what a world away from each other we are.  No corporation supplies our childcare (they have a nursery and daycare building on the premises), provides a company cafeteria, nor all the little and big perks of life here in the “normal”, “successful” world.   We have our unions, but we don’t have a steady job, only the current project.

Have I really grown up or am I just enjoying (still) my own little Disneyland Autopia ride?  With the economic meltdown of the past few months destroying lives, derailing careers, poisoning hopes for the future (at least the immediate future), I myself have never felt so lucky.  I’m used to the freefall, the uncertainty, the sense that you’re only as successful as your last job, and it’s all up to you to fail or fly high.

I joke that we in the movie business, or at least the shooting and production side of it, are the New Carnies.  We have all our teeth, or at least a good dental plan, but like Carnies, we inspire the same emotions from the “civilians” as we land in their towns or neighborhoods: a curiosity, a sense that this is where the fun is to be had—we have the keys to the Autopias and the Ferris wheels and the screaming rollercoaster rides.  Yet at the same time, we are the subjects of a certain repulsion and a vague distrust.  Why are we out here at the carnival, joining the fun every night and not working a real job and settling down like everybody is supposed to do?

Every night when we pull out of a location, it’s the circus leaving town all over again.  Although without the elephants.  Long ago I proudly put my first bumper sticker on my first car, choosing a quote from my favorite writer, Hunter Thompson, that said: “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”  I didn’t really understand the quote, but that was part of its charm.  At the time, I was in college, figuring I’d be working in a permanent job in the sciences someday.  I’d be a success, I’d be okay by the majority’s standards.  Instead, I ended up here, in the midnight Autopia of the endless carnival.  I think I know what Hunter was talking about, now.

Maybe if I had followed the road more travelled, I’d be frozen with fear right now at the collapse of my plans and my job at this point in my life.  A few years after I put the bumper sticker on, an aquaintance of mine told me that she hated permanent employment, and loved working freelance, “Because it keeps you hungry, it keeps you alive and aware, looking for your next meal.”   I was in a “secure”, nine-to-five job at the time, and regarded her with, now that I think about it, the same distrust I once reserved for Carnies.  That’s food for thought—I realize as I drive my borrowed golf cart through the artificial landscape to the next set. 

The Good Day

It’s odd to be sitting here not four feet away from Brendan Fraser and Harrison Ford, and a visiting family, who are all introducing themselves to each other, and be part of it all but not a part of it at all.

This is the surrealistic world that I find myself in today.

We have commandeered the 12^th, 10^th, 16^th, and 17^th floors of one of the most luxurious business buildings in downtown Portland for the weekend, filming a key scene in the borrowed (rented, actually) offices of an unknown business that seems to involve lawyers and fantasy baseball, from what I can tell based on the paraphernalia on employees’ desks and walls. I’ve set up my laptop in one of their cubicles, and various other departments have taken over empty, beautiful offices with views of the river and Mount Hood.

Snug in “my” cubicle, I have been writing and doing research for a book on dolphins while the scenes are being shot, and then when they cut, I go down the hall and check on the walls of the boardroom set/real boardroom, paint the spots where we’ve nicked the finish, or dull the shine on a metal window frame—whatever is required.  Then I go back to my cubicle and immerse myself in dolphin brain morphology until the next “Cut!” or “Checking the gate!”

Meanwhile, people are talking to each other all around me, mostly about family or friends, not the scene. This is one of those easy days, except for a few hurry-up-and-get-it-done, then-get-out periods every so often.  This is the day, though, when we have to pack up all our equipment and load it into our various trucks, which have been parked on several major downtown streets for this weekend of shooting.

***

The day is over, now and everybody has decided to head over to a very upscale bar and restaurant across the street that lives on the first floor of an exclusive hotel.  So exclusive that it has a doorman stationed in front wearing a heavily gold-braided beefeater outfit, looking vaguely like Henry the Eighth, but with a huge grin on his face as he realizes that the movie crew he’s been watching from across the street for two days has decided to come into his domain.

Gradually we take over the bar, and there’s probably over fifty of us, either sitting at small marble tables or standing around up near the bar.  People from different departments mingle, and at one point six or seven people raise their glasses and toast me for some reason.  A young couple sitting next to me at the bar sharing a cheese assortment look surprised (they aren’t from our crew and I hope this isn’t their first date, because this sudden influx of raucous show business people must be very strange).  The girl leans over to me and says, “I thought they were toasting me!”

He name, it turns out, is Renee, also.

I stay for about an hour, talking to friends, both old and new.  I’ve got an hour drive home, but the people from LA probably live not more than a few blocks away, and everybody’s ready to blow off some steam, because it’s been a long week, and somehow over the last few days everyone has started to loosen up with each other and the atmosphere has changed subtly.  The crew has become a team, and now things are starting to get fun.

Everyone is getting to know each other at this point.  I really like this time in the course of making a film, because in my alien observer mode I can see the walls between people who began as strangers crumbling right in front of me as crewmembers who were once unsure of each other, and maybe a little defensive begin to find that the other person is dedicated to their job like they are, and that they might be a little weird, or maybe even a lot weird, but in this business, who isn’t?

Every show I’ve done has had a day like this, where everyone makes new friends.  After tonight’s socializing and probably a lot of revelry, the rest of the movie will be different, more like a team sport instead of a personal, solitary effort. It’s a shame I have to leave before things get really wild and crazy, but it’s been a long day.  A long day, but a good day.