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.