Portland Confidential

This is a blog that is going to say nothing about that movie that I am now working on.  Why not?  Because I have, for the first time since working up here in Portland, signed a confidentiality rider.  Which means that all the exciting adventures (and I have already had at least two, not counting getting lost when my GPS failed me on the way back from our new shop) shall remain untold.  At least until they tell me it’s okay to talk about it.

So that doesn’t leave me with much to talk about right now, since I am extremely busy, but with top secret activities.

I think, though, that I can tell you something without breaking any important confidences.

There will be wallpaper.  And it has to go up over existing wallpaper.  So someday, there will be a story to tell.

And, just in case anyone is wondering, I haven’t called you-know-who by his first name, yet.  However, I remain hopeful this will eventually happen.

Hurry Up and Wait

Hmmm…  Thought I’d have news from my work on the Gus Van Sant show, didn’t you?  Well, I haven’t started yet, probably because they haven’t locked down the locations, which is where most of the painting will come in.  It looks like we may be in for a marathon overtime run for the finish line by the time we painters get started.

There are only two small construction projects in the script, but things are always changing, so I am biding my time, working on scheduling jobs to get the flip house going, but there’s not much more I can do until I actually sign the deed to close on the thing, and that event seems to be on the slow boat through escrow town.

Of course I have had free time for more important things—mainly hanging out with my wild hawk friend Tennerin, who is a good source of procrastination from doing the work of getting my work tools and kit really organized.

So, short blog today, hope springs eternal for work tomorrow, but the future is never certain in the great business of show business.  And now I go to the dreaded Garage of Chaos and face the task of loading my truck with approximately 10,000 things large and small, useful or potentially useful, good to have on hand for peace of mind and for whatever the future holds.

A Wing and a Prayer While Waiting to Start

Still waiting to start on the Gus Van Sant film, which should happen in the next day or three, and from then on it will be Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride until the day we wrap.  But I live for this kind of high riding excitement and thrill-a-minute work under the pressure of foreshortened prep time.

My only regret will be if we have to skimp on some important visual treatment because of deadlines.  Let’s hope we can keep up and do everything the production designer desires.  I haven’t met the DP or the director yet, but it is a strange kind of suspended wonderment, thinking of them out there, or up there, in the future of shooting this film.

I love the script, but that’s all I will say about it.

It’s going to be a long day for me tomorrow, getting everything out of mothballs for my kit, and cleaning up the mayhem from my last show.  I still have to find a missing regulator for my CO2 canister that’s been missing for months, and clean up a tint rack that repeatedly leaked all the colors of the spectrum into my footlocker.

My flip house is taking up all my time for the moment, and that has to get scheduled and autonomously running by the time I get swept away into filmmaking for the next two or three months.

And there is one more thing taking up my time for the past few days; a prayer that was answered:  my beautiful wild red tail hawk Tennerin has returned from his migration for the eleventh year.  He wasn’t due back for another week to three weeks, but I had been “feeling” him getting close to the house for several days.  So what if psychic connections aren’t scientifically validated (yet)—I was so sure of this feeling that for the past three days I have been heading outside the first thing every morning to stand on the edge of the deck and call to him.

At 8:00 am October 9^th I called out ”Tennerin!” and one second later he flew over my head.  I ran down to the meadow at the river bottom and talked to him while he cart wheeled in the sky above me, then I raced to the store and bought some beef (round steak, on sale), put some pieces of it on a log I had saved from the flooding the winter before, and looked for Tennerin in his favorite tree.   We looked at each other for a long moment, and just as he always does, he waited for my call, “Come on down, Tennerin!”, and he flew in, just four feet above the ground, wings held still and wide, coming in for a perfect landing, as if he had never been gone.

Life is good.  It will be hard to leave him for work every day, but we have the entire fall and winter together, and by Christmas I’ll be wrapped.

I have done a little filmmaking myself, extremely low budget (about $6.95 for the Hi 8 Sony video tape), and Tennerin is the subject.  Someday, Tennerin, I’ll make a real film featuring you.  However, right now any of my readers out there can see a video I put together two years back, in which Tennerin expresses his opinion of pasta from the Olive Garden.  It’s here: YouTube - My Wild Hawk Friend .  It is worse than amateurish, of course, but it was a labor of love.

I’ll fill you in on the first day of work on the film next Monday.

Mission Accomplished—Or at Least Begun

Here’s how it all went down, Dear Readers.  I am now going to work on the latest Gus Van Sant show as their standby painter, because they did have a budget for me, after all.  I am also assisting the lead scenic, who is away on vacation right now until the twelfth of October, so any and all questions and plans are being fielded to me by various members of the art department.

As you will remember from last week, I was about to call my union Business Agent once he had returned from his first visit to the newly-opened production office to inquire 1) whether they had a production designer (yes) and 2) whether they had an art director (yes), so I was spared the possible embarrassment of presenting myself as a candidate for either when there were other, more experienced candidates.  Whew!

I am under enough stress right now as it is, with my new flip house undergoing asbestos testing for its popcorn ceilings as well as the budgeting I am required to do for the millions of repair projects to make it saleable and “too cute to fail”.  In fact, now that I think about it, I am already doing production design for my own movie: about a house destroyed by a mysterious family of ape-like creatures with a hatred of all kitchen appliances, flooring, and working bathroom fixtures which is then rescued by a caring interior designer who wants to rehabilitate it for a new life with a loving family (of non-apes who have no desire to destroy houses for no good reason).

Anyway, so my friend went in to apply for the lead scenic position, got it, and asked if I could start the show for her while she was gone on vacation, and they said yes.  The designer wanted to meet me, which she did, last week.  It was a good meeting, held in one of the upscale boutique hotels in Portland.

As I searched for the parking garage, driving slowly past the front doors of the hotel, I saw a bevy of movie types getting into cars, probably for a location scout, all talking or texting on their Iphones or Blackberries, dressed in that certain manner which conveys the message: “I am visiting here from LA and I am very busy on this very important film project”.  My people.  It was good to see my kind, even though I’m removed from LA by a few years.  However, I suppose LA is injected within my genetic structure in many small and large ways, forever a part of my being.  I don’t mind.

The designer and I met, and I like her very much, having already been impressed by her web posting site, which she built just to convey the breadth of research she had amassed for the script’s visual components.  She even has a specific paint chosen for its color properties, something I agreed with and further was impressed by.  We talked and I showed her pictures from my portfolio on my website, during which time we were visited by the UPM, and interrupted by a phone call and text messages until it was time to head back home, to my own movie (The House with the Expensive Ceiling Repairs and Who Knows what Else) which is not directed by Guys Van Sant, but by me.

I begin working on the film next week, technically, but already I’m getting emails and calls about various projects that need attention or research and planning, so really I’m being drawn into the maelstrom right now.  That’s fine by me—I am so ready to make a movie with this group of people, and some of my favorite fellow local union brothers and sisters are filling out the main crew.  It’s going to be super cool!

Now, I haven’t met Mr. Van Sant yet, so I can’t call him, you know—“Gus”.  But it will happen, you’ll see.  By next month “Gus” and I will be on a first name basis, and I will once again be honored with the job title of “Standby Painter” for another film.  And, as I always do at this early point in the process of getting onto a film, I think about the true wonder of how, right now, I don’t have a clue as to who I will get to know on this show, but they are all up there ahead in time, my future friends and colleagues.  I will be glad to meet all of you.