Behind the Movie

First, a thank you to T. Emerson for your kind comment last week.  I fear that this entry will be short and not a telling of any story.  When I could have written this blog as planned, while waiting over an hour and half at the car repair shop and using my laptop there, I was instead held hostage by yet another endless succession of Windows Vista updates.  They took so long to install themselves that my battery ran down and the laptop shut off.

So here it is, late at night when I have to get up at 4:30 am to get to location early enough to carry my two set bags (40 pounds of dead weight in one, and an awkward 20 lbs in the other one) over two and half blocks down to the little corner store where we are shooting the first scene.  I had some good ideas for this blog, but they will have to wait until next week when I have more time and energy to bring them to light.

But before I sign off, I would like to remind those of us who work on location and on set that if we will just pay attention and be good listeners, we will learn incredible stores of knowledge, and broaden our cultural understanding, as well.  The next time you find yourself stuck on a strange street in a strange town during a long afternoon to night shoot, talk to the inevitable people who wander over and want to watch what’s going on.

In one long afternoon, I found out what a short line railroad is and met a couple of railroad engineers who drive the short line railroad engines.  I learned that the helicopters buzzing us all day out in the middle of nowhere were actually not carrying paparazzi, but were picking up bundles of Christmas trees from the farms and fields to carry them to waiting trucks.  I learned that one house on the street sold jars of honey made by their own bees, and that on the floor below where all the extras were getting dressed in their Halloween costumes, there was a church bazaar selling some very interesting crafty creations and art.

The people we come into contact with during a show—the “normal” people have amazing jobs and sometimes fascinating stories.  They have a community that you are lucky enough, through arriving in the gilded coach of filmmaking, to be accepted into their lives in an open, excited way.  Meeting people this way, all of you can be like kids again, happy with curiosity, asking questions and wanting to hear the answers.

I have met and talked seriously and deeply with frat boys and prison guards and sheriffs; with chicken farmers, biotech scientists working on cures for genetic diseases, architects, CEO’s, skateboarding artists and punks, a professor who teaches Russian and Math as well as manages the condominium complex where we are filming.  A woman who helped lend us some décor for a magician’s cottage set had traveled the world collecting native  artwork and jewelry hoping to bring them to buyers here and then return with the money to the natives so they could invest  their profits into making more pieces for the outside world, empowering themselves.

As exciting as making a movie is, the relationships that form and the wide range and colorful characters of the people who pass through are sometimes the real story, and the movie is only a shadow left behind.  And even if the movie is much more than a shadow—if it’s powerful and unforgettable—all of it will be colored by those other stories that you lived during that time with those people.  If you worked on that movie you will always see more in it than anyone else—anyone who didn’t come to know the people of the places you filmed in and lived in for those months of long days and hard work.