New Year’s Regrets and Resolutions

Here are some of the things I regret most from my career in film, followed by, just to lighten up all the negativity, some resolutions to prevent similar regrets from occurring in the future.  I think anyone reading these will learn something from my mistakes.  At least I hope they will.  If they don’t, they’ll probably regret it.

Some years ago, my sister and I traveled to Mexico’s spectacular Mayan pyramid at Chichen Itza known as the Temple of Kukulcan. She had the brilliant idea of placing a “slinky” on the famous staircase that is built into the structure and filming the spring-like toy as it climbed down, step by step, from the apex of the pyramid.  Neither of us had a video camera at the time, so we asked two guys we met on the tour bus to film it for us and gave them a blank video cassette.  We released two slinky’s and the guys filmed the ensuing race to the bottom and gave us the recording, which I still have today.

Several months after our trip, on Saturday Night Live, Dennis Miller did a Weekend Update news story that featured a slinky going down the stairs of the Kukulcan pyramid at Chichen Itza.  A few months after that, I was working at Culver studios and Dennis Miller happened to sit next my table at the studio commissary.  Was it just a coincidence that his fake news story paralleled our real efforts, or were the two guys we met perhaps writers for the show?  I wanted to ask him, to solve the mystery of the recurring slinky and the Mayan pyramid, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.  I’ve regretted this ever since.

Another regret: Because I was a huge fan of Steve Martin a while before he became famous (that’s not what I regret), I had bought a first edition of his book, Cruel Shoes, one of only 750 in print. Years later, when I knew he was shooting Three Amigos! on the stage next door to where I was working, I kept bringing the book to work, planning on asking him to sign it if I ever saw him, thinking he would be flattered that someone had bought and kept one of the first printings of his first book.

A week into the Three Amigos! shoot, who stands next to me in line at the studio commissary but Mr. Martin.  I had the book in my shoulder bag, and I turned to him and I…  I couldn’t ask him.  I couldn’t even say hello.  I still have the book.  It’s unsigned, of course.

And then there’s the opportunity I had to work with director Ridley Scott.  I loved his work—Blade Runner is still one of my favorite films. This was a three day commercial out in the middle of the Mojave Desert, and I was half a day late getting to the location. That’s six hours late. This incident happened during the year which will always be known to me as the “What the hell is wrong with me??” year.  I slept through my alarm back in LA, I spaced out on the driving directions and got lost, I took hours to match a couple of paint colors, and I fell asleep during a conversation with the unit production manager on the crew van drive back to the hotel one afternoon.  If he remembers me from that shoot, I will probably never work with Mr. Scott again even if the opportunity arises.  Hideous regret, that one.

Back to the present, the first blush of the year 2010.  If I want to avoid having more such regrets in the future, there are some resolutions that are very clear to me now, so many years on.  Why didn’t I talk to Dennis Miller and Steve Martin?  I didn’t want to embarrass myself. I was afraid of looking stupid.  But the cost of avoiding embarrassment and giving in to fear has been years and years of recurring “ah hah” moments when I have thought to myself, “You just should have done it!  You could have avoided hundreds of horrible, soul-searing moments of pure, miserable, and apparently unending regret!”

Even if Dennis Miller had thought I was a space cadet and called security (which wouldn’t have been a problem—the guards all knew me because I’d been working on two films there for several months), even if Steve Martin had withered me with a stare of pure distain, or backed away from me without a word, I would have had an adventure, a story to relive.  I would have had closure.  So I’m going to stop fearing embarrassment so much, and stop worrying about looking stupid.  So what if they think I’m an idiot?  I’m reasonably sure they’re wrong.

As far as the year I blew it with Ridley Scott (and lots of other jobs, in various ways), I now know that I had an undiagnosed medical ailment called hypothyroidism beginning sometime before that year.  It slows you down and eventually, if untreated and becomes severe enough, can cause heart failure.  You gradually stop thinking clearly or quickly.  You start to fall asleep all the time.  You screw up in many different ways, because your body is seriously malfunctioning.

My resolution to prevent this particular regret from ever happening again is to make sure I have some kind of health coverage that lets me get to the doctor immediately when things start going south, like they did that year.  At the time, I was working on non-union jobs and had no money to spare for $300.00-a-pop doctor visits and tests.

It would be another year of slow motion descent into hell before I could find affordable health care and get myself diagnosed and fixed.  I found out then that it was easy to counteract this chronic condition with a daily dose of thyroid hormone, but I lost many opportunities and my health for almost two years just because of the lack of medical care.

So, dear readers, answers and advice for those of you who want to avoid living a life filled with stupid regrets?  Don’t take yourself so seriously; don’t be afraid to look a little stupid in the moment.  You’ll avoid feeling stupid regret over and over again for the rest of your life.

And don’t let yourself go without health care.  In fact, write Washington and let them know that you support Obama’s efforts to get the health care reform bill passed, and that you will hold your representative responsible for doing their part to make it happen.  Everyone needs this kind of insurance.  Anyone can suffer with what I had (or something much more serious and acute) even in their twenties, and as a result they may very well regret many things in their lives that could have been easily prevented or cured.

A last regret:  not appreciating the wonderful weirdness and great talents of the Business.  Resolve to do the research on everybody you work with.  Who has your DP or your director worked with over their careers?  What movies have they done and how do their movies look as far as color, visuals, lighting and tone?  How much coverage and what kind of camera moves is your director fond of?  Study their work, and you’ll appreciate what they have brought to film.  Learn what everyone’s job is, as much as you can.  Be curious.  It will bring you into the process with a greater clarity, and it will make your job more like your calling.

As another year in show business gets rolling, I don’t kid myself—I know I’ll blow it sometime, probably even sometime soon.  And then I’ll have to live with yet another regret.  But I’m resolving that beginning with this year, I will step up more often and break through my fear of embarrassment.  And if I run into Dennis Miller again I’m going to ask him about slinky’s on the Kukulcan pyramid at Chichen Itza.  He probably won’t know what I’m talking about, but I can explain, if he gives me a chance.

Avatar Again

My sister and her husband are here on a rare visit from the Midwest, and to celebrate, I asked them to see Avatar with our mother and me. It was to be my second viewing of the film, but I had wanted to see Avatar again so I could study it and have something to say about it in this blog.  I knew my sister and her husband would love it, because they’re both gamers and science fiction fans.

However, we got a late start. We had to wait for Mother to show up, and as usual she was running late.  Very late.  Over an hour and a half late, she finally showed up with several bags of odd, unneeded stuff from the Dollar Store.  Why had she spent so much time shopping when her daughters were waiting on her?

My mother and my sisters and I have a running joke.  Whenever we get distracted by something during a simple shopping errand, and find ourselves spending an hour or three at someplace like the “wall mirrors” section of Big Lots, we explain it all by looking at one another and saying the same two words, usually in unison: “Pretty!  Shiny!”  That’s because these two features in any one object are all it takes to grab our attention and hold it for ridiculous amounts of time.

And true to form, our mother had stopped at the Dollar Store for who knows what stupid little item—I think it might have been potato chips (I know, a bad idea) —and something pretty and shiny had gotten her attention at 3:00 pm and the next thing she knew, it was 4:30 pm.

We rushed through dinner and then got to the theater, picked up our 3D glasses, and watched the film.  As I predicted, both my sister and her husband were amazed, entranced, and they loved Avatar.  My mother and I still loved it, as well.

So what can I say about Avatar for this blog entry?  I had plans to analyze the color palette and talk about the quality of light and its continuity through the rising and setting of the several planets in Pandora’s sky.  I was also going to check the credits for listings of painters and what part they played in the making of the film as far as live action or CGI effects.

But you know what?  For the second time I fell headlong into the world reaching out from the screen and flew with those giant bird-lizards (who strangely enough remind me of my hawk Tennerin), caught my breath again at the luminescence of the forest plants and the seeds from the Tree of Souls, watched the irises of the Na’vi glow with emotion, and the changing hues of their skin, marveled at those lizard’s mottled scale patterns that seemed to shift through the colors of the rainbow as they soared between floating mountains…

And I have nothing of any substance to report.  Once again I was completely distracted by the beauty of Pandora.  It was all so pretty, and so shiny!