A PA on PE for a WE

During the weekend of April 26-27 I had the opportunity to serve as a PA for Universal Studios on their shoot of "Public Enemies" in Minocqua, WI. I doubt I learned enough to violate any kind of confidentialty agreement I signed, though I will try to avoid any such details that might cause Universal to sue me for "$5 million dollars and all my stuff," as they politley put it.

Normally, I do not answer phone calls from area codes that I don't recognize--those are usually the calls from collectors or phone companies that claim I owe them or their clients ghastly sums of money I will accept no culpability of owing. But, something made me answer this particular call as I stepped out of the shower... A curiosity as to whom I may now owe a ghastly sum of money, most likely. To paraphrase:

"Hey, is this Mike?"

"Yeah."

"Whaddup? Wanna work on Public Enemies?"

"... ... Yes?"

"Sweetness. Come to the Hilton by 5. Bring an overnight bag. Later, bro!"

Intrigued, and in no mood to go to my real job that afternoon (the matter of a $200 paycheck for a day's worth of work may have been mentioned), I called in to work.

"Hello?"

"cough This is Mike. I'm sick. cough See you Monday." -click-

After 12 more phone calls to brag to my friends who were not going to be working on a major motion picture that weekend, I proceeded to watch as much of the first round of the NFL Draft as I could--thank god for Public Enemies, I actually got to watch the Draft!

Somewhere between Keith Rivers and Ryan Clady I was informed not to be there until 6 PM, which was good news, as I could now attend the beginning of the cookout which I was origianlly planning on skipping work for (as it was the one day that week when it was really really really nice out--you know, before it plummeted into the 30s again that night). Unfortunately for me (more unfortunate, it would prove, as the night carried on), the food began its preparation just as I had to leave--I did net one Twizzlers Pull N' Peel, however.

I arrived at the Hilton at 10 to 6, when I was informed that our bus would be arriving "within a half hour."

...

...

2 and a half hours later we were on the bus. In this interim, no one involved really knew when the bus would arrive--it was in a perpetual state of being a half hour out, which caused me to put off eating. When I finally decided I should eat something--anything--before the bus got there, the bus arrived, and we were shipped on our way, five hours to Minocqua.

I had referenced, prior to leaving, exactly where Minocqua was--approximately Canada--and how to get there, which was to take 41 north to 10, 10 to 51, then 51 to Minocqua. Our bus driver had made no such previous inquisitions. He said later that if he had known where he was driving he "probably wouldn't have taken the job."

We passed 41... We passed 45... We passed Lake Mills... I was pretty sure we were taking the long route--at 45 MPH and floating between lanes. Later, we found out he had come to Milwaukee from lower Michigan (he'd hit Chicago rush-hour traffic, hence the 2 hour delay) and, by the end of the trip, had been driving 16 hours stright. These are things I don't need to know about my bus driver.

It had been recommended that we get some sleep on the ride, since we were going to have an early morning. Now, theroretically, we were riding in a "luxury" bus. That may have been true for anyone under the height of 5'4," but at my elongated frame, I couldn't even sit facing forward, much less find the room to sleep. When I did attempt to nod off, my head resting against the window, I would be reminded of the drver's fatigue every time he rolled over the rumble strip, bouncing my head rapidly off the glass. Luckily, I took this opportunity to ge to know my fellow compatriates, most of whom were quite a bit like myself, except for the loudmouthed family of rednecks and the quiet jazz musician and one-time saxophonist for the Violent Femmes who, until his revelation of musical association, reminded me of Wilford Brimley in Bizarro World.

The group included two UWM film grads (one formerly the Equipment Room manager), a film maker who is a UWM Art History grad student, a New Yorker who specifically came to Milwaukee for UWM Film, and a guy who works for a local television production company who will be entering his sophomore year in the film program. This group gave me a lot of confidence in this program--the confidence I had when I applied, but the kind that can wane when you're inside something without the outside perspective reminding you that what you're doing really is worthwhile.

Somewhere in the middle of nowhere--North of Portage, but not on the Interstate--our driver decided we should pull over at a rest stop so we could "stretch our legs." As soon as we were off the bus, he scambled to his atlas to figure out where he was. I did not quibble with the stop, however, because after a frantic search for a vending machine, I was finally able to derive sustenance from a $1 16 pack of vanilla-chocolate sandwich cookies and a Coke!

We set back out, travel agenda reaffirmed. After nearly hitting a black bear crossing the highway, we eventually reached Minocqua--where it was snowing. This mattered little at the time, as we were eager to sleep as much as we could before we met again at 6 AM.

Originally, we had been hired to drive crew members' cars to Milwaukee while they rode the bus, since they were pulling a 16 hour shift, after which they couldn't drive safely. When we awoke after our 3 hours of sleep, we were informed that the crew had decided to stay in Minocqua, and, rather than leaving at 7, we would be there until 10... and there was an open bar.

So, in essence, we were paid by Universal Studios to spend a night in a resort hotel and get drunk for four hours with the film crew before coming home.

If this is Hollywood, where do I sign up?

Intervention Upon Narrative in "Duck Soup"

In Duck Soup feel less that the Marx Bros. are intervening upon narrative as much as narrative is intervening upon them. Coming from Vaudeville, the Bros. were much more accustomed to the free-form revue format, featuring gags, sketches, and musical numbers loosely connected to one another through association from one to the next, with "context" existing as just another gag to be used or ignored as the situation required (for instance, it could be used as a means of self-reference common in this form of theater). Duck Soup plays in just the same fashion, except teh context is suddenly a limiting thing, that demands the players follow a central (if utterly flimsy) plot line through to the end. It seems, at times, like a struggle to contain all of their anarchic energy within the confines of the frame, which was no doubt a limiting thing for them creatively (though certainly a boon financially).

Did I Really Just See That?

On this past Saturday I had the rare opportunity to see a live performance by the sketch comedy quintet The Kids in the Hall at The Riverside, their second performance in their current tour--only their second appearance in Milwaukee, and the first since 2002. I, myself, write, produce, and act in a sketch group, so its a medium of particular interest to myself. If sketch comedy is not an art, then this show would have required a new classification. It is a difficult thing to write about--good sketch is something that needs to be experienced, and I have no desire to anecdotally reflect on the funniest moments or best lines of dialogue. Even old jokes, like the video of Bruce McCulloch over-dubbed to say "Milwaukee" at the right time, carried a freshness with them born purely of sincerity.

The trap in writing sketch is soaking yourself in sarcasm. It abounds in sketch, and, without it, sketch would probably suck. Hardcore. But there is a difference in writing sarcasm and performing sarcastically. When you perform sarcastically, you appear disinterested, like you're just doing this because you have nothing else to do, like you don't really respect the audience's ability to interpret you, or any number of other bad things. Some genres might benefit from a sarcastic performance--like soap operas, for instance--but in sketch it just makes you look like an ass. The Kids in the Hall have been doing this for 24 years--22 with the current lineup--in which time they've become the most well-recognised sketch group in the world behind only Monty Python. To still play with the same enthusiasm and commitment after that long--not to mention keeping the humor fresh after they've established their own canon--is incredible.

We're lucky to have had them (though Dave Foley did express amazement to me after the show that they'll be doing a show in Green Bay [followed by shrugging and shaking of head] later in the tour), because their live performance is a very unique and worthwhile experience.

James Benning

I would lie if I said I wasn't intrigued by the idea of a film class featuring a math lecture from a very prominent experimental filmmaker. What James said about the disengagement of math teachers and lecturers from their audience really rang true with me. If he had been my 8th grade Algebra teacher, I might not be in film school--I guess I can count my blessings. While the math he did really was not advanced at all (it really did feel like a condensed version of 8th grade Algebra--never mind I failed 8th grade Algebra), my attention was held just by the energy he radiated long enough to let him apply the lesson to my reality.

He held a particular fascination for the elegance of simplicity in mathematical logic. Math and the sciences always work from specific to general in their proofs, applying a hypothesis to a very specific set of circumstances, then broadening their proof of concept to cover a much more general set of circumstances--the ultimate goal of which is to develop a unified "theory of everything." That elegance of simplicity is a philosophy I've held for a long time myself. In my work, I try to express the most I can with the least--a glance, a raised eyebrow, a camera angle, and pencil stroke, a sound effect, or simply silence itself--which, I think, is what he meant when he said we should look for that kind of elegance in our own work.

Splitting/Spiral Jetty

I felt a couple different reactions for Splitting and The Spiral Jetty. To me, though it was filmed, Splitting seemed like a performance piece more than anything. Like how much of his "anarchitecture" had to be experienced first hand, I feel like Splitting was more of a total experience that couldn't be as well approximated on film as in person. The concept alone, "this guy is going to cut a house in half," is provocative and exciting, but the matter-of-fact workmanlike editing of the piece sucks that excitement and intrigue dry.

The Spiral Jetty certainly had much more of a story to tell, and I felt it was primarily narrative in form. The early focus on dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures gave the proper undercurrent of motivation as to why Smithson may have been interested in building this object, and the bulk of the film is more or less the story of physically constructing it, with the climatic moment being the person (presumably Smithson) traversing the length of it.

That said, I think the "denouement" of the piece--the protracted helicopter shots--ran long and hinted of ego. If not ego, then a lack of objectivity in looking at the formation--pride is uderstandable, but it overshadows the rest of the film when it leaks through the final minutes.

Tabletop Artist's Statement

Sorry for the lateness of this entry--without further ado:

Obviously, I took a very minialist approach to this assignment, because that is always my preference. My project, essentially, was a live-drawn picure of a scientist holding a film canister, excaiming "This is my most experimental film YET!" I didn't know I could have adjusted the zoom prior to shooting, so the text was mostly cut off of the video, but this is what it intended to say in entirety. The message is a kind of double-edged satire, both of the heavy emphasis of experimental film, virtually to the exclusion of studying contemporary commercial film in a program filled with people trying to take advantage of contemporary commercial film moving to the State of Wisconsin, but also of the idea that the "experimental film maker" is nothing more than a petty novelist who peddles an amorphous artistic sensibility in place of a more tangible meaning in their films.

I feel as though several my numerous rough drafts were much better than the final product, because I underestimated to amount of concentration required to maintain a whistled tune, a last-second addition, throughout the process. Given a second chance, I'd have done it silently. Still, I think the scumbly nature of the line made it difficult to discern exactly what I was drawing until the end, which should serve to maintain interest until the end.

Reflecting on The Amatuerist

As I watched Miranda July's "The Amateurist," I couldn't help but impose my own narrative outside the limited frame. To me, the character of the Professional didn't seem unsure of herself in her technical expertise, just of her ability to communicate that expertise on a human level. This seemed like a textbook case of a "techie," someone so engrossed in the techincal aspects of their field that they lose (or fail to develop) their interpersonal skills. The character also expressed a kind of forced contentment. More to come...

(continued)
Furthermore, the character of the Amateur as depicted seemed like a representation of caged freedom, restrained against her will, forced to bid by outside authority, but retaining the anger of wanted liberty.

Based on these observations, I constructed an Orwellian dystopia outside the frame. (It helped that the surveillance cam was in a grainy black and white, suggesting a vision of the future from the 1950s.) The movie, to me, was as though a hand-held first-person documentary were being made about the ordinary people who make the Big Brother network operate, as ironic a concept as that might be (since the overall tone was one seemingly of ironic humor, that didn't bother me very much). The Amateur was a free-spirit, brought to wherever she was for the purposes of re-education or just observation and experimentation. The Professional was just a technician doing a job, one she was particulrly skilled at, even though she may be aware of the dubious morality. Any such inclinations would need to be forced back, of course, or else it would be her on the other side of the monitor.