A few years ago, I was working on a movie on the Eastern Shore. It was a basic cookie-cutter romantic comedy with big name actors in it, including Matthew McConaughey. The last time I’d worked on a show with him, it was “Contact”, and he’d impressed me as being a pretty cool, laid-back guy- he came and hung out at the wrap party, even hitting on my then-girlfriend (now wife).
Time had worked it’s Hollywood magic on the dude since then. We kept getting script changes, and a new sub-plot was developing. The movie’s about a guy who lives with his parents, and dates girls until they start to “get serious about him’, then he brings them home to Mama and they run screaming- pretty funny bit, right?
Evidently, the actor felt that his character was too much of an asshole, and helped develop the storyline about a fiance who had died, and the emotional pain that made him act this way- he doesn’t want to get close again, you see? From a comedy perspective, nothing’s funnier than a dead girlfriend.
This happens a lot, actor help shape scripts, and that’s a natural part of the process. It seemed like a inelegantly executed play: let’s build in some pathos for my character. It just rang cheezy to me- maybe I don’t get the big picture.
I was doing what I love- Art Department, specifically set dressing. Dressing sets on a movie about boats is about as good as it gets, and we spent lots of nice time out on the water, and kept finding reasons to take the ferry from Oxford to St. Michaels. It was a great gig, but all great gigs have their dirty underbelly.
Mine was that the guy who hired me was a drug-addled lunatic whose highest priority was getting drunk every night and banging a fat bartender who was, by any stretch of aesthetic imagination, not attractive in the least. One of my main tasks was to cover for him when he didn’t show up at call time and to creatively weave new tales out of sparce narrative fabric (where the hell else could he be afterall?), I was running out of places to say that he was.
One night I went to dinner with him and the Production Designer, Set Decorator and a couple set dressers. The evening’s dynamic was one of overlords and underlings, the set dec explained how things work in the industry (I’m in my 16th year of it at this point) how the designer and decorator work in tandem (thanks, I’ve done both jobs) and other tales of regalia skewed to remind me how lucky I was to be in this present company.
And the wine flowed, as it should at a good meal. But having returned to my straight edge roots, I was chafing- when people get drunk, they lose their subtlety. Whatever grace they use to cloak their barbs falls away. I started feeling the need to leave, but there wasn’t a polite way to do so. It became a chore to not let my discomfort show, and to stay witty, charming, fun, all the things that we like think ourselves to be.
Finally, the meal wound its way down and we were leaving through the old colonial architecture of the restaurant when a huge thunderclap shook the place. It was raining violently, suddenly. I took the chance to bolt, just kinda yelled thanks bye and sprinted into the storm towards my car.
Sitting dripping in the driver’s seat, I turned the key and music filled the inside of the car: it was Frodus’ last record, and the drums and bass shook the windshield as I cranked it up.
The words were like a balm to me, I started feeling calm, soothed. Something about those sounds was bringing me down from my near-anxiety attack. Nothing matters. I could hear tubes in the amps rattle as the singer screamed his words: “Move on down move on down/ The road goes on for miles…”
I started driving through the rain. It’s all cool, I can handle whatever comes my way.
http://www.frodus.com/mp3s/frodus-red_bull_of_juarez.mp3
